Christopher Nolan's next: 'Interstellar'

[keg in kc]

Script was written by his brother, and Spielberg was previously attached.

Originally Posted by The Hollywood Reporter

With his Batman trilogy now complete, Christopher Nolan has found his next project.

According to multiple sources, Nolan has set his sights on a sci-fi project titled Interstellar, which he is in talks to direct and produce. The project involves time travel and alternate dimensions in a story that sees a group of explorers travel through a wormhole. The script is based on scientific theories developed by a Kip Thorne, a theoretical physicist, a gravitational physicist and astrophysicist at Caltech.

...

The script for Interstellar was written by Jonathan Nolan, Chris' brother, who worked on The Dark Knight Rises and The Dark Knight, as well as Prestige. Jonathan Nolan (known as Jonah) also has a "story by" credit for Memento, Chris Nolan’s breakout movie.

Steven Spielberg was previously attached to direct Interstellar and produce with Lynda Obst. It is unclear if Spielberg will remain involved, especially considering the director's planned next movie, Robopocalypse, was delayed indefinitely on Wednesday.

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[DaneMcCloud]

It sounds like "Contact", save for the poor science.

[Silock]

Originally Posted by kysirsoze

Spoiler!

Agreed, but it would have been the absolute last resort. In fact, they probably wouldn't have sent someone there in the first place because they would know their info would be worthless. They would have exhausted all other options before flying in blind on this planet. They literally had minutes of data in all of those years.

It was all a contrivance to age Coop's kids so Murph could get working on Earth and Coop would feel more desperation to get home. I understand it's just a movie, but for me the situation was robbed of it's emotional impact because it was so transparent and careless. Seemed manipulative. That's my growing problem with Nolan's movies.

Spoiler!

Maybe. It's also possible that these characters just . . . made a mistake. Kinda like the world-class scientists that launched the Hubble telescope with mirror problems, or those that ignored the warnings against launching Challenger after a freeze, or those that figured Columbia would be fine, even with the damage to the heat shielding.

As far as being manipulative, I can see that. But the whole thing was contrived. They were never coming home. Screwing up the time on that planet wouldn't have mattered in the long run, because it would have ended the same way -- running out of fuel and having to use the black hole to propel them around.

[Silock]

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud

It sounds like "Contact", save for the poor science.

Yeah, pretty much.

[kysirsoze]

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud

It sounds like "Contact", save for the poor science.

Originally Posted by Silock

Yeah, pretty much.

They even got McConaughey! Also some shadows of 2001 sprinkled in. Still the best space movie of all time.

[keg in kc]

I don't think it's much like Contact. It's closer to 2001, although it doesn't have the inherent coldness of Kubrick's masterpiece.

Interstellar's a bit of a strange bird, because beyond the great visuals there's some very emotional moments, which is no doubt why I liked it so much. There's a reason that, while I love them both and have dedicated hundreds of hours to the Star Trek universe, I prefer Star Wars (OT...). I just gravitate more toward storytelling than I do science. Neither imagination or fantasy are to me dirty words, I generally don't give a shit if something isn't 100% scientifically accurate (like we could possibly know that for speculative fiction anyway, but that's another topic...) and I usually leave hard science fiction, whether it's books or movies or whatever, feeling like the tech was cool but the story just wasn't very interesting. But that's just me.

I did not feel like that walking out of Interstellar. That is to say that while I do think that the Nolans were striving to be accurate with their science, they just happened to tell what I thought was a good, emotional story. And while I wouldn't put it on par with 2001, as I said last night I thought it was pretty great, and I'm sure I'll see it again, although maybe not this weekend. I want to catch Birdman while I can.

[kysirsoze]

Birdman is AWESOME. See that immediately.

[ragedogg69]

I love it when an overhyped movie get shit on by critics and fans. I go in with lower expectations and thnk the movie is great. A very emotional story that came full circle. I like that.

The only science part that I did not like and I am sure someone smarter than me will tell me I am wrong about is

Spoiler!

the whole black hole thing. A water planet orbiting a black hole close enough to make landing difficult? That orbit would have been disrupted long ago. Piloting into an event horizon for a gravity assist? Atoms cannot escape the event horizon, but a ship can? Once in the horizon, his ship would have been stretched like a rubber band and have the thickness of a drinking straw. Not to mention a man would have been crushed to the size of a grain of sand due to the gravity forces. I did enjoy the idea of the 5th dimension. I was surprised they tried to show what a singularity might be like. Kudos for that.

In no way did that ruin the movie for me. I loved it.

[Silock]

Originally Posted by ragedogg69

I love it when an overhyped movie get shit on by critics and fans. I go in with lower expectations and thnk the movie is great. A very emotional story that came full circle. I like that.

The only science part that I did not like and I am sure someone smarter than me will tell me I am wrong about is

Spoiler!

the whole black hole thing. A water planet orbiting a black hole close enough to make landing difficult? That orbit would have been disrupted long ago. Piloting into an event horizon for a gravity assist? Atoms cannot escape the event horizon, but a ship can? Once in the horizon, his ship would have been stretched like a rubber band and have the thickness of a drinking straw. Not to mention a man would have been crushed to the size of a grain of sand due to the gravity forces. I did enjoy the idea of the 5th dimension. I was surprised they tried to show what a singularity might be like. Kudos for that.

In no way did that ruin the movie for me. I loved it.

Spoiler!

The planet could orbit a black hole. It wouldn't have to be very close for the gravity of a hole to affect the tide like it does. Look at how much our moon affects our tide, and it's very, very small. As far as how long ago the orbit would have been disrupted, that all depends on how far out it started. Our entire galaxy is orbiting a black hole, so not everything gets crazy quickly.

Did they actually say they were piloting into the event horizon, or just using the black hole for a slingshot? They wouldn't be able to come back from the event horizon, but they could get relatively close to a black hole, as the power of gravity follows the inverse square law (ie twice as far away means 1/4 of the power, 3 times as far away, 1/9th, etc.). It would fall off fairly quickly, even given how massive the gravitational attraction of the black hole is. I thought they were shedding weight so as not to fall into the event horizon, but I could be wrong.

Gravity should have crushed him, but there are theories that shy away from that a bit, so we don't actually know what would happen. There are theories that one could survive the event horizon and pop out on the other side in a new dimension, or in a new galaxy.

[notorious]

9.2 on IMDB from 52k votes.

[ragedogg69]

89% audience ranking at rt as well.

[ragedogg69]

neil degrasse tyson will do a podcast with Nolan in the future. I look forward to it.

[BigRichard]

Meh

[BWillie]

Originally Posted by notorious

9.2 on IMDB from 52k votes.

Every single movie is high on imdb on its opening day. It's because fan boys see it first, rate it high no matter what

[BigMeatballDave]

Why does anyone really care about movie ratings?

Why should I give a shit what someone else thinks about a movie?

[kysirsoze]

Originally Posted by BigMeatballDave

Why does anyone really care about movie ratings?

Why should I give a shit what someone else thinks about a movie?

I'll check rotten tomatoes to get an overall idea of how the movie is being received if I'm on the bubble about seeing it. Not a huge factor, though. I have a few friends whose opinions I respect what they thought of something, too. IMDB ratings are practically worthless, though. There's a very specific demographic that spams that site. It's evident in the top 20 list.