Shelby…
Congrats on running the boards for all the big posts over the last couple years! hahaha. From my perspective, I have such enormous esteem for Nolan, that this was a bit of a logical let down. The continuity was flawed and the execution was iffy. But yes, I enjoyed the movie. There isn’t a Nolan movie I haven’t enjoyed.

But if I could choose my favorite Nolan movies it would be The Prestige, Memento and Inception as three neck and neck finalists. I loved the emotion and the feel of Inception. But not the execution in every minute detail as his other homeruns. Just saying. But regardless, welcome!! Thanks for commenting… all the comments!

Taylor

With that in mind, Interstellar is known for being incredibly accurate (probably only 2nd to The Martian). I liked Mr. Ex’s string theory take on it, but it may not even be that complicated. Such a beautiful movie and I wish everyone had the experience I had because (without exaggerating) it had a profound effect on me. I feel bad that others didn’t have a similar experience!

Cooper has no kids, he is a NASA pilot, and not a farmer. When he is sent to Space with the other crew members; all the usual events happen except when he ejects out into Gargantua, he ends up dying, along with the people of Earth; while Brand pushes on to Edmunds’ planet. There she utilizes the population bomb and starts a colony. Many years in the future, those humans have now evolved into 5D beings. Because of this, they can see the past present and future. They see that Cooper was one of the original saviours and helped the human race to survive by ejecting, they decide they want to save him and the other humans from death. So they manipulate his fly by wire from the future causing him to crash. This results in him retiring from NASA, marrying and having kids; one of which will be Murphy Cooper, a vital component of their plan. Skipping ahead to the blackhole part, he ejects but this time they pull him into their newly constructed Tesseract, thus saving him. This allows him to communicate with Murph, through the whole quantum physics morse code thing, resulting in her being able to lift the stations and save the people on Earth. You asked for a working theory and here you have one.

I think the literal theory does make sense, unfortunately. There’s no timeline, no “run through”, where Cooper dies, and then gets corrected by future Cooper. That’s where your criticism breaks down. The idea is that the intervention from the future has always occurred. It’s a closed, self-consistent chain of cause and effect.

The reason you don’t like it is because it has no prime mover, no cause outside itself. Which is valid and a valid criticism of the storytelling (it’s just a complicated Deus ex Machina), but not physically illogical or inconsistent.

My biggest problem with Interstellar is how terrible the writing was, how cold and inhuman the characters are, how politically unrealistic the future world is, and: how utterly unforgivable the portrayal of female characters is.

The movie fails the Bechdel Test and simultaneously illustrates why the Bechdel Test is a good rule of thumb.

Brand gives a totally scientific, rational reason for choosing Edmunds planet over Manns. Cooper gives an irrational, unscientific, dumb reason for choosing Manns. Does the movie lampshade this as an example of Cooper foolishly trusting a guys reputation over a logical, coherent argument? No, instead it has Brand turn around and say “You’re right! I’m illogical because I’m a WOMAN and I’m in LOVE! But maybe FEELINGS are what matters! If only you MEN could learn that!”

I may have paraphrased. It’s such an unforgivably sexist scene, if you saw it in a movie from the 1960s you’d chuckle at how naive screenwriters used to be.

The movies take her side in the end, yes, but it’s the side of irrationality, explicitly represented by womanhood. Women and their judgement clouding emotions! My gosh, what a twist if they turned out to be right!

The progress of science back on Earth, utterly unbelievable. The giant centrifuge NASA base – why would you even build that on the ground? Ridiculous. The behaviour of every character – none of them acted like believable humans, except for Dr Mann. One of my favourite movie villains ever. Such pathos. If only there was a human character thematically opposing his panicked doomed bid to not die alone.

So yeah. Terrible movie, but not for any of the logic in the plotting – for the unbelievably low quality script.

Murphy’s law: anything that can happen, will happen. This may be an indication towards the quantum mechanics theory of many worlds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation

This simply means that our daily actions, our faree will, creates multiple realities, multiple branches of existence, many worlds, multiverses.

You could for instance be served tea and coffee, and elect with your free will to choose coffee; however, in an alternate branch, you picked tea. This creates two realities or branches. Hence, every action, every invocation of our free will leads to a creation of new a branch of parallel existence, leading to possibly infinite branching like a fractal.

This choice making ability, this free will, which creates multiple branches of reality, can be illustrated as follows: http://rosettacode.org/mw/images/a/a3/Fractal_tree_bbc.gif

In one branch, humanity suffers blight, the Earth is dying and extinction looms. In another branch, humanity has progressed, evolved and transcended above space and time.

The transcended humanity, or referred to as “they”, are able to traverse time as a physical dimension.

Like normal humanity, “they” are able to travel through space backwards and forwards, and in all other directions. However, the difference is that “they” can also travel to events in time whether backwards or forwards.

This time-travel is not a literal one whereby previous events can be altered creating paradoxes. Rather, all events which can happen, have happened. Murphy’s law from this perspective has happened, not will happen.

All possible potential branches of reality have occurred. All events across space and time as observable by “they” have already occurred, and are available for “they” to traverse; “they” are able to observe all branches.

Since all possible events or outcomes, or branches of humanity are available for “they” to traverse, this implies that branching is in fact finite and not infinite. Therefore, normal humanity experiences limited free will as opposed to unlimited free will; i.e. choices are limited even though a certain route branches to transcending space and time.

Since the branching of humanity and creation of many worlds is limited and finite, and since blight is threatening to destroy an entire branch of creation, “they”, decide to rescue normal humanity to ensure the continued branching of many worlds.

Why would “they” want to create branching / many worlds?

Well, “they” are humanity which stemmed from normal humanity in the first place from an earlier branch. Perhaps “love is the one thing that transcends space and time” and “they” desire to love?

Perhaps “they” feel being alone and one is lonely —perhaps the ‘one’ requires the ‘many’ to express love? Many and one have several themes —many worlds via quantum mechanics, many outcomes explained by Murphy’s law, and quite literally many worlds visited; i.e. Miller/Mann/Edmunds.

Nature is created and manifested in fractal branching patterns (http://www.miqel.com/fractals_math_patterns/visual-math-natural-fractals.html), by ill-executed actions of limited free will, normal humanity threatens destruction of a fractal branch which “they” decide to restore?

More evolved, “they” have transcended time. If time is transcended, free will cannot exist. If time is a physical dimension which allows “they” to navigate to all events past, present and future; this presupposes all events have already occurred and “they” simply move from event-to-event, from one point in time to another.

Everything that can happen, has happened. Therefore, “they”, even though evolved, no longer have free will to create further events, thereby are no longer able to create further branches of realities.

Hence, the fractal branching stops for “they” due to no free will, and the fractal branching in a another route is also stopping due to blight. Perhaps, this is another motivation for “they” to rescue normal humanity to ensure continued evolution?

But, if “they” have no free will, how are “they” able to create a rescue event? The rescue event is created by “they” in normal humanity’s branch of existence; i.e. placing of wormhole nearby Saturn, and a tesseract nearby/within Gargantua. Normal humanity then devises and pursues plans A and B.

The tesseract placed in the bulk of normal humanity’s space-time allows Cooper, via gravitational messaging, to interact with normal humanity’s space-time. This interaction is expressed additionally with time as physical dimension on top of normal humanity’s branch so that Cooper is able to traverse and message normal humanity’s space-time events.

Continued evolution may be a theme: “Mankind was born on Earth, it wasn’t meant to die here” / “We’re explorers, not caretakers” / etc. “Our destiny lies above us” may also elude to predestination, hence themes of free will.

You are starting to wonder if Memento was a fluke ? I mean, look at your blog, for many years have you been discussing this masterpiece now ?

SLOW DOWN…….

Yes, Interstellar was a let-down, big time. It’s time to cut Nolan a slack. Just because someone’s a genius does not mean he can churn up a mind-blowing masterpiece every time he attempts something.

Face it. Interstellar has no layers-of-meaning woven within. It is what is appears to be on the first viewing (Yes, I am sticking to my All-is-real theory as I already described on http://taylorholmes.com/2014/09/23/christopher-nolan-interstellar-movie-theories. Yes I am very pigheaded)

If you need a better version, Christopher Nolan would be the best person to provide you that :) You’ve been a loyal Nolan fan for so many years that I’d say he owes you one interview at least. Do write up a big piece once you get to meet him. We’re all waiting.

Regards,
Jane