Adam, Norm, and Will have mixed feeling about Interstellar, Christopher Nolan’s latest project. Rest assured of one thing though, there will be spoilers aplenty. Enjoy!
One Day Builds
Adam embarks on one of his most ambitious builds yet: fulfil…
Show And Tell
Adam recently completed a build of the royal St. Edwards cro…
Making
Viewers often ask to see Adam working in real-time, so this …
One Day Builds
Adam and Norm assemble a beautifully machined replica prop k…
One Day Builds
One of the ways Adam has been getting through lockdown has b…
Making
Adam unboxes and performs a quick test of this novel new hel…
Making
When Adam visited Weta Workshop early last year, he stopped …
One Day Builds
Adam tackles a shop shelf build that he's been putting off f…
Show And Tell
Time for a model kit build! This steampunk-inspired mechanic…
One Day Builds
Adam reveals his surprise Christmas present for his wife--a …
Maybe Adam should make his own movie. A short film with lots of cool props and practical special effects sounds like something he could have fun with.
TARS was the only character I enjoyed. Oh, , you’re totally right about the planet-choosing-love-BS. Went to see it with the girlfriend and we both looked looked disapprovingly at each other during that scene. I pretty much checked out after that. (It was really beautifully shot, though.)
Matt Damon’s appearance actually upset me. That conflict felt unnecessary. It just made me look forward to The Martian’s movie adaptation even more!
Can we talk about how Cooper was TOTALLY an analog for (Mercury Astronaut) Gordon Cooper?
And I thought Dark Knight Rises had big plot holes… Interstellar´s plot holes are so big that not even worm holes and black holes can escape the gravitational force…
Perfect timing! I saw this Sunday and enjoyed it, though I agree that the whole sequence with Matt Damon was unnecessary.
Also, at the end, I totally expected the son to just punch his sister out for setting a fire on his farm and then come babbling at him about some watch hand.
I really felt like this movie was a direct copy of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I was expecting more from Nolan than just copying a bunch of movies he likes.
I did not understand the ending. Is she in another galaxy? Did he just steal the analog of a Honda Civic to go there? Isn’t that the planet her boyfriend is on? Where the… is she?
Maybe he is dead and it’s all in the last few seconds that he dreams this up – made to seem longer by the black hole? An Lp version of space death if you will.
The three of you sound like the voices in my head: “it was sooo beautiful”, “I enjoyed it”, “but it’s got so many flaws.”
I’m not one for long comment posts (or comments at all) but I was hyped for this film and ultimately let down. Mostly echoing Norm and Adam but wanted to list off a few more things that bugged me.
On the plus side, it looked amazing in 70mm Imax and I got to see the full size ship from the movie.
The feeling I got from the movie about why they needed more farmers was because of the blight. You could spend an entire season growing a crop, and then it just has to be burned because its no good. Because of that, you would have to grow a lot of crops in the hopes that enough survives to feed everyone. I also got the feeling that there were no live stock anymore, or at least no one wasted crops to feed them to live stock. You never see anyone eat meat in the movie. It is always corn, or cornbread or other simple crop based products.
The technology thing I just figured that enough people died that we lost things like large companies, factories, and think tanks at universities. Sure there are still some smart people around, but even if you have a few people left in the US that know how to run an MRI machine, that does not mean you have people that can fix it, or make one. Doctors wouldn’t know how to make an x-ray machine.
Even if you had the correct people that knew how to do all of that, would you have the resources to dedicate to mining and processing raw materials, Manufacturing, things like that. It would be more important to feed the populace first. They also point out that the government is manipulating people to do what it thinks is best. Convincing people that we never went to the moon so that no one wants to become an astronaut so that they focus on fixing the earth instead. If they are doing things like that, then they are controlling other industries and ways of thinking as well. A simple minded populace that is farming is more beneficial over all and easier to control for a government that is trying to rebuild itself.
I don’t necessarily agree with all of these things, i just felt like that is what the movie was trying to get across.
Thank you for the Spoilercast, Guys! 👍
One thing that I wished that Adam mentioned was the spacesuits in this movie. Did he like the design? If so, does he ever plan to make one? Or have someone else make one for him? That is what I want to know..
The guy who rendered the black hole is actually a physicist. Hollywood gave him a bunch of money for computer time to render the equations, looked at it, and said “good enough”. So he got a paper out of the deal. Kind of cool that Hollywood basically gave a scientist a grant and said “have fun.”
To everyone confused about the time paradox (from reddit):
Just want to warn everyone that this podcast contains spoilers for the book and upcoming movie The Martian.
Norm, you just ruined The Martian for me, a film I was very much looking forward to and even considering reading the book.
I’m very disappointed in you and Will as well for not calling you out on this. This should have been cut out, bleeped or the show should have had a warning up front that this show contains spoilers for the Martian. I ripped the headphones right out of my ears when I heard this and didn’t listen to any more. Just because this is a “spoilercast” does not give you carte blanche to spoil every other piece of fiction, even if you previously did a spoilercast for it.
I’m sad to say that I will not be listening to any future spoilercasts from you guys.
I thought this was also to force them to leave the farm (since they were getting sick).
Yes, but I liked the idea of thinking about what you would do in his situation (doomed to die unless you jeopardise the mission by faking the planetary report, as he did). I’d have maybe preferred it if he then just admitted what happened, to then see how everyone else reacted (but then without the conflict and damaged ship, Cooper might just have returned home without going into the black hole, etc.)
I really liked it, but I also liked Gravity and Prometheus, both films with grand ideas and problems. I’m sure there’s a quote somewhere (but I can’t find it), which says that you’re basically allowed one unbelievable thing in a good sci fi story, as long as you’re consistent elsewhere. So 5D beings/black holes/wormholes work for me (unless you count those as 3, and can’t ignore the other plot holes 🙂
Love..while my toes curled up when the mentioned it in the movie, I did not thought about the Hollywood lovey dovey banter,
The first thing that came to mind what my wife told me about some years ago, and I found very interesting idea, Morphogenetic fields, and part of that idea is that all living things are in connected to each other in some way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpudgs9ZTfg
But one thing puzzled me from the movie, about the signal they received from the first planet they visited,
wouldn’t the signal be deformed,changed due to the time dilation, and they would have known the first craft would have landed/crashed mere hours before they set down ?
It seemed like a missed opportunity for Romilly, after 23 years of waiting, to seem normal. Shouldn’t he have developed some coping mechanism (or at least a twitch), and harbor some resentment towards the landing crew?
I didn’t hear any real spoilers, and even if they reveal a detail or two, it’s the journey, not the destination. Apollo 13 is still a great movie, even though I know how it ends.
What spoilers? That “Matt Damon will kill all the martians!”? That was a joke.
No spoilers as far as i´m concerned.
It’s near the end, Norm compares the character Jessica Chastain plays in Interstellar and the character she plays in The Martian and their role in the story. I won’t go into more specifics as I don’t want’ to ruin it for anyone else. I of course don’t know the extent of the spoiler, but it sounds pretty big to me.
It’s great if you’re not affected by spoilers, but I am, and the information will unavoidably color my perception when experiencing the material. Apollo 13 is also not a good example I would argue.
Ha, you think that post would make us less confused? If it works for you that’s great but damn that is some fan fiction. Not a big fan of the “Back to the Future” style of time travel (multiple timelines) to explain away paradoxes. Plus I feel there are still gaps even in that explanation (example: Timeline 2 Cooper is a skilled NASA pilot and he goes on the initial 1st wave, didn’t only non-family people go on the missions? In that timeline does he not have a family?) .
Good point on setting the fire to get them to leave. Missed that one. And I too would have preferred it if Matt Damon would have come clean when they woke him rather then the dumb lies/fight, but like you said that would stop the ship from getting damaged messing up the plot.
Well, this is of course just speculation, but I’m guessing if he hadn’t crashed his plane, he would’ve still worked as a testpilot, not met his wife etc.
Oh, and they had 3 ships: the mothership “endurance”, the ranger and the lander.
What didn’t make sense about Mann wanting to kill cooper? The plan was for everyone except Cooper (Who would go back to earth using the remaining fuel) to stay on Mann’s planet and start plan B, but Mann knew that the planet was inhabitable, and wanted to use the fuel to get to another planet where he could start plan B alone.
I’m wondering if there will be an extended bluray version that fills some of the problems and explain things better. Not that my opinion really matters, but I really enjoyed this movie. It’s nice to finally see a movie that doesn’t “appeal to the masses” and is just a bunch of explosions to make money. This movie isn’t for everyone and I find that refreshing.
Pretty sure there are 2 landers and 2 rangers and the endurance. (Tars in one ranger and Cooper in the other go through the black hole, one lander Mann destroys, the other lander and endurance is left for Brand and the embryos)
Full infographic at http://www.space.com/27694-interstellar-movie-spaceships-infographic.html
I get that Mann had some sort of plan, I just think it was a really dumb plan. Too dumb for “Best of us” “Greatest Man Ever” astronaut to try. So he kills Copper cleanly, what next? how does he convince everyone to leave with him? are the others not curious about where Cooper went? The whole sequence is in service of plot and themes at the expense of realistic character motivations.
Yeah I follow that timeline speculation but it is way to far down the rabbit hole of fans explaining away movie issues for me to get on board.
You are absolutely right, there are two of each ship.
Regarding Mann, I just thought his plan was to take the ranger up to endurance and go to another planet, leaving the others to die.
And yes, it is far far down the rabbit hole, but when you start asking questions instead of going along with the plot, that is where you end up 🙂
Yup, have to completely agree with the criticism you guys gave. It was a gorgeous looking movie, but the plot was so far-fetched and contrived and ridiculous that for me it just strained the credibility past the breaking point.
It would have been more than enough just to have a mysterious wormhole appearing near Saturn. But no, Nolan’s also got gravity equations and psychotic astronauts and weird time-dimensions and circular space station farms and interdimensional ghost aliens….
It was just too damn much for one movie.
I agree with the sentiments that the film had plot problems but I disagree with the notion of looking into Matt Damon’s characters actions too closely. I just assumed upfront that his years of despair and isolation had caused him to be illogical and a bit unhinged, and his character made sense to me. I don’t think the acting worked perfectly; it seems that they didn’t want to show his torture on his face as to not give away the twist but at the same time he seemed a little lame duck.
I enjoyed this movie, like Will, despite it’s many flaws. I enjoy it as an exploration of really neat ideas that is also beautifully shot.
Those neat ideas are poorly connected with a loose story line full of whatever character dialogue and some ham-fisted silliness. And at some point it choses to get saddled with all the problems any time travel movie gets.
But as a neat sci-fi film it’s for sure worth checking out as a current version of 2001. Especially in an IMAX format.
Also that wormhole dialogue made me think of Event Horizon. Pretty sure they used the same explanation line for line as well as the paper/pencil example.
Interstellar and Prometheus: Plotholes in Love!
Hey thanks for the spoilercast! I can’t wait for the martian. On another note, I’d love to hear more about Adams shop infrastructure. Whats his dust extraction setup? Is there anything he regrets doing that he wont do in his next shop? What are his next big plans?
“Do not go gentle into that good night” doesn’t make a showing in Four Weddings and a Funeral. I think Adam is thinking about “Funeral Blues” by W.H. Auden. “He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest”.
Did I miss a part at the end where they describe the new ships on the space station? They could have at least thrown in a line about them having FTL drives otherwise he’s stealing a ship that’s the equivalent of the ranger to travel to another galaxy to find Brand
One of the problems in the movie for me is how did the equations that Murph solved help them go to space? Did she invent anti gravity engines?
If so, if they have the technology to lift a space station with those engines, and have the technology to provide such a perfect environment for growing crop on a space station, can’t they do it on Earth?
Is it the constant dust storms and blight? Space is a vacuum filled with constant microscopic space debris, especially around earth, and radiation. If they can shield all that, couldn’t they have built something on the ground?
Just seems weird – yeah, we solved gravity, now we can take up huge space stations, even though most high end technology hasn’t been made in 50 years or whatever. And those space stations are better environments for us to live than earth.
EDIT: And I know the end goal is to reach Brand’s new planet, but they seem perfectly happy even on Cooper station.
My big issue has to do with the fact that they discuss and know about the 1 hour relative to 7 Earth years on the first planet. They should have known that the person was only there for a few hours before they even went down to the planet. Theoretically they could have calculated how long that person was there for. They still could go down to pick up the person. After arriving at the location, not seeing the person and only seeing water as well as knowing that time is precious while on the planet, they should have left a lot sooner without major loss of years or death.
He stole the ship to fly through the Saturn worm-hole. So he went back the same way they did the first time.
As someone who has read the book: It really isn’t a spoiler that affects your perception of the story. It’s hard to explain without giving you spoilers, but it really doesn’t fit my definition of a spoiler, so you can relax.
There are certainly many contrivances in Interstellar, but I have not heard anyone identify any actual plot holes. (Wikipedia: “A plot hole, or plothole is a gap or inconsistency in a storyline that creates a paradox in the story that cannot be reconciled with any explanation.”)
Regarding time travel: there is no need for a third timeline if you accept block universe theory. As long as everything is consistent (eg. nobody kills their own father), it is perfectly fine for events in the future to cause events in the past to happen that in turn allow for the events in the future.
I assume the plan is to use the wormhole…
Haven’t seen Interstellar yet, but so far most of the complaints I’ve seen mirror a lot of my complaints with Danny Boyle’s Sunshine. Also, I think the days of big budget mass market sci-fi epics without a lot of needless exposition and audience hand-holding are over. Big studios will not put out films like this without focus grouping it to death.
I really hated this movie and I’ve been trying to figure out why it bugged me so much. It’s not the plot holes – those are par for the course in scifi today. I think it was more the fact that it was billed as an epic but it is actually such a small, myopic movie that felt more like a bad play. There is literally a scene (shown in the trailers, no spoiler) where they pull away a wall at NASA to reveal the “space program” a few feet away… It was *so* intensely cheesy and stage theater like… especially trailing on the fact that NASA exists within driving distance of his farm and… yada yada, I know the explanations but it’s just so dumb… The entire cast is basically six people when the story is about the peril of the entire planet… It was not an epic story and it was not scifi – it was more in the fantasy realm and would have been better if they’d tried to explain less. This seems to be the trend in modern scifi movies – follow one guy around and only give glimpses of what is happening elsewhere – it’s a really lazy, cheap way to make a film under the guise of making it more relatable and personal…
I really enjoyed this movie. A part from minors things there are actually not plot holes i can think of. It is true that it is a movie that one has to think about the understand the whole story, so that might be putting people off. Not only did the visual quality of the movie not disappoint, the music was just sublime. Powerful stuff. Personal favorite movie of the year.
Keep up the great podcasts. They are really entertaining and enlightening.
Hey guys. I love your show as well as this spoilercast. But I’m confused. You are complaining about major plot holes but you are actually not mentioning a single one. I agree that Interstellar is not Nolans best nore is it a subtle one. It is a very pragmatic and stringent picture that shows the beauty of cinema.
And if you have only few astronauts that are willing to potentially sacrifice themself you don’t have the luxury to take the logic choice of sending only women to the great unknown. 😉
I’m shure you would like it more after a second screening.
At no point in the movie I had the impression that TARS could be a thread like HAL. That incredible robot was truly an homage to 2001: a space odyssey, as this is one of Nolans all time favorites, but it is made clear that it is just a device, a useful thing with no implication of consciousness whatsoever.
Also, there is no concept of timetravel shown in the film that is ilogical in any perspective. Time is another physical dimension. This is beautifuly shown as cooper moves through the tesseract, where the 3rd dimension is locked to murphs room. Therefore there are no multiple timelines. There is no changing of the past because if you perceive the 4th dimension there is no past you could change to alter future events. Cooper sending himself to the coordinates of nasa headquarters makes absolute sense from that perspective. By doing that he understood how to communicate to his doughter.
And the interpretation of love as a motivating emotion that is effectet by a glimpse of perceiving the 4th dimension, as I understood it, was an interesting approach.
So in my opinion Interstellar is a bold masterpiece.
I must say I was disappointed by the guys not talking more about how the movie was made (like they usually do), i.e. No green screens were used, they built real size models of the spaceships with hydraulics and everything, projected the visual effects on walls outside of them so the actors had something to react to, the way the dust storms were made using giant fans and synthetic dust, the crazy amount of work that went into making the black hole and so on.
Also, the score was just fantastic. Loved the mad organ.
how about the fact that the ranger needs a huge booster to leave earth, but on subsequent planets, such as the water planet (which they said had 130% earth gravity) it just up and flew away?
Just wanted to say hi. Over the last few weeks I’ve been listening to all of the still untitled podcasts from the beginning and have enjoyed each and every one.
Thanks
everettdale
There was a lot of seat of there pants decisions made by the crew in the movie that probably wouldn’t realistically happen, because NASA tends to plan and train for as many possibility’s as they can for a mission. But in the movie they are basically making up all the plans and decisions about what they are going to do once they go through the wormhole, like they had absolutely no game plan at all. But for story reasons i can see why they do it like that to help explain to the viewers what they are doing and what is happening, but it does lead to some moments like that where you wounder if they thought ahead about anything at all when it comes to the mission.
Hey Adam, Will and Norm,
I know it’s a little shallow, but what would your ‘outta tens’ be for this film? Just interested to what your overall opinion in numbers was, as it wasn’t said in the podcast
Thanks!
I absolutely agree with everything said in this.
I’ve got to say that I’m pretty bummed how much you rip on this film. Yes, it has big problems but for my money the running time skipped by and I was left with many thoughts upon exiting the cinema (in a good way) which is far more than can be said of most films these days. A miss when compared to Nolan’s other work but that is still worthy of more credence than you gave it here I’d argue.
Is this the one where the trailer is some dude crying with his daughter on a farm? And one shot of a apollo 11-looking spaceship? Seemed totally lame. Obviously have to decide whether I even want to see if before I listen to this.. I probably won’t so I should just go ahead.
I’m so glad I wasn’t the only one that thought this movie wasn’t the greatest. Especially after all my friends were raving how good it was.
Adam, Will and Norm,
I’m a huge fan of the podcasts and all of the great content you guys post each week. My girlfriend and I own a small creative studio based in New York City. While our backgrounds are in Architecture and Interior Design, seeing your experiments with 3d printing got us interested.
We invested in a desktop 3d printer and have been developing models and some prototypes. We’ve developed a line of 3d printed jewelry called “The World Is Your Oyster” with interpretations of the earth based on a single pearl bead. The pieces can be seen here at http://www.towndesign.etsy.com
Please let us know if we can send any of the pieces to the Tested Mailbag for you to check out. Keep up the terrific work.
Best,
Will
I thought the movie was decent, especially hearing more about how it was made. There are a bunch of liberties taken, and I agree that the Mann arc wasn’t needed, especially given the run time. Also Cooper shouldn’t have lived in the end – far too feel good. I did explain my biggest issue with the self-fulfilling time bending super future humans away by rationalizing only two time loops: originally they succeed in a lab B scenario without Cooper. Everyone left on earth dies…. But life finds a way and plan B descendants evolve into the Q or whatever super time/space benders who then start with the wormhole to save the plan A folk. Sure one might think that they might go pre-blight or whatever, but at least it’s a thought. Maybe a new planet has some necessary elements required for the evolution, so they don’t want to stop their ancestors from transplanting. Anyway, just my thoughts on it. Also, I thought I caught in the credits a thanks to Ken Burns; if he was responsible for the video interviews, that was an awesome touch.
Yes, I realize that without the wormhole, there’s mo way for the original plan B folks to get to the Edmunds world, but it’s possible they go somewhere else. Anyway, without something along these lines, the movie makes little sense to me. Also I have no clue why nasa has no records about Cooper, despite everyone else seeming to know about his past and their relative proximity.
I had virtually the same thoughts as Adam and Norm, while in the theatre. I think the movie has a solid first act, and everything just falls apart once they go through the wormhole, because it’s a bunch of smart people doing incredibly dumb things for no discernible reason.
This doesn’t pertain to Interstellar but a few of my friends and I who watch the tested video would really like to see a One Day Build video focused on the finishing process of a hard material project. My friends and I are Industrial design majors and always impressed with the level of finish Adam achieves on his projects.
Haven’t gotten around to seeing this one yet. Having 2-year old kids at home kinda makes it difficult to find holes in the schedule for such pastimes as going to the movies.
Though when i do go, it sounds like i´ll be needing a big bucket of popcorn…
Couldn´t help myself from thinking that it sounded like you said “I am a lot of Adam’s” instead of “…atoms” which would have put a bit of a twist on the conversation 🙂
I finally saw it yesterday in IMAX. I think Interstellar is close to a masterpiece.
I admit there’s some clunky dialogue in places and it’s reaching a little further than it actually grasps, but on the whole it blew me away… it’s frustratingly close to being perfect. I’d preferred a more ambiguous ending and less exposition- but that is little to worry about in contrast to the overall work. I loved it… for the first time I disagree with the Tested crew about a film.
I’m actually kinda disappointed that they said nothing about the soundtrack. I MEAN HOLY CRAP THAT SOUND TRACK WAS AMAZING.
i just had a vision of Anne Hathaway saying this…. it would fit right in the movie!
I really liked the podcast… it is a critique without being hatery…. I have seen the film 5 times and plan on seeing it more… i notice something new each time and i get moved each time. . . i also love hearing how different audiences react to different lines differently.
I would love to know about the robot props — i read they were 80% in camera practical puppets, operated by Bill Irwin! I can’t even begin to imagine how they made those things walk. Did they have feet?
i too kept wondering what Adam thinks of the space suits…. why two hoses? Is it redundancy? I was also wondering about the challenges of filming with these suits in Iceland… it looked so cold in some scenes.
Thanks.
I’m not sure why Adam is so hung up on the specifics of the blight, it’s not important at all. The only important point to make was that earth was dying.
They could have easily chosen a runaway greenhouse effect, nuclear winter, or excessive WALL-E trash if they felt like it. The blight was just chosen for it’s particular depiction of a dying earth, and the mechanics and origins of it shouldn’t matter. The LAST thing this movie needs is more exposition. It was probably just some sort of anti-biotic resistant, plant destroying bacteria.
Did you guys seriously just ruin the Martian? I listened to this because I’ve seen Interstellar. I haven’t listened to the Martian spoilercast because I haven’t read the Martian.
Aaaaahhhhhh.
There seems to be one robot that does run like TARS do!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTIpdtv_AK8
Adam Savage 12:30, you are but 1 Adam, not a bunch of Adams….Joker31
I found it hard to believe that an Astronaut exists that doesn’t know about Relativity, especially one who is traveling into a wormhole, all those books and not a single Hawking, Thorne or Tyson book?
The pencil through the paper was a Sagan explanation and everyone uses it, I heard it from high school teachers, College Professors and Lecturists