Interstellar
First off, this is not Interstella, which of course would have been a movie about Stella Mudd, a character from an Original Startrek episode. Don’t worry, not only is J J Abrams not that crazy, neither is our old nemesis’s Berman and Braga. At least I don’t think so.
It is also not a remake of Field of Dreams or a certain Twilight Zone episode, even though it starts out in a cornfield. It does, however, seem that we have sent the Earth and everyone on it to the cornfield, figuratively speaking. (Checking IMDB…Nope, Al Gore is not in this.)
Matthew McConaughey, plays Cooper an ex astronaut. You will probably remember him as Palmer Joss in the movie Contact. His job in that movie was to say profound things when the movie called for it. Here, he plays a farmer who is about as comfortable farming as I would be as a Politician.
He has a daughter named Murph, She was a genius of sorts. She ran for Class president under the banner “Murph--Not just a good Idea, it’s the Law”. Of course her and her brother were expelled for not believing the moon landing was a fake and global warming was a hoax. Its bad enough the Earth is dying from some unexplained plague. The real disaster is that Texas Republicans have taken over the nation’s educational system.
There is something strange in the neighborhood. Books fall off of shelves, strange patterns appear, and watches appear to be receiving messages from nowhere. No monsters in the refrigerator or marshmallow monsters though. No one thought about calling the Ghostbusters.
Cooper and Murph find their way to an underground NASA base. Yes I know this makes no sense. (Its like the Amish have taken over the government, which suggests that our national anthem is now Weird Al’s “Amish Paradise”). The exterior shot of the NASA base looks something like the outside entrance to Stargate Command. (not a bad idea as sending humanity through the stargate would solve the problem)
Anyway, these NASA guys have a plan to save humanity. It involves a wormhole that somehow just appeared at the right time and leads to possible worlds that humanity could start over on. If they only had an astronaut and a genius to help with things. How convenient.
This movie is also a plug for Dylan Thomas. In case you didn’t know who said, “Do not go gentle into that good night”, you will after watching this movie. The line is repeated almost as much as “With great power comes great responsibility” is in the original Spiderman movie. Of course Stan Lee is not in this movie however.
Now the movie shifts to the actual voyage to save humanity. We meet 2 robots that are unlike any movie robots. They look like the monolith from 2001. They do not come with Asimov’s Three Laws, but they do have adjustable humor and honesty controls. Turning up the humor controls too high may subject you to random wedgies and puns that only robots understand.
Michael Caine plays the NASA guy and keeper of the Dylan Thomas poem. You may remember him as Mr. Destiny from the movie of the same name. He spends the whole movie trying to figure out some gravity thing. If the answer was blowing in the wind that would be one thing but its inside a black hole. Is this a backhand way of saying this movie sucks? Well no, but I thought I would take the gag before anyone else does.
In space near Titan, Cooper docks with this ring thing near the wormhole. Maybe it is there to catch space worms but its used to go through the wormhole. Ok there are two planets sort of close to a black hole. As we learned on an episode of Stargate SG1, the black hole messes with time. Cooper wants to go down to Ice Planet Hoth but Mr Destiny’s daughter (That would be Destiny's child..sorry) wants to go to the other planet. Only thing is nobody is down there. Its all water and you can’t land without land to land on. Landing there would actually be watering. They get out of there before a giant wave threatens to “wave” them goodbye.
Back in space everyone is older. Mr. Destiny is really old and Murph is middle aged. The audience got older too. Our next trip is down to Hoth where we meet Matt Damon. Cooper tries to borrow parts for his robot but Damon’s mentis is quite non compos by now and he not only tries to kill Cooper and steal the ship, but his acting is quite lousy. He gets killed trying to break into the ring thing.
Ok, we’ve run out of places to go and this last trip is really going to suck, literally. Not only does the robot have to go into the black hole to find out about the gravity thing, Cooper has to somehow go back in time and give his daughter the information. To quote Bill and Ted, “Only the winners get to go back in time and set things up”. To use the proper technical jargon, this is more likely to be a bogus journey than an excellent adventure, but yes, Cooper is most triumphant. He not only sets up the books and the messages to Murph, he winds up in the future safe with the rest of humanity he has saved. The audience is of course 3 hours older and desperate for a bathroom break.
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