The Interstellar Experience

I have been pretty excited to see Interstellar since the first teaser came out. I really wanted to see it in IMAX and the only option for that was in Pittsburgh, at the Waterfront. I knew that Lindsey would never go to Pittsburgh, just to see a movie. So I had to go about it a different way.

We got there in the afternoon and started out by heading to Express then Charming Charlies. That place is evil. We walked the store at least three times. If you have never been there, it is a girl’s store that has everything organized by color. So all the blue clothes and jewelry are together, etc. It was a nightmare trying to get Lindsey to decide on anything. We were in there for almost two hours. After that we stopped at Loft for a bit, then went to eat.

Once all that stuff was done, we finally went to the theater. Naturally the universe was a bit against me. I ordered the tickets from Fandango the day before and you have to go to a kiosk to print them. For some reason the kiosk hated me and would not work and the food from P.F. Chang’s was starting to hit me, which means I had like 23 seconds to find a restroom or else I could have a repeat of my brother’s wedding day.

Fortunately, as I came back from destroying the toilet, Lindsey was able to figure out the stupid kiosk and print the tickets. We wanted some coffee before the movie, so we went to the little coffee shop there. The girl was making two frozen drinks and it took her like ten minutes, we were going to get lattes, but I did not think we would have time, so we just got coffee. Lindsey’s was poured and then the machine went empty, so she had to brew another batch. Ugh, nothing was going my way.

We made our way into the theater (I know, why didn’t we just go get seats first then one of us come back for the drinks?) and it was already pretty packed. We found two seats together and sat down. During the trailers, we both noticed that the guys in front of us smelled like body odor. It was absolutely disgusting. Lindsey had to use my jacket as a gas mask.

Now, onto the actual movie. It was awesome. Filmdrunk has a great review for the movie, as does Greg. The movie is like everyone says, absolutely amazing when it comes to the space scenes. If you are a space geek, you will definitely get a boner during the film. I mean, seriously, when else would you ever get the chance to travel through a wormhole, experience relativity at an extreme rate, and fall into a black hole? Obviously not very often. I think Greg put it best though, while it was breathtaking to watch at times, the movie did not really blow me away. I feel like Inception was more mind-blowing.

Here are some of my stray observations about the movie (there will be spoilers):

-Lindsey was confused about the planet’s current food situation. I understood what was happening right away, but then I read a few other reviews and it seems like plenty of people were lost. I guess I am just awesome.

-Speaking of me being awesome. I knew that Cooper was the ghost the moment that he was able to decode the gravity anomaly as binary code. It was one of those things that seemed so obvious at that time. I guess that is the problem when you are a director known for these big twist endings.

-Another thing that annoyed me was the way Cooper just joins the team and in like two days they are on their way to Saturn. I am pretty sure they would have had to train for a few months. I mean, c’mon, Cooper has not flown in years and he just hops back in and is able to remember everything just like that? Even Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck had to train for two weeks in Armageddon.

-Brand goes to the planet of her boyfriend, who turns out to be dead. She took the fertilized eggs with her, correct? She should be there raising the first generation of children, or at least setting things up so they can begin a colony. Instead, she goes to sleep in her cryotube. I guess she had a hunch that Cooper would show up at some point in life. Considering the last time she saw him, he was flying into a black hole.

-Here is a scientific question that no one seems to be asking. Nothing escapes a black hole, not even light. So if you were flying into one, how would you be able to see? Our eyes use photons. Just something to think about.

-I know people hated the little love speech from Brand, but that did not really bother me. I mean, the movie is not completely science, there needs to be the human element. I mean, in the end the movie is really just about family.

-As soon as they landed on the ice planet and they woke up Matt Damon, it was pretty obvious with what was happening. Especially when TARS mentioned fixing the other robot and Damon was all cagey about it. I feel like much of the movie was stuff that Nolan saw in other sci-fi movies/television shows and went “I could do that better.”

I mean, that whole Mann versus Cooper fight felt like how Sunshine turns into a horror film at one point, especially with Damon delivering his reasons for what he was doing. Hell, when Romilly explains what a wormhole does, he uses the exact same explanation as the physicist in Event Horizon. And the idea of a pilot father watching his son grow up while barely aging was explored on the program, Futurescape with James Woods.

-Lindsey liked the movie and stayed awake for the whole thing. Her only complaint was that the space scenes were making her a little sick. We will never be able to ride a roller coaster.

I think it is pretty clear that I liked the movie. I feel like it will be one of those movies that I will easily be able to watch it a bunch more times when it is on HBO. Let me know what you thought about it.

Author: Ngewo