If you're a fan of Christopher Nolan's 2014 sci-fi
space epic Interstellar, you'll probably want to watch it more than once to make sure that you get
everything out of it. So let's transcend space and time once again as we discover the details
that are only clear after multiple viewings. The convergence point for the entire
decades-spanning story in Interstellar is Murphy's childhood bedroom. There's a poltergeist
chucking books off her bookshelf and toying with the physics of gravity and magnetism.
Ten-year-old Murphy, played by Mackenzie Foy, doesn't appear to be afraid of the apparition.
Instead, she's mostly curious. Luckily, she's being raised by a father with a scientific mind
who has no room for superstition. Cooper, played by Matthew McConaughey, instructs his daughter to
not just label it as a "ghost" because she doesn't know what it is. Instead, he directs her to
study it and come to a scientific conclusion. Her instincts end up being accurate all along, and her
first line of dialogue hints at the final outcome. The opening moments of Interstellar feature a
brief tumultuous moment from Cooper's days as a pilot. His aircraft spins out of control and
the Gs amp up before he suddenly snaps awake, safely at home in his bed. Standing over him
is his daughter, who looks at him and says: "I thought you were the ghost." Later, by the end of the film, we find out
just how accurate this statement really is. Christopher Nolan is fascinated with the
intricacies of time, particularly the paradoxes created by toying with timelines. Interstellar
creates scenarios where time stretches and squeezes based on its characters' galactic
locations. They unknowingly trigger various events that lead them to the NASA base where Cooper
signs on to pilot a mission to save the world. Coordinates to this base arrive courtesy of
the "ghost" in Murphy's room. The directions are given in binary form by altering gravity, so
billowing dust settles strategically on the floor to spell out a message. The ghost ends up being
Cooper himself from inside the tesseract within the massive black hole known as Gargantua. But
where did this whole chain of events begin? As we find out later, the instructions
for how to find the NASA base were given to Cooper by Cooper himself. However,
in order to get inside the tesseract and give himself these directions, he
needed to have already received them, thus creating a paradox for which there is no
answer. The notion of an unanswerable question is very much something that we should
always expect from Christopher Nolan, so be prepared for your brain to have a
workout whenever you watch one of his films. Once the crew of the Endurance travels
through the wormhole into an unknown galaxy, they receive a clearer picture from the data
sent out by previous explorers on all the possible planets orbiting Gargantua. After some
deliberation, they decide to first visit a planet closer to the black hole, though its proximity
to the massive gravity created by Gargantua creates some problems with relativity. Time on
this planet runs much faster than on Earth, as every hour is equivalent to seven years back home.
Therefore their time must be considered a precious resource that they do not have in abundance.
The whole excursion is incredibly stressful, and with multiple viewings, that's only
amplified, especially once you notice the strange ticking sound playing in the background
the entire time they're on this first planet. It turns out that there's a reason that this
ominous ticking plays consistently throughout the scene. One particular cinema sleuth on Reddit
discovered that these ticks occur exactly 1.25 seconds apart. With a little math, you can work
out that each tick is equivalent to one entire Earth day. This knowledge adds another whole
layer of stress to an already tense situation, and multiple viewings only peel
back more layers to this odyssey. The most exciting part of any space adventure
obviously occurs once the characters are out voyaging among the stars. This quality is likely
to leave you feeling antsy during your first time watching Interstellar. Plenty of viewers
are probably anxious as the characters hop into a rocket ship and launch into space, which
could cause many of the most fascinating elements of the story to slip by unnoticed. And that's one
reason why multiple viewings are so rewarding, as every bit of dialogue in Interstellar has
a purpose, since everything comes full circle. For example, Cooper's talk with Murphy is
a particularly prophetic conversation that hits harder when you watch it again.
Before he leaves Earth, Cooper says: "Once you're a parent, you're the
ghost of your children's future." This poetic message winds up becoming
reality in more ways than one. Not only does Cooper quite literally end up being
the "ghost" in his daughter's bedroom, he also in a way becomes a figurative ghost
walking into the hospital room where Murphy is on her deathbed. He's the same
age as he was when he left Earth, stepping back into his daughter's life exactly
as he was in her memories: a ghost in her future. The small crew of the Endurance isn't the
first group of brave astronauts to plunge themselves into the wormhole near Saturn.
A decade before their mission departed, a group of 12 was sent across the universe
to explore the viability of these new worlds. Each individual was sent to their own planet
to discover the possibilities. Due to the potential of death for these astronauts, they were
required to not have any attachments on Earth, as explained by Amelia Brand, played by Anne
Hathaway. While this was a strict prerequisite for the original mission, it apparently wasn't
completely inflexible for the follow-up. Among the Endurance crew, half of them do in fact
have family attachments. Cooper has two kids he desperately wants to return home to, while
Brand is the daughter of the lead scientist. The "no attachments" stipulation of the
first mission was based on the logic that people would operate with the whole human
race in mind as opposed to individual desires. We're surprised that this crucial second
mission lacked that same strict guideline. When Dr. Mann sits up in his cryotube, it's a
pleasant surprise to discover that he's played by Matt Damon, which was kept under wraps
before Interstellar hit theaters. That's an understandable decision. If we had known he was in
the film ahead of time, we would've been waiting impatiently for him to show up during the first
half. Damon usually plays heroic roles, but not this time. Although, he's not exactly a villain
per se, just more of a cowardly antagonist. Mann's survival instincts contrast notably with
the rest of the film. At its core, Interstellar is a tale of human connection. Since the first
crew sent into the wormhole were required to have no family attachments, Mann doesn't share the
same deep connections that Brand and Cooper have. This leaves him purely self-serving. He attempts
to mask this quality, but everything he does feels illogical. He's a man operating purely
on fear. Mission leaders believed that a lack of attachments would help the crew work with the
greater good in mind, but the opposite turns out to be true, as the only people to survive either
mission are those with connections back on Earth. When Cooper is trying to console Murphy
before his trip, he attempts to appeal to her intellectual sensibilities by discussing
the fascinating aspects of time relativity. "Maybe by the time I get back, we might even be
the same age. You and me. What? Imagine that!" But this plan backfires when Murphy realizes
that her dad has no idea when he'll actually be returning from his voyage. She's so upset by
this that she doesn't even send a reply message into space for more than two decades. The
resulting age difference that Cooper predicts does indeed come into play, but it turns out
that his estimate is off by about 60 years. Cooper ultimately does make it back to his
daughter, but only in time to witness the final moments of her life. Residents of the Cooper
Space Station inform him that he's 124 Earth years old when he returns. That means he's been gone for
more than 80 years, which is quite a long time for a quick reunion with his daughter. That large
chunk of time lost between the two of them can make their extremely brief final interaction
a bit anticlimactic. It's a powerful moment, but you just might come away wishing it could've
lasted longer, especially after multiple viewings. It's no secret that Christopher Nolan is a big
fan of Sir Michael Caine, as the Cockney actor has appeared in almost every single one of the
director's films. In Interstellar, he plays the lead scientist at NASA, Dr. Brand. His sage-like
demeanor helps convince Cooper to embark on his voyage, and a poetic voiceover from Caine sets a
majestic tone as the Endurance crew leaves Earth. "Do not go gentle into that good night. Old
age should burn and rave at close of day." Once you know the final outcome of this space
odyssey, you'll only have more respect for Caine after each viewing. It turns out that Dr.
Brand never had any intention for the successful execution of "Plan A," which involved humans
leaving Earth for a new planet. His formula for harnessing the power of gravity requires a glimpse
at data from a singularity inside a black hole, a requirement he considered impossible. This
means that all the conversations convincing Cooper to join this mission were laced with
a monstrous lie. Knowing this while watching Interstellar more than once will make the
nuance of Caine's performance more obvious. He dodges questions and grows distant when
certain topics are brought up, and it's hard not to be impressed by this legendary
actor even more than you've already been. The main plot twist in Interstellar occurs when
it's revealed that Dr. Brand knew he couldn't complete his gravity equation. The reason is
because he needed information from inside a black hole, a task that was deemed impossible due
to an inability to see beyond the event horizon and glimpse the singularity within.
Luckily for all of humanity, though, Cooper is willing to sacrifice himself by climbing
into a spacecraft and launching himself into Gargantua. Once he and his robot companion TARS
make it inside, he's able to gather enough data to complete the equation. But then he has to
figure out how to get the information back out. Since Cooper is trapped behind an endless stream
of bookshelves in Murphy's bedroom, the only solution is to send this information to her. By
manipulating gravity from within the tesseract, he's able to relay the data through Morse code.
We know that there's plenty of artistic license taken with Interstellar, but this one sticks out
more with each viewing. We're not going to pretend to be math experts, but we feel safe assuming
that complex quantum data about the occurrences inside a black hole probably can't be easily
transmitted via Morse code in most circumstances. Cooper's journey to return to his daughter dwarfs
any distance traveled by any human in history. Unfortunately, because of relativity, he
returns to find Murphy on her deathbed. The nurse at the hospital informs Cooper that
she's been in cryosleep for two years. The large amount of family gathered around her indicates
that she's lived a full life without her dad. She tells him that no one should have to watch
their own child die, so she spurs him onward back into the cosmos in search of Dr. Amelia Brand.
But how does she know that she's still alive? "She's out there. Setting up camp." As an elderly Murphy speaks over a montage of
Dr. Brand settling into her new home planet, it's meant to wrap up the entire film and drive
home the idea of moving forward in our lives. But we're left wondering about the lack of
explanation at this key moment that could've easily been remedied by a single line about
a debrief. Although maybe that's a bit harsh. Interstellar's plot does cover over 80
Earth years, a wormhole, a black hole, and countless light-years, after all.
So considering the circumstances, we can find it in our hearts to overlook some
omitted information. It's what Cooper would do. Check out one of our newest
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