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.
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