By the end of Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, the audience is fully versed on what happened
to Cooper, Brand, and humanity in general. However, there are a lot of smaller details
that are left up to our imaginations. Here are some of the biggest questions we have
after watching Interstellar.
It's obvious that Interstellar takes place in the future, although just how far in the
future is never clarified. We do receive a few clues that the world of Interstellar isn't
tremendously ahead of our own: the characters' clothing and housing all seems to line up
with current designs, and while the robotics technology is certainly more advanced than
what we have today, it doesn't appear to be too far beyond where we are now.
In order for the Lazarus Missions to have departed ten years before the start of the
film, humans must have made significant strides in space travel and cryosleep technology a
decade before the movie started, at the latest. And Cooper looks to be in his late 30s or
early 40s at the start of the movie, which means that his flashback to his career as
a NASA pilot must have taken place within the past couple decades before the movie began.
One theory, referencing the book The Science of Interstellar, extrapolates that the wormhole
near Saturn was discovered in 2019, placing the beginning of the movie around the year
2067. However, this is based on supplemental material, and not the film itself. While this
seems a reasonable guess based on the information presented in Interstellar, we have no way
of knowing for sure.
One of the more curious throwaway lines in Interstellar happens early on, when Cooper
mentions how MRI technology could have saved his late wife.
"If we'd had any of those left, the doctors would have been able to find the cyst in my
wife's brain before she died instead of afterwards."
No further elaboration is ever given about why MRIs would have ceased to exist, and it's
an odd piece of world-building when you consider that other types of technology still appear
to be just fine. Not only are cars, trucks, and large farming equipment still prevalent,
but the characters' clothing and resources speak to a manufacturing industry that is
still going strong. And while colleges are now only open to the very top echelon of students,
that's probably because those students are going into highly educated fields, and it's
reasonable to assume medicine would be among them.
Of course, other forms of technology have been scrapped on purpose, as part of the scapegoating
of NASA.
"Explaining how the Apollo missions were faked to bankrupt the Soviet Union."
In response to the blight that wiped out most of Earth's crops, the history books were rewritten
to teach that the moon landing was faked and that space exploration was futile, in an effort
to keep humanity focused on fixing the problems of Earth, not dreaming of the stars. But MRI
machines don't seem like they should have been lumped in with spaceships in that particular
disinformation campaign, since they're used to diagnose patients here on Earth.
Could one of the gravitational anomalies prior to Interstellar have fried all existing MRI
machines simultaneously? Perhaps, but in that case, why not build new ones? Interstellar
never offers any clarity on what happened to the life-saving technology, so we're left
to guess.
At the start of Interstellar, Earth's crops have been largely destroyed thanks to a global
blight that eventually wipes out every form of plant life it encounters.
"Nelson's torching his whole crop."
"Blight?"
"They're saying it's the last harvest for okra. Ever."
Corn is one of the only viable crops that humans have left, but even that will eventually
die out, leaving humans with no food source at all.
Professor Brand mentions at one point that the blight seems particularly suited to thrive
in Earth's largely nitrogen-based atmosphere. Yet the film never provides much more detail
on exactly what the blight is. We don't know if it evolved naturally, or if humans somehow
caused it through our own actions. The blight affects every last person on, and off of
Earth, but how it came to be is left entirely up in the air.
Before Cooper heads off into space, we get a couple glimpses at what life is like in
Interstellar's dusty future version of the United States, and it begs some interesting
questions about the supply chain. Although the school principal mentions that most students
will grow up to become farmers, lots of other industries must still be up and running in
order to create the world in which the Coopers live.
Basic utilities all seem to still exist, and cars seem pretty common, which means that
the fuel industry must still be chugging along. Most meals are corn-based, but the Coopers
eat a variety of dishes requiring other ingredients that they don't seem to grow on their farm,
implying that at least a modest grocery supply chain is still up and running. Their clothes
are dusty, but intact, so there must be a functional textile industry as well. And perhaps
most bafflingly, there still appear to be professional sports teams with the money for
new, custom uniforms.
It causes us to wonder exactly how long the list of viable professions is in the world
of Interstellar, and why everyone talks as if the vast majority of people are farmers,
when the world they live in tells a different story.
Even in secret, NASA is still an agency run by the American government, so it's unsurprising
that Interstellar tells a pretty America-centric tale. But what's going on in other countries
while Professor Brand is spending decades solving his equation to save the world? Surely
they're not just sitting around waiting for the Americans to save the day, but we never
get so much as a hint at what they are doing.
Cooper does mention at one point that there are no more armies, which implies that instead
of the widespread famine prompting war, it has instead incentivized Earth's population
to work on the problem together. He also says that India's space program was disbanded around
the same time as NASA.
"Delhi Mission Control went down same as ours, ten years ago."
The teacher at Murph's school mentions that the revised version of history claims that
the moon landing was nothing more than Soviet propaganda, implying that there's still no
love lost between the two countries, although apparently not enough to warrant military
intervention.
By the end of Interstellar, humanity has successfully escaped the dying planet. We're meant to understand
that this means that all of humanity was saved, but it sure would've been nice to have seen
evidence of life outside of the future United States.
Throughout Interstellar, the characters encounter various gravitational "anomalies", both big
and small. By the end of the film, the source of many of these anomalies has become clear;
they aren't anomalies at all, but intelligent acts designed to serve a specific purpose.
The humans of the future, referred to only as "They", created the wormhole in order to
give the humans of the past an escape route from Earth. Cooper himself was responsible
for the various anomalies in his daughter's childhood bedroom.
"I figured out the message. One word. You know what it is?"
"STAY."
"Stay. It says 'stay,' Dad."
However, there are a number of other anomalies referenced in Interstellar that don't appear
to have any clear purpose, such as the one that caused Cooper's instruments to malfunction
when he was working as a test pilot.
"We started detecting gravitational anomalies almost 50 years ago. Mostly small distortions
to our instruments in the upper atmosphere."
What these anomalies were and why they occurred are never really addressed. It seems reasonable
to infer that "They" caused the anomalies, but for what purpose? Was it merely to get
humanity's attention, and thus put in motion the sequence of events leading to the film?
Or did the past anomalies serve some sort of other, unexplained function that we never
learn about?
By the time Cooper is finally able to finally collect and transmit the quantum data from
the black hole Gargantua to his daughter, Murph, back on Earth, only a couple years
have passed for Cooper and Brand, but decades have elapsed on Earth. During that time, Professor
Brand has been tirelessly working on his gravity equation, although Murph later finds out that
he'd known for years it was unsolvable, and was merely trying to give the people on Earth
a glimmer of hope until they eventually suffocated to death in the degrading atmosphere.
However, for that entire time, Professor Brand and Murph are working inside the massive space
station orbiting Saturn that we see at the end of the film. Once Cooper Station is in
space, we see that its inhabitants are able to use the space inside it to farm, creating
food for the humans who have escaped earth.
So why weren't they using the stations for that purpose when they were still on earth?
Granted, they couldn't have used every inch of real estate for farming if they were tied
down by gravity, but it seems like they should've been able to figure out a way to use some
of it, especially given how much time they had.
When the Endurance leaves Earth, it's only been 10 years since Wolf Edmunds and the other
scientists first departed on the Lazarus missions, but by the time Brand finally makes it to
the planet where he'd set up camp, nearly 90 years have passed, and Edmunds has died.
It's implied that he was killed when a rockslide destroyed the cryochamber in which he was
hibernating, although it's also possible that he died due to a malfunction in the chamber
itself and the rock slide happened afterward.
That Edmunds didn't survive until Brand was able to reach his planet isn't really surprising,
but what's interesting is the question of when he died. Although Edmunds was only sent
to his planet with two years' worth of resources, he could extend that almost indefinitely with
his cryogenic pod. So when Brand and the Endurance first emerged from the wormhole twelve years
after Edmunds first departed, only a year or two would've passed for Edmunds, assuming
his pod was still functioning. Even after Brand lost 23 years on the water planet, Edmunds
could've still been alive. It's possible that, if Cooper had taken Brand's suggestion and
headed straight to his planet, they might have arrived in time to save Edmunds, although
in that case, Cooper might not have gotten the data that saves the rest of humanity.
When the Endurance departs on its mission, they're heading to a system in a distant galaxy
with three potentially habitable planets, based on the data sent back from three of
the astronauts on the Lazarus mission. However, 12 astronauts originally departed ten years
earlier, with a mission to each explore one of twelve possible worlds. They all knew that
the chances of their world being able to support human life were slim, and that if their planet
wasn't a good candidate for relocation, that they'd be on their own for the rest of their
lives.
However, while it's implied that none of the other nine worlds the Lazarus astronauts visited
were viable, and that those astronauts eventually died, we don't actually know that for sure.
It's possible that one or more of the planets was viable, but something happened to the
astronaut or their equipment before they could send back the "thumbs up" that would send
NASA to them. It's even possible that one or more of the astronauts is still slumbering
away in cryosleep, not really living, but not truly dead either.
Throughout Interstellar, humanity receives help from "Them," mysterious beings that the
scientists of NASA assume must be benevolent extraterrestrials. However, by the end of
the film, Cooper realizes that "They" aren't aliens at all, but actually the humans of
the future, who have figured out a way to exist and navigate in five dimensions. This
creates a bootstrap paradox, in which the existence of the humans of the future depends
on them already existing to help the humans of the past, but that's easy enough to explain
in the world of Interstellar, where time may not actually be linear at all.
What we don't know is exactly how far in the future these five-dimensional humans are,
or if they even exist in a specific time at all. Once Murph solves Professor Brand's gravity
equation, it opens up a whole new world for humanity. Not only are they able to escape
their dying planet, but they're able to thrive in new ways that they never could on Earth.
Perhaps Murph's breakthrough is precisely what lays the groundwork for these new future
humans, meaning that they're not as far ahead of the humans aboard Cooper Station as one
might think. Then again, it could take centuries or even millenia for humans to evolve to that
point.
At the beginning of Interstellar, Cooper's two children, Murph and Tom, function as pretty
typical siblings. Neither best friends nor mortal enemies, but simply two kids who mostly
get along and occasionally get under each other's skin.
All that changes, though, when Cooper leaves aboard the Endurance. Murph spends the next
few decades nursing a grudge against her father, while Tom does his best to remain in touch,
even long after Cooper stops responding. During that time, Tom marries and has two children,
but his oldest dies a few years later of complications due to the dust-saturated atmosphere. Murph,
meanwhile, throws herself into her work with Professor Brand and rarely visits home, but
eventually returns to try to convince Tom to move his family out of their old farmhouse
and underground with her. When Tom refuses, Murph decides to trick him, luring him away
so she can essentially kidnap his family.
She doesn't actually manage to leave before Tom returns, and by then she's realized she
has what she needs to solve the gravity equation and save humanity. But while Murph gives her
brother a relieved hug upon his return, Tom doesn't look nearly as ready to bury the hatchet.
Despite Murph's great accomplishment for humanity, the actions she took with her brother's family
significantly overshot the boundaries he'd set. But we never see Tom again after that,
making us wonder if the end justified the means for him, or whether Murph's actions
damaged their relationship permanently.
After Cooper emerges from the black hole, "They" drop him off near Saturn, right where
a Ranger from Cooper Station is passing by to pick him up. While it's only been a few
minutes for Cooper since he jettisoned himself from the Endurance in order to send Brand
on to Edmunds' planet, it's been over 60 years for the people of Earth, due to the time slippage
in Gargantua. Even if it took a while for Murph to actually implement her solved equation
and launch the space stations, humans have had decades in which to find a new home.
And yet, Cooper Station and others like it are still content to just float around near
Saturn, despite never having received conclusive data about the worlds just on the other side
of the wormhole. We know the wormhole still exists, since that's how Cooper returns to
Brand at the end of the film. As far as NASA knows, one of those planets from the Lazarus
mission could still be a viable new homeworld. It's understandable that they wouldn't want
to send an entire station through as a guinea pig, but why not send a few Rangers after
the Endurance went silent? It seems like by the time Brand arrived on Edmunds' planet,
a whole human colony could've already been set up and ready to go, and she wouldn't have
had to be alone at all.
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