If you watched the TV series Firefly, you’ll recall the basic facts of how humans found themselves in the ‘Verse:  Earth got “used up”, and humans had to find a new home.  Interstellar could be the story of how that happened.

Plot Synopsis, with minimal spoilers:

Interstellar is set in the not too near, but not too far, future, where the nations of the world have had to give up their strife in order to concentrate on basic survival.  A “blight” has destroyed the world’s wheat crops entirely, and is slowly working its way through the rest of the staple crops, such as okra and corn.  Human population is crashing, with one character remarking about how it’s hard to imagine 6 billion people.  Add to that dust storms that are reminiscent of the 1930’s American Dust Bowl, and you can see why the world isn’t that great a place.  A secret program to find a better place is underway, and former pilot/astronaut Cooper is drawn into it in a desperate attempt to save his family.

Analysis:

The plot isn’t a techno-thriller, but it has an amazing amount of tension throughout most of the movie.  There are exciting semi-action scenes scattered through the movie, but they are neither over the top nor out-of-place.  They all happen for a reason, and they all support the furthering of the story.  While there is no overall antagonist, other than the “We have to save the world”, the conflicts, both big and small, between the characters fill that gap.  The movie clocks in at almost 3 hours, and by the end of it, you’ve noticed.  But don’t take that to mean that you’ll be bored and wanting to get it over with.  While the last 30 minutes or so definitely tie up all the loose ends and finish the story, it doesn’t feel too contrived.  This is a thinking movie, not a lens-flare and big explosions movie.

What I liked:

The casting is, for the most part, outstanding.  Matthew McConaughey plays the main character, Cooper.  Michael Caine plays Professor Brand, the leader of the effort to save humanity.  Anne Hathaway plays Brand’s daughter, who is a scientist and accompanies Cooper on his voyage.  John Lithgow plays Cooper’s father-in-law, who stays behind to look after his children, and puts in one of the better character roles I’ve seen in a while.  All of these actors seemed to fit into their roles extremely well, and they all turned in good performances, with Caine and McConaughey being the best in a crowd of experts.

The cinematography and visual effects in this movie were outstanding.  The space scenes look almost like something that NASA might beam back from the ISS, while the settings on alien worlds look photo-realistic.  If CGI was used as a backdrop to live actors, I couldn’t tell.

Something else that I liked was that the technology, especially the interiors of the space ships and habitats, looked real and lived-in.  Things are dirty and scuffed from use.  Things go wrong, and the characters have to live within the limits of their mission and the resources aboard their ship.  There is very little suspension of belief about how they travel, and where we have to take their word for something, it’s explained using plausible terms, rather than a semi-mystical talk of hyper-conductive crystals.

What I didn’t like:

There were only two things that I didn’t care for in this movie. One was Matt Damon, and the other one wasn’t.  Damon plays Dr. Mann, who is an astronaut who was sent on an earlier mission to scout for a habitable world and hasn’t seen another human being in years.  His performance was forced and heavy-handed, and I had a hard time believing that a man who had put himself into suspended animation after his supplies ran out would be pudgy.  This was the one place where I think the casting was wrong in this movie, and it distracted me from an important part of the story.

The other thing is really a quibble, and one I don’t think most people will notice or care about.  There is a scene late in the movie where one of the minor characters arms himself to protect against someone who he thinks will harm him or Cooper’s now-adult daughter.  They had travelled a long way from their secure area, through a world that is quickly coming apart, and the best weapon he has is a tire iron.  Maybe it’s just me, but if I was going to be traveling alone with a pretty woman across a landscape that is populated mostly with dying farms and refugees, I’d have brought something a little more ballistic for both of us.  For a movie that put a lot of thought and effort into making the space-based storyline realistic and plausible, this stuck out for me.

Overall, I’d give this movie an A.  As you can see, what I disliked in it was, to be honest, minor, and there is a lot to like.  If you like relatively hard science fiction without too much Buck Rogers, you will definitely enjoy this one.

Discussion:  (Warning, spoilers ahead)

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