There's a lot to like about this movie, but overall it left me feeling annoyed. It could have been a LOT better than it was and I think what annoyed me the most is that Spoiler it never seemed to be able to figure out what kind of movie it wanted to be. At times they hammered the hard science, but then decided to just let that slide and go with a "love will save the day" direction. At times it wanted to be sci fi, sometimes it wanted to be fantasy, sometimes it wanted to be action, sometimes it wanted to be drama. Sometimes the movie was just stupid. For example, even if it was possible for a planet to orbit a black hole, which it probably isn't, why would anyone think that was a potential new world to colonize? That's a whole lot like building a house at the top of an active volcano. Also, if a movie wants to hammer hard science at some point, why would they then have someone go into a black hole and come out alive? I dunno, maybe all of that is picking nits. Overall it was a fun visual experience, but it could have been so much more amazing with better writing.
I could recommend a couple of General Relativity books, but they still might not address your question in exactly the spirit that the movie has raised the question. I haven't seen the movie, so I'm not sure yet what they're claiming. Spoiler Backwards in time propagation is considered very exotic and improbable, even where it might be theoretically (and semantically) allowed. In general, we do *not* think we are experiencing gravity waves from the future, according to anything I've ever read. That said, I'm not an astrophysicist or cosmologist. I'm just a more ordinary physicist and I'm no expert on G.R. (einstein's theory of general relativity).
That's probably the one piece of dialogue that fell flat with me. She could have gotten her point across in a fraction of the time.
Spoiler It's completely possible for a planet to orbit a black hole. People have this idea that black holes are these entities with gravitational attraction different from other bodies of mass. If you replaced our sun with a black hole of equivalent mass, the Earth's orbit wouldn't change in the slightest. It's not like the Earth would get immediately sucked in; that's not how it works. The danger only comes when something enters a black hole's event horizon. The planets orbiting Gargantua are seen as potentially habitable because they are in stable orbit (i.e. well outside the event horizon) and receive enough energy from Gargantua's accretion disk. As far as Cooper surviving entering the black hole, that's where we get into the "fiction" part of science-fiction. It seemed pretty clearly stated that humanity's more evolved descendants set events in motion, first by creating the wormhole and then by creating the tesseract that "captures" Cooper as he enters the black hole and allows him to interact with Murph through a hypothetical fifth dimension. So he doesn't really go "into" the black hole, rather he crosses the event horizon and is then placed in the tesseract. Anyway, if it wasn't for you, it wasn't for you... but I figured I could address some of those criticisms at the very least.
From my study in E&M and quantum I remembering coming to the conclusion that time reversal is not allowed (Working path integrals on key problems led me to this conclusion). Concerning gravity, I thought gravitational waves travel at the speed of light. In other words, no traveling back in time for them either. Of course, one or both of the above could be false (wouldn't be surprised).
This is a f-cking terrible film. I'm tired so i'll go into the multitude of problems it has, like 3rd act 'twist' of having Jason Bourne going nuts out of nowhere, or purposely underlining every single thematic point in case the slow kids at the back of the class don't understand what's happening, or the terrible near Lifetime movie 'emotional' dialogue... in another post. What I do want to say quickly and hopefully Mrs Nolan has caught on to it, but your husband has a thing for dead wives. Knowing that one Nolan brother is a murderous nutbag, I would f-cking high tale it outta there.
Spoiler Regarding time remember that TARS says that they (the creators of the Tesseract) didn't send him to change the past so in that sense he isn't actually reversing the time. Gravity is very poorly understood but from relativity it is known it can affect time. While the speed of light is an absolute speed limit warp theory explains that things could actually travel faster than the speed of light due to gravity warping space. Also since we are talking about fifth dimensional travel that could also provide a shortcut for traveling faster than the speed of light. Another theory is that Cause and Effect doesn't work the way we perceive when it comes to a quantum level. A black hole is essentially the point where gravity compresses everything down to the quantum level so at that point it isn't really the gravity waves traveling back in time but that the effect has already happened, relative to Cooper, even though he perceives himself as the cause in the future.
Saw the film last night in IMAX at the Bob Bullock Theater. It was enjoyable but I agree with a lot of complaints about the movie. Watching it in IMAX, I wasn't too impressed with the visual quality. The picture was pretty grainy, I could notice the cigarette burns here and there. Plus, the colors didn't seem that saturated, very dull and washed out. The visual effects were good, like Gargantua, but I thought Gravity had more eye-popping visuals. Bobbythegreat has a good point that it tried to fit too many genres in at once, the sci-fi, love, drama, etc. I didn't have a problem with that, except for when it involved the "love conquers all" and when Anne Hathaway gives her love speech. Really cheesy and eye-roll worthy. Going along with that, I felt they did try to fit too much into the movie. They could have shaved some time off scenes, especially in the beginning. Spoiler An example is when they get the flat tire, see the UAV, chase after it through the corn fields, hack its fly patterns, and go through the parent-teacher conferences. I get that the purpose was to show McConaughey's ingenuity, Murph's a child prodigy, and the state of the world in regards to space and farming, but I thought they could've done that in lesser time. I'd say this was one of Nolan's less than average movies. Still better than most movies out there, though.
"Love transcends dimensions of time and space." A sentence like that could only be written by someone who likes the rhythm of English words, but doesn't understand their meaning.
I really enjoyed the film, although I will admit that it had more to do with the audio and visual effects than the actual movie. This was some of Hans Zimmer's best work in my opinion. His music actually brought me to tears more than the moments that it accompanied, just very well done.
Outsourced copyediting? But seriously, I wonder if I could find a copy of this with the dialogue cut but the soundtrack intact. In any case, I now think I'm not going to bother. I really, really suffer bad dialogue, which sucks for me. EDIT: Also, based on all evidence, love does not transcend an Oregon sneaker wave or a mild Oklahoma tornado, so the whole idea is just appallingly stupid.
I enjoyed the first half of the movie more than the second half. i didn't have a problem with the science, it's a movie after all. I do agree at times it felt like I was watching The Road but at other times I felt like I was watching Star Trek. The dialog also suffered from this contrast, some very technical jargon followed by some cheesy existential dialog and vice versa.
That line made me cringe. I didn't have a problem with most of the exposition, though. Even the over-the-top, "keep funding NASA" stuff. And it looks like having theoretical physicist Kip Thorne consult and serve as executive producer on the project paid off. A lot of mind bending use of science. Like ipaman, it felt a bit like watching The Road, but a happy version of The Road.
Just got out of the theater. The movie did not live up to the hype, but I thought it was still very good. Spoiler Wish they visited more planets. Nolan is incredibly good at building and sustaining tension.
Yes I agree, the best sequence was the one that had absolutely no business in the movie. The killing of Jason Bourne. I guess he kinda took to heart the critique that he's emotionless, humorless and cold (he is) and went for the faux cheese melodrama which is akin to Lil Jon picking up a guitar and doing a solo acoustic album. Dude you make cold humorless interesting crime dramas. That's your bread and butter. Do you & stay in your lane Nolan. Maybe if you drop you brother as a collaborating writer and higher a better cinematographer one day you might make a movie as good as Zodiac.
Not out of nowhere Spoiler When they were debating which planet to go to, I actually wondered why they didn't consider the possibility that he hit the beacon purely so he can be rescued. The man spent years alone in isolation wondering if he'd see anyone again or if he'd die on that planet. It's entirely possible he was driven to madness and acting on emotion and survival instincts when he tried to kill Cooper and open the air lock without it being secure. After all, he lied about the data and Cooper asked to be taken down to the surface. Panic set in for Damon and he saw no other alternative. Hell his whole conversation as they were traveling foreshadowed those events. Not to mention all the comments regarding his character throughout the movie were how brave of a man he was. He was just a little too highly regarded
Spoiler My guess is because McConaughey was so utterly dumbfounded on the words that came out of Anne Hatheway's mouth that he chose the alternative.
You guys realize Anne Hathaway didn't write that love speech? The greatest actress in history couldn't have sold that cringe worthy crap. Seriously, overall I liked the movie, but that was awful.
