Revisiting 'Interstellar': The Fallacies of its Fictional Future

In 2014, Christopher Nolan released his latest film, the sci-fi epic Interstellar. Matthew McConaughey starred as Joseph Cooper, a former NASA test pilot-turned-farmer on a dying planet Earth during the mid-21st century. When his 10-year-old daughter (Mackenzie Foy) discovers a gravitational anomaly in her bedroom, Cooper gleans a message in it, offering coordinates. These coordinates lead him to the secret location of NASA, led by Prof. Jonathan Brand (Michael Caine). Cooper is recruited to pilot a spacecraft into a wormhole near Saturn, so that NASA can find the survivors of a previous expedition to find habitable planets. Accompanying Cooper on this mission are Dr. Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway), Prof. Romilly (David Gyasi), Doyle (Wes Bentley), and two advanced robots (both voiced by Bill Irwin). The expedition spans decades, even as Cooper’s adult daughter Murphy (Jessica Chastain) works for the elderly Prof. Brand in the hope that the planet’s population might be saved.

It’s clear that Interstellar pays homage to a number of classic films such as Star Wars, Blade Runner, and Metropolis. What Nolan truly borrows from, however, are the films of Steven Spielberg (in fact, Spielberg was considered to direct the film when it was first conceived in 2007). For all the close attention paid to the physics behind this story, it is nevertheless a story which is embedded in emotion. Cooper is a father trying to save his children’s futures, just as Prof. Brand is determined to give his daughter Amelia a chance to leave Earth for new worlds if all else fails. Amelia also embarks on the journey because one of the men on the previous voyage was her lover. Although he is very likely dead, she is determined to find him if she can.

The main conflict of the film is the struggle to save the human species, but there is strong disagreement over what that means. As Prof. Brand explains to Cooper, there is a Plan A to get the humans of Earth to a safer world. If that fails, Cooper’s spacecraft is carrying hundreds of fertilized eggs which will save the human species from extinction (this, ironically, is dubbed Plan B). Cooper himself is determined to save his children by any means necessary, even if that means being absent for decades of their lives. For all the respect which the film pays to science, it is love which triumphs in the end. Cooper’s will to save his children is what drives him to enter a black hole and master the use of gravity to transcend time itself. As Dr. Brand herself points out, “Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that, even if we can’t understand it.” Although Cooper dismisses such an argument when she first gives it, the film’s conclusion proves her right.

Upon its original release, Interstellar was immediately hailed as a triumph. Grossing more than five times its original budget, it was also nominated for multiple awards at the Academy Awards, winning for Best Visual Effects. The film was a triumph for the three leads, who were all at various stages in their careers at the time. McConaughey had spent the previous three years going through what was dubbed the "McConaissance", where he broke out of the rom-com world to which he’d been typecast. By 2014, he’d established himself as a dramatic actor who went for much more daring roles in such projects as Killer Joe, Magic Mike, Mud, Wolf of Wall Street, and Dallas Buyers Club. The year 2014 marked a high point for his career, as he starred in Interstellar on the big screen and True Detective on the small screen. Meanwhile, Anne Hathaway had been an established actor since 2005, and she was coming off her first Academy Award for Les Miserables. Like McConaughey, the year 2014 was a highlight year in her film career, thanks in large part to her performance in Interstellar . The same can be said for the third lead, Jessica Chastain. She had only just broken through in 2011, but had quickly garnered two Academy Award nominations for her work in The Help and Zero Dark Thirty. Her own career went on to far greater heights, not only with the success of Interstellar but also The Martian, It: Chapter Two, and The Eyes of Tammy Faye.

This year, to mark Interstellar’s ten-year anniversary, the film was rereleased in IMAX, allowing people a chance to see the film as Nolan intended (the film was shot partly on 35 mm movie film and IMAX 70 mm). Having seen it again for the first time since its release, rest assured that Interstellar still retains the power to amaze. It is a spectacle of visuals and sound, thanks in part to the incredible work of cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, composer Hans Zimmer, visual effects supervisor Paul Franklin, costume designer Mary Zophres, and production designer Nathan Crowley. Additionally, Nobel Prize winner Kip Thorne served as an scientific consultant, shaping the screenplay to be as scientifically accurate as possible. Accordingly, the film has received a great deal of acclaim from the scientific community, including former NASA engineers. Small wonder that it’s been hailed as “the most ambitious and challenging science fiction film since [Stanley Kubrick]’s [2001: A Space Odyssey].” In 2020, it was ranked by Empire magazine as one of the best films of the 21st century, and one would be hard-pressed to find someone who disagrees with that assessment.

While its acclaimed legacy is not in question, however, it has nevertheless aged in ways that the cast and crew probably didn’t intend. Ten years is a long time to revisit any film; one must remain conscious of when it was made and what has changed since then. Since Interstellar attempted to tell a story set in the mid-21st century, it has thus far avoided the trap into which so many sci-fi films fall as the years lengthen. We haven’t yet caught up to the film’s timeline, and thus we don’t know where we’ll be by then. The story, written by Christopher and Jonathan Nolan with Thorne’s help, envisions a future where blight has destroyed crop after crop, with corn being the last one left (though trees and other plants seem to be growing just fine). The society in which Cooper lives has largely abandoned any interest in space exploration, to the point that the school curriculum insists that the Moon landing of 1969 was faked. It’s hinted that the planet has no resources left for military or geopolitics, to the point that NASA’s very existence is a closely kept secret. Even technology such as MRIs are no longer in use.

In 2024, this kind of portrayal will doubtless be met with mixed feelings. This is, after all, the age of fake news, conspiracies running rampant, a global shift towards far-right politics, and a growing disdain for science among the general populace. More than ever, we are becoming conscious of the severe environmental impact which we have made upon this planet, and things only seem to be getting worse. With all that in mind, Interstellar feels darkly prophetic, especially given the Nolan brothers’ meticulous research and Thorne’s devotion to authenticity. Moreover, it is very easy to gaze with cynical eyes upon this story of hope, exploration, and advancement. Humankind is given a glorious opportunity to shrug off their past failings and reach the sort of heights which we can barely fathom. The future becomes a utopia thanks to the efforts of Cooper, his crew, Prof. Brand, and Murphy.

That’s not to say that Interstellar is completely unaware of humankind’s failings. Indeed, for all its lofty idealism, the film accounts for the darker aspects of human nature. On his deathbed, Prof. Brand admits to a devastated Murphy that he lied to Cooper, persuading him that Plan A was possible, for that was the only way he could persuade Cooper to go on the mission and abandon his children. At the same time Murphy makes this discovery, her father and the rest of the crew reach Dr. Mann (Matt Damon) who has discovered a habitable planet. It is revealed that not only was Dr. Mann aware of Prof. Brand’s deception, he lied about the habitability of his planet so that he might be rescued. After the movie spent more than half its runtime hailing Mann for his bravery, he is revealed to be a coward of the highest order, risking the future of an entire species just to preserve his own life and avoid facing consequences for his actions. It is this naked display of selfishness which helps Cooper come to grips with what sacrifice truly means, and proves that he’s capable of doing the impossible.

Of course, the film still clings to a sentimental idealism which will ring hollow to some who watch it today. It feels difficult to imagine a world which abandons geopolitics when times get tough. Our history and our present both show that people will continue to put their own selfish views above the greater good, even when it flies in the face of all common sense. The ‘villainous’ characters in Interstellar are desperately acting out of despair rather than genuine evil. Dr. Mann is framed as someone who spent decades in complete isolation, and even when he attempts to kill Cooper, he explains that nobody was tested like he has been. He shows remorse and even a strange compassion for Cooper as he waits for Cooper to die, offering him soothing words to help him on his passing. While this makes for a very complex and interesting character, it says a lot about the film that this is the man who proves the biggest obstacle in the story. To the very end, he professes his desire to save humanity through Plan B, leading the new generation of people in honour of those who died. The only named character who seems to lose hope for humanity is Cooper’s son (Timothee Chalamet and Casey Affleck), but when Murphy figures out the solution to save humanity, he is also saved without further ado.

That, in itself, might be the least plausible aspect of this futuristic film. In this version of the future, when humanity has fallen so far that they’re subsiding on corn alone, the people of Earth have seemingly reached the mid-21st century without prejudices around race or sexuality, without a deeply divided class-based society, without any religious conflicts, without extremist political actions, and no more wars over resources beyond the desperate desire for food. While such issues were certainly abundant in 2014, the last ten years have brought all these concerns to the forefront in the midst of an increasingly unstable planet. These various issues feed into each other, inflame each other, and often result in an increasingly fractured response. For all of Interstellar’s timelessness and its dedication to accuracy, it hand-waves away a lot of the very real problems which hold humanity back from achieving such goals as space travel, and which divide humanity more than ever whilst the environmental death-clock keeps ticking away.

And yet, that shouldn’t take away from Interstellar’s quality as a film and story. Its emotional power still rings true, judging by the people who still weep with Cooper’s character as he watches videos of his aging kids. Nor is it absolutely necessary for this film to tackle all the weighty problems which our species faces in real life. It is a dream, a beacon of hope which was co-written and directed by a father to four children, and this comes through whether Nolan intended to do so or not. To paraphrase a character from another Nolan movie, we can forgive this film’s naiveté and embrace it for what it is. It still stands among the upper echelon of sci-fi films, and will doubtless continue to do so for as long as people look up at the sky and wonder at their place in the stars.