With Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey (which I'm eagerly anticipating) right around the corner, I thought it an opportune time to talk about Nolan’s other Odyssey movie - that being of the space variety, a.k.a. Interstellar.
While Interstellar isn’t exactly Nolan’s version of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, many would say that it’s just as ambitious in scope as what many consider to be Kubrick’s best movie. In fact, a lot of people consider Interstellar (which you can watch with a Paramount+ subscription) to be Nolan’s best movie, with this website even putting it at number one when we ranked his films.
However, even though I write for this website, I have NEVER been of the opinion that Interstellar was Nolan’s best. In fact, I genuinely think it’s one of his worst (though not as bad as Tenet), and for multiple reasons. Here are just a few. And yes, there are spoilers ahead!
I Always Found The Whole S-T-A-Y Scene To Be Predictable And Mawkish
There was a moment when I first saw Interstellar that was make-or-break for me. Early on in the film, Murphy, who is Cooper’s daughter, thinks there’s a ghost in her room. One such incident sees books knocked on Murphy’s floor, seemingly out of nowhere, and it spells out “S-T-A-Y” in Morse code.
Now, when I first saw this movie, I made a quick-time decision. In my head, I thought, this “ghost” is probably Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) communicating with his daughter from the future, because that’s a very sci-fi concept, especially when you’re dealing with time dilation, which I figured this movie was probably heading toward since it dealt with black holes. So, I was like, if this IS Cooper sending this message back to his daughter, I’m going to hate this movie because that’s really obvious. If it’s NOT what I predict, then this movie might have a shot at being good with me.
And…it was exactly what I predicted. Cooper found himself in a tesseract toward the end, and he was telling himself to stay and not go on this mission, which I found super mawkish and lame. I mean, one reason I used to love Nolan was that he was unflinching, and even cruel at times in his storytelling. The Prestige, which is my favorite Nolan movie, is fascinating, but also stark, with nary a maudlin moment. The same goes for Inception, which ends ambiguously, so we don’t know if it’s a happy ending or not.
Interstellar just feels…cheesy to me, and that’s not a word that I ever thought I would associate with Nolan until this movie.
I Genuinely Don't Like Any Of The Characters
Another problem I have with this film is that I don’t care about any of the characters. I usually like McConaughey, but Cooper is so bland in this movie, and I have no idea why. His children, who we see both as young (Mackenzie Foy and Timothee Chalamet), and as adults (Jessica Chastain and Casey Affleck, respectively) don’t do anything for me, and I’m sorry to say this, but I don’t care if they die on earth or not. They just never moved me in any way.
Anne Hathaway plays a NASA scientist floating around with McConaughey, but I don’t find her interesting, even WITH her being the daughter of Michael Caine’s character, who I feel also isn’t interesting. Heck, I don’t even like Matt Damon as the, I guess you can call him the “bad guy” of the film (And get this. His name is Dr. Hugh Mann…Get it? Hu-man? Oh, brother). Damon appears late in the film trying to get back home (Hmmm…wasn’t Damon in another space movie like that?), and he fudges the numbers in order to get a lift back.
Look. I know Nolan isn't always on his A game when it comes to crafting interesting characters. Shoot, if it weren't for films like Memento, Insomnia, and Oppenheimer, I might even suggest that Nolan is kind of…lacking when it comes to characterization. Interstellar (and Tenet. Remember when John David Washington's character was simply known as…The Protagonist?) is still on another level when it comes to weak characters.
Which wouldn't be such a bad thing if this movie felt sterile and cold like 2001, but it doesn't. It's supposed to find the Hugh-Mann-ity (I’m sorry) in the vastness of space, and it just…doesn't. Not for me, anyway.
I Thought Nolan Somehow Made Even Wormholes And Black Holes Boring
When we first heard that Tenet was going to be about entropy, I was like, cool. I don’t really know what entropy is, but I know it has something to do with time travel since that’s what Primer was about, too…I think. Anyway, if Nolan used to do anything well in his career, it was to take these scientific concepts and make them interesting.
So, when we learned that black holes would play a significant role in Interstellar, I was game. I mean, Nolan made a dream machine cool in Inception, and he turned Batman on his pointy head with the Dark Knight trilogy by making it “realistic,” so I was looking forward to Nolan’s take on black holes.
Until I saw the movie, and was just bored by it. Yes, it pays to watch Interstellar on as big a screen as possible, but besides some of the visuals being kind of interesting, I think Nolan made black holes a little boring.
It’s a visual feast for the eyes, and, as my late mother once said, “Really cool if you were on something.” However, the wormhole and black hole scenes in Interstellar are just kind of…mid. I don’t know how else to put it. How Nolan made such cool concepts boring, I don’t know, but he did.
I Also Didn't Think Any Of The Planets Explored Were All That Interesting
There was this video game that came out a few years back called Starfield, and even though I didn’t play it, one complaint I kept seeing over and over again from critics was that there were so many planets (like, 1000 or something), but there was virtually nothing to do on them. They were just, like, there, and you could explore them, but why would you even want to?
Now, maybe this has been updated since its 2023 launch, but I get a similar feeling with Interstellar, as there are three planets that are visited - Miller’s Planet, Mann’s Planet, and Edmunds’ Planet - and they’re all even more boring than the last.
Miller’s Planet is the ocean one with the huge waves, and even though it’s cool that time goes faster there…it’s still just a water planet. It looks like something you might find on Earth. The same goes for Mann’s Planet, as it’s just a cold planet, which is dull. And then you have Edmunds’ Planet, which is another bland place, but this one seems suitable for habitation.
That’s it. Like the rest of the film, I’m just left underwhelmed, and this is made worse with a rewatch, as I already know how dull the planets are, so there’s nothing to look forward to. I mean, I don’t know. People love this movie so much, and I just don’t see what the big deal is. Hopefully the actual The Odyssey will be much better (and I’ve heard good things!), because Nolan’s space odyssey? This just ain’t it, man.
