Revisiting Interstellar As Oppenheimer Approaches (Amazon Prime)

For years, I was adamant I did not like Interstellar and that it was Christopher Nolan's most flawed film. I revisited it as I'm very excited for Oppenheimer and wanted to give it another chance - maybe I was the problem. And my experience revisiting it a decade plus later was drastically different than my first viewing in theaters. Did you love Interstellar on a first watch or did it need time to grow on you? I'd love to know what you think.

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Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, Dan Bettimore.

(00:22):
I'm a producer, writer of filmand television and now a podcast producer.
And despite having every streaming service,I never know what to watch. So
anytime I watch something good, Italk about it on the show. This
way, you'll never have the sameproblem I do. I watch this tonight,
there's always something good to watch.Let's get started today. On the
show, I am revisiting Interstellar.As Oppenheimer approaches. There's a moment early

(00:45):
an Interstellar where Matthew McConaughey sees anIndian drone in the sky and he's excited
about it and he wants to pursueit, but his truck has a flat
tire, and Timothy Shalom plays hisson, tells him, hey man,
there's a flat tire. You can'tand they but he doesn't care. He
drives the truck anyway after it andthey almost drive off a cliff. And
I was thinking about that, andI thought, this moment, this sequence

(01:08):
is like a microcosm of the incrediblestrength of Christopher Nolan's a filmmaker and the
arguable weaknesses. And I always feltlike this was his most flawed film.
I always felt like his ambition isso great, and I love his ambition,
and the movie is beautifully made,it constructed, and then you watch
it and you kind of second guessyourself and you're like, wait a second,
like you think that I have Iis this a plot hole? And

(01:30):
then you're like, well, it'sit's so smartly put together. Maybe there's
just something I'm not understanding. Andin a lot of his movies, I
felt that way, where I'm like, this kind of seems like a plot
hole, and then I think,no, there must just be something I'm
not understanding. And my memory ofInterstellar is that I saw it in the
theater and I felt that really strongly. At the time, I had been
studying stuff about black holes. Iwas writing something about black holes, so

(01:52):
I knew, you know, adecent amount of stuff about it, and
I felt like this movie just ignoredjust the basic idea of how those things
work. And I really had avery honestly, like a pretty negative reaction
to it, and I kind ofyou walked out of the theater. I
never watched again. Obviously, Iam in the minority. The movie made
three quarters of a billion dollars wascritically well received, although if you go

(02:14):
to Rod Tomatoes and then you justgo to just the top critics, it's
a bit more mixed. Most ofthe criticism is about the last act.
But I'm very excited for Oppenheimer.I'm reading a book about three guys that
are involved in making a decision touse the atomic bomb, and so I
was like, you know, Ifeel like I should go back and give
Interstellar another look. Maybe the passageof time. You know, we do

(02:36):
the all star episodes on the show. Maybe I just kind of judged it
unfairly, and so I did,and it was interesting. There were some
things that I actually did not understand, but there were also some things that
I think are still kind of plotholes. So let's get into it.
This is revisiting Interstellar. So thismovie has a single sequence that I think
is better than many entire films,which is the sequence on the planet.

(03:00):
And obviously we're going to be inspoilers here. I'm assuming if you're listening,
if you're listening to this, you'veseen an Interstellar. The sequence on
the planet with the mountain sized waveand the robot turns into like an asterisk
and rolls to get in Hathaway andthey get up in the wave and then
they got to escape. And it'sjust a great idea. If you're looking
for a home planet, you're goingto be looking for a planet that has

(03:20):
water. Great, we found aplanet with water, except the whole planet
is these giant killer waves. That'sa great idea of you know, it's
a great example of taking your charactersout of the frying pan and their friar.
I think it is up there withany sequence, any single sequence in
any Nolan movie. That's great.And then the planet that Matt Damon is
on is also incredible. There's amoment when they're flying and they hit a

(03:43):
frozen clouds, so cleverly done,because it looks like they're just flying they're
seen a cloud and then they hitit and it's solid and it breaks your
brain for a second. It isa great idea, and the Damon twist
is incredible, So so much goodstuff, right, But then I think
one reasons that I had issues withit is that it's so deadly serious at

(04:04):
times in ways that also kind offeel silly. But it's hard to even
it's sort of intangible, right,So, for example, At one point,
we're in the future. You know, obviously the story takes place in
the future. The only sustainable cropis corn. And there's a dinner scene
that is extremely serious and the wifeof Casey Affleck she tells their kid,

(04:30):
finish your fritter. But she saysit like a deadly serious, like heavy
drama away, like finish it fritter. And it's one of those intangibles that
intellectually it makes sense, It logicallymakes sense, but it just feels silly
else to explain it. Sort ofthe same thing. Jessica Chastain asks Michael
Caine an extremely important question. He'sjust admitted that he lied to her and

(04:53):
betrayed her in this horrible way,and she's she asks him this very important
question that's like found to who sheis as a person, and he just
quotes a poem and dies. Now, to be fair to the film,
probably might the scene that bothered methe most of the whole movie is when
Anne Hathaway has the thing where shebasically talks about and I had remembered it

(05:15):
as like love is the only dimensionthat transcends whatever, and I remember seeing
the theater, like, what areyou talking about now? I when on
the rewatch I was able to listenmore carefully. What she actually says is
love is the only thing we're capableof perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and
space. So what threw me offthere was the word dimension. In the

(05:39):
theater. It's a two hour andforty nine minute movie. It's so easy
to miss, like exactly what she'ssaying. I took it as she's saying
that, like, love is adimension, which I'm like, love is
an abstract idea, what are youtalking about? But she's saying that love
is something that still applies across physicalspace in the passage of time, which
is of course true. If sheliterally just took the word dimension, that

(06:00):
totally would have worked for me.But I misunderstood on the first watch because
just trying to catch it and nowscrutinizing it more carefully, obviously it makes
sense. It's clearly illustrated in therelationship with Chastain and McConaughey, which does
transcend space and time, even beforethey get into this stuff in the third
act. And I relate obviously muchmore into the central relationship now that I

(06:20):
have a daughter and you know,there's a moment where I think it's the
first planet they go to, andthen they go back up and like twenty
years have passed and they have twentyyears of video messages and McConaughey is watching
those twenty years of video messages,and that all hit me much harder now,
right, You're much more aware oftime is so much more precious in

(06:42):
your mind when you have children andyou see them growing and you know to
miss that time. I actually understandwhat that means now. So I would
say my biggest criticism of the filmnow is like null and void, I
was wrong. My second biggest criticismof the film is that they just casually
invent this concept of a gentle singularity. So this is something that I again,

(07:05):
when I saw the movie, Iwas like, this seems made up,
and then I googled it when Iwatched this yesterday, and it is
made up. It's not a realthing. They just made it up.
So if you research black holes,the idea of the black hole is that
the nature of it if you ifyou as in a spaceship or in this
movie, Matthew McConaughey ejects into space, or to even get close to a

(07:29):
black hole. You would for suredie, no matter what, you would
die. It's that's it. It'snot more complicated than that. And you
know, they it's a problem becauseas storytellers, it's so tantalizing, like,
oh man, what happens when yougo in a black hole? The
answer is you die, that's theanswer. And so they just made this
thing up to deal with that problem, the idea of the gentle singularity.

(07:53):
And I think the reason bothered meso much, and this is this is
how marketing affects your perception movie.They had made such a big deal about,
oh my god, it is soscientifically accurate in the marketing leading up
to the release of the film.So I think that's why maybe it rubbed
me the wrong way. It's aperfectly reasonable like you have to make some
stuff up in service of the story. And it's also you know, you

(08:15):
can make the argument of like,hey, who really knows none of us
have been in a black hole,so you know, I was much more
lenient on it this watch. Theother thing is that the movie is pretty
long, so I feel like inthe theater, if a couple things rub
you the wrong way, you cankind of check out on it at home.
I was able to take a break, go in for the last forty
five minutes with a clear head,and I really did enjoy it much more

(08:37):
on this viewing. That being said, the part that I have a tough
time with at the end, atthe very very end. So Matthew McConaughey,
the whole movie is about him andhis daughter being separated and then making
their way back to each other.And she's on her deathbed and it's like,
hey, I haven't seen you myentire life, and she's like,
you know, you shouldn't watch yourchild die. Like, I'm good,

(09:00):
you can piece out go find Annehalfaway and he's like, all right,
sweet, let me go find itand halfway and it felt a little bit
like kind of a betrayal of thethemes of the entire movie. So again
I just kind of rubbed me andbit the wrong way. But overall,
I would say my initial reaction onthis very much was like the arrogance of
youth, right Like, sitting therethinking like as a twenty six year old

(09:20):
or whatever, I was being like, oh, yeah, this movie sucks.
The movie rocks. It's a reallygood movie. You know. My
issues with it. Notwithstanding, Ithink my issues with it in the grand
picture of what the movie accomplishes arerelatively minor. And this movie is really
good, breaking news. Interstellar isgood. Oh it really, it really

(09:43):
is. I was I was waytoo hard on it. But in the
tradition of these all star episodes onthe show, definitely the passage of time
affects your viewing. I am socurious to know if there's any of you
out there listening to this who hadan equally mixed reaction Interstellar, either when
you first saw it maybe you stilldo or is it just gangbusters for you
all the way through and you justabsolutely loved it the first time, still

(10:07):
love it? Has it played differentfor you as the years have passed.
Yeah, I just would love toknow your thoughts on Interstellar. You can
always reach me at Benamore Dan onTwitter, watch This Tonight on Instagram,
watch This Night podcast on TikTok,or you can join our Facebook group.
That is the show for today Untilnext time. Bye,