History Film / Interstellar

!! T.R.O.P.E.:

--->'''Principal''': Frankly, the world doesn't need any more engineers. We didn't run out of trains or television sets or satellites. We ran out of ''food.''

--->'''Ms. Hanley''': Murph is a great kid. She's really bright, but she's been having a little trouble lately. She brought this in to show the other students. The section on the lunar landings. [...] If we don't want a repeat of the excess and wastefulness of the 20th century, then we need to teach our kids about ''this'' planet. Not tales of leaving it.

* AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: The Bulk Beings apparently went through this. [[spoiler: They are implied to be the ultimate fate of humanity in the distant future.]]

** [[spoiler: Try calculating the odds of finding a lone astronaut floating in space just in the nick of time - but also note that [[AWizardDidIt the bulk beings]] who brought Cooper into the Tesseract ''also created the wormhole in the first place.'' Spitting him out right where the spacers would find him instead of just dropping him off inside the station itself is just them granting present-day humans their WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief.]]

** The bulkier and less sleek-looking Lander, designed to haul heavy scientific equipment, proves its own worth when [[spoiler: Dr. Mann steals the ''Ranger'' and Brand uses the Lander to rescue Cooper]].

* DeathByIrony: When [[spoiler: Dr. Mann]] cracks Cooper's faceplate and leaves him to die, he quotes Brand's usage of [[DoNotGoGentle "Do not go gently"]]. Minutes later, [[spoiler: Mann]] triggers his own demise while trying to commandeer the ''Endurance'', and it was ''anything'' but "gentle".

--->'''Cooper''': You '''fucking''' coward.

** The black hole, [[spoiler: both inside and out.]] On the outside it appears as a blacker-than-black sphere surrounded by a nimbus of light from all directions, which makes sense - the gravity causes such extreme distortions in local space that ''all'' light is literally wrapped around it. [[spoiler: On the inside, Cooper flies through a stream of particles that steadily increase in size and speed which destroy his ship, forcing him to eject, which lands him inside the Tessaract. Also, his ship's systems mostly fail and he has no control because like the wormhole, the inside of the black hole is not physical space.]]

* TheEpic: It fits the outline of a classical Graeco-Roman epic to a T. The story opens InMediasRes, the hero goes on several (somewhat) episodic adventures (Finding NASA, exploring the three planets, [[spoiler: fighting Mann and finding a way to send the ''Endurance'' home...]]), which take place across a great length of time and [[spoiler: there's even a rough analogue to the required [[ToHellAndBack journey to the underworld]] inside the black hole.]] Chris Nolan seems quite conscious of this since his previous film ''Film/{{Inception}}'' closely parallels this structure as well.

---->'''Cooper''': Nice reckless flying, CASE!\\
'''CASE''': Learned from the best.

--> '''Romilly''': So they say you want to go from here, to there (holds up a blank sheet). But this is too far. So a wormhole bends space like this so you can take a shortcut through a higher dimension (folds paper and pierces it with a pen). Okay so, to show that they've turned 3-dimensional space into 2 dimensions, which turns a wormhole in 2 dimensions? ... A circle. What's a circle in 3 dimensions?
--> '''Cooper''': A sphere.
--> '''Romilly''': Exactly. A spherical hole.

-->'''Cooper''': Get ready to match the ''Endurance'' 's spin with the retro-thrusters.\\
'''CASE''': It's not possible.\\
'''Cooper''': No... It's ''necessary''.

** Amelia is revealed to have one in [[spoiler: Edmunds]]. He may or may not be alive, but she's partially motivated by the chance of seeing him again. [[spoiler:He's confirmed to be dead in the epilogue]].

---> '''Cooper''': [''tearfully''] Murph, I love you. Forever.

* MeanwhileInTheFuture: Cooper, in [[spoiler: the Tesseract, decades ahead of Murph's childhood and adult storylines]], watches as [[spoiler: he is powerless to stop himself from leaving his daughter for the Endurance mission.]] He soon realizes that [[spoiler: he was never meant to ''change'' the past, only to help move it along, so that his daughter could save the human race.]] He proceeds to [[spoiler:send a message to Murph, her adult self discovers the message, and as he leaves the Tesseract, he "shakes" hands with Dr. Brand as she enters the wormhole.]]

--> '''Dr. Mann''': What does research tell us is the last thing you're gonna see before you die? Your children. Their faces. At the moment of death, your mind is going to push you a little bit harder to survive. For them.

* NiceJobFixingItVillain: The StableTimeLoop requires [[spoiler: Mann's betrayal, which makes it necessary to drop Cooper into the black hole.]]

--->'''Brand''': Cooper, what are you doing?\\
'''Cooper''': [[ExactWords Docking]].

** The early parts of the film are spliced in with interviews with elderly people living in a "Dust Bowl". Given that they're speaking in English, with US accents, the viewer may well assume that they are talking about the USA's Great Depression-era Dust Bowl.[[note]]In real life, this ''is'' actually what these are; real interviews from a documentary about the Dust Bowl are used for this movie.[[/note]] [[spoiler: The ending scenes reveal that those interviews were part of a museum exhibit on Cooper Station about life on earth in the first part of the film.]]

* OneWordTitle

-->'''CASE''': [[spoiler:[Mann]]] doesn't know the ''Endurance'' docking procedure.\\
'''Cooper''': Well, the autopilot does.\\
'''CASE''': Not since TARS disabled it.\\
'''Cooper''': ({{Beat}}) ''Nice!'' What's your trust setting, TARS?\\
'''TARS''': [[DeadpanSnarker Lower than yours, apparently]].

--->'''Cooper''': Ready, CASE?\\
'''CASE''': Yup.\\
'''Cooper''': ({{Beat}}) You don't say much, do you?\\
'''CASE''': TARS talks plenty for both of us.

* SacrificialLion: [[spoiler: Doyle and Romilly.]]

--> '''Cooper''': MUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURPH!!!

-->'''Cooper''': Humor... 75%.
-->'''TARS''': Confirmed. Auto self-destruct in T-minus ten... nine...
-->'''Cooper''': Let's make that 60%.

** From the robots shaped like [[TheMonolith monoliths]] to the score, the film is a love letter to ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey''. Even some of the dialog from [[spoiler:Dr. Mann]] is oddly similar to that of HAL's. [[spoiler: It's a bit of foreshadowing that Mann is going to be the character that will cause problems later on, rather than TARS and CASE that audiences would be expecting.]] Then there's an In-Universe example of the wise-cracking robot making a joke about blowing the team out of the airlock.

** Like in ''[[Literature/TheSpaceOdysseySeries 3001: The Final Odyssey]]'', [[spoiler: the protagonist is found floating near Saturn.]]

--->'''Cooper''': A sarcastic robot. What a great idea.\\
'''TARS''': I have a cue light I can use when I'm joking, if you'd like. ''(flashes light)''\\
'''Cooper''': That'd probably help.\\
'''TARS''': Yeah, you can use it to find your way back to the ship after I blow you out the airlock. ''(flashes light)''\\
'''Cooper''': ({{Beat}}) What's your humor setting, TARS?\\
'''TARS''': That's 100%.\\
'''Cooper''': Bring it on down to 75, please. ''(Doyle smirks at him)''

--->'''Brand''': This crew represents the best of humanity.\\
'''Cooper''': Even me, eh?\\
'''Brand''': You know what, we agreed, 90% [honesty].\\
'''Cooper''': ''(Nods)'' There you go.

* StableTimeLoop: [[spoiler: Not only does "Ghost" Cooper direct past Cooper to the secret NASA base, but the n-dimensional space from which he sends the message was/is/will be created by Humanity's distant descendants, who only survive the Second Dust Bowl due to the quantum math Cooper sends to Murphy. He also returns to the initial trip through the wormhole to touch Brand's hand via gravitational anomaly.]]

-->'''TARS''': STAND BACK, PROFESSOR! STAND BACK! [KIPP explodes]

* TimeDilation: Miller's planet orbits so close to Gargantua (the black hole) that one hour is equal to seven years outside. [[spoiler: When Cooper and Brand returned, 23 years had passed on the ''Endurance'' and on Earth. After the shock sets in, Brand realized that the transmitter was still giving the "thumbs up" because from its perspective, it had only gotten there a couple hours ago, and that Miller likely died only minutes before the ''Endurance'' arrived.]]

** Brand should have listened to Cooper and hurried back to the Ranger, especially since she can see that the next wave is practically on top of them. Instead, she insists on trying to retrieve the data log anyway and [[spoiler: [[HeroicSacrifice Doyle dies saving her]]]].

** [[spoiler: Mann]] really should have listened to the three separate warnings telling him not to open the airlock.
* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: As the trailer's space scenes feature [[spoiler: just Cooper and Brand]], when the mission [[spoiler: starts with four]] crewmen, you can already draw some conclusions as to what happens later on. The trailers also depict [[spoiler:Mann's pod exploding, debris spewing from ''Endurance'', and the waves of Miller's Planet.]]

* TrippyFinaleSyndrome: In the film's climax, [[spoiler: Cooper winds up in a Tesseract, a cosmic plane of existence created by the Fifth Dimensional Beings who helped create the wormhole that allowed the team to travel. While he is there, he and TARS are able to transmit the proper equation to Murph (via her bookshelf through morse code) to solve Professor Brand's gravity equation and successfully propel humanity into space.]]

--->'''TARS''': [[YearOutsideHourInside 23 years, 4 months, 8 days.]]

--->'''Brand''': [[spoiler:[[ILied I lied.]] [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone I lied, Murph.]]]]

--->'''Mann''': [[spoiler:[[EvilAllAlong The truth is, I never really considered the possibility that my planet wasn't the one. Nothing worked out the way it was supposed to.]]]]

--->'''CASE''': [[spoiler:Ranger 2, prepare to detach.]]

* SpiritualSuccessor:
** The film acts as this towards ''Film/{{Inception}}''. Time passing by at bizarre speeds, a father being separated from his children in a faraway location, [[spoiler:a TragicVillain who almost screws up the team's goals]], Nolan being in the Sci-Fi genre again, etc. Of course, the main difference is that the scale is much grander than ''Film/{{Inception}}'s'' smaller focus. Even lampshaded by Nolan himself in a couple of interviews.
** The film is a more practical and straightforward version of 1997's ''Film/{{Contact}}'', which also deals with an otherworldly message that triggers a drive for space exploration. In ''Interstellar'''s case, they actually have the logistics for space travel and [[spoiler:Cooper speculates that the messengers are advanced futuristic humans]], whereas in ''Contact'', the beings basically provide the means [[spoiler:and are extraterrestrial]].

*** Objects spin around their centers of mass. After it's damaged by [[spoiler:Mann's failed attempt to enter]], the ''Endurance'' is no longer symmetrical, and would not spin around its former center, where the central hatch is located. Therefore, Cooper would not be able to dock it, no matter how fast his module is spinning around its own center of mass. If the ''Endurance'' has failsafes for such a contingency, the movie doesn't mention them.

** [[spoiler:Cooper's love for his daughter enables him to literally transcend time and space to give her younger self the information required to save humanity]].

* RoboSpeak: Averted. TARS and CASE are given completely natural sounding voices with very little filtering, making them sound incredibly human-like in spite of their obviously non-humanoid bodies.

* DullSurprise: Murphy's kids/grandkids/etc are markedly uninterested in Cooper's arrival to visit the elderly Murphy, despite him being their surely long presumed deceased grandfather/etc.

!! This film provides examples of:

* TheNotLoveInterest: Cooper and Amelia clearly share a special bond that he doesn't have with Romilly or Doyle. They're probably not in love, considering Cooper is still grieving for his dead wife and Amelia has a boyfriend on one of the planets. [[spoiler:By the end, though, said boyfriend is [[DeathOfTheHypotenuse revealed to have died before their mission ever began]], and Cooper leaves the space colony to seek her out at Murph's urging, so who knows what might happen]].

** Tom's first child, Jesse, dies from lung disease.

* TheNotLoveInterest: Cooper and Amelia clearly share a special bond that he doesn't have with Romilly or Doyle. They're probably not in love, considering Cooper is still grieving for his dead wife and Amelia [[spoiler:has a boyfriend on one of the planets. By the end, though, said boyfriend is [[DeathOfTheHypotenuse revealed to have died before their mission ever began]], and Cooper leaves the space colony to seek her out at Murph's urging, so who knows what might happen]].

* GetOut: Adult Tom evicts his sister from the house when the latter tries to convince him and his family to leave because of health issues.
* GetOut: The dramatic moment when adult Tom evicts his sister from his farm: "'''Get out... and don't come back.'''"

* AIIsACrapshoot: Briefly played with and lampshaded, but ultimately averted.
** Cooper is alarmed when TARS states that his Honesty setting is set to 90%, but TARS explains that BrutalHonesty isn't always preferable. Ultimately Cooper trusts the robots and they never betray him or the mission. This also allows him to joke about the astronauts being "slaves for [his] robot colony".
** We even get a scene that almost mirrors events of ''2001'', where CASE gets a message to relay to Cooper containing information that would hinder the mission; he would have been perfectly able to edit the message to remove the ending, but instead he shows it to Cooper and company in full.

*** However, Doyle is also partially responsible for this; after CASE gets Brand back to the Ranger and they both jump in, [[spoiler:Doyle doesn't immediately jump in after them, and instead spends a few seconds gawking at the giant wave about to crash down on them. By the time he turns back to try to get in the Ranger, it's too late, and Cooper has had to forcibly close the outer hatch so the water doesn't get in and kill them all, trapping Doyle outside and causing him to be killed by the tidal wave]].

* PastExperienceNightmare: The opening scene suggests Cooper is haunted by the experience of having crashed crashing a plane when he was a pilot.

* DeathWorld: Miller's planet, thanks to Gargantua's gravitationally forces causing [[GiantWallOfWateryDoom mountainous waves]] to frequently sweep the surface.

* DeathWorld: Miller's planet, thanks to it consisting entirely of a shallow ocean and the fact [[GiantWallOfWateryDoom mountainous waves]] frequently sweep the surface thanks to Gargantua's gravitational forces.

* AcePilot: Cooper. At first only an InformedAttribute, he later proves this to be true when docking onto the wildly rotating ''Endurance'' without losing consciousness and when pulling off the SpaceshipSlingshotStunt around the black hole.

* StarfishRobot: TARS and CASE have a very unique non-humanoid design. They're essentially large slabs divided into 4 vertical sections that let them swing about with great force and further divide these sections into ever-smaller pieces to simulate limbs.

* VillainWithGoodPublicity: In the epilogue, [[spoiler:Dr. Mann is still remembered as one of the heroic astronauts who led humanity into the stars, despite being revealed as an insane coward who ''nearly'' dooms all of humanity]].

--->'''Ms. Hanley''': Murph is a great kid. She’s really bright, but she’s been having a little trouble lately. She brought this in to show the other students. The section on the lunar landings. [...] If we don't want a repeat of the excess and wastefulness of the 20th century, then we need to teach our kids about ''this'' planet. Not tales of leaving it.

* AwfulTruth: [[spoiler:Professor Brand's Plan A, to move the remains of humanity on Earth to a new planet, was a sham; his real motivation was Plan B, to abandon the humans on Earth and restart humanity on the new planet, because he can't solve the gravity equation with the limited information available to him on Earth. He's been keeping up a façade of optimism until his deathbed]].

** The sequence in which Cooper docks with the out-of-control ''Endurance'' is evocative of a emergency that occurred during Neil Armstrong and David Scott's 1966 Gemini 8 mission, when a thruster failure while practicing docking and rendezvous caused the spacecraft to spin violently out of control, which Armstrong was able to recover from. It also harkens back to the Soviet mission Soyuz T-13, in which spacecraft rotation had to be matched to dock with a derelict Salyut 7.

* BigBad: [[spoiler:Dr. Hugh Mann]] is essentially this, serving as the biggest obstacle to the ''Endurance'' crew’s mission to find a new home for humanity. [[spoiler:He tricks the crew into traveling to the planet he's on, even though he knows it is inhospitable, just so he can be rescued. He later decides to keep Cooper from leaving by [[EvilPlan killing him and claiming to the rest of the crew]] [[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident that his death was an accident]], and though that fails, a trap he set in KIPP kills Romilly. At this point, he decides to maroon Cooper, Brand, and the robots on his planet, and leave by himself to [[WellIntentionedExtremist restart humanity on Edmunds’ planet]]. This ends up killing him and almost destroying the mission, and any hope for either Plan A '''or''' Plan B along with it]].

* DeathByIrony: When [[spoiler: Dr. Mann]] cracks Cooper's faceplate and leaves him to die, he quote's Brand's usage of [[DoNotGoGentle "Do not go gently"]]. Minutes later, [[spoiler: Mann]] triggers his own demise while trying to commandeer the ''Endurance'', and it was ''anything'' but "gentle".

** After Murph sets Tom's crops on fire, she returns to her old bedroom to try to figure out the secret behind it that's been bugging her since she was a kid. One of the first things she picks up and takes a look at is the watch Coop gave her. The second hand on the watch is not working properly; it appears to be stuck, wobbling up and down repeatedly. [[spoiler:Those wobbles are not random, but are actually Morse, as this is where the future Cooper, her "ghost", left the quantum data for her. This has already happened in ''her'' timeline (he changed the watch from the tesseract at a time shortly after he left, when she was still a child), but at this point in the movie, Cooper hasn't done this yet in ''his own'' timeline. Murph doesn't realize its significance, and that her father is her "ghost", until these things are also revealed to the audience when Coop is in the tesseract.]]

** [[spoiler:Dr Mann]] tries to smash Cooper's helmet with his own. When Cooper points out he has an equal chance of cracking his own helmet, [[spoiler:Mann]] replies that a 50/50 chance are the best odds he's had in years.

** Namely the cause of his [[spoiler:delusions seems to ironically be his position as The Ace, the star of all mankind and patriarch of future mankind along with all the expectations and pressure that came with it from within and without. HIS planet was supposed to be the right one because how can it not be? Similarly, any decision he makes is the correct one and any collateral damage is justified by his "righteous cause to save humanity". Ofcourse reality is very different and utterly unforgiving, especially when opening the hatch of an improperly docked ship]].
** Downplayed for Romilly. He's stiff and awkward after 23 years of isolation on the ''Endurance'' (he spends a good portion of that time in cryosleep, but it isn't enough), but he's still sane and sober enough to continue functioning mostly-normally and remains helpful to the crew [[spoiler:up until his death]].

* HomeworldEvacuation: Initially discussed heavily, [[spoiler:then played straight once the data necessary to safely transport humans ''en masse'' is finally acquired]]. The survival of the human race as well as most of Earth's lifeforms depend on finding a suitable planet for them to live.

* ImpliedLoveInterest: The movie never specifically states that Getty is Murph's boyfriend, and at one point she refers to him as her friend. However, they seem to be quite close (since Murph apparently told him about her "ghost" at some point), she kisses him in delight after [[spoiler:solving Professor Brand's equation]], and the end of the movie reveals that she gets involved with ''someone'' at some point, since she has children and grandchildren.

** The ''Endurance'', which - besides its obvious implications championing the human psyche's resilience - is also the name of Ernest Shackleton expedition's ship. Bonus points for Mann's planet being an Antarctica-like SingleBiomePlanet, with the ''Endurance'' orbiting it while the crew go off to search for Mann.

** Professor Brand, shortly after being introduced, informs the protagonist and the audience about the history that has lead the Earth to such a dire situation and NASA's attempts to save humanity.

* TheNeedsOfTheMany: Discussed and deconstructed. The film looks at whether or not humanity on Earth should establish space colonies and abandon Earth (Plan A), or abandon humanity on Earth and re-establish the human race in another habitable planet so that ''more'' humans can live on in a different planet (Plan B, or the utilitarian "many" plan). [[spoiler:Turns out that Professor Brand and Dr. Mann sided with "Plan B," but even so, their utilitarian point of view is proven wrong at the end of the film thanks to Cooper's [[ThePowerOfLove love for his daughter]] and manipulation of time and space to save not only her, but a large number of humans on Earth and, ultimately, the species. The ending heavily implies that both Plan A and Plan B are playing out.]]

** Also, Donald, who is charged of taking care of Murph and Tom while Coop is away. Tom particularly seems to regard him as his primary father figure [[spoiler: after years of not hearing from Coop]].

* PlacidPlaneOfAnkleDeepWater: Miller's planet has a ocean that only comes up to the astronauts' knees. Gargantua's gravity pulls the rest of the water into mountain-sized tidal waves.

** TARS is ProperlyParanoid about [[spoiler:Dr. Mann]] and prepares accordingly, but never thinks to voice this concern to his fellow crew at any point. Had he done so, [[spoiler:Romilly may have survived and the ''Endurance'' wouldn't have been badly damaged by Mann's failed docking attempt]]. Based on the way robot programming often works, the fact that that they do this on their own initiative, and the fact that CASE (who also knows about it, since the robots are in constant contact with each other) reveals it as soon as it becomes relevant to the current conversation, it's possible they don't bring it up beforehand because [[YouDidntAsk nobody asks them about it]].

* SceneryPorn: ''Egads''. From dusty dystopia of Earth to the vastness of space, it would be very hard to say it doesn't look pretty.
* ScienceIsGood: The decline of science is largely responsible for the famine. It is only when a curious former pilot and a rag-tag team of NASA astronauts leave the planet to find a new Earth in outer space that humanity has any hope to survive.

** In the movie ''Film/{{Contact}}'', [=McConaughey=]’s character gives Jodie Foster’s character a compass before she goes on her space voyage, and tells her it might just save her life (which it eventually does). [[ActorAllusion The same actor in a similar movie performs the same gift-giving act]] with a similar gift that turns out to have similar plot results.

* StarfishRobot: TARS and CASE have a very unique non-humanoid design. They're essentially large slabs divided into 4 vertical sections that lets them swing about with great force and further divide these sections into ever-smaller pieces to simulate limbs.

* UsedFuture: Most everything looks worn-out, battered or generally dated for a film set in the future. This is meant to convey the deteriorating conditions on Earth, which make the relatively well-maintained NASA facilities and craft stand out more. The 22nd Century scenes by contrast, look considerably ''cleaner''.

* VillainWithGoodPublicity: In the epilogue, [[spoiler:Dr. Mann is still remembered as one of the heroic astronauts who led humanity into the stars, despite being revealed as a insane coward who ''nearly'' dooms all of humanity]].

** Cooper's relationship with his son Tom, as well as the daughter-in-law and grandson whom he never meets, seems to be thrown aside in favor of his bond with his daughter. [[spoiler:Given the time skips, it's probable that he dies of old age and that his descendants are in the room with the rest of Murphy's family in the end]]. In any event, he isn't seen or mentioned in the finale in the movie, though the novelization expands on it by confirming that [[spoiler:Tom died over a decade before Cooper arrives on the station]].