History Film / Interstellar

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: After the disastrous attempt at establishing a colony on Miller's planet, Cooper rejects Brand's recommendation that they travel to Edmunds' planet next, because Brand's in love with Edmunds and goes on a rant about love, making it sound more like The Force than a human emotion, which causes Cooper to think she might be biased]]. He instead chooses Dr. Mann's planet because Mann has been frequently described as "the best of us" and is still transmitting. It turns out that [[spoiler:Edmunds' planet is the only one of the three that can actually sustain life, and Mann has gone insane. This ultimately gets Romilly killed, and almost dooms the colonization project]].

*** 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.
*** It's conceivable the Endurance was designed for situations like this, considering how catastrophic such a situation would be, plus simple modularity. The ship could have ballast in all the modules that could be ejected as needed. Or even, perhaps, large hidden masses in each of the modules that can be moved toward or away from the center.

* ArtisticLicenseAstronomy:
** Kip Thorne, one of the world's ''leading experts'' in astrophysics, put an [[ShownTheirWork amazing amount]] of [[http://thetrendythings.com/read/12213 research]] into the film, but this film is the first place many viewers will have seen it. And some of it -- the TimeTravel in particular -- is bleeding-edge theoretical, and may be [[ScienceMarchesOn disproved in the future]] -- especially as Thorne was actually able to use [[Creator/DoubleNegativeVFX Double Negative]]'s (the CGI effects company that worked on the film) resources to make ''[[http://uk.businessinsider.com/interstellar-black-hole-physics-discovery-2014-11?r=US significant theoretical advances]].'' Of particular note is a [[http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2014/nov/05/interstellar-astrophysics-does-space-science-work-out disagreement]] between Thorne and Roberto Totta over those advances.
** There is at least one major aspect of the film that is pure artistic license. A planet orbiting a black hole's accretion disk would not be habitable by humans for numerous reasons. For starters, while accretion disks do give off radiation, very little of it is visible light of the sort that humans would need; most of it is deadly X-rays and gamma rays. The planet would also be at risk of being torn apart by the black hole's tidal force (that is, the difference in the pull of gravity on different sides of the planet).

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: One of the major plot devices in the film is the existence of a world-scale blight wiping out all plants and thus depopulating the world. Such a situation is impossible in RealLife. Historically, blights of this nature only happened on a much smaller scale (such as the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytophthora_infestans potato blight]] which caused the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland) Great Irish Famine]] in eastern Britain and Belgium; the mainland cultivated multiple crops whereas one-third of Ireland had been forced to rely on potatoes through [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_Laws mainland-government policies]]. In comparison, two-thirds of the entire world at present is dependent on wheat, rice, and corn). Moreover, crop scientists are always specifically aware of the potential of disease, and develop new varieties to deal with them, even in crops that are all direct clones (such as common fruits like bananas, apples, and oranges). And the blight shouldn't be so devastating towards wild plants, since [[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5192947/ wild plants have greater genetic diversity]] (giving them greater potential to develop resistance) and tend to grow in mixtures of multiple species ([[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyculture#Disease_control making it harder for diseases to spread, compared to the monocultures that many crops are grown in]]).

** Dr. Brand looks slightly puzzled but mostly straight-faced as Cooper exchanges goodbyes with TARS when the latter detaches and drops into the black hole ("See you on the other side, Cooper" "See you there, slick!"). It's not until CASE announces that Ranger 2 (Coop's ship) is about to be detached that she panics and pleads for him not to do it...only to get the [[MeaningfulEcho 90%]] rule response from Cooper before he detaches despite her protest.

** Brand finds out Cooper is about to [[ColdEquation detach himself]] from the ''Endurance'' to ensure her safe onward travel to Edmunds' planet, and distraughtly cries that he told her there were enough resources for both of them to make it. He responds with "We agreed, didn't we? 90% [honesty]."

* PrecisionFStrike: Cooper bitterly growls out "You ''fucking'' coward!" when he realizes that [[spoiler:Mann faked his reports just to be rescued]]. (A second one was cut - badly, it's rather obvious - from Cooper's "... because of your arrogance...", to get the rating.)

* 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.]]

* RealityEnsues:
** On Miller's planet, there is no life and nothing to sustain it, because not enough time has passed there to allow evolution to do its thing, and also likely because the violent tidal waves would make it quite difficult for complex life to survive there.
** NASA chose Lazarus mission crew members with no strong attachments to leave behind. One of them turns out to have no higher priority than his own survival and is willing to jeopardize the entire human race for a better shot at living.
** Earth society might be slowly crumbling and the people starving due to the blight, but that doesn't mean all aspects of civilization have vanished. Ignoring the NASA facility which operates in secret (and where apparently you can still buy drinks in old-fashioned cups with plastic lids and straws), people are still driving cars and trucks (suggesting fuel sources still exist), there is still electricity and there is still some form of internet.

** The sequence when 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. The spin was so violent, both crew members could've blacked out, and in the film, Brand actually does.

* SuddenlyShouting: Romilly is quietly rebooting KIPP (Mann's robot) when CASE suddenly starts shouting:
-->'''CASE''': STAND BACK, PROFESSOR! STAND BACK! [KIPP explodes]

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: One of the major plot devices in the film is the existence of a world-scale blight wiping out all plants and thus depopulating the world. Such a situation is impossible in RealLife. Historically, blights of this nature only happened on a much smaller scale (such as the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytophthora_infestans potato blight]] which caused the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland) Great Irish Famine]] in eastern Britain and Belgium; the mainland cultivated multiple crops whereas one-third of Ireland had been forced to rely on potatoes through [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_Laws mainland-government policies]]. In comparison, two-thirds of the entire world at present is dependent on wheat, rice, and corn). Moreover, crop scientists are always specifically aware of the potential of disease, and develop new varieties to deal with them, even in crops which are all direct clones (such as common fruits like bananas, apples, and oranges). And the blight shouldn't be so devastating towards wild plants, since [[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5192947/ wild plants have greater genetic diversity]] (giving them greater potential to develop resistance) and tend to grow in mixtures of multiple species ([[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyculture#Disease_control making it harder for diseases to spread, compared to the monocultures that many crops are grown in]]).

** The incredible time dilation of Miller's planet may seem to be an exaggeration -- indeed, for a non-rotating (Schwarzschild) black hole, such a dilation is impossible. But for a rotating (Kerr) hole, as described in Kip Thorne's ''The Science of Interstellar'', the time dilation level in the film is actually possible -- if the conditions are just right. The black hole must be spinning near the speed of light for the effects to be as strong as in the film. The real problem with the black hole comes from its visual appearance in the film. As a fast-rotating Kerr black hole, Gargantua would look highly asymmetric due to its spin in real life, looking very different from how it does in the film[[note]]It ''is'' asymmetric in the film, but only very slightly, so you need to know to look to spot it; look at how the accretion disc hugs the edge of the disc more closely on one side than the other.[[/note]]. Thorne, who would otherwise never agree to unscientific elements in the film, had to concede this small but noticeable inaccuracy to Nolan so that audiences would not be confused by an asymmetric black hole.

** Several of the orbital maneuvers performed by Cooper defy real life orbital mechanics. Of particular note is the sequence where Cooper attempts to dock with the damaged ''Endurance'', where several such inconsistencies appear in rapid succession.

*** A small boost from Cooper's ship is apparently enough to not only deflect the ''Endurance'' out of its sub-orbital trajectory, but enough to get it to interplanetary velocity ''by mistake''.

* BenevolentAI: TARS and CASE save the astronauts' asses on several occasions, and closest thing they show to hostility is a bit of snark, which they were programmed for. [[spoiler:TARS even goes into the middle of a black hole to get the information that can save humanity.]]

** Briefly Coop to Murph as well, when, after years of already resenting him for leaving, [[spoiler:she learns that Plan A is a sham and comes to fear that her father knew about it and abandoned her, Tom, and the rest of humanity to die. However, she eventually realizes that her father was her "ghost" all along and was giving her the info she needs to save humanity, and]] he becomes a RebuiltPedestal as a result. [[spoiler:However, she does move on from waiting for her dad after this; when he does return, she's glad to see him, but tells him that she has filled her life by surrounding herself with family that love her, and that he should seize the opportunity that being still young gives him.]]

* ComingInHot: Cooper decides to slow down the shuttle by skimming off the atmosphere of Miller's planet. This makes the other crewmembers a bit nervous as they've never experienced this maneuver first hand.
* ComputerVoice: Downplayed with the robots, whose voices are indistinguishable from human voices, except for a slight metallic twang from what are presumably [[UsedFuture low quality speakers]]. Anyone who can't see their obviously mechanical appearance could be forgiven for assuming they're hearing a real person speaking over a phone or intercom.

* ConspiracyTheorist: Apparently, the USA's education system, out of desperation to keep peoples' attention on Earth instead of "Why don't we leave?", has [[PoliticallyCorrectHistory corrected]] federal textbooks to say that the [[MoonLandingHoax moon landing never happened]] and was just a ruse to bankrupt the Soviet Union. The textbooks seem to at least propagate the idea that leaving Earth is an unhelpful waste of money, which was true enough before the wormhole opened, but it's not clear whether or not they claim it's outright impossible (as some real life Moon Landing conspiracy theorists do).

** 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]].
* CoolStarship: The ''Endurance'': its modules contain machines and supplies which can keep a crew alive in deep space for decades, it can send and receive messages back through a wormhole, and it can spin to create artificial gravity. And it has some sleek looking smaller ships to ferry its crew to planetary surfaces.

* CrapsackWorld: Earth has become this, with governments and economies having collapsed, humanity suffering a planet-wide famine and NASA itself being shut down only to be brought back to conduct the interstellar voyage in hopes of finding new worlds to colonize before humanity dies out. It's so crapsack, that there are no more militaries. Everyone is too busy starving to fight. There are also no more MRI machines, which Cooper says in a discussion with Murphy's teacher that one would have saved his wife by finding the tumor that killed her -- and it's said that NASA was forced to ''bomb civilians'', though the circumstances surrounding that are not elaborated upon.

* DaysOfFuturePast: The CrapsackWorld mentioned above is in many ways the Dust Bowl and Great Depression of the 1930s on a global scale, and with crop blights that not only destroy the food supply, but also threaten to make the atmosphere unbreathable. The documentary films at the beginning and towards the end only enhance the effect by treating the Blight as a historical event.

** Also, after essentially dooming Cooper to die, [[spoiler:Mann]] tries to stay and watch so he won't have to die alone, but admits he can't do it. He then tells Cooper he'll stay on the comms and talk to him, at least...but realizes he can't ''listen'' to him die either, and turns off his comm. This actually turns out to be vital to Coop's survival, since it means that [[spoiler:Mann]] doesn't hear it when Coop gets his long-range transmitter back and calls Brand to come save him.
* DisappearedDad: Cooper to Tom and Murph after the first act. Admittedly, if a father is going to abandon his children, Cooper has one of the most noble excuses you can get--attempting to save humanity. (However, since he deliberately wants to spare them as kids from the knowledge that Earth is doomed, Murph wouldn't have realized this until she's older, meaning she spends ''years'' thinking her dad left her because the excitement of piloting again was more important to him than his family, and that she'd led him there.) Doesn't stop him from considering it to be the biggest mistake of his life--especially once he figures out that [[spoiler:Plan A was a sham, and that all the humans currently still on Earth will likely die]].

** 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.

** The waves on the water planet are only visible when the plot requires them to be, despite being so massive they can be seen from orbit. Also, when the crew is digging around in the water, there is no way the probe debris would be that close together with waves that powerful tossing it around. Finally, when the crew is looking for the probe wreckage, they proclaim they should be right on top of it, when their robot steps on it and digs it out... at which point the camera pans to reveal that they're ''surrounded'' by brightly-painted pieces of metal [[BehindTheBlack they should have been able to see]] with ease. It also floats to the surface right after they proclaim they can't see the wreck. Though it's possible the water being drawn up into the advancing wave exposed them as the water receded.

** Cooper and Brand. She's a bit of an IceQueen towards him at the beginning of the mission, and he is ''furious'' with her for her screw-up on Miller's planet. By the end of the movie, [[spoiler:Brand has saved Cooper's life, Cooper has attempted to perform a HeroicSacrifice so Brand could make it to Edmunds' planet, and Cooper is heading out to reunite with her, since each of them is the only human being that the other has left]].

** In spite of being the "best" astronaut that NASA has to offer, Mann doesn't seem to know that [[spoiler:opening an imperfectly sealed airlock will result in violent decompression. Apparently his mental breakdown gets in the way. The novelization clarifies that a part of him does realize that it's a bad idea, but he's worried that if he backs up and abandons the imperfect seal he already has to try to re-dock and get it perfect, it'll give the Lander (which has experienced pilot Cooper and both robots on it) the opportunity to dock ahead of him, and thus he'll lose control of the situation. Mann seems to see docking with an imperfect seal as merely a risky maneuver than could still work out okay, rather than the guaranteed-suicidal move it actually is]].

* JumpJetPack: Small rockets are part of the protagonists space suits as gauntlets (presumably a successor to real-life astronaut propulsion units). Cooper uses his as an ImprovisedWeapon in his struggle with [[spoiler:Mann]].

* LensFlare: We are treated to a spectacular one when the team reach Saturn. There are also some horizontal flares in the earlier scenes on Earth.
* LittleStowaway: When Cooper refuses to take Murph with him to the mysterious location, she hides under a blanket in his car. By the time Cooper notices her, it's too late to send her back, so they continue the journey together. This receives a CallBack later, when Cooper drives away to go on the mission and checks the same blanket, only to find a box there instead of her.

* 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 reestablish 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.]]

** Part of the reason that the lone woman on the mission, Amelia Brand, is included is because she's Professor Brand's daughter. However, she is also a legitimately vital part of the crew in her own right; as the biologist on board, she's the expert on and in charge of caring for the fertilized eggs of Plan B. [[spoiler:She's the only human member of the crew to make it to Edmunds's habitable planet (with only the non-human CASE there to help her) and is heavily implied to have started enacting Plan B there, which would have been much more difficult for any of the other crew members to do.]]

* NoOneGetsLeftBehind: When Brand gets trapped under wreckage before the GiantWallOfWateryDoom, she urges them to leave her. Instead Doyle sends CASE to rescue her, only to get killed because this--and [[TooDumbToLive him spending too much time standing and gawking at the giant waves]]--delays his own escape.

** This is also describes the look on Brand's face as Cooper moves to dock with the spinning ''Endurance'' after Mann's failed desperate attempt to commandeer it.

* ReplacementGoldfish: Played with, as [[spoiler:an elderly Murphy tells her dad that even though she's happy to see him finally and never gave up hope, she is reserving her final moments for the big family she spent her lifetime with; this gives him perspective to live his life (as he is still a man in his prime) and gives him the drive to look for Amelia.]]

** Among the books in Murph's collection is Creator/StephenKing's ''Literature/TheStand'' -- kind of relevant, given the post-apocalyptia of Earth.

** The film acts as this towards ''Film/{{Inception}}''. Time passing by at bizarre speeds, a father being separated from his children in a far away 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 more grander than ''Film/{{Inception}}'s'' smaller focus. Even lampshaded by Nolan himself in a couple of interviews.

* TatteredFlag: The Lazarus missions mark their habitat with a US flag along with a mission flag. Naturally after years exposed to the elements of an alien world they become extremely tattered. At the end of the movie, [[spoiler:Dr Brand is shown burying her dead lover under a rock cairn next to his destroyed habitat with its tattered flag, then is shown walking to her own [[RayOfHopeEnding functioning habitat with intact flags flying]].]]

* TranshumanAliens: [[spoiler:Cooper believes that the mysterious fifth dimensional aliens are in fact humans from the distant future.]]

* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: Zig-zagged with the robots TARS and CASE. Technically, they are merely pieces of equipment, serving as a combination of calculator, Manuel labor and bodyguard. However, all of the astronauts form variousnattachments to them, and at one point debate whether it would be moral to ask TARS to sacrifice himself for the mission. Notably, the robots have sentient traits (humor, honesty, trust), but their settings have to be calibrated by humans.

* OrwellianEditor: In the future of ''Interstellar'', textbooks take on an anti-intellectual bent by claiming that the space program of the 20th century was ''faked'' as propaganda to bankrupt the Soviets.

* TokenRomance: In the denouement Murph and Getty kiss out of nowhere. Granted, it's implied to be a while after she first figures out the equation, and there's been a little bit of ShipTease between them, but it's still sudden. Though Getty looks rather surprised himself, so perhaps the workaholic Murph CouldNotSpitItOut.

** ''[[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment Heavily Debated]].'' Kip Thorne, one of the world's ''leading experts'' in astrophysics, put an [[ShownTheirWork amazing amount]] of [[http://thetrendythings.com/read/12213 research]] into the film, but this film is the first place many viewers will have seen it. And some of it -- the TimeTravel in particular -- is bleeding-edge theoretical, and may be [[ScienceMarchesOn disproved in the future]] -- especially as Thorne was actually able to use [[Creator/DoubleNegativeVFX Double Negative]]'s (the CGI effects company that worked on the film) resources to make ''[[http://uk.businessinsider.com/interstellar-black-hole-physics-discovery-2014-11?r=US significant theoretical advances]].'' Of particular note is a [[http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2014/nov/05/interstellar-astrophysics-does-space-science-work-out disagreement]] between Thorne and Roberto Totta over those advances.
** That said, there is at least one major aspect of the film that is pure artistic license. A planet orbiting a black hole's accretion disk would not be habitable by humans for numerous reasons. For starters, while accretion disks do give off radiation, very little of it is visible light of the sort that humans would need; most of it is deadly X-rays and gamma rays. The planet would also be at risk of being torn apart by the black hole's tidal force (that is, the difference in the pull of gravity on different sides of the planet).

** The film ''vaguely'' implies that the blight wasn't a natural event, but the result of genetic engineering - either a bio-weapon or just technology that went out of control. Either way, it's frustrating that for a film so focused on getting the hard science and technical details right about space travel, they basically just handwave that a "blight" of some kind happened. When the creators were asked about this, they did point out that Earth's biosphere is fragile in the grand cosmic scale of things, and ''any number'' of different ecological catastrophes could render the planet uninhabitable "like a dog shaking off some ticks". On a scale of millions of years, humanity is doomed to die if it never spreads to other planets (it's not like the sun will last literally forever).

-->'''Cooper:''' Well, this little manuever's gonna cost us 51 years.

* ThisIsGonnaSuck: "Well, this little manuever's gonna cost us 51 years."

* SuddenlyShouting: Romilly is quietly rebooting KIPP (Mann's robot) when TARS suddenly starts shouting:
-->'''TARS''': STAND BACK, PROFESSOR! STAND BACK! [KIPP explodes]

* PrecisionFStrike: Cooper bitterly growls out "You ''fucking'' coward!" when he realizes that [[spoiler:Mann faked his reports just to be rescued]].

** After the crew returns from Miller's planet (an excursion which, thanks to TimeDilation, feels to them like only a few hours), Cooper asks how much time has passed for the ''Endurance'' (and by extension, Earth). TARS responds with "[[YearOutsideHourInside 23 years, 4 months, 8 days]]."
** Professor Brand, on his deathbed, has this to say to Murph about his work on his gravitational equation: "[[spoiler:ILied. [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone I lied, Murph.]]]]"
** A conversation that Cooper has with [[spoiler:Mann]] goes downhill pretty quickly once the latter states "[[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.]]]]"
** While the Endurance is accelerating around Gargantua, CASE [[spoiler:reveals that Cooper's about to make a HeroicSacrifice: "Ranger 2, prepare to detach."]]

[[caption-width-right:300:"We must confront the reality that nothing in our solar system can help us...we must reach ''far'' beyond our own lifespans. We must think not as individuals...but as a ''species''. We must confront the reality of ''[[TitleDrop interstellar]]'' travel."]]

** The wormhole itself is represented as an instantaneous passage between two points in space separated by millions of lightyears, yet it is possible to see through the "aperture" from multiple angles due to its spherical shape in physical space, allowing probes to scan the far galaxy in all directions to identify potential new worlds for humans to settle. Later when the Endurance passes through, it takes a noticeable amount of time to make the trip, and while inside the crew witnesses a prolonged passage of other stars and galaxies on the way. Also, the ship's controls do ''nothing'' inside, because it's not physical space.
** Miller's planet at first appears relatively earth-like and normal, but two big differences play a key role in the plot: time passes at approximately 1/60 000 of the Earth's rate, due to the extreme bending of space that occurs as a result of the planet orbiting right outside the event horizon of a black hole, and the surface (which is a uniform ocean only two feet deep across the entire planet) is regularly swept with literal [[GiantWallOfWateryDoom mile high tidal waves]], again due to the planet's close proximity to the black hole. It's also uniformly well lit like a slightly overcast day on Earth, but the planet has no sun - that light is caused by the black hole again, due to light bending around it from all directions.
** 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 flys 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.]]

** After the crew returns from Miller's planet (an excursion which, thanks to TimeDilation, feels to them like only a few hours), Cooper asks how much time has passed for the ''Endurance'' (and by extension, Earth). TARS responds with "[[TimeAbyss 23 years, 4 months, 8 days]]."

** When the crew arrives at the ''Endurance'' and successfully docks the Ranger for the first time, we get a lingering shot of it from the outside and see the clamps lock themselves around the ship seals, showing what a perfect seal looks like. When [[spoiler:Mann]] later steals the Ranger and tries to dock it (which he has to do manually, since TARS turned the autopilot off), we again get a shot of it from the outside and see the clamps repeatedly trying and failing to close, since he has imperfect contact with the ''Endurance''. As Coop and Brand both plead with him not to open the hatch, get [[RuleOfThree two more]] shots showing the clamps still attempting in vain to lock, emphasizing that yes, the docking is definitely imperfect and something horrible is definitely about to happen.

* OnlyOneName: Cooper's first name is never stated during the film. People familiar with him call him, "Coop," instead of being on a first name basis.