History Film / Interstellar

* AwfulTruth: Brand doesn't take her father's reveal about [[spoiler:Plan A having been a sham]] lightly.

** Cooper suffers this ''twice''. First, [[spoiler:Dr. Mann]] cracks Cooper's visor and takes the emergency oxygen packs out of his suit, leaving him to die. Later, [[spoiler:Cooper is teleported out of the black hole and floats in free space near Saturn, only to be rescued by one of NASA's scouting Rangers.]]

** [[spoiler:Mann trying to enter the airlock with a vessel that can't seal with the entrance is also similar to Dave Bowman's dilemma in ''2001''. However even though Mann has his space helmet, unlike Bowman he dies because he can't seal the airlock properly before opening the inner hatch.]]

* YearOutsideHourInside: Miller's planet is so close to the black hole's gravitational pull that an hour on the planet is roughly 7 years Earth time, causing TimeDilation.

* 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.

* ContinuousDecompression: When Cooper's [[BrokenFaceplate visor cracks]], we hear a continuous hissing sound.

* EEqualsMCHammer: Professor Brand's gravity equations are spread [[TheBigBoard across several blackboards]] at his workplace and seem to hold lots of integrals.

* GoMadFromTheIsolation:
** Dr. Mann, to the point of [[spoiler:lying about his planet's habitability, attempting to kill Cooper, setting a trap which kills Romilly, and docking his ''Ranger'' with ''Endurance'' while ignoring all warnings Cooper and Brand give him. Also, he gave in to selfish temptation from the isolation, as he knew that he would be never be rescued if his world was not habitable -- meaning all the ''Endurance'''s colony supplies would have been good for was keeping him alive a few more 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]].

* HeroStoleMyBike: Downplayed. At the end of the film, [[spoiler:Cooper steals a one-man scoutship to go after Brand]].

* 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.

* InterfaceSpoiler: A rare film example. The subtitles refer to Murphy as "YOUNG MURPHY" before the idea of time dilation is brought up, implying that the ten-year-old we're seeing isn't the only version of Murphy the audience will see.

* NeverASelfMadeWoman: Downplayed.
** Part of the reason that the lone woman on the mission, Amelia Brand, is included is that 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.]]
** Likewise, Murph only gets to meet her eventual-mentor Professor Brand, who brings her to NASA to be educated, thanks to him knowing her father. However, the Professor is still quick to notice her intelligence after meeting her, and specifically seeks her out on her own merits after her father is gone to take her under his wing.

* PickYourHumanHalf: TARS and CASE act like (remarkably levelheaded) humans; they look like refrigerators on stilts.

* SigilSpam: Like its real-life counterpart, the (redesigned) NASA logo is everywhere.
* SirNotAppearingInThisTrailer: Matt Damon. Although we ''do'' see his character, Dr. Mann (he is the astronaut on the take where there is an explosion on the planet's surface), we don't see his face, and his name was practically absent from many of the posters and trailers.

* TimeshiftedActor:
** Murph is played by Mackenzie Foy as a child, Jessica Chastain in her mid-30s and Ellen Burstyn as an old woman.
** Tom is played by Creator/TimotheeChalamet as a teen and Casey Affleck as an adult.

* ViewersAreGeniuses: This is quite possibly the most philosophical movie Nolan has made yet. Being reasonably familiar with astrophysics certainly helps in understanding what's happening, but the most basic ideas are explained in fairly simple terms in the movie. When it comes to interpreting the meaning of anything, you're left completely alone.

* 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 various attachments 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.

* ChangeTheUncomfortableSubject: Murph detects an error in Professor Brand's methodology and he appears to take offense, leaving in his wheelchair instead of waiting for her to push him. [[spoiler:Turns out Brand realiz(ed long ago he can't solve the gravity equation and is only pretending to.]]

* MultipurposeMonoculturedCrop: Corn, by default rather than choice. It's the only field crop ''left'' that hasn't been wiped out by the Blight.

And one day, his daughter's strange experiences with a "ghost" lead him to a secret government facility where he learns the AwfulTruth: the blights are accelerating, and within a generation, they will not only destroy all food crops but render the very atmosphere un-breathable. But the good news is that NASA still exists in secret, and Professor Brand, his former mentor and now a high-ranking NASA leader, has a plan: to send one last crew of explorers through a wormhole in Saturn's orbit, in search of a team of scouts who claim to have discovered inhabitable worlds.

* ApocalypseHow: Ongoing Planetary/Societal Collapse turning into a Planetary/Species Extinction (dominant species, natural), as failing crops endanger the survival of the human race. Eventually, all oxygen-breathing species will die.

** Cooper reveals that his wife had died of a brain tumor. The fact that doctors were not able to save her is implied to be a big part of his motivation to go on the mission.

* CrazyPrepared / ProperlyParanoid: TARS, who disables the autopilot docking feature from the Ranger offscreen at some point prior to [[spoiler:Mann stealing it]], which turns out to be vital in foiling [[spoiler:Mann's plan to commandeer the ''Endurance''--which would have left the remaining heroes stranded in space.]]
-->'''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]].

** [[spoiler:Dr. Mann. He knowingly forged data about the planet he's hibernating on because it turned out to be uninhabitable and he's too scared to perform a HeroicSacrifice.]] And the film uses its "one F-word per PG-13 film" to the most beautiful effect after it's revealed:
--->'''Coop''': You '''fucking''' coward.

''Interstellar'' is a 2014 science-fiction drama film directed by Creator/ChristopherNolan, written by him and his brother Creator/JonathanNolan and starring Creator/MatthewMcConaughey, Creator/AnneHathaway, Creator/JessicaChastain, Creator/MichaelCaine, Creator/MattDamon, Creator/TopherGrace and Creator/CaseyAffleck. While primarily a science-fiction film, it features the RealLife research performed by guest executive producer and renowned astrophysicist Kip Thorne (who's best friends with Creator/StephenHawking and Creator/CarlSagan).

It is TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture and, though most either [[JustForFun/DyingLikeAnimals don't know]] or [[ApatheticCitizens refuse to acknowledge]] it, JustBeforeTheEnd. Many gadgets, machines, and substances once taken for granted are no longer cost-efficient or widely available and the world is experiencing a global [[TheGreatDepression Dust Bowl]] as one vital crop after another falls extinct to unstoppable blights. In this CrapsackWorld, widower Joseph Cooper, the last man to fly into space before NASA was disbanded, spends his days raising his [[ChildProdigy gifted]] daughter Murphy and increasingly cynical son Tom with the aid of his aging father-in-law Donald, and his nights reminiscing on past glories -- both his own and his civilization's.

* BizarreAlienLocomotion: Not so much alien as robot, but TARS and CASE move around with a gorilla-like gait normally. When they need to move fast, they rotate all four of their sections to roll in the desired direction.

* BizarreAlienLocomotion: Not so much alien as robot, but TARS and CASE move around with a gorilla-like gait normally. When they need to move fast, they [[EverythingsBetterWithSpinning rotate all four of their sections]] to roll in the desired direction.

* EverythingsBetterWithSpinning: Mostly played straight, since the ''Endurance'''s spin creates artificial gravity for the crew. Though this is ''not'' true when you have to dock with a spacecraft that's spinning too fast for safe docking while it's simultaneously falling into the atmosphere.

* SiliconSnarker: TARS is programmed to have a sarcastic and witty personality to make his human coworkers feel more at home.
** During takeoff.
---> '''TARS''': Everybody good? Plenty of slaves for my robot colony?
** TARS.
---> I have a cue light I can use when I'm joking, if you like. [...] Yeah, you can use it to find your way back to the ship after I blow you out the airlock. (cue him turning on said light but only after a very poignant pause)

* JustBeforeTheEnd: Thanks to the mass extinction of plant life from the blight, the oxygen levels in Earth's atmosphere are slowly but surely dwindling, and will eventually reach the point where life on Earth is no longer sustainable. In the words of Professor Brand, the last people to starve will be the first people to suffocate.

* MadnessMantra: Professor Brand and [[spoiler:Dr. Mann]] seems to use Dylan Thomas' poem ''Literature/DoNotGoGentleIntoThatGoodNight'' as one. Brand even manages to squeak it out as his dying words.

*** Ironically, it is [[spoiler: the his very position as The Ace which lead to his insanity, as the pressure put on him to be The Ace and all the coddling from his superiors as humanities best hope and Plan B's future father of a new mankind made him believe everything was always going to work out for him and everything he did was justified. It made it impossible for him to even consider that his "high potential" planet was a dud because thats just the unfortunate statistical reality of life and him being The Ace is irrelevant to the universe.]]

* AdultFear: Watching your children grow up without you while they think you're dead.

** Cooper, and some others, refer to his daughter Murphy as "Murph"

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

* AwfulTruth: [[spoiler:Professor Brand's Plan A was a sham; his real motivation was Plan B all along 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]].

** Attempted but subverted by [[spoiler:both Cooper and TARS, who let themselves fall into Gargantua so Brand and CASE can continue, but are saved by the Bulk Beings, who first place them in a tesseract that allows Cooper to make minimal contact with Murph in the past and give her TARS's data to save humanity, and then, after that's completed, send them back through the wormhole to a location where they can be rescued by the Plan A habitat.]]

* MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness: A 4 overall, though most of the movie could easily be considered closer to 5. While the physics and space travel are highly accurate based on our current understanding of the universe, [[spoiler:once Cooper goes into the Tesseract and receives the resulting MindScrew, the plot becomes driven by the work of future humans wielding technology far beyond the understanding of people today, rather than modern-day science.]]

* AfterTheEnd: The Earth is being bombarded with dust storms; humanity relies on a dwindling supply of corn after the blight has killed off all other crops; governmental and military organizations have disbanded just to produce enough farmers to sustain the population; and technology is scavenged to make use of solar panels. The only hope left for humanity's survival is to move to a different planet.

** 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's perfectly capable of editing the message to remove the ending, but instead he shows it to Cooper and company in full.

* AmericaSavesTheDay: The entire mission is under NASA control and we see the US flag mounted on Mann's planet.[[note]]It's interesting to point out that this part differs from the earlier draft by Creator/StevenSpielberg which had Cooper find a dusty Chinese base camp on Mann's planet, implying that the Chinese had already discovered the ice planet 30 years prior with a 4 man crew and 15 robots.[[/note]]

* AntiIntellectualism: Much of Earth has embraced this given the increasing scarcity of resources and economic downturn.
** Cooper's son is ruled out as a college candidate before he's even in his senior year of high school because the school authorities reason he's of more use as a farmer, given the decline of time- and labor-saving machinery and chemicals that keep the need for agricultural workers at unprecedentedly low levels in the present-day USA.

* ArmorPiercingQuestion: Attempted by Murph. After Tom is too stubborn to leave his farm, despite the health risks to him and his family, Murph coldly asks him, "You gonna wait for your next kid to die?" It only serves to piss Tom off and, with quiet rage, demands her to leave.

** The nitrogen gas that makes up roughly 70% of our atmosphere has a triple covalent bond that's the second strongest of diatomic molecules (after carbon monoxide). Highly-specialized microbes could 'fix' nitrogen (break the bonds and bind it into more complex molecules), but nothing could respire with it - the process absorbs more energy than it could be used to release.

** There is no realistic way the solid surface of the water planet would be that smooth if there are tidal and rotational forces as powerful as what there would need to be for waves that big. The probe debris being that close together is also unlikely, especially since it is all invisible a moment before it.

** 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).

* AwfulTruth: [[spoiler:Professor Brand's Plan A was a sham; his real motivation was Plan B all along because he can't solve the gravity equation with the limited information available to him on Earth. He's been keeping up a facade of optimism until his deathbed]].

** 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. 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.

** Cooper had to leave his family for possible dead as he ventured out to find a suitable planet.

* ChangeTheUncomfortableSubject: Murph detects an error in Professor Brand's methodology and he appears to take offense, leaving in his wheelchair instead of waiting for her to push him. [[spoiler:Turns out Brand realised long ago he can't solve the gravity equation and is only pretending to.]]

* 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 firsthand.

* 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.

* DeadlyDustStorm: One of the effects of the blight is that frequent dust storms plague the remaining population. They get so bad that people have to wear breath masks and goggles when one comes up.

** 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.

** 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 and save him.

* EarthThatUsedToBeBetter: Once upon a time, metals and energy were so abundant that humanity tinkered with A.I. robots and even traveled to Mars. Now humanity is so resource-starved that building or even just maintaining [=MRIs=] is no longer feasible, the only profession that is (seen as) important is farming, history is rewritten to curtail curiosity in anything other than farming and the farming itself is failing as the only major crop not extinct is corn. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Even the baseball playing is suckier now]].

** The wormhole 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.

** 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.]]

*** The first time they meet involves TARS tasing Cooper for trespassing and apprehending him, and the two of them getting right up in each others' faces. After engaging in SnarkToSnarkCombat throughout the mission, the movie ends with [[spoiler:Cooper repairing TARS and the two of them leaving the space habitat together to go find Brand and CASE]].
*** Though it's a less pronounced example due to CASE being TheQuietOne, Cooper gradually builds a rapport with him too. CASE is initially shown to plead with Cooper--who performs quite a few awesome but reckless flight maneuvers--to be more cautious, but as Coop gradually demonstrates his flying chops, CASE trusts him more and becomes quicker and more willing to take more risks himself. This culminates in CASE encouraging Coop to go ahead with the highly-risky docking of the ''Endurance'' when the latter briefly hesitates, and this exchange after the former successfully flies them around Gargantua:

*** Murph says that she calls the mysterious happenings in her bedroom the work of a "ghost" not because she's afraid of it, but because it feels like a person. [[spoiler:[[TheCuckoolanderWasRight Turns out she's right]], and it is a person...namely, her father reaching out to her from the future]].

** Cooper's father-in-law, Donald, agrees with Professor Brand's offer to mentor Murph by commenting that she's already making a fool out of her teachers, so she might as well come and make a fool out of him too. [[spoiler:Indeed, the Professor gave up on solving Plan A before the story even started and has just been counting on enacting Plan B to save the species, while Murph is the one who comes up with the solution to Brand's own gravity problem and makes Plan A possible.]]
** Cooper complains about the complacent attitude of the farming people, fooling themselves into believing that ''next year'' everything is going to change. Turns out his son Tom becomes one of those complacent farmers repeating the mantra verbatim. Tom's complacent nature is made clear from the beginning when they have a flat tire and an Indian drone flies by. Cooper and Murphy are immediately on its tail to capture it to harvest its solar cells while Tom is more preoccupied with the tire.

* GreatOffscreenWar: The film never goes into explicit detail, but it appears some sort of military conflict erupted about a decade earlier related to the food situation. It is indicated that Amelia's father was (supposedly) dismissed from NASA for refusing to use its resources for military purposes. Other than the appearance of an Indian drone, there is no reference to any other countries as the mission into the wormhole takes place beyond a past-tense reference to the Russians.

** The crew agrees to land on Miller's planet, as she has been transmitting positive signals for years. However, as the planet is within Gargantua's gravity distortion, time there runs extremely slow, to the tune of one hour to every seven years outside, so they won't have long to assess viability. It never occurs to them that Miller likewise couldn't have been there very long by her planet's time--a couple of hours at most--and thus her signal is repeating because she simply hasn't had long enough to transmit anything else. Cooper is furious, and Brand admits she screwed this up after the fact.

* LostInTheMaize: Played with. Twice in the movie does a truck mow through a cornfield in dramatic fashion.

** Cooper reveals that his wife died of a brain tumour in the opening portions. The fact that doctors were not able to save her is implied to be a big part of his motivation to go on the mission.

*** He brings back the reference to Newton's third law ("The only way humans have ever figured out of getting somewhere...is to leave something behind").

** 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.
** ''Amelia'' Brand, the only female astronaut on the ''Endurance'', is a callback to Amelia Earhart: the first female aviator to fly across the Pacific solo. [[spoiler:At the end of the movie, Brand also successfully lands on an inhabitable planet -- and her whereabouts to the general public are unknown.]]