Interstellar
Haven't done one of these for a while, though I've been thinking about this one since I saw the movie, because I hated it so much. So much, you guys. So much.
Let's say that again, so I'm really clear, and every time I see people gushing about this film, I get annoyed that it took 3 hours of my life all over again: I hated Interstellar.
I watched it with lovely, awesome people, and really enjoyed getting to chat about it afterwards, and the night was great fun, and I'm glad I went. But none of that really had to do with the movie.
Pros: It is pretty! I really enjoyed the pretty bits on the big screen.
* I thought TARS was funny. I think dad jokes are funny, but I liked his sense of humor. (Though I wondered why he had his name in braille dots painted on him. I mean, it looks cool and all, but it's purely aesthetic, as they are painted on a giant robot).
* They did some cool stuff with relativity, and the way time gets wonky near a black hole.
* The planets were, again, very pretty, and kind of wondrous and impressive.
Cons: Literally everything else.
First off, much was made about how this movie had totally equal lady scientists! This is so blatantly not true it makes me want to scream.
There are two lady scientists! Maybe three, if you count one they talk about, who is dead the whole time and never appears on screen (so, uh, no). Compared to somewhere around 5 men, (plus a matching talked-about-but-dead-the-whole-time-never-appears-on-screen guy).
But ok, numbers aren't everything. Let's look at how completely awful each of these characters are.
Anne Hathaway plays some lady astronaut! Yay! Except her job in the film literally - literally! - is to 1) fall down and need to be rescued, causing the death of a crewmate (more on that later), 2) faint so the Manly Man Father Scientist Man can show off how Manly he is by not fainting during his heroic piloting of the ship through high-G manuvers, and 3) Talk about how her heaaaaaart saaaaaaays to do something objectively stupid, because looooooove. Also, feeeeeeeelings. So, um, real scientific there, bucko.
Other scientist is the daughter of the main character (Manly Man Father Scientist Man). Her mother is dead, of course, because how else could a daughter have a close relationship with her father? Why else would a father care about a girl? (barf) She becomes a kick ass scientist and saves humanity, because she has daddy issues. No, really.
Note on the guy dying while Hathaway is getting rescued: He gets to the ship first, and then _waits outside the door_ for the robot to get the girl with a twisted ankle inside, and thus is not able to get himself inside before being killed. If he'd have just gone in like they were in a life-and-death situation during a mission to save humanity instead of holding the door like he was taking her out to dinner, he'd have been fine. UGH.
Note on daughter saving the world: Much is made of Plan A (get people to new planet, if we can find one to support them) and Plan B (kick off a bunch of embryos and use surrogates to rebuild new humanity, despite the fact that, while the ship has thousands of embryos, we never see anything like, say, seeds, but whatever. Also, hat tip to Sven, who pointed out any solution that plays out rather like The Handmaiden's Tale should perhaps go back to the drawing board). Further, the reason everything is horrible on earth is that there is 'the blight', which is killing off entire species of plants, so humanity is down to pretty much just corn to eat, forever, as the blight evolves and eats new kinds of farmed plants.
So ok, even if you're cool with how she built a fancy space station to move everyone to - just resource-wise for building the actual thing, not gravity-wise - suddenly the blight is no longer a problem, and life in the space station is awesome, without having gone to a new planet? Because the gravity equation got solved? And also true love?
But whatever.
We also have the slow-time planet, which I did not put together the little twist for before it showed up. Which, in my defense: we had about 10-15 minutes of movie before that reveal. As opposed to NASA, which had years. And it never occurred to anyone that time would be so slow there you maybe couldn't trust the signal, as she'd only been on the planet for half an hour?
We also have the scientist who broke, and called for help. This could have been awesome and lovely and really moving. I adore the idea that someone went off and was super brave and volunteered for this one-way mission, but then, years later, can't handle it and fakes an 'all good here' signal just so he'll be rescued and have other people, and not be alone. There's a lot of really great material in there. Instead, he's kinda really obviously evil from the get-go, and it, of course, turns into a slug fest in the frozen clouds.
I'm unclear on how he thought killing the main character would really help anything - it's not like he could keep faking his planet was fine any longer, it's not like it would change the limitations of the existing ship. But whatever, we need to hammer some more on the heavy-handed dialogue about how 'nature isn't evil' so the only evil that's out there is "what we bring with us." Yes. We got it. We got it a while ago, when you were busy repeating it. But thanks for the 20 minute filler, I guess. The frozen clouds were pretty.
But whatever. Those are all just sidebars before the big, "Wish I was 2001" ending.
So the big twist, and time travel, and blah: is... really dumb. I mean, it doesn't hold up, even if you're cool with it. Ok, so for some reason he gets a window into only his daughter's bedroom through time. Sure. I'll roll with that. And he decides to program the second hand of her watch to tap out in morse code the crazy equation to answer life the universe and everything and also gravity. But she doesn't stay in that room, and somehow the watch is still programmed to have all that very long information anyway. But ok, fine. He programmed it. Does it repeat? Because she figures it out, and then goes out and talks about it, and then drives back to her lab, so it seems to me she might have missed a lot.
But none of that really matters, because it's all about the power of love. Love trumps science. Love trumps time. Love is how she knew it was him! All along! Love trumps everything, because feeeeeelings. Which is _really_ not my bag, and I hate hate hate it when The Power Of Love solves the plot.
And, of course, when he finally reunites with his now elderly daughter on the utopian space station that seems to have solved earth's problems without having had to go to another planet, so huh? but whatever, she's like, nah, I've got my family, you should go. Go to that new planet and make with that chick you totally knew for, like, a couple of months in active time! Because hey, she's got a vagina, so close enough, amirite?
I mean, I can kinda get the "don't be here in the hospital and watch me die," maybe, but may he'd like to, you know, meet his grandkids? Or their kids? Or their kids? Or they'd like to meet him? No? Ok, then. Better steal a spaceship and go to the lady - who, I would note, is _mourning the death of her boyfriend,_ - as I'm sure just showing up on her new planet and being literally the only man in that galaxy will be good enough.
Fuck you, movie.
Let's say that again, so I'm really clear, and every time I see people gushing about this film, I get annoyed that it took 3 hours of my life all over again: I hated Interstellar.
I watched it with lovely, awesome people, and really enjoyed getting to chat about it afterwards, and the night was great fun, and I'm glad I went. But none of that really had to do with the movie.
Pros: It is pretty! I really enjoyed the pretty bits on the big screen.
* I thought TARS was funny. I think dad jokes are funny, but I liked his sense of humor. (Though I wondered why he had his name in braille dots painted on him. I mean, it looks cool and all, but it's purely aesthetic, as they are painted on a giant robot).
* They did some cool stuff with relativity, and the way time gets wonky near a black hole.
* The planets were, again, very pretty, and kind of wondrous and impressive.
Cons: Literally everything else.
First off, much was made about how this movie had totally equal lady scientists! This is so blatantly not true it makes me want to scream.
There are two lady scientists! Maybe three, if you count one they talk about, who is dead the whole time and never appears on screen (so, uh, no). Compared to somewhere around 5 men, (plus a matching talked-about-but-dead-the-whole-time-never-appears-on-screen guy).
But ok, numbers aren't everything. Let's look at how completely awful each of these characters are.
Anne Hathaway plays some lady astronaut! Yay! Except her job in the film literally - literally! - is to 1) fall down and need to be rescued, causing the death of a crewmate (more on that later), 2) faint so the Manly Man Father Scientist Man can show off how Manly he is by not fainting during his heroic piloting of the ship through high-G manuvers, and 3) Talk about how her heaaaaaart saaaaaaays to do something objectively stupid, because looooooove. Also, feeeeeeeelings. So, um, real scientific there, bucko.
Other scientist is the daughter of the main character (Manly Man Father Scientist Man). Her mother is dead, of course, because how else could a daughter have a close relationship with her father? Why else would a father care about a girl? (barf) She becomes a kick ass scientist and saves humanity, because she has daddy issues. No, really.
Note on the guy dying while Hathaway is getting rescued: He gets to the ship first, and then _waits outside the door_ for the robot to get the girl with a twisted ankle inside, and thus is not able to get himself inside before being killed. If he'd have just gone in like they were in a life-and-death situation during a mission to save humanity instead of holding the door like he was taking her out to dinner, he'd have been fine. UGH.
Note on daughter saving the world: Much is made of Plan A (get people to new planet, if we can find one to support them) and Plan B (kick off a bunch of embryos and use surrogates to rebuild new humanity, despite the fact that, while the ship has thousands of embryos, we never see anything like, say, seeds, but whatever. Also, hat tip to Sven, who pointed out any solution that plays out rather like The Handmaiden's Tale should perhaps go back to the drawing board). Further, the reason everything is horrible on earth is that there is 'the blight', which is killing off entire species of plants, so humanity is down to pretty much just corn to eat, forever, as the blight evolves and eats new kinds of farmed plants.
So ok, even if you're cool with how she built a fancy space station to move everyone to - just resource-wise for building the actual thing, not gravity-wise - suddenly the blight is no longer a problem, and life in the space station is awesome, without having gone to a new planet? Because the gravity equation got solved? And also true love?
But whatever.
We also have the slow-time planet, which I did not put together the little twist for before it showed up. Which, in my defense: we had about 10-15 minutes of movie before that reveal. As opposed to NASA, which had years. And it never occurred to anyone that time would be so slow there you maybe couldn't trust the signal, as she'd only been on the planet for half an hour?
We also have the scientist who broke, and called for help. This could have been awesome and lovely and really moving. I adore the idea that someone went off and was super brave and volunteered for this one-way mission, but then, years later, can't handle it and fakes an 'all good here' signal just so he'll be rescued and have other people, and not be alone. There's a lot of really great material in there. Instead, he's kinda really obviously evil from the get-go, and it, of course, turns into a slug fest in the frozen clouds.
I'm unclear on how he thought killing the main character would really help anything - it's not like he could keep faking his planet was fine any longer, it's not like it would change the limitations of the existing ship. But whatever, we need to hammer some more on the heavy-handed dialogue about how 'nature isn't evil' so the only evil that's out there is "what we bring with us." Yes. We got it. We got it a while ago, when you were busy repeating it. But thanks for the 20 minute filler, I guess. The frozen clouds were pretty.
But whatever. Those are all just sidebars before the big, "Wish I was 2001" ending.
So the big twist, and time travel, and blah: is... really dumb. I mean, it doesn't hold up, even if you're cool with it. Ok, so for some reason he gets a window into only his daughter's bedroom through time. Sure. I'll roll with that. And he decides to program the second hand of her watch to tap out in morse code the crazy equation to answer life the universe and everything and also gravity. But she doesn't stay in that room, and somehow the watch is still programmed to have all that very long information anyway. But ok, fine. He programmed it. Does it repeat? Because she figures it out, and then goes out and talks about it, and then drives back to her lab, so it seems to me she might have missed a lot.
But none of that really matters, because it's all about the power of love. Love trumps science. Love trumps time. Love is how she knew it was him! All along! Love trumps everything, because feeeeeelings. Which is _really_ not my bag, and I hate hate hate it when The Power Of Love solves the plot.
And, of course, when he finally reunites with his now elderly daughter on the utopian space station that seems to have solved earth's problems without having had to go to another planet, so huh? but whatever, she's like, nah, I've got my family, you should go. Go to that new planet and make with that chick you totally knew for, like, a couple of months in active time! Because hey, she's got a vagina, so close enough, amirite?
I mean, I can kinda get the "don't be here in the hospital and watch me die," maybe, but may he'd like to, you know, meet his grandkids? Or their kids? Or their kids? Or they'd like to meet him? No? Ok, then. Better steal a spaceship and go to the lady - who, I would note, is _mourning the death of her boyfriend,_ - as I'm sure just showing up on her new planet and being literally the only man in that galaxy will be good enough.
Fuck you, movie.