It's going to be big
With a running time of two hours and 47 minutes, Interstellar,
which opens in the UK and the US on November 7, is going to be director Christopher
Nolan's longest movie yet. It's also possibly going to be his most
complex (yes, more complex than Inception).
The basic premise? It's the future (precise date unspecified). Planet Earth is
dying, ravaged by food shortages. But according to Michael
Caine (well, according to an unnamed "Professor" played by
Michael Caine): "We're not meant to save the world. We're meant to
leave it." A crew, including Matthew McConaughey's engineer Cooper, are
recruited to explore the universe and find a new, inhabitable
world for humanity.
It's going to be "incredible"
Or at least Edgar
Wright says it is. While the first official Interstellar screenings
won't take place until November 5, Paramount President Brad Grey has allowed
a select group, including directors Ang Lee and Steve McQueen and actors
Chris Rock and Jake Gyllenhaal, to watch the film early. Other private
advance screenings are also reported to have taken place. Among the lucky
few is director Wright (best known for his "Cornetto" trilogy),
who recently tweeted: "Am I allowed to say that 'Interstellar' is
incredible yet?"
It's going to be deep
According to Nolan's speech at Comic Con earlier this year, the film is going to be “about what it is to be human, and what our place is in the universe”, and the fact that “the further that you travel out into the universe, the more you realise it’s in your heart”.
The director also recently told Entertainment Weekly: “When you take an audience as far away from human experience as possible, you wind up focusing very tightly on human nature and how we are connected to each other. What the film tries to do is to be very honest in that appraisal.”
Given the mind-boggling scope of Nolan's intentions, should we expect 2001: A Space Odyssey-style trippiness and a giant space foetus? Alas, probably not. Anne Hathaway, who stars in the film, told EW: “Isn’t it nice to have a movie that is about all things the movie is about and not feel druggy?”
That said, Nolan is still hoping that audiences will be able to "lose themselves" in his film, telling EW: “This is the first film I have made where the actual experience of the film is paramount to the audience ... It hearkens back to the direct experience films of 2001 [A Space Odyssey], where you’re not just experiencing it through the characters, you are lost in it.”
It's going to be pretty
Rather than relying too heavily on CGI, Nolan had his spaceship set built, and has claimed that the decision “paid huge dividends for the actors", as well as giving the scenes a more realistic feel. Instead of making his cast act against a greenscreen, he also decided to give them a real taste of space, projecting a background of stars on to a huge black curtain outside the set.
The director has also incorporated more than an hour of large-format IMAX footage into his film, and even strapped an IMAX camera to the nose of a jet plane to capture some of his shots. Interstellar is definitely going to be a film worth catching on the big screen.
In keeping with his (frequently voiced) hatred for all things digital, Nolan is giving the film a limited early release to cinemas equipped with traditional film projectors. On November 5, Interstellar will screen in 240 locations across the US and Canada in 70mm IMAX, 70mm, and 35mm film.
It's going to be clever
The premise for the film was conceived by producer Lynda Obst and theoretical physicist Kip Thorne back in 2006, with Steven Spielberg named as director. The script was written by Jonah Nolan (often credited as Jonathan Nolan), younger brother of Christopher. But the project never went ahead.
In January 2013, Christopher Nolan, decided he wanted to take over the project and rewrite parts of Jonah's script himself. (Because older siblings always know best.) After entering into negotiations with Paramount, who owned the project, and Warner Bros, who traditionally handle Nolan's films, he succeeded in doing so.
Nolan's changes to the original script included making it bigger, and more epic. He wanted spectacle: dust storms and tidal waves, man pitted against the might of the universe. But he also wanted to incorporate a more nuanced depiction of human nature, revealing it at both its worst and its best.
Thorne, who is 74, has remained on board as a scientific consultant. He's one of the world's leading experts on the astrophysical implications of Einstein's theory of general relativity, and film is based upon his theories, meaning that everything in it could (possibly-one-day-maybe-in-theory) really happen. Thorne's speciality? Wormholes.
It's going to have wormholes
Wormholes, for everyone who isn't an astrophysicist/hasn't watched Donnie Darko, are theoretical "shortcuts" through space-time, also known as Einstein – Rosen bridges. Thorne is one of several scientists to argue that, in theory (and everything involving wormholes is "in theory"), it might be possible to stabilise a wormhole, and use it to cross space and time, or to cross over into other universes.
In Interstellar, a team of explorers and scientists discover a wormhole, near the planet Saturn, and decide to send a small crew to traverse it, in search of planets that could provide a new home. Beacuse the wormhole allows them to cross vast distances within a short amount of time, they are able to bypass the usual limitations on space travel.
And Matthew McConaughey
McConaughey's character, widowed engineer Cooper, has been described by Nolan as an "everyman" – someone for the audience to connect with.
Cooper leaves his two children behind to embark on the planet-hunting mission, joining three other crew members, played by Anne Hathaway, Wes Bentley, and David Gyasi. In a nod to Ernest Shackleton's 1914 mission to Antarctica, their spacecraft is named The Endurance. (Unlike fellow British explorer Scott, Shackleton's mission actually had a happy ending. Which is possibly a good sign for Cooper and his crew.)
If you've watched any of the trailers, you'll have noticed a sobbing little girl: she's Cooper's daughter, Murphy (Mackenzie Foy). Cooper isn't abandoning his kids because they cry too much. Instead, he's determined to save them, and everyone else on the dying Earth. But he's in a (literal) race against (actual) Time.
In one of the trailers, McConaughey is warned: “Every hour on that planet will be seven years back on Earth.” When you're dealing with worm holes and time travel, things are bound to get a bit complicated, timeline-wise. Consequently, Jessica Chastian will play a grown-up version of Murphy, back on Earth.
There's a real chance that, if Cooper spends too long in space, everyone he knows will grow old and die before he can get back.
And robots
Spotted that strange metallic, angular thing from the trailers? That's the ship's on-board robot, TARS. The film also features another robot named CASE. As to what the initials stand for, it's anyone's guess. (We like "Cleverly Advancing Space Exploration" and "Trust A Robot? Stupid.")
And a secret
Anne Hathaway's character, a scientist named Brand, will reveal a secret halfway through the film. A secret that will "change the course of the story".
And music from Hans Zimmer
Zimmer, who also scored Nolan's Batman trology, has written the music for Interstellar. According to Zimmer, when the time came to start work on the score, Nolan refused to give him any plot details about the film, and instead presented him with a single sheet of paper.
“[The page] wasn’t about the film,” Zimmer told GQ Magazine. “In a peculiar way, what Chris wrote down that day, and what he wanted from me, had more to do with my story than the plot of the movie. He knows how to get under my skin. That’s the game we play.”
Aww
During filming, the code name for Interstellar was Flora's Letter. Flora is the name of one of Nolan's children. According to cast-member Jessica Chastain, the name chosen was symbolic: the film can be read as a letter from Nolan to his daughter.
Tellingly, in Jonah Nolan's original script, Chastain's character was a boy. After Nolan took over the project, one of the first changes he made was to swap the sex of the character.
The director told EW: “For me, the whole movie is about what it means to be a dad".
It's going to be deep
According to Nolan's speech at Comic Con earlier this year, the film is going to be “about what it is to be human, and what our place is in the universe”, and the fact that “the further that you travel out into the universe, the more you realise it’s in your heart”.
The director also recently told Entertainment Weekly: “When you take an audience as far away from human experience as possible, you wind up focusing very tightly on human nature and how we are connected to each other. What the film tries to do is to be very honest in that appraisal.”
Given the mind-boggling scope of Nolan's intentions, should we expect 2001: A Space Odyssey-style trippiness and a giant space foetus? Alas, probably not. Anne Hathaway, who stars in the film, told EW: “Isn’t it nice to have a movie that is about all things the movie is about and not feel druggy?”
That said, Nolan is still hoping that audiences will be able to "lose themselves" in his film, telling EW: “This is the first film I have made where the actual experience of the film is paramount to the audience ... It hearkens back to the direct experience films of 2001 [A Space Odyssey], where you’re not just experiencing it through the characters, you are lost in it.”
It's going to be pretty
Rather than relying too heavily on CGI, Nolan had his spaceship set built, and has claimed that the decision “paid huge dividends for the actors", as well as giving the scenes a more realistic feel. Instead of making his cast act against a greenscreen, he also decided to give them a real taste of space, projecting a background of stars on to a huge black curtain outside the set.
The director has also incorporated more than an hour of large-format IMAX footage into his film, and even strapped an IMAX camera to the nose of a jet plane to capture some of his shots. Interstellar is definitely going to be a film worth catching on the big screen.
In keeping with his (frequently voiced) hatred for all things digital, Nolan is giving the film a limited early release to cinemas equipped with traditional film projectors. On November 5, Interstellar will screen in 240 locations across the US and Canada in 70mm IMAX, 70mm, and 35mm film.
It's going to be clever
The premise for the film was conceived by producer Lynda Obst and theoretical physicist Kip Thorne back in 2006, with Steven Spielberg named as director. The script was written by Jonah Nolan (often credited as Jonathan Nolan), younger brother of Christopher. But the project never went ahead.
In January 2013, Christopher Nolan, decided he wanted to take over the project and rewrite parts of Jonah's script himself. (Because older siblings always know best.) After entering into negotiations with Paramount, who owned the project, and Warner Bros, who traditionally handle Nolan's films, he succeeded in doing so.
Nolan's changes to the original script included making it bigger, and more epic. He wanted spectacle: dust storms and tidal waves, man pitted against the might of the universe. But he also wanted to incorporate a more nuanced depiction of human nature, revealing it at both its worst and its best.
Thorne, who is 74, has remained on board as a scientific consultant. He's one of the world's leading experts on the astrophysical implications of Einstein's theory of general relativity, and film is based upon his theories, meaning that everything in it could (possibly-one-day-maybe-in-theory) really happen. Thorne's speciality? Wormholes.
It's going to have wormholes
Wormholes, for everyone who isn't an astrophysicist/hasn't watched Donnie Darko, are theoretical "shortcuts" through space-time, also known as Einstein – Rosen bridges. Thorne is one of several scientists to argue that, in theory (and everything involving wormholes is "in theory"), it might be possible to stabilise a wormhole, and use it to cross space and time, or to cross over into other universes.
In Interstellar, a team of explorers and scientists discover a wormhole, near the planet Saturn, and decide to send a small crew to traverse it, in search of planets that could provide a new home. Beacuse the wormhole allows them to cross vast distances within a short amount of time, they are able to bypass the usual limitations on space travel.
And Matthew McConaughey
McConaughey's character, widowed engineer Cooper, has been described by Nolan as an "everyman" – someone for the audience to connect with.
Cooper leaves his two children behind to embark on the planet-hunting mission, joining three other crew members, played by Anne Hathaway, Wes Bentley, and David Gyasi. In a nod to Ernest Shackleton's 1914 mission to Antarctica, their spacecraft is named The Endurance. (Unlike fellow British explorer Scott, Shackleton's mission actually had a happy ending. Which is possibly a good sign for Cooper and his crew.)
If you've watched any of the trailers, you'll have noticed a sobbing little girl: she's Cooper's daughter, Murphy (Mackenzie Foy). Cooper isn't abandoning his kids because they cry too much. Instead, he's determined to save them, and everyone else on the dying Earth. But he's in a (literal) race against (actual) Time.
In one of the trailers, McConaughey is warned: “Every hour on that planet will be seven years back on Earth.” When you're dealing with worm holes and time travel, things are bound to get a bit complicated, timeline-wise. Consequently, Jessica Chastian will play a grown-up version of Murphy, back on Earth.
There's a real chance that, if Cooper spends too long in space, everyone he knows will grow old and die before he can get back.
And robots
Spotted that strange metallic, angular thing from the trailers? That's the ship's on-board robot, TARS. The film also features another robot named CASE. As to what the initials stand for, it's anyone's guess. (We like "Cleverly Advancing Space Exploration" and "Trust A Robot? Stupid.")
And a secret
Anne Hathaway's character, a scientist named Brand, will reveal a secret halfway through the film. A secret that will "change the course of the story".
And music from Hans Zimmer
Zimmer, who also scored Nolan's Batman trology, has written the music for Interstellar. According to Zimmer, when the time came to start work on the score, Nolan refused to give him any plot details about the film, and instead presented him with a single sheet of paper.
“[The page] wasn’t about the film,” Zimmer told GQ Magazine. “In a peculiar way, what Chris wrote down that day, and what he wanted from me, had more to do with my story than the plot of the movie. He knows how to get under my skin. That’s the game we play.”
Aww
During filming, the code name for Interstellar was Flora's Letter. Flora is the name of one of Nolan's children. According to cast-member Jessica Chastain, the name chosen was symbolic: the film can be read as a letter from Nolan to his daughter.
Tellingly, in Jonah Nolan's original script, Chastain's character was a boy. After Nolan took over the project, one of the first changes he made was to swap the sex of the character.
The director told EW: “For me, the whole movie is about what it means to be a dad".
