Christopher Nolan had one goal by the end of Interstellar

Oppenheimer’s film may have become the highest-grossing biopic of all timeThe Dark Knight trilogy may have made Christopher Nolan a household name, but Interstellar is a strong contender for the director’s best picture simply because it has more emotional core than any of his other projects. By now, it’s well-documented that Interstellar is somewhat of an outlier among Nolan’s filmography in this regard. But the more I thought about it, the more impressive it became.

The massive, galaxy-spanning space epic that sends a man into a black hole singularity during its climax also manages to be the most raw and intimate portrait of human connection Nolan has ever made. This strange sequel dichotomy extends to other areas of the film as well. Just think how committed Nolan is to scientific realism and how fascinating the events in the film are. This film not only shows a surreal journey across the event horizon of a black hole, but also a planet of permanent tsunami waves. However, rather than relying on his own creative ideas for these bizarre moments, Nolan adhered closely to science in order to conjure such seemingly fantastical moments.

This is really just a testament to the fundamental strangeness of extraterrestrial reality, but it’s also another fascinating layer to Nolan’s best film. As follows: Nolan was so insistent that his sci-fi epic adhere to scientific principles, that he hired physicist Kip Thorne to ensure this. But when it came to that final journey into the heart of a black hole, the director gave himself license to get as weird as possible, not only moving away from science and into full-on sci-fi, but also trying to emulate sci-fi classics. type in this process.

The truth is that no one has ever experienced what it means to cross a black hole’s event horizon. Even while physicists are fairly clear about what would happen if humans approached this mysterious cosmic frontier (it involves something called “spaghetti,” which is a lot less fun than it sounds), there’s no actual direct evidence of what could happen. It happens like that. The experience will be like. So, when Joseph Cooper, or “Cobb” (Matthew McConaughey), made his journey across the Gargantua event horizon in Interstellar, Christopher Nolan managed to take at least some artistic license.

After relying on the extensive knowledge of Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist Kip Thorne to inform the bulk of the film’s depiction of space and its various oddities, Nolan found himself with some creative freedom. But rather than completely depart from the book, the director substituted real physics for the mythical ending of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey as his guide.

Nolan has never made any secret about how indebted he and Interstellar are to Kubrick’s film, but rather than simply taking his cues from the 2001 film in this thrilling scene, he actually wanted to recreate the exact feel of Kubrick’s original film. As “2001” comes to a close, David Bowman, played by Keir Dullea, enters a “stargate” that sends him on a surreal journey through time, where Bowman, after witnessing a psychedelic light show, encounters ancient versions of himself before ending The film is based on the famous film. The final shot is of a fetus hovering above the ground. Although much has since been written about what this strange journey was supposed to mean, it’s safe to say that Kubrick deliberately kept things vague in this regard. Obviously, this is what Nolan wanted to recreate in its entirety with Coop’s journey across the event horizon.

“Interstellar” is inspired by certain childhood experiencesSpecifically, Christopher Nolan, who watched “Star Wars” and “2001: A Space Odyssey” for the first time. Of these two films, Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi epic was perhaps the most influential on the director, certainly in terms of Interstellar. But even beyond his influence on this film, Nolan has proven his lasting appreciation for Kubrick’s work elsewhere, overseeing the 70mm restoration of “2001” along with the film’s 4K re-release in 2018. He even went so far as to say that Kids should watch “2001” Because it is fundamental to his understanding of cinema.

The 2001 film’s influence on Interstellar was so profound that it seems Nolan not only wanted to emulate the scientifically informed aesthetics and overall style of the film, but he also wanted to achieve a very specific goal: recreating the film’s enigmatic final scenes. . During an appearance on Neil deGrasse Tyson’s show “Star Talk” Kip Thorne once revealed that Nolan told him this during production, saying: “Chris told me early on that I wanted to make a movie where the ending was as ambiguous as the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey.” Expanding on his experience, Thorne revealed that Nolan was very protective of the ending and its 2001-inspired mystery, only allowing it to be explained in Thorne’s own book, The Science of Fantasy. “Interstellar.” In his own words:

“(Nolan) is a huge fan of Stanley Kubrick and this movie, and then somewhat later when we were talking about the ending, and we had a lot of conversations about the ending, he said, ‘Well, you can explain the ending in this book however you want.’” Replanning the writing. “(…) He identified that as the place where the ending would be explained.”