Tired of the environmental scare tactics that seem to pervade society nowadays? The Earth is slowly dying. If we don’t change our wasteful ways, our demise will come. Man’s neglect will bring about the end of the world. If you’ve seen Interstellar, you know that by the end of it you’ll be exhausted; physically, because you were just immobile for nearly three hours, and mentally, not only because of the mind-boggling plot that fills every minute, but also because of the omnipotent, impending sense of world destruction. But that’s the intrigue of it.

Director Christopher Nolan once again fails to disappoint. Well-known for producing and directing some of the top movies of the century, including The Dark Knight, Inception, Man of Steel, and The Prestige, Interstellar is definitely worthy enough to join their ranks.

Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a 72% approval rating, critiquing that it “…represents more of the thrilling, thought-provoking, and visually resplendent film-making…even if its intellectual reach somewhat exceeds its grasp.” There’s no doubt that the theoretical sci-fi concepts seem, well, out of this world, but they do get you thinking.

Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a former NASA pilot and engineer, lives with his young daughter Murphy (Mackenzie Foy) and the rest of his family on their farm. Earth is dying, having been ravaged by a crop blight, forcing the world back into an agrarian society. Survival is harsh as his household suffers respiratory issues due to the dusty atmosphere.

Murphy’s bedroom begins to be haunted by strange signals left in the dust. She and her father decode the signals, which lead them to a secret NASA facility. The professor there (Michael Caine) tells Cooper that NASA has discovered a wormhole. It leads to a different galaxy containing three planets, orbiting the black hole Gargantua, with the potential for inhabitation. He convinces Cooper to pilot a spaceship with a team of fellow astronauts: Romilly, Doyle, the professor’s daughter Brand (Anne Hathaway), and two highly intelligent robots. Murphy is distraught that her father has to leave, but Cooper knows it is the only shot at saving humanity from a rapidly deteriorating Earth.

The astronauts disembark and enter the wormhole. They must collect data from previous astronauts Mann, Edmunds, and Miller, one surveying each planet. Miller’s planet, the first destination, is so close to the black hole that time is distorted on its surface; one hour there is seven years on Earth. The crew finds that immense tidal waves on its surface killed Miller and make the planet unlivable. They depart, but due to difficulties, 23 years have passed back home.

The distressed team heads to Mann’s (Matt Damon) planet, but it is a barren, frozen wasteland. With hardly any fuel remaining, Cooper and Brand, the only surviving crew members, use the wormhole’s gravity as a slingshot to get to the last planet. As they pass Gargantua, Cooper detaches his small vessel and falls into the black hole, both to collect data and propel Brand to the planet.

Within the black hole, Cooper emerges in a ‘tesseract’ where time structures itself into a physical dimension, giving him glimpses into Murphy’s room at varying times. He realizes he was the one sending the signals. He sends new codes to Murphy through her watch, who is now a grown scientist working on saving the people of Earth, allowing her to solve the professor’s equation and evacuate humanity.

The unknowing Brand finds Edmunds alive on his planet. Following the professor’s ‘Plan B,’ restarting humankind using frozen embryos in the spaceship, the movie closes with the two stepping onto Edmunds’s planet to set Plan B into action.

Interstellar is formed around the underlying trend of environmentalism that has grown in prevalence in the past few decades. The whole premise is based on the Earth dying; it was a fatal enough situation that astronauts had to search for a new planet to call home, and possibly start over with a whole new human race. Maybe increasing awareness and concern for the Earth wasn’t a goal of this movie, but it was certainly achieved. Murphy’s teacher stated, “If we don’t want a repeat of the excess and wastefulness of the 20^st century, then we need to teach our kids about this planet, not tales of leaving it.”

Please let it be known that Joel Freecheck agrees with this review, great job Anna Proulx! 😉