Interstellar is a 2014 epic science fiction drama film directed by Christopher Nolan, who co-wrote it with his brother Jonathan. It stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, Ellen Burstyn, Michael Caine, and Matt Damon. Set in a dystopian future where Earth is suffering from catastrophic blight and famine, the film follows a group of astronauts who travel through a wormhole near Saturn in search of a new home for humankind.
The screenplay had its origins in a script Jonathan developed in 2007, and was originally set to be directed by Steven Spielberg. Theoretical physicist Kip Thorne was an executive producer and scientific consultant on the film, and wrote the tie-in book The Science of Interstellar. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema shot it on 35 mm movie film in the Panavision anamorphic format and IMAX 70 mm. Filming began in late 2013 and took place in Alberta, Klaustur, and Los Angeles. Interstellar uses extensive practical and miniature effects, and the company DNEG created additional digital effects. It received critical acclaim upon release and is considered a successful film in the science-fiction genre.
Interstellar premiered in Los Angeles on October 26, 2014. In the United States, it was first released on film stock, expanding to venues using digital projectors. The film received positive reviews from critics and grossed over $681 million worldwide ($733 million after subsequent re-releases), making it the tenth-highest-grossing film of 2014. It has been praised by astronomers for its scientific accuracy and portrayal of theoretical astrophysics.[4][5][6] Interstellar was nominated for five awards at the 87th Academy Awards, winning Best Visual Effects, and received numerous other accolades.
On his deathbed, Brand confesses that the equation was a charade, meant to keep humans from dissolving into anarchy out of panic for their eventual doom. Murph is frustrated and wonders if Cooper knowingly abandoned her. She decides to continue Brand's work, and returns to her childhood home to search for clues. On the second candidate planet, the Endurance crew is met by a harsh ice world. They awaken Mann, the surviving NASA explorer in cryostasis, who landed here a decade ago. Mann and Cooper go on a scouting trip, but once alone, Mann confesses that the planet is uninhabitable and that he falsified data to attract rescuers. He tries to kill Cooper but fails. Amelia is pulled into rescuing Cooper, leading Romilly to die at the base by an explosive trap left by Mann. Mann takes off in a lander, attempting to hijack the Endurance, but is killed in a failed docking maneuver. Cooper and Amelia chase down the damaged spacecraft, and narrowly dock with it though they have limited fuel remaining and are falling into the black hole.
Charting a gravity-assist path around Gargantua, Cooper propels the craft towards the third and final planet, losing another 51 years to time dilation. Ignoring Amelia's protestations, he detaches the two heavy auxiliary craft carrying himself and TARS so that Amelia's mass-reduced craft may safely reach the final planet. More significantly, he sacrifices himself (rather than re-boarding the Endurance and detaching the empty vessel) because he knew the Endurance did not have enough resources for both of them to make it to Edmunds' planet. Beyond the black hole's event horizon, Cooper's craft begins to break up, and Cooper ejects, falling into a four-dimensional tesseract, where time is a physical dimension. He uses gravity to communicate with Murph and his past self, and realizes he sent the NASA coordinates to himself, thereby initiating this mission. He deduces that a future generation created the tesseract to similarly guide humankind. Cooper eventually enables Murph to solve the gravity equation by sending her the quantum data captured by TARS inside the singularity. Murph comes across the information encoded in Cooper's wristwatch, which she finds while visiting the family home. She saves humanity by successfully developing gravity manipulation. The tesseract dissolves, ejecting Cooper and TARS back into Saturn's orbit, where they are rescued in 2156 by humans inside a massive O'Neill cylinder named after Murph. When he finally reunites with his daughter, who is now relatively much older than him, she tells him not to wait around for her to die and to seek out Amelia instead. Cooper commandeers a spacecraft and sets off on another solo mission with TARS.
Also appearing are Josh Stewart as the voice of CASE; Leah Cairns as Lois, Tom's wife; David Oyelowo and Collette Wolfe respectively as school principal and teacher Ms. Hanley; Francis X. McCarthy as farmer "Boots"; William Devane as Williams, another NASA member; Elyes Gabel as Cooper Station Administrator; and Jeff Hephner as Cooper Station Doctor.
The premise for Interstellar was conceived by the producer Lynda Obst and the theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, who collaborated on the film Contact (1997), and had known each other since Carl Sagan set them up on a blind date.[8][9] The two conceived a scenario, based on Thorne's work, about "the most exotic events in the universe suddenly becoming accessible to humans", and attracted Steven Spielberg's interest in directing.[10] The film began development in June 2006, when Spielberg and Paramount Pictures announced plans for a science-fiction film based on an eight-page treatment written by Obst and Thorne. Obst was attached to produce.[11][12] By March 2007, Jonathan Nolan was hired to write a screenplay.[13]
After Spielberg moved his production studio, DreamWorks, from Paramount to Walt Disney Studios in 2009, Paramount needed a new director for Interstellar. Jonathan Nolan recommended his brother Christopher, who joined the project in 2012.[14] Christopher Nolan met with Thorne, then attached as executive producer, to discuss the use of spacetime in the story.[15] In January 2013, Paramount and Warner Bros. announced that Christopher Nolan was in negotiations to direct Interstellar.[16] Nolan said he wanted to encourage the goal of human spaceflight,[17] and intended to merge his brother's screenplay with his own.[18] By the following March, Nolan was confirmed to direct Interstellar, which would be produced under his label Syncopy and Lynda Obst Productions.[19] The Hollywood Reporter said Nolan would earn a salary of $20 million against 20% of the total gross.[20] To research for the film, Nolan visited NASA and the private space program at SpaceX.[15]
Warner Bros. sought a stake in Nolan's production of Interstellar from Paramount, despite their traditional rivalry, and agreed to give Paramount its rights to co-finance the next film in the Friday the 13th horror franchise, with a stake in a future film based on the television series South Park. Warner Bros. also agreed to let Paramount co-finance an indeterminate "A-list" property.[21] In August 2013, Legendary Pictures finalized an agreement with Warner Bros. to finance approximately 25% of the film's production. Although it failed to renew its eight-year production partnership with Warner Bros., Legendary reportedly agreed to forgo financing Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) in exchange for the stake in Interstellar.[22]
Jonathan Nolan worked on the script for four years.[8] To learn the scientific aspects, he studied relativity at the California Institute of Technology.[23] He was pessimistic about the Space Shuttle program ending and how NASA lacked financing for a human mission to Mars, drawing inspiration from science-fiction films with apocalyptic themes, such as WALL-E (2008) and Avatar (2009). Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly said: "He set the story in a dystopian future ravaged by blight, but populated with hardy folk who refuse to bow to despair."[14] His brother Christopher had worked on other science fiction scripts but decided to take the Interstellar script and choose among the vast array of ideas presented by Jonathan and Thorne. He picked what he felt, as director, he could get "across to the audience and hopefully not lose them," before he merged it with a script he had worked on for years on his own.[15][24] Christopher kept in place Jonathan's conception of the first hour, which is set on a resource depleted Earth in the near future. The setting was inspired by the Dust Bowl that took place in the United States during the Great Depression in the 1930s.[8] He revised the rest of the script, where a team travels into space, instead.[8] After watching the 2012 documentary The Dust Bowl for inspiration, Christopher contacted the director, Ken Burns, and the producer, Dayton Duncan. They granted him permission to use some of their featured interviews in Interstellar.[25]
Christopher Nolan wanted an actor who could bring to life his vision of the main character as an everyman with whom "the audience could experience the story."[26] He became interested in casting Matthew McConaughey after watching him in an early cut of the 2012 film Mud,[26] which he had seen as a friend of one of its producers, Aaron Ryder.[8] Nolan went to visit McConaughey while he was filming for the TV series True Detective.[27] Anne Hathaway was invited to Nolan's home, where she read the script for Interstellar.[28] In early 2013, both actors were cast in the starring roles.[29] Jessica Chastain was contacted while she was working on Miss Julie (2014) in Northern Ireland, and a script was delivered to her.[28] Originally, Irrfan Khan was offered the role of Dr. Mann but rejected it due to scheduling conflicts. Matt Damon was cast as Mann in late August 2013 and completed filming his scenes in Iceland.[30]
Nolan shot Interstellar on 35 mm film in the Panavision anamorphic format and IMAX 70 mm photography.[31] Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema was hired for Interstellar, as Wally Pfister, Nolan's cinematographer on all of his previous films, was making his directorial debut working on Transcendence (2014);[32] Pfister would later retire as a cinematographer for films.[33]More IMAX cameras were used for Interstellar than for any of Nolan's previous films. To minimize the use of computer-generated imagery (CGI), Nolan had practical locations built, such as the interior of a space shuttle.[26] Van Hoytema retooled an IMAX camera to be hand-held for shooting interior scenes.[8] Some of the film's sequences were shot with an IMAX camera installed in the nose cone of a Learjet.[34]Nolan, who is known for keeping details of his productions secret, strove to ensure secrecy for Interstellar. Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Ben Fritz stated, "The famously secretive filmmaker has gone to extreme lengths to guard the script to ... Interstellar, just as he did with the blockbuster Dark Knight trilogy."[35] As one security measure, Interstellar was filmed under the name Flora's Letter,[36] Flora being one of Nolan's four children with producer Emma Thomas.[15]
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