The past decade has been rich in worthy science fiction films. Among them are such films as Gravity (2013, directed by Alfonso Cuarón), The Martian (2015, Ridley Scott), Arrival (2016, Denis Villeneuve), Blade Runner 2049 (2017, Denis Villeneuve)… And, of course, today’s anniversary – Interstellar by Christopher Nolan.
It sounds strange, but not everyone liked the movie at first. For example, it was nominated for an Oscar only in technical categories, some viewers and critics found it boring, and some thought it was speculative both in terms of science and in terms of pressure on emotions. However, today, Interstellar seems to be the main science fiction film of the twenty-first century.
It’s hard to believe, but ten years have passed since Interstellar was released. But what is ten years? Perhaps we just live near Gargantua, so during this period of time we only managed to close our eyes, then open them and… Let’s recall this movie, its way to the viewer, its creators and its main concepts.
Briefly about the plot: for those who haven’t seen it yet or have already forgotten
Over the past decade, many humorous retellings of the story have appeared on the Internet. They say that Interstellar is a story about a farmer who failed to produce corn, so he went into space and got stuck between the cupboards. Of course, it’s much more serious than that, although there is indeed a lot of corn in the world of Interstellar – it’s the only crop that still grows on the depleted Earth.
The story is set in the near future, where humanity is on the verge of extinction. The planet is becoming uninhabitable: the soil is degrading, the air is polluted, and dust storms are becoming more frequent. At this critical moment, a group of NASA scientists discover a mysterious wormhole near Saturn. It could be the path to salvation, as it leads to another galaxy with potentially habitable planets.
The film’s protagonist is Cooper, a former NASA pilot who is now a farmer, widower, and father of two. He agrees to lead an expedition to find a new home for humanity. This is a journey not only through space, but also through time, where both scientific discoveries and human relationships, especially the bond between father and daughter, play an important role. Murph’s daughter is an inquisitive child with a scientific mind, who later became a scientist herself and is trying to solve the mysteries left by her father.
Kip Thorne is a serious “daddy” at Interstellar
If you are not a fan, then most likely for you Interstellar is primarily the brainchild of Christopher Nolan. Of course, he is the director, but this movie, like almost any other, has several parents. And it would be fair to call the physicist Kip Thorne the most important ideological creator.
He is not just a friend of the great Stephen Hawking, but one of the most prominent scientists of our time. A specialist in gravity theory, astrophysics, and quantum measurement theory, Thorne has been a professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) for many years. He is a world-class expert on general relativity and a renowned science popularizer.
Kip’s achievements were recognized not only by his students and Interstellar fans, but also by the Nobel Committee: In 2017, Kip Thorne, along with Rainer Weiss and Barry Barish, received the Nobel Prize in Physics for their contributions to the detection of gravitational waves. Their work was key to the creation of the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory), which first detected gravitational waves in 2015.
Gravitational waves are space-time fluctuations that occur as a result of cosmic cataclysms, such as the merger of black holes or neutron stars. Predicted by Einstein, this phenomenon has opened up a new way of studying the Universe and made it possible to observe events that could not be recorded using traditional methods.
The birth of Interstellar
Kip Thorne himself best describes the origins of the film’s main ideas and its difficult path to the audience in his book The Science of Interstellar.
Kip emphasizes that the idea for the film was born out of his acquaintance with producer Linda Obst. They were introduced by mutual friends back in the eighties of the last century, and later their relationship became friendly and then creative in the best sense of the word.
In 2005, over lunch, Linda shared with Kip her idea for a science fiction movie based on real-world physical principles. She had already worked on Contact with another prominent scientist and science popularizer, Carl Sagan, so she wanted to take on another project, but this time in collaboration with Thorne. Together they came up with an interesting idea: a film that would show viewers black holes, wormholes, gravitational waves, and even the concept of a fifth dimension, all through the lens of modern science. Thorne, an astrophysics specialist, was keenly interested in the opportunity to translate scientific ideas into film. Thus began their adventure together, and in four months they created a draft of the story.
Steven Spielberg and Jonathan Nolan
In 2006, Linda Obst introduced the idea of the film to Steven Spielberg’s agent. The eight pages of synopsis, compiled from Thorne and Obst’s correspondence and notes, impressed the director so much that he immediately agreed to head the project.
At the first meeting, Thorne proposed two key rules: The film should not contradict the laws of physics, and all speculative concepts should be grounded in scientific ideas. Spielberg supported this approach and even organized an eight-hour scientific seminar at the California Institute of Technology, where experts from various fields discussed the scientific aspects of the future film.
To write the script, Linda Obst and Steven Spielberg began looking for a screenwriter who could turn the idea of intergalactic travel and five-dimensional space into a compelling cinematic story. After a long search, they settled on 31-year-old Jonathan Nolan, who had already worked on scripts for such films as The Prestige (2006) and The Dark Knight (2008), co-written with his brother Christopher Nolan.
To immerse himself in the science of Interstellar, Jonathan (or Jonah, as his friends called him) spent months studying the literature on astrophysics and relativity, and questioning Kip Thorne about the complex physical aspects of the story. Thorne recalled how John would amaze him with questions during long lunches at the California Institute of Technology club. After such meetings, Thorne would often come home and, in his half-asleep state, find scientific justifications for John’s ideas that seemed unacceptable when he was awake.
Together, they created a framework for the future scenario, which detailed gravitational anomalies and possible ways to evacuate humanity from the dying planet. Linda, as an organizer and producer, skillfully maneuvered between the studio’s requirements and the desire to preserve the creative spirit of the project. In 16 months, he created three versions of the script, although the work was interrupted by the writers’ strike and his involvement in The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
But there were new challenges ahead: Steven Spielberg left the project due to disagreements with the studio. For some time, Interstellar was in limbo. Linda was forced to look for a new director and, fortunately, found him in the person of Christopher Nolan.
Christopher Nolan
When Christopher Nolan took on Interstellar, the project took a new direction. Together with his brother Jonathan, he combined his ideas with the original story and virtually reimagined the film’s structure from scratch. It was Nolan who gave the film the ambition and scale for which it is known today.
Nolan’s first meetings with Kip Thorne took place in the office of his production company Syncopy at Warner Bros. Chris listened carefully to all of Thorne’s scientific “rules”: the story had to be based on true physical laws or theories that were recognized by at least part of the scientific community. These were not empty formalities for Nolan-he not only followed these rules, but also showed a genuine interest in science.
During the months of work, Chris asked Thorne all sorts of questions: about time, gravity, interstellar travel, even multidimensional structures. The discussions often lasted several hours, either on the comfortable sofas in Syncopy or over the phone, and sometimes in the middle of the night Thorne would try to solve another of Nolan’s scientific puzzles. In the morning, he would write down his ideas, graphs, and explanations and hand them over to Nolan in person so that all information remained under control.
Thanks to this collaboration, we were able to create not only a scientifically accurate history, but also enrich it with fresh, unexpected aspects.
Science or speculation?
“Some of what you’re going to see is true, that is, firmly based on the laws of physics we know. And some of it is speculation, based on physics we don’t know yet,” Kip Thorne characterized Interstellar in his book The Science of Interstellar.
Let’s try to figure out where science ends and fiction begins in the movie.
Scientific basis and assumptions
The image of the Gargantuan black hole became the most accurate in the history of cinema thanks to Thorne’s calculations. Nolan deliberately simplified some visual effects, such as the Doppler effect in the accretion disk, to make the picture more understandable to the audience.
A scenario of environmental disaster on Earth. Interstellar begins on a future Earth where a new pathogen has wiped out most crops, leaving humanity with corn as its last source of food. Dust storms cover large parts of the United States, making the planet barely habitable. This scenario, although somewhat dramatized, has a scientific basis. The prototype was the dust storms that hit the central United States in the 1930s, known as the Dust Bowl. As for a pandemic that could wipe out all major crops, this is an unlikely but possible scenario. Thorne and Nolan presented this point not as a prediction, but as a hint at the environmental challenges that are forcing humanity to look for new places to live.
According to the story, NASA sends an expedition through a wormhole located near Saturn to find a new home for humanity. Although wormholes have not yet been discovered, science suggests that they exist. The theories of Kip Thorne and other astrophysicists predict the possibility of wormholes, but their stable existence requires a special form of matter with negative energy-something that is repelled by gravity instead of attracted. Such “exotic matter” so far exists only in theoretical calculations of physicists, and we do not know whether it is possible to create it in reality.
As for the planets near Gargantua, scientists have expressed some doubts. A planet like Miller’s planet, where an hour is equivalent to seven Earth years, would have to be very close to a black hole, which would make its orbit unstable. However, Thorne suggested that Gargantua’s ultra-fast rotation could create the conditions for a stable orbit and such a slowdown in time.
Fiction
The Tesseract and the five-dimensional creatures are pure fantasy, although inspired by scientific theories about the multidimensionality of space. In the movie, the fifth dimension is presented as a space where time exists as a physical quantity that can be manipulated. This allows Cooper to interact with different moments in the past while remaining within the physical laws of his three-dimensional world.
Traveling through a black hole and the ability to transmit information through gravity are also artistic elements. Although gravitational waves do exist (their discovery confirmed Einstein’s predictions and earned Thorne the Nobel Prize), they are fluctuations in space-time caused by the collision of massive space objects. Using them to transmit information between dimensions belongs to the realm of science fiction.
Interesting technical facts about the creation of Interstellar
Visualization of a black hole. Gargantua has become one of the most realistically depicted black holes in cinema. The team led by Kip Thorne used a new rendering technology that created the effect of gravitational lensing. The calculations were so complex that it took about 100 hours to process the data on a supercomputer of the time for each frame.
40 thousand lines of code for one scene. The visualization of the black hole required 40 thousand lines of program code describing the interaction of light and gravity. This software was a breakthrough not only for the movie, but also for scientific research, as the modeling results were used in the academic field.
Miniatures instead of CGI. Although the movie uses computer graphics, most of the spaceships were created as miniatures to achieve the effect of physical presence. The model of the Endurance ship was built on a scale of 1:5 and worked out in detail, which allowed us to create old-school effects similar to those used in the classic Star Wars.
TARS and CASE works. The actors controlled specially created full-length mechanical structures. The robots were real, not computer-generated, which allowed for natural interaction between the actors on set. Actor Bill Irwin not only provided the voice of TARS, but also physically controlled the robot during filming.
Realistic landscapes. Scenes on the surface of the planets were filmed in Iceland on large areas of lava fields and glaciers to achieve maximum authenticity. The visual style of the film was based on real images of space landscapes from NASA missions.
Lyrics and film language of Interstellar
Interstellar gives the impression of a film from another era – not 2014, but rather the 1960s and 1970s – and sometimes even resembles European cinema in its slowness and deliberation. Nolan boldly plays with pacing and long shots, allowing the viewer to linger on the details, to see the beauty of our planet and the vastness of space. Here you can stare, feel, and not just follow the plot. Despite the fact that the story revolves around a race against time, paradoxes and inevitable catastrophe, there is a lot of space for pauses. It’s a return to the old traditions, when cinema was thought-provoking, not just suspenseful.
The language of Interstellar is particularly distinguished by its attention to the emotional component. The plot is filled not only with scientific assumptions, but also with personal dramas and universal tragedies. A father who abandons his children to save humanity realizes that the chances of returning are almost zero. A scientist whose lover is stranded on a remote planet finds that her team does not share her desire to save him. And on another planet, another scientist who couldn’t stand being alone reveals his weaknesses and inability to sacrifice himself when it’s really necessary.
These dramas are complemented by Hans Zimmer’s music, which has become an integral part of the film. It is not like the usual orchestral compositions for space adventures: here, organ sounds and almost minimalist motifs create an atmosphere that balances between epic and silent sadness.
One of the controversial, but not as superficial as it might seem at first glance, ideas that has sparked a lot of discussion is Dr. Brand’s assertion that love can be as fundamental a force as gravity. In terms of physics, this is a purely artistic device, but it is intriguing as a way to bring humans closer to the cosmos. Love in the movie is what binds Cooper and Murph across space and time. Thorne admits that this artistic aspect is not just an incidental detail: it is meant to show how emotional connection can push humanity to overcome its physical limitations and find new ways in the universe.
It is the emotional connection between the father and daughter, Cooper and Murph, that is the central theme of the film. And although this concept may cause skepticism in some people, the director takes a risk by embodying it as a force that can overcome even the time barrier and eventually saves the characters and humanity from destruction. Of course, this idea may seem speculative, but it has its own logic in the world of Interstellar.
However, not everyone took this interpretation unequivocally. Some viewers and critics thought that the film went too far in its assumptions, especially in the final scenes with the tesseract and the fifth dimension. For some, they even reminded them of an LSD trip. But perhaps Interstellar is more about leaving the viewer with the question of what science is and what it means to be human.
So who saved humanity?
One of the most interesting questions in Interstellar is who are the mysterious “they” who created the wormhole and the tesseract? In the movie, Cooper theorizes that these are people from the distant future who have evolved to the point of being able to manipulate the fifth dimension. And while this version seems convincing, Kip Thorne, in his book The Science of Interstellar, offers other possibilities.
Among the possible explanations, Thorne considers the concept of parallel universes in which humanity could have evolved to a higher level of technology, or even the idea of an alien intelligence that observes humanity. However, the most interesting theory that coincides with the movie is a vicious circle of causality: people of the future were able to evolve into five-dimensional beings because they helped their ancestors by creating a wormhole and a tesseract. That is, the future and the past exist simultaneously, creating a classic paradox that becomes the driving force of the plot.
But, as we have already noted, it’s not just science that wins in this highly scientific movie. Professor Brand makes a mistake in his calculations, and the ultra-precise computers TARS and CASE cannot solve the problem by themselves. Instead, the key element is the “non-scientific” one – love as a force that transcends time and space, as Dr. Brand Jr. describes it.
Perhaps this is the main message of the film: science opens the way to the stars, but to save humanity, we need something more – the very “human factor” that allows us to look beyond the known and the possible.
Humanity’s odyssey: see you in the fifth dimension
Serious theorists of literature and cinema often argue that the literary works of European and world civilization are built on several basic archetypal plots. One of the most powerful is Homer’s Odyssey. It is a story about the hero’s return home or his search for home through numerous obstacles and discoveries. In fact, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Kubrick is one of the most expressive cinematic interpretations of this idea.
In Kubrick’s film, a man travels to distant worlds, challenges the cosmos, and encounters forces beyond human understanding. It is a story about both the search for truth and the irresistible desire to understand and find one’s place in the universe. Kubrick presented space as an infinite and mysterious place where the characters must not only overcome technological barriers but also find answers to fundamental questions about themselves, human nature, and the future of civilization.
Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar continues this tradition – it’s the latest cinematic Odyssey, where the characters are also looking for a new home. Only this time the stakes are even higher: it’s about the survival of humanity as a species. Nolan pushes the boundaries of science fiction by showing space not only as a set of physical laws, but also as a space that hides enormous emotional and personal challenges.
It’s hard to believe that ten years have passed since the release of the movie Interstellar. But what is ten years? Perhaps we just live near Gargantua, so during this period of time we only managed to close our eyes, then open them… and find ourselves in another reality, where humanity has gone mad and instead of exploring space and developing science for peaceful purposes, it is stubbornly trying to kill itself. And the protagonist of Interstellar is still looking for a way to his inquisitive two-hundred-year-old daughter, getting lost in a five-dimensional maze of lockers.
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