Watched Nolan's Interstellar last weekend and was left mesmerized - you could call it an epic of a movie. And it shows how much of effort and thinking has gone into each character and the storyline - the characters are so intricately woven into each other and yet have individual screen presence; the idea that there can come a time when the entire earth is destroyed and we may need to look for shelter elsewhere seemed so very true; the sequences shot in space were more than just amazing. Just one small downside though, in the second half of the film; too much of scientific jargon (read:terminology) has been used, which escaped a person like me who is not particularly from a science background. More than once in the second half I was lost, trying to figure out things and fit in the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle in my mind; only to lose track of what was going on then. Could it have been made a wee bit simpler?

Perhaps you stick with Star Wars..... [just kidding]

I haven't seen this one as yet....but I will constantly rile at attempts to dumb-down SF.  It's taken all my lifetime to see it even begin to be vaguely considered mainstream fare.

...and I'm 60 ....

You really need to check the english TV show called Utopia, if you havent already. It directly deals with your concerns. 

LightStar, it has always been so. Movies of a particular era usually go with the most pressing concern/uncertainty for humanity. You had James Bond (started in the cold war period), Aliens, attack from mars etc, when the space race was there/space exploration became mainstream, and now you have things like Interstellar. What you say is not far off. The Earth is a wonderful planet that has a good recycle period but the rapidness of human degradation of the environment is ruining it all.

Awesome film I love it. Almost everything, science stuff, action, emotional part at the end that almost made me cry like a bitch, the music. aahh good memories

WARNING: all the stuff below could not ruin the film for me. I just feel it to be unnecessary to analyse the whole film and all the good stuff as I don't want to discucc those..

It was quite easy to understand the whole film, I don't understand people who say it's too complicated or something.

I know a lot of quantum physics and theoretical stuff, and yeah, this film was really realistic mostly, well, except the BS with love being 5th dimensional or something. Though thats the sci-fi part so nothing wrong with it if you think about it this way. I especially liked the documentary part, when elderly people talked about their past, our not unlikely future....

The lack of info on the catastrophy that destroyed Earth was truly annoying, I want to know how this pile of dust could destroy the planet and how the heck did they manage to dismiss the whole US army??? Dust Bowl did not kill the USA decades ago, and the army is the most important thing to have during times of crisis, and if it really disappears something will take it's place like Maffia or militias. And the thing with the non-existing government being able to fund NASA lol.

Scientifically accurate film saying the Moon landing was fake? Now that was the moment when I wanted to get up and leave the film.. But I could convince myself it's a joke or something, and remained.

Oh, the black whole part was weird, totally unrealistic, Cooper would have died like 1000 times before reaching the event horizon, I don't know how could their physicist advisor say yes to that part..

TBH, if they had implemented more stuff from the original version of the plans for the film, it would have been even more awesome

They did that only to stop young people from dreaming big. they only wanted farmers.

Not really. It is possible to enter the ergosphere and the event horizon of a SUPERMASSIVE Kerr black hole without undergoing spaghettification. They mentioned it in the movie that the back hole was one such. That is accurate as well!

Yes, but no.

Supermassive black holes still have the massive tidal forces that will rip things apart when they get near the singularity.  The "supermassive" label doesn't change any of the relevant physics here - it refers to the location and formation of the black hole, not its physics.  A supermassive black hole is generally large, at the center of a galaxy, and probably formed via some kind of seed+accretion mechanism.  A "normal" (macroscopic) black hole is around "only" a few solar masses or so and formed via the collapse of a massive star.

The fact that its a Kerr black hole also doesn't change anything.  Basically, the Kerr metric here just means that the thing is rotating.  That means that you get some weird effects like frame dragging, but you still get big time tidal forces in that metric. 

What is different for a really large black hole is where the effect would occur.  The point at which "spaghettification" would occur would almost certainly be inside of the event horizon for a supermassive black hole.  I haven't watched Interstellar yet, but if you go much inside of the event horizon, you are still going to get torn up eventually.

Now the real problem with your argument with regards to the move is that there is only one supermassive black hole in our galaxy.  Its called Sagittarius A* and its the one at the center of our galaxy.  So unless they were messing around with that specific black hole at the center of the galaxy, they weren't messing around with supermassive black holes.  I very much doubt that they were since the distances involved would be very large, even compared to the distances to nearby stars (its roughly 6500 times more distant than the nearest star).

It takes the piss eloquently....

....whereas Star Wars is just plain piss.....

My understanding of the plot of the movie is that they check out some planets orbiting the black hole.  Do you have any idea of what kind of properties those planets would have if the black hole that was being orbited had the mass that you would need?  The stars orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of our own galaxy can get up to almost 2% the speed of light at a distance of 10s of lightyears.  For this movie to be plausible, the planets would have to be much, much closer.  The orbital velocities would therefore be a VERY significant fraction the speed of light.  Do you know what kind of accelerations are implied by this?  

On the other hand, planets orbiting a stellar mass black hole would have normal orbits.

Sure - some people used to think that Andromeda had two such nuclei (mergers are far more likely since you really need a 3 body problem to eject something violently).  But then things go to a common core pretty quickly.  And a supermassive black hole elsewhere would be trivially detectable.  Millions of solar masses in an area less than the size of the solar system is very obvious - it causes nearby stars to move around at tens of millions of miles per hour, which is quite noticeable.

Quoting starkers,

reply 18

I dunno, why can't people enjoy or not enjoy a movie for what it is, rather than analyse the shit out of it and knock the stuffing right out of it.

You have to be introverted to understand it.

IMO the movie in its core is about love and the scifi is just a background to that. 

I am adding the SPOILERS tag to the name of the thread, since the discussion turned this way - not my fault this time around, as i created this topic back in the May. I still recommend to you not to read topics about movies you havent seen yet, if you dont want to get spoiled - it is truly the only safe way to do so.

Quoting starkers,

reply 20

Quoting Timmaigh,

reply 19

Quoting starkers,

reply 18

I dunno, why can't people enjoy or not enjoy a movie for what it is, rather than analyse the shit out of it and knock the stuffing right out of it.

 

You have to be introverted to understand it.

IMO the movie in its core is about love and the scifi is just a background to that. 

 

I am adding the SPOILERS tag to the name of the thread, since the discussion turned this way - not my fault this time around, as i created this topic back in the May. I still recommend to you not to read topics about movies you havent seen yet, if you dont want to get spoiled - it is truly the only safe way to do so.

Timmaigh, I generally don't have a problem with film discussion when it concerns the charcters and/or plot... the storyline.  What I find annoying is the picking apart of this sci-fi movie with so-called science.  It's like destroying a kids cartoon by telling children that 'things like that can't happen in real life'.  Maybe not, but you still let your kids enjoy the show, and that's what I'm saying here, people should enjoy 'Interstellar' for what it is and stop applying scientific theory to either disprove or discredit it... to prove it, even... cos that's not needed, either.

And I know it's not your fault.

Oh, OK then. i totally understand you, what you mean, believe me, i share the same view on this. It makes me almost angry to see people nitpick details in fine movies, even though they are totally irrelevant to the premise or the big picture. I recently read an article called 21 - or was it 25 - plotholes in Interstellar and it was IMO utter drivel. Even if some of those points were true, none of them IMO took away the message, what was meant to be important... 

On other hand, i dont see anyone in this topic trying discredit the movie, cause someone survived falling into the blackhole, which should be scientifically impossible. Yes, Laszlo (Turchany) pointed that out, and it ignited quite a discussion, but even he liked the movie a lot, despite that. So i see this to be just a harmless discussion about some science related nuances from the movie - these boards are perfect place for it, since i suppose majority of people who would want to watch Interstellar are the kind of people to frequent these forums - without anybody saying the movie was shit cause of that.

BTW, if you are not way too spoiled at this point, you should go to see it. It may have its shortcomings and some things could have been done better, but among the shit produced en masse, this is a movie worth to watch. IMO better than Nolans Batmans. Personally, i would give it 8/10 (with 9 reserved to all-time greats like for example...thinking about something... One Flew over Cuckoos Nest....). Thats my honest opinion. 

The movie IS quite enjoyable. Would recommend watching it at least once on IMAX.

That being said, a science fiction movie should kindle a debate. It is good that people debate on it. Do not compare it with cartoons as this discussion is not pointless. So many people discredit a movie just because they do not understand it. I feel it does not do justice to the guy who made the movie, and is getting two journal papers published because of it, to just get his work dismissed as 'entertainment' (which it is and I do not deny it). People need to learn to see what the possibilities open up and this movie can just be a spark for that. A forum is a place where people can gather and I think we can have more than one viewpoint existing in the threads. If the complaint was about spoilers, I could understand the statements made above. But it was not that.

If Percy Spencer had dismissed the fact that his chocolate bar had melted while he was working on radar technology after that moment, we wouldn't be having microwave ovens now.

I dont think this debate turned into pissing contest (yet at least). Its just bunch of nerds talking some details regarding scientific backdrop of the movie - is it surprising? People have different interests, i guess in this case many wanted to see it cause they were curious about the portrayal of the science related aspects - moreso than anything else, including the overall premise of the movie. I guess there were people who wanted to see it just because of Matthew McCounaghey and nothing else - including True Detective and Dallas Buyers Club, this feels like his year, his star is kinda on the rise...anyway, 100 people, 100 tastes...

Additionally, i dont see how this discussion could make the movie any less enjoyable experience. It surely wont, you said you would enjoy it for what it is, yourself. If you annoyed by all the analysing, just dont read it, easy. If you want to talk the premise of the movie, how the movie felt as a whole, as soon as you can watch it and will be subsequently ready to share your impressions, i am ready over here to talk with you about it, if you wish. And the others might be as well.