When your last couple of movies have been so successful and critically acclaimed as Inception and The Dark Knight trilogy has been, it could be expected that whatever your next movie will be, it will be met with much anticipation. Such was the hype surrounding Christopher Nolan's new science fiction epic Interstellar.
The movie, which was reportedly inspired by such films as Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, is based on hard science, as studied by astrophysicist Kip Thorne. But at its heart -- amidst its elements of worm holes, black holes, time travel, and galaxies far, far away, is the story of a father and his daughter. The Interstellar movie has plenty of critics praising its spectacular filmmaking, and of course, as with any big blockbuster movie, the haters are quite a handful too.
Christopher Nolan has said in a previous interview that his movie will be discussed much as Inception was very much a magnet for debate, but he said that the movie was better felt than understood. Even so Interstellar movie haters are going on about how the movie got most of its science wrong, and how the story does not live up to the hype.
The director himself has addressed these haters, in a recent interview with The Daily Beast. Christopher Nolan had this to say, "There have been a bunch of knee-jerk tweets by people who've only seen the film once, but to really take on the science of the film, you're going to need to sit down with the film for a bit and probably also read Kip Thorne's book."
The book the director mentions is called The Science of Interstellar by Kip Thorne, the theoretical physicist who not only served as executive producer in the Interstellar movie, but also as its consultant.
Even with the gripes about the science and the story, there are reactions from those who do know what they are talking about, and they have largely commended the movie. Notably, the Twitter review from astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is famous for having taken issue with the science in movies such as Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity. For the Interstellar movie, the scientist had these to say: