Spoilers Interstellar

[Morrus]

you can't revivify a corpse via some chemically induced process

How dare you claim I can't revivify a corpse via some chemically induced process!

 

[TheAlkaizer]

Interstellar is one of my favorite movies.

People often critique the hard sci-fi bits of it. But I actually don't think it's a hard sci-fi movie. One of my critique of science-fiction (not all of it of course) is that it often focuses on such grand questions, or on technical/scientific premises that it becomes cold and not about humans anymore. What I loved about Interstellar is that it was very much about individuals, human feelings. It's a great piece of drama wrapped in a different cloth.

I know that the development team looked up in a ton of scientific papers and worked with scientists, but in the end, it doesn't matter to me. It makes some bold (impossible?) suggestions that allows the movie to tell a beautiful story. I cry twice every time I watch it.

 

[dragoner]

This is like wanting to talk about Lord of the Rings being racist, with it being a race war, and racial killings. Hard SF has been around as a genre since Rappaccini's Daughter Rappaccini's Daughter - Wikipedia people often are criticizing what they don't understand, and science is often least understood. If one wants to frame it unfavorably one can, though the only thing actually happening is merely tearing down something someone else likes.

 

[Morrus]

This is like wanting to talk about Lord of the Rings being racist, with it being a race war, and racial killings. Hard SF has been around as a genre since Rappaccini's Daughter Rappaccini's Daughter - Wikipedia people often are criticizing what they don't understand, and science is often least understood. If one wants to frame it unfavorably one can, though the only thing actually happening is merely tearing down something someone else likes.

Wow, calm down, dude. We’re just chatting about a movie.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Gargantua, the black hole in the film, per Kip Thorne is about a hundred-million solar masses - of a size we'd call a "supermassive black hole". The tides at the event horizon are not large, and one could totally step across without harm.

Yes, and you could make a case for that making you "inside a black hole", I suppose, but I'm referring to the part where all of your matter becomes part of the singularity. I don't think that there's any way to be alive when that happens. Or, "conscious", or "transcend existence" or any of that. You just become a tiny, tiny bit of mass added to the whole.

Now, all the stuff about being in a tesseract and interacting with the world outside the black hole? That's magic.

Yes, that's the part that bothers me the most. It's what the move - and I, when referring to the movie - consider being "inside (a) black hole".

 

[Morrus]

Yes, that's the part that bothers me the most. It's what the move - and I, when referring to the movie - consider being "inside (a) black hole".

Does the movie say “inside the black hole” or are those just your words? (Genuine question—I don’t remember). Or do they just refer to crossing the event horizon?

 

[dragoner]

Wow, calm down, dude. We’re just chatting about a movie.

It is only an example of unfavorable framing of something destroys the enjoyment.

 

[MGibster]

People often critique the hard sci-fi bits of it. But I actually don't think it's a hard sci-fi movie. One of my critique of science-fiction (not all of it of course) is that it often focuses on such grand questions, or on technical/scientific premises that it becomes cold and not about humans anymore. What I loved about Interstellar is that it was very much about individuals, human feelings. It's a great piece of drama wrapped in a different cloth.

I took a Gender & Science Fiction class as an undergraduate, and we read some letters from the 1930s about how ill suited women were to writing "scientifiction." For some critics, it was specifically because they found women focused on the human aspects instead of the technical aspects of the technology, proving they were generally ill suited to writing science fiction. And I couldn't help at the time but think most of the science fiction that's great is about people not technology.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Well I don’t know who ‘they’ are but generally the only context I’ve personally heard that in was as I described above. I’ve never heard anybody describe the magic bit at the end as amazing science. Most people just went “huh?” at that bit. YMMV, of course.

By "they" I mean the people that made, and the people that have reviewed the move. Not ALL of them, I'm sure, just the general talk about it.

I guess the part that I've objected to is that IME, the movie was, and is, usually talked about in a general sense, without any caveats as to which parts. I wouldn't argue if, like you suggest, the line was, "It has some bits of it that have cool cutting-edge correct science that we haven't often seen in Sci-Fi!"

It's just that all of that has been skipped in the general praise of the science. Sure, it has some good science, it also has some ridiculously silly fantastical stuff. The latter was too much to make the former useful. TO ME. I absolutely acknowledge that I'm both being overly critical of an otherwise - okay - film.

 

[Umbran]

Yes, and you could make a case for that making you "inside a black hole", I suppose, but I'm referring to the part where all of your matter becomes part of the singularity. I don't think that there's any way to be alive when that happens. Or, "conscious", or "transcend existence" or any of that. You just become a tiny, tiny bit of mass added to the whole.

You are a tiny, tiny bit of mass added to the whole back at the event horizon. At that point you are inside what the universe sees as the black hole.

And nobody knows what happens at the singularity - I mean that pretty literally, that's a "dividing by cosmic zero" level of undefined. We don't know the rules - general relativity still doesn't cooperate with quantum mechanics, so suggesting you continue in some way is just as plausible as not.