It’s been out for a while, but there are still two things that bug me about Interstellar.
And no, neither of them is the science of it. I’m not expert in theories of time travel, interstellar travel, worm holes, quantum mechanics, etc. I’m not even very interested in such things. I know that some people explain the science of Interstellar isn’t good, but I don’t care. My two concerns are more from a story and character perspective.
That’s Some Bizarre Parenting
I am not a parent, so I cannot say that I am 100% correct on this, but something did strike me very strange in Interstellar. When McConaughey is trying to reassure his daughter about his trip into the stars, he says something along the lines of “by the time I return, we might be the same age.” This is bizarre on so many levels. First of all, is he really telling her “it’s okay, because I’m only going to be gone for a couple decades.” And he’s also telling her, “don’t worry, this is going to mess up all the laws of space and time so intensely, that I’m no longer going to be older than you.”
It also seems like a bizarre throwback to his character in Dazed and Confused:
I suppose that this bizarre piece of dialogue was only inserted as a form of foreshadowing, especially when his daughter references back to it during his monologue later in the film. But that doesn’t make it any less strange for it to have been said in the first place, and it’s nearly impossible to understand why the character would say this. Especially when you consider that his entire character’s identity seems to revolve around being a good father.
It really stops making sense when compared with his other piece of dialogue: “When you become a parent, one thing becomes really clear. And that’s that you want to make sure your children feel safe.”
You Guys Forgot to Find a Pilot?
The other thing that really confuses me is that, when McConaughey arrives at the secret government space facility (the last remnant of NASA, it turns out), they don’t have a single available pilot. They are days away from launching their spaceship, but they don’t have a pilot? And they decide that a guy who hasn’t flown in years is better than the people they’ve been training? And, if this is the case, then why didn’t they track him down in the first place? They had to wait for him to become a fifth-dimensional being who could write coordinates in dust so that he could go back in time and recruit himself?
Those are my only complaints. Sure, I’m a little behind in voicing them, but they still bug me, and so I finally wrote about them.