Interstellar - The Movie

RisingFury

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Well, there is music made specifically for trailers. Two Steps from Hell features a lot in many trailers, especially their Heart of Courage piece.

Yes and Kevin McLeod's music appears in every amateur's YouTube video. Doesn't mean a multimillion budget movie should do the same.


And yes, StarGate experimented with "alternate dimensions" and time travel. And I thought that most of the time they attempted that, they produced the worst episodes...
 

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The music that's in the trailer also appeared in the movie "V for Vendetta". I hate it when they recycle popular music like this.

Few fans, or studio editors tasked with putting a trailer together for that matter, have access to a composer and full orchestra so the "recycling" is to be expected.
 

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Yes and Kevin McLeod's music appears in every amateur's YouTube video. Doesn't mean a multimillion budget movie should do the same.

Well, if they haven't the soundtrack ready they cannot use it and you don't want the audience to hear the soundtrack early on because that can detract from the experience. It's not the director's choice anyway.


And yes, StarGate experimented with "alternate dimensions" and time travel. And I thought that most of the time they attempted that, they produced the worst episodes...

They were still funny. Do you think we'll see Michael Caine with a goatee being evil?:thumbup:
 

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The beginning of the trailer reminds me of some potential effects global warming will have decades in the future, with famine as a result of low precipitation in the Great Plains, causing a permanent Dust Bowl. I wonder if global warming will be the cause of humanity's decline in Interstellar.

That seems to be the consensus on reddit. Also, there was a post on reddit today which summarizes my problem with the premise:

"The world doesn't need any more engineers. We didn't run out of planes and television sets. We ran out of food."

That doesn't sound right. Engineers are useful for improving agriculture techniques.

So, basically, you have to go through a wormhole to find a solution to the global warming problem? Seriously?
 
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Hlynkacg

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So, basically, you have to go through a wormhole to find a solution to the global warming problem? Seriously?

thus my eyerolling. ;)

That said the tag-line, Mankind was born on Earth but it isn't isn't meant to die here. is all sorts of :headbang:
 

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There have been many points in our history where we thought we had exhausted the Earth's resources (Malthus, etc.) but then we found ways to get around that. Theoretically, one could say that the Earth's resources are unlimited, as long as we continue to develop new technology to use these resources in more creative ways. That being said, at some point when the resources we depend on become scarce enough, the cost of technological innovation which would allow us to continue living on Earth could theoretically outstrip the cost of interstellar travel. For instance, if we for some reason were to run out of land, we could build farms and cities on the ocean floor, there's plenty of land there. But if we had the option of wormhole travel and a reasonably habitable world to go to, IMO that begins to look like the more attractive option, maybe even the less expensive one. So who knows? It wouldn't be too much of a stretch for them to come up with a really good reason for us to leave Earth, hopefully they aren't lazy about it...
 

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But this reasoning still misses the point. Assume the problem is that we will run out of land. Assume that this is because land use increases 10% per year. This means that the land use doubles every 70 years. So your newly discovered planet-beyond-the-wormhole can only provide enough land for another 70 years of growth. In 70 years, you'd have to find two more habiltable planets, and in the next 70 years four more habitable planets, and so on. (Actually probably you'll need twice that, because each planet will likely be irreparably destroyed in the process.) So if the galaxy has 1000 habitable planets, then the entire stock will be exhausted in 700 (350) years.

That's completely ignoring the fact that each habitable planet is probably going to have, you know, inhabitants, which may not like the idea of taking their land.

And the real paradox is that the technology which will have to be developed to survive the global warming is pretty much the same technology which is needed to colonize the solar system...
 

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Well, maybe they need the place to grow stuff on because they can't do it anymore on Earth. Or something else. We'll see when the movie comes out. As for me, I don't care if we need to get to another star system because we've run out of Twinkies. I'd freaking go and bring those Twinkies back, for this Twinkies-starved Earth.
 

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I spent the last 24 hours pondering the realism of the movie trailer. I kinda invented a scenario in which there is a food catastrophe and a desperate need to get off the planet.

Theoretically, runaway glacier melt and desertification could make large swaths of land unfarmable. A combo punch of a rising coastline and a food price singularity devastate cities and industry...causing more economic chaos. Nation states, unable to maintain security and reverse the course of climate change, turn to the heavens for an answer and KABOOM KABOOM...we got Interstellar.

Of course there are many problems with this scenario. Any society capable of detecting and traveling to a stable wormhole in addition to building a large spaceship with additional plans to colonize the opposite end of the terminus should be able increase the efficiency of traditional farming if not inventing entirely new farming methods(vertical farming, zero-g farming, artificial ecologies, etc)...

I also hope they make the wormhole even more realistic...maybe they could depict it being 400au away from sol(the only way for it to remain stable)...and have some scene where they try to match the velocity of the wormhole to avoid making it unstable upon transit.
 
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That seems to be the consensus on reddit. Also, there was a post on reddit today which summarizes my problem with the premise:
Do you have a link to this Reddit thread? It would be interesting to see the discussion and what conclusions they come to.

So, basically, you have to go through a wormhole to find a solution to the global warming problem? Seriously?
The predictions for global warming by the end of this century are seriously grim, especially if humanity continues to ignore making serious efforts to mitigate the damage. It's difficult to not see how the trailer relates to global warming, and taking place in the "near" future is open to interpretation. As in the previous post, there are a combination of effects that can swiftly reduce the amount of farmland and flood cities, leading to mass human displacement and not enough food production for all the billions of people. An increase in global temperature up to ten degrees Celsius is unprecedented, and it will indeed disrupt human civilization, leaving the opportunity for another dramatic event in the future to destroy the rest of humanity while it's down.

It is difficult to think of another credible, sudden, and dramatic event that can alter Earth's climate significantly, specifically to the extent that it has changed in the trailer. A fictional, perfectly sized asteroid with the perfect orbit is a possibility. Too large of an asteroid would destroy surface habitability for thousands or millions of years until all the evaporated water to precipitates back to form the oceans. Too small of an asteroid would only disrupt the environment on a regional scale. However, maybe an asteroid like what caused the Chicxulub crater will fit the bill.

Both ideas require another imminent future event to end humanity. A larger asteroid impact can happen, but it's probably significantly easier to slightly change an object's orbit than send people to another solar system. Why not alter the first asteroid's course before impact? If the object is large enough, it would have been detected.

It's not about fixing the global warming problem, the climate has become an issue that obviously can't be fixed at this stage. It's too late and humanity must leave Earth.
 
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T.Neo

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It's not about fixing the global warming problem, the climate has become an issue that obviously can't be fixed at this stage. It's too late and humanity must leave Earth.

That still doesn't make sense, if Earth's carrying capacity for a human population is severely limited in such a scenario it will probably still remain habitable in some form- it wouldn't be a good outcome, obviously, but it's a number of notches below "planet is destroyed". And even if we effectively had another habitable planet next door it probably wouldn't be feasible to ship the entire population there with forseeable technology. Granted, we don't know what kind of technology they have available to them, but the launch vehicle looks pretty conventional- the engine bells actually look quite similar to the F-1s on the Saturn V.

That said, I don't want to be a joykill. The wormhole in the trailer looks like the best we've ever seen in a motion picture to date.
 

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Well said T.Neo.

I want to add that if the weather is that extreme how does mankind manage to launch a space vehicle?

In a lot of ways this reminds me of farscape, humans in space, humans find a wormhole, humands travel through a wormhole.

Yawn. No thanks.
 

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Do you have a link to this Reddit thread? It would be interesting to see the discussion and what conclusions they come to.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/25qh7i/interstellar_a_christopher_nolan_film_depicting/

http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comm...er_for_chistopher_nolans_interstellar/chjoyjh

The predictions for global warming by the end of this century are seriously grim, especially if humanity continues to ignore making serious efforts to mitigate the damage.

Oh, I competely agree. I'm kind of disappointed that Hollywood did not catch into this yet -- climate change predictions are a goldmine for LoTR-scale epics. For example, I'd like to watch one about the inhabitants of rapidly desertifying Italy escaping from disease and famine and trying to cross Alps. However, all tunnels have already been blown up to curtail immigration from the Appenine Penninsula, so they must go through the mountains, where they are being hunted by UAVs. Could be as good as Hunger Games, and the premise would make more sense.

But, having read some literature on global warming impacts, I must say that there is absolutely no consensus that the planet will be so messed up that we will have to leave it. There are only two pathways for this to happen, and these are:

- [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis"]methane clathrates defreeze[/ame] and cause runaway warming producing Venus

- a nuclear war breaks out over the remaining resources

Everything else is bad, but it's not planet-destroying bad, basically, it never gets worse than Mad Max. Once you realize that, for a state-level actor, there are much better ways to spend your money than interstellar trips. In order of severity of the AGW impacts:

- Develop GMO crops suitable for new climate.

- Develop closed-system farming techniques. Hydroponic farming needs only sunlight and water, both of these are going to be always available.

- Attempt geoengineering by seeding ocean with iron and/or injecting SO2 into the atmosphere. Cost calculations on both options come up surprisingly cheap (below $1B), the main reason people are opposed to these solutions is that they can only be tried once, and they may work incorrectly. But if the situation is so bad that you don't have much to lose...

- If the breakup of civilization is imminent, build up a stock of weapons, basic machinery, greenhouses (see above), etc., and head for an easily-defended mountain valley (higher altitude means that the land will be suitable for farming even in case of large warming). Wait 100-200 years for the situation to stabilize, then go back down and establish an empire.

So, the only situations when interstellar trip would make sense would be if there was some unobtainium which could be used to magically fix things.

Besides, there is another problem with just "colonize another planet" premise. First, the suitable planet would have to have an oxygen-rich atmosphere, which means that it would have to have native life... which opens a whole can of worms (literally). Second, unless you have a stargate next to a railway station on Earth, your colonists are going to be severely limited in what they can bring along, which would make the transfer of civilization largely impossible. Therefore, they would be trading living in Medieval conditions on post-apocalyptic Earth for living in Neolithic conditions on New-Earth.
 

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Medieval conditions on post-apocalyptic Earth for living in Neolithic conditions on New-Earth.

Just like BSG... However better than dead/extinct/ex-existing. The upside is that they wouldn't have to start from scratch (they would still have the knowledge and some tooling and equipment) and could probably get back to an industrial civilization in, say, 500 to 1000 years instead of 20'000.
 

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That still doesn't make sense, if Earth's carrying capacity for a human population is severely limited in such a scenario it will probably still remain habitable in some form- it wouldn't be a good outcome, obviously, but it's a number of notches below "planet is destroyed". And even if we effectively had another habitable planet next door it probably wouldn't be feasible to ship the entire population there with forseeable technology. Granted, we don't know what kind of technology they have available to them, but the launch vehicle looks pretty conventional- the engine bells actually look quite similar to the F-1s on the Saturn V.
To respond to this and kamaz's post, it seems that both of you missed my own doubt that global warming itself is sufficient to make humans extinct, expressed in these sentences:
...leaving the opportunity for another dramatic event in the future to destroy the rest of humanity while it's down.

Both ideas require another imminent future event to end humanity.
Another imminent event can be a future heavy bombardment, potentially caused by a large asteroid (more like protoplanet) that fragmented, with pieces striking Earth frequently over time. That is the only idea I have. It is not conceivable that global warming will destroy humanity, but as I wrote, it will certainly disrupt human civilization (and is already doing so to a degree that is presently ignored).

http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/25qh7i/interstellar_a_christopher_nolan_film_depicting/

http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comm...er_for_chistopher_nolans_interstellar/chjoyjh



Oh, I competely agree. I'm kind of disappointed that Hollywood did not catch into this yet -- climate change predictions are a goldmine for LoTR-scale epics. For example, I'd like to watch one about the inhabitants of rapidly desertifying Italy escaping from disease and famine and trying to cross Alps. However, all tunnels have already been blown up to curtail immigration from the Appenine Penninsula, so they must go through the mountains, where they are being hunted by UAVs. Could be as good as Hunger Games, and the premise would make more sense.

But, having read some literature on global warming impacts, I must say that there is absolutely no consensus that the planet will be so messed up that we will have to leave it. There are only two pathways for this to happen, and these are:
Thanks for the links. It is definitely unclear why engineers are generalized and useless to help solve the food shortage.

I am aware that the permafrost is melting which is releasing additional methane, which I recall was the case for previous cycles of warming (except that now humanity caused the permafrost melting by adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere to begin with). I don't think that there's enough greenhouse gases to produce a Venus-like Earth, but it is definitely a cool and feasible idea. I don't have time to catch up on these readings now (if anybody observed when I post in my timezone, they'd think I'm insane).

Everything else is bad, but it's not planet-destroying bad, basically, it never gets worse than Mad Max. Once you realize that, for a state-level actor, there are much better ways to spend your money than interstellar trips. In order of severity of the AGW impacts:

The rest of the bullets are pretty good alternatives to spending the resources on interstellar travel, but of course the situation must be more desperate than global warming. I've read those solutions somewhere before...

With the current trend of exoplanet discoveries, the chances of finding a habitable world with signs of life (that uses photosynthesis) in the future is looking good. If humanity is really threatened, it could not care about contaminating the environment and starting over.

I'm glad that even with a two minute trailer, Interstellar presented a story with a lot of potential, and something that can be nitpicked. I have high expectations for the movie. It's definitely (hopefully) not something like another superhero sequel.
 
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dbeachy1

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O-F Staff Note: let's take the global warming debate to the Basement, please, and stay on-topic in this thread. Thanks.
 

kamaz

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Just like BSG... However better than dead/extinct/ex-existing. The upside is that they wouldn't have to start from scratch (they would still have the knowledge and some tooling and equipment) and could probably get back to an industrial civilization in, say, 500 to 1000 years instead of 20'000.

But there is another overlooked problem with this -- you'd need to send a minimum of 1000 colonists (and probably more like 10000) to avoid rapid extinction due to genetic diseases caused by inbreeding.

I really don't see sending such number of people on short notice, unless you have a stargate and you can drive a train through it.

So I think that the entire premise of the movie is wrong.

I adore the tagline, though.
 
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O-F Staff Note: let's take the global warming debate to the Basement, please, and stay on-topic in this thread. Thanks.
Global warming should not be a controversial issue and it is potentially a significant part of the movie's story. The debate (which remains focused on the movie's plot) involving global warming has not been politicized, unless some unmentioned posts have been removed. Why should I have to take the discussion of global warming in the movie to the Basement while discussing an asteroid impact seems fine? Both are valid guesses of how Earth's climate in Interstellar changed.
 
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