The Story Punk Podcast

Episode 055: This week on Story Punk, we continue our recent Christopher Nolan streak by going back to his 2014 science-fiction epic starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, and John Lithgow.

Earth is slowly becoming uninhabitable, humanity is running out of options, and former NASA pilot Cooper is asked to leave his family behind and travel through a wormhole in search of a new home for the human race. Simple enough, except every decision comes with a cost, and sometimes that cost is measured in decades.

We get into all the big themes people associate with Interstellar, including love, family, sacrifice, survival, and our desperate need to keep exploring. But the idea that hit us hardest was time as the movie’s real antagonist. Planets can be escaped. Problems can be solved. Even black holes can apparently be negotiated with. But every minute Cooper spends trying to save humanity is time he can never get back with his children.

We also talk about why the movie’s emotional sincerity works for us. Nolan has sometimes been accused of making cold or overly cerebral movies, but Interstellar puts its heart right on the table. From Cooper watching twenty-three years of messages from home to Murph realizing who her “ghost” really was, the movie keeps bringing enormous science-fiction ideas back to something painfully human: a parent trying to find a way back to his kids.

Along the way, we dig into the terrifying water planet, the science behind the black hole, NASA hiding underground, a surprisingly prophetic parent-teacher conference, Matt Damon showing up when you least expect him, the wonderfully strange design and personality of TARS, Jessica Chastain’s performance, and an ending that gets extremely complicated without completely losing us.

And then there’s Hans Zimmer’s score, which may be doing almost as much heavy lifting as gravity itself. We talk about the organ-driven music, the film’s cathedral-like sound, and the absolutely relentless docking sequence that turned a late-night viewing into a “well, I guess I’m not going to bed now” situation.

Plus: Team America’s Matt Damon, Ernest Borgnine, fake moon landings, corn as humanity’s final meal, emotionally manipulative movies doing exactly what movies are supposed to do, robots with adjustable humor settings, Christopher Nolan’s obsession with doing things practically, and why sometimes continuity matters less than making the audience feel something.

For one of us, Interstellar was an overdue first trip through the wormhole. For the other, it was another chance to revisit a movie he wishes he could somehow experience for the first time again.

Turns out this one was worth the wait.

Listen now to Story Punk, where story matters.