Interstellar (2014)

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Khane

Got something right about marriage
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Finally watched this movie on Saturday night. Pretty great flick.
 

LachiusTZ

Rogue Deathwalker Box
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I thought the previews were better than the movie. Was not complete shit, but far from something I'd be ok paying for.
 

Attog

Blackwing Lair Raider
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Like most of Nolan's stuff, I found some amazing parts sprinkled in there but overall it felt padded. I think with tighter editing or someone to reign in some of the crazier ideas, this could have been one of the greatest "hard" scifi movies ever made.
 

Krozman

N00b
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Watched it with the wife, and she fully threw her hands in the air and gave up soon as the black hole thing came up. She's not really into movies that go all Deus Ex Machina on her.
 

Homsar

Silver Baronet of the Realm
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Then you guys don't know what dues ex machina means
That is exactly dues ex machina, execs pushed for a happy ending and had them change the original script thus creating the black hole that saves hiim and the human race
 

Sylas

<Gold Donor>
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That is exactly dues ex machina, execs pushed for a happy ending and had them change the original script thus creating the black hole that saves hiim and the human race
yeah no.

Originally script was a masterpiece of scifi but it still features tars and rusty falling through awormholethat's trapped in the orbit of the supermassive blackhole and ending up outside of the universe in a tesseract of extradimensional space. They still send the data back to earth via a nasa probe which is the thing that rusty found in the very beginning of the movie that started everything. He doesn't morse code up a watch in the tesseract, his daughter (and her children, etc) work on the device he created in his barn using that data from the probe before he ever left earth, and eventually like his great grandson figures out the gravity problem and uses it evacuate all life off of earth. then like decades after that when humanity is a space fairing race of nomads colonizing other worlds living in space stations and shit, rusty falls out of the otherside of the original wormhole near saturnin a spaceshipflies to earth to keep his promise, finds it desolate, accidently releases alien life that thrives in the frozen wastes of earth, and is then rescued by space rangers from their base Cooper station (named after him) which was right next to and monitoring the wormhole doing science and shit and saw him come through it. He gets to meet his great grandson who is the really old person dying in the hospital, but since he's never met this person and hasn't made some impossible vow to return to meet him or anything, it's like an "oh cool, this is neat you are the guy my grandma used to talk about all the time. well i'mma go die now, I kinda wanna be with my family if you don't mind" and coop takes off to go find brand.

like most ppls complaints about the film were created by the changes made from the script, which featured none of those problems. but the entire premise of the film is interstellar travel via wormholes so not sure how you can call that deus ex machina when interstellar travel through wormholes happens.
 

Ambiturner

Ssraeszha Raider
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That is exactly dues ex machina, execs pushed for a happy ending and had them change the original script thus creating the black hole that saves hiim and the human race
Someone else that doesn't know what the phrase means.
 

Krozman

N00b
99
-2
From Urban Dictionary.

Deus Ex Machina

Dates from ancient Greek times, where "deus ex machina" ("god from the machine") in a play referred to the act of lowering a god on stage using a cable device (therefore, a god from a machine) to decide in a dilemma and give fate a nudge, so to say.

These days, deus ex machina has the negative connotation of an utterly improbable, illogical or baseless plot twist that drastically alters the situation, as if the "deus ex machina" came down to give fate that little push.


If you're going to be a dick and say we don't know what we're talking about, show us your infallible definition then.
 

Sylas

<Gold Donor>
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If the entire first act of the movie hadn't occurred and you never had any of the ghost story shit during the earth scenes or rusty reaching out and high 5ing himself while they were traveling and, just out of fucking nowhere he ends up in the tesseract and saves everyone with no build up or foreshadowing at all, that would be Deus Ex Machina. So yes if your wife slept through the first hour of the film then from her perspective that would be an accurate statement. It would totally be wrong of course.

A good example of Deus Ex Machina is the Eagles from the lord of the rings, every fucking time they appear. Or when Gandalf dies by falling in the pit in the first movie and it is quite literally retconned out (yeah yeah book, it's still bullshit) with some overly illogical fight scene with a balrog in which he still dies and goes to heaven but is then sent back to earth and shit.
 

eVasiege_sl

shitlord
359
1
The science of Interstellar with Christopher Nolan is up on Star Talk Radio as of Saturday. Haven't listened to it yet, but will soon.
 

Krozman

N00b
99
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If the entire first act of the movie hadn't occurred and you never had any of the ghost story shit during the earth scenes or rusty reaching out and high 5ing himself while they were traveling and, just out of fucking nowhere he ends up in the tesseract and saves everyone with no build up or foreshadowing at all, that would be Deus Ex Machina. So yes if your wife slept through the first hour of the film then from her perspective that would be an accurate statement. It would totally be wrong of course.
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Foreshadowing to a Deus Ex Machina doesn't mean it's not a Deus Ex Machina. Lest you forget, the ONLY reason he entered the black hole (that eventually saved the human race) was because Matt Damon was a butthole, caused a boom, and the resulting recovery caught them in the gravitational pull of the black hole. A sacrifice had to be made, and Dr. Brand was "saved" knowing that TARS and McLucky would be doomed to the darkness of the black hole. THEN, if that's not stupid enough, the ship is nearly torn to pieces and he ejects and LIVES. Not only that, TARS lives without any explanation over how he wasn't torn apart so he could transfer metadata for transmission to Earth 90 years or so prior to any of these events occurring. not only that, but the only reason why there was a connection between dad and daughter was through the power of love, and somehow that coincidence allowed future humans that never should have existed in the first place to allow a communication to the only person alive that could save them through math and stuff.

The movie does give you clues explaining that dad was the ghost. That doesn't mean anything when talking Deus Ex Machina. This entire movie could have been (1) go through wormhole, (2) accelerate into the black hole. (3) save the world, without any need for any of the plot between wormhole and black hole. Half of the entire movie is completely irrelevant because all that was required was entry into black hole so paradox could save us.
 

Cad

scientia potentia est
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What the fuck kind of space shuttles have ejection seats anyway. Where the fuck are you going to eject to?
 

Jive Turkey

Karen
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THEN, if that's not stupid enough, the ship is nearly torn to pieces and he ejects and LIVES. Not only that, TARS lives without any explanation over how he wasn't torn apart so he could transfer metadata for transmission to Earth 90 years or so prior to any of these events occurring.
Not that I don't agree with you on many of the problems of the third act, but this seems like a silly thing to complain about. It's not like Nolan was stuck with the problem of a spaceship being torn apart and had to resort to Rust ejecting to avoid the issue. The turbulence was included by Nolan himself to add suspense. You're treating it like some great inconsistency the writers couldn't overcome. They could have just as easily made it a smooth ride. Besides, I'm not 100% sure on the math, but the larger an object, the greater the gravitational difference on either side of the object and the greater chance it has of being adversely affected by those differences. It's the same principle that causes the oceans to bulge in relation to the moon, but not our heads. That said, the ratio of sizes between Rust and the Ship in relation to the supermassive black hole are miniscule, so it's probably not an issue. Either way, it could have be easily written away if they wanted to
 

Krozman

N00b
99
-2
Not that I don't agree with you on many of the problems of the third act, but this seems like a silly thing to complain about.
I'm not complaining. I'm pointing out the obviousness that the series of ridiculous events that somehow resulted humanity being saved is, by definition, a Deus Ex Machina.
 

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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I'm not complaining. I'm pointing out the obviousness that the series of ridiculous events that somehow resulted humanity being saved is, by definition, a Deus Ex Machina.
No, because IMO: If a fiction sets up the hand of God, then it's not a Deus Ex Machina.

Deus ex machina (Latin: ['de?s ?ks 'ma?.k??.na?]: /'de?.?s ?ks 'm??ki?n?/ or /'di??s ?ks 'm?k?n?/;[1] plural: dei ex machina) is a calque from Greek ??? ??????? ???? (ap? mekhan?s the?s), meaning "god from the machine".[2] The term has evolved to mean a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved by the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability or object.
Given that the entire movie sets up these "others" who are giving a nudge to humanity to help them get off Earth, it's not unexpected or contrived. Plus the entire movie builds up the idea of 'what happens inside this black hole? nobody knows!'

And the idea that their humans isn't too surprising. I actually predicted it when they were headed to Saturn.

As for all the other complaints about the plausibility of it, once you build some 5th dimension tesseract to creep out on some ginger, you can pretty much do anything.