Interstellar is fantasy, not science fiction

Rating: 5/10 (26 February 2015)

Although the visual effects are good, Interstellar (shouldn't it be "Intergalactic"?) is just too far-fetched. It's nothing like the believable film of human planetary migration that I was led to believe, and was hoping for. I've never been a fantasy fan. I majored in electrical-electronics engineering and physics in my 6 years of college, so I am a bit of a nerd and science stickler. When I view (or read) science fiction, to me the "fiction" should apply to the story, not to the science. In fantasy, the fiction applies to the science. Personally, I wish the film industry would make more realistic dramas about human space exploration. Hollywood's blockbuster profit machine abandons serious science fiction art, and, like Prometheus, made Interstellar into another action-packed CGI thriller crapper that caters to 13 to16 year-olds (the large demographic of movie going audience-$$$). And, of course, no sex, violence, horror, or language to get it an R rating.
Interstellar's story is quite crazy. In it we humans, in the very distant future, discover how to communicate backward in time somehow by using gravity. Also, we (or they?) discover how to create crazy things like wormholes anywhere in time and space. Both of these things are quite insane. Anyway, our future humans supposedly use their fantastic smarts to send us (present humans) subtle messages that help in our quest to migrate to another planet, because earth is presently dying. And here's a real clincher, apparently our future selves have a morbid sense of humor, because they don't send us clear-cut messages (like any sensible race would do), they make it a silly game by sending mysterious coded riddles that we have to first solve. Things like coded binary numbers sent by arranging the books on the shelves in a young girl's bedroom; the numbers turn out to be coordinates to a giant secret underground NASA spaceship factory located below cornfields. Another mystery message leads us to a wormhole near the planet Saturn that our future super humans have kindly created for us, and maintained there. This fantastic (and quite absurd) wormhole leads to a cluster of candidate earth-like planets in a distant galaxy. But our future relatives don't want to make the game too easy, so the next step requires us to build numerous spacecraft, fly to and thru the wormhole, and explore the candidate planets to find which one is the jackpot. While doing this our explorers encounter all kinds of treacherous and crazy things, like planets with mile-high waves in 18-inch deep water, entering and exiting a rotating black hole, mentally unstable astronauts, and surviving and navigating fantastic spacecraft thru enormous gravitation fields that cause relativistic time dilation leaving an astronaut younger than his daughter. Typical things that any astronaut would experience over a few years right.
I read that physicist Kip Thorne was a consultant for this film, and he said he tried to keep it as authentic as possible. Well, he really stretched authentic here. I agree with ASU physicist Lawrence Krauss. I don't think Thorne served physics well working with this film. Oh I don't argue with his gravitational lensing, or other more straight forward aspects like the time dilation and the rotating black hole "gargantua". But things like our future ancestors communicating backward in time via gravity, and creating wormholes? Or like Cooper entering into a singularity, reversing time, fidgeting with the past (multiverses?), and then exiting? I'm not sure what world Thorne is living in to call all that authentic. For example, take the wormhole (..please!). This hypothetical concept is a physics metaphor used in teaching general relativity. Many people may not know that there is absolutely no evidence or accepted scientific theory suggesting that wormholes actually exist in any form anywhere, or, even more fantastic, can be created and traversed by humans. In fact the inconceivable energy, matter, and forces alone involved with such a hypothetical warp would make it impossible for humans to "create" one. Black holes, on the other hand, are not only scientifically known to be possible, but are known to exist. Entering and exiting the event horizon of a rotating black hole is purely hypothetical, and is certainly not considered scientifically possible, partly because literally nothing is known about black hole singularity. Yet all these things are depicted in very silly fantasy in Interstellar. Also, I swore I saw a 2013 Dodge Ram pickup and a cute robot with artificial human intelligence in the movie. Fantasy. It appeals to the target child audience.
Not only the wacky science, but the excessive pace of Interstellar made for a poor film. There's no pausing to smell roses in this film. The fast pace hindered character development and made for shallow story development. Frankly, I can't remember being so happy to see a movie end. It became a struggle to watch. Also, a lot of McConaughey's speech seemed to be at whisper level bordering on mumble, which I found irritating. The background music was okay, but not great.
I consider the films Gravity, and my favorite, Alien (1979), much better. They aren't perfect realism, but at least they don't have ghosts from the future and manmade wormholes.
In closing, I must say that I truly do believe humanity will someday migrate from earth, but it will NEVER be anything like this movie depicts. How sure am I of this? If I'm wrong I hereby promise to pay each living human being in the universe a million dollars. Being able to afford that is more probable than the science in this film.