The time travel featured in Christopher Nolan’sInterstellarwas much less confusing compared to a more recent film by the director. Nolan has earned the reputation as a director who makes ambitious, oftentimes complicated movies, andInterstellarremains one of his boldest cinematic outings. InInterstellar, Earth is suffering from a blight that will make the planet uninhabitable. Therefore, former NASA pilot Joseph Cooper is sent on a mission across the galaxy to find a habitable planet that humankind can move to.
Theending ofInterstellarintroduces an element of time travel. Time travel always naturally complicates a story, butInterstellarexplains the concept of time dilation quite well. Six years afterInterstellar’srelease, Nolan’s 2020 movieTenetalso dealt with time travel. Compared toInterstellar, howcharacters inTenettravel back in time is much more confusing. This led to many moviegoers completely being lost about what actually happened in the movie by theend ofTenet, making it a less satisfying high-concept story thanInterstellar.
Most Of Interstellar’s Time Travel Is Relatively Factual And Sticks To Real-World Science
Interstellar Explores The Concept Of Time Dilation
InInterstellar, three astronauts were sent to different planets that NASA believed may potentially be able to sustain human life. The first planet Cooper and his team arrive at is Miller’s planet, which is very close to a supermassive black hole, Gargantua. It is on this planet that thecharacters inInterstellarexperience time dilation. The science ofInterstellaris based on the works of Albert Einstein, who believed that time is directly influenced by gravity. Therefore,since Miller’s planet is so close to the strong gravitational field of Gargantua, time moves significantly slower on the planet compared to Earth.
Cooper and his crew were on Miller’s planet for roughly three hours and seven minutes, which means that 23 years, four months, and eight days went by on Earth.
InInterstellar,for every hour that Cooper and his crew spend on Miller’s planet, seven years pass on Earth. Cooper and his crew were on Miller’s planet for roughly three hours and 17 minutes, which means that 23 years, four months, and eight days went by on Earth. Technically time traveling into the future because of time dilation had a profound effect on Cooper, since his children, whom he left to embark on the mission, were fully grown adults by the time he got off Miller’s planet.
Interstellar’s Ending Is Where The Movie Truly Becomes Science Fiction (But It Still Works)
Fifth-Dimensional Humans From The Future Ensured Humanity’s Survival In Interstellar
The majority ofInterstellaris a linear story, but because of the time dilation Cooper experienced on Miller’s planet, the ending of the film gets slightly confusing. At the end ofInterstellar, Cooper is pulled into The Tesseract, which was built by humans from the future with knowledge of fifth-dimensional physics.The fifth-dimensional humans, who can observe the past, present, and future, built The Tesseract so that Cooper could communicate with his daughter, who is also trying to figure out a way to save humankind.
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While the concept of fifth-dimensional humans is somewhat complicated, the time dilation that Cooper experienced on Miller’s planet easily explains how he is able to communicate with his adult daughter.The information that Cooper is able to provide Murphy with during the climax ofInterstellardramatically advances humanity’s understanding of space and time, and ultimately ends up saving the species.
Interstellar’s Time Travel Was A Lot More Straightforward Than Tenet’s
Characters In Tent Travel To The Past
While there are still some very complicated subjects tackled inInterstellar, the high-stakes of spending too much time on Miller’s planet was effectively communicated to the audience, and makes for one of the most nerve-racking sequences in the film. While Cooper technically traveled into the future inInterstellar,characters inTenettravel into the past. InTenet’sstory, a scientist from the future invented a machine called the turnstile which inverts the entropy of anything or anyone placed inside it.
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Characters inTenetcan move backwards through time, rather than forwards, using the turnstile. However,while characters inTenetare moving backwards through the past, everything around them is still moving forwards, which makes several sequences in the film very disorienting and hard to follow along with. Thetime travel featured inTenetis based on a hypothesis in theoretical physics by Richard Feynman and John Wheeler, but it is not explained nearly as well as time dilation inInterstellar. Therefore, the time travel inInterstellaris much easier to understand thanTenet.
Interstellar
Cast
From Christopher Nolan, Interstellar imagines a future where the Earth is plagued by a life-threatening famine, and a small team of astronauts is sent out to find a new prospective home among the stars. Despite putting the mission first, Coop (Matthew McConaughey) races against time to return home to his family even as they work to save mankind back on Earth.
Tenet
Armed with only one word—Tenet—and fighting for the survival of the entire world, a nameless Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time.
