Movie fans spot disturbing detail about Interstellar amid film’s re-release

Fans of the mind-bending sci-fi blockbuster ‘Interstellar’ have noticed a poignant detail since the film enjoyed a limited re-release timed to its 10th anniversary.

Christopher Nolan‘s space epic – which stars Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway as astronauts on a mission to save Earth – has received additional fan attention during its return to theaters on special 70mm IMAX film in December.

In a crucial plot point, the astronauts embark on a risky journey to a distant watery exoplanet called Miller’s planet, where just an hour on the surface is equivalent to seven years passing on Earth.

As they carry out their mission to find a new home for humanity, their loved ones on a dystopian Earth, ravaged by blight and crop failures, age rapidly.

Just three hours and seventeen minutes on Miller’s planet, which experiences this “time dilation” due to its proximity to a supermassive black hole, extends to a whopping 23 years back home.

In a tear-jerking scene, McConaughey’s character watches his children grow up via video messages sent to the team’s distant ship, many light years away.

Now, fans have discovered from back-of-the-envelope calculations that only an hour and 25 minutes would have passed on Miller’s planet since the film was released in 2014.

“That’s so crazy,” one fan said of the discovery on Reddit. “The whole story of Miller’s planet is so gruesome and terrifying.”

When it was released a decade ago, Interstellar – starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway (above) – was praised for its scientific accuracy in astrophysics. Some said it could help students better understand Einstein’s theory of general relativity

‘The sky-high waves. The time dilation. That planet was never meant for humans,” the Redditer continued in their post to the r/Interstellar subreddit. ‘Terrifying.’

Overall, Nolan is thrilled with the continued attention to these scientific details that moviegoers and science fiction buffs alike continue to pay to his now decade-old film.

With a small re-release that hit just 166 screens in the US and Canada, the 10th anniversary event exceeded expectations by raking in $4.5 million and selling out the overtly non-digital 70mm IMAX film presentations in minutes .

“I was so happy with the response,” Nolan said. ‘It’s really exciting when people respond to your work at some point.’

“But ten years later, to get new audiences to experience it in the way we originally intended on the big IMAX screens and in particular on those IMAX film prints?” he told the Associated Press. ‘It’s really worth it.’

According to Nolan, he has received a lot of positive feedback from the general public since ‘Interstellar’ first debuted in 2014, with many asking for a re-release – due to their own nostalgia for experiences lost to the ravages of time.

“A lot of these people were younger people,” Nolan said, “who, clearly to me, had seen the movie at home and hadn’t had the chance to see it on the big screen.”

But while some fans may feel disturbed or emotionally moved by the heady concepts of spacetime and human experiences explored in the film, others are mostly having fun playing with theories about the structure of our universe.

The 2014 blockbuster used precise math and computer simulations to depict a giant black hole and wormhole tunneling through the fabric of spacetime (still image above)

“There’s no way people on Miller’s planet even watched Interstellar’s 2:49 [hour:minute] runtime,” one user Reddit joked.

Another Redditer suggested that July 14, 2034 should be a special “Interstellar Fan Holiday” because “enough time will have passed (since the film’s release) to watch Interstellar in its entirety on Miller’s Planet!”

While NASA astrobiologist David Grinspoon once criticized the film for the agricultural mechanics of its global plague plot, many physicists have praised the film’s detailed and faithful attempt to depict phenomena like black holes and wormholes—and to accurately tell a story about these celestial bodies. studied properties.

Interstellar’s visual effects team even contributed an article for the American Journal of Physicswhich explains the work that went into the computer modeling and animation of the wormhole seen in the film.

“As we wrote this article, we became increasingly excited about the educational opportunities our Interstellar experience offered,” they confessed.

‘The tools we used to build, explore and investigate Interstellar’s wormhole – at least the ones discussed in this article – should be easily accessible [understandable] to fourth-year students studying relativity, but also to PhD students.’