Spoiler alert: this breakdown divulges key information about the plot of the film.
For screenwriters, Interstellar is a study in convergence. In my opinion, setting up a story vortex is the single most important technique in popular screenwriting today (found in the Anatomy of Story Masterclass). With Interstellar we see both the potential and the challenge of this technique.
Convergence is a technique of plot. It occurs when the writer crosscuts between two or more main characters and storylines, at progressively greater speeds, leading to a single point in space and time where everything is resolved at once.
Why is this vortex so important in film? Unlike serial television, film is a one-time event. So theoretically we can get the most powerful dramatic impact in a movie by starting the vortex with the widest expanse in space and time and narrowing down to one point all in that 2-hour event (or, in the case of a film by Christopher and Jonathan Nolan, 2 hours 49 minutes).
Plot is the most misunderstood of all the major story skills, involving more techniques than all the other major story skills combined. One of the biggest misconceptions about plot is that it is a series of unrelated obstacles the hero must overcome. But this creates an episodic story that keeps hitting the same beat until the narrative drive simply stops. Plot is really the entire line of interconnected events, the superstructure or extension bridge that must span the full length of the story.
The Nolans are masters of plot. In fact they are so good at it that they are the only screenwriters in popular filmmaking today who consistently have too much plot in their films. Whether from hubris or from artistic challenge, the Nolans try to stretch the plot span as long as possible, with as many story threads as they can get away with. Beginning with The Dark Knight Rises, and continuing through Interstellar, their ambition has been inspiring, but their execution has been a bridge too far.
The problem when you create such a long suspension span is that you force the viewer to make huge leaps of logic, believability, motive force and emotion. For example, in The Dark Knight Rises, the plot is so vast and complex that it collapses from a lack of forward narrative drive. In Inception the plot outlasts the emotion, so the story becomes less involving as it proceeds.
Interstellar is their most ambitious plot yet. Both Interstellar and Inception set up a giant vortex in which all plot lines converge to a single point in space and time. In Inception, the hero and his team travel to three levels of the subconscious to fulfill the goal of planting an idea in someone’s mind. In Interstellar, the hero and his team travel to three worlds to fulfill the goal of finding a new place for humans to live.
But Interstellar has a stronger emotional kick at the end because of how the writers handle the vortex point. In Inception, the point at which all the plot lines converge happens when the van, packed with sleeping team members, hits the water. All three main action lines come to a stunning conclusion at this split-second in time. But that’s not the end of the movie. The hero still has to go into his deepest subconscious world to confront his nasty ex-wife and get back his kids whose faces we’ve never seen. So the emotional payoff just isn’t there.
With Interstellar, on the other hand, the Nolans create a massive vortex that weds plot to emotion, because the vortex point of the story comes at the moment the hero, Cooper, meets his long lost daughter, Murph, who is now much older than he. This father-daughter relationship has been set up from the beginning as the central relationship of the film, and it has been developed in painful detail throughout. So when the complex plotlines all come together at this communion, it’s an emotional knockout punch that leaves the audience in shock. And it’s followed immediately by the hero heading off to save the other female lead, Brand. That’s a helluva one-two punch.
Interstellar shows the tremendous payoff when a plot vortex is done properly. But it also shows us the flaws of the vortex technique, especially when writers make the suspension span this long and complex. For one thing, the story goes on for a good hour before any narrative drive kicks in, not to mention emotional involvement for the viewer. For another, there’s virtually no conflict in the first half of the film, which makes it pretty slow going.
The long and complex setup of the vortex also means that the plot holes are as big as the universe. Let me quickly say that criticism by some reviewers about the fallacy of the science in this movie is ridiculous, and totally irrelevant. The story involves wormholes, time travel, five dimensions and traveling through black holes. The science at this level is complete conjecture and is in the movie for fictional reasons only.
Science fiction is not a manual for successful space travel. It’s a story frame – indeed the biggest frame in all storytelling – designed in Interstellar to juxtapose all of humanity with the most intimate father-daughter relationship. All of the science fiction elements in the film are there to allow the writers to make extreme contrasts of character and theme, which are made possible and further intensified by the power of the film medium to crosscut (for all Science Fiction story beats, see the Horror-Fantasy-Science Fiction Class on CD).
But there is a big difference between physics theories and plot holes. The Nolans can throw all kinds of technical jargon at the audience at warp speed, which no one can begin to process in one viewing, in order to convince us that their movie is based on the latest science. It all feels very authentic. But it doesn’t matter.
What does matter is creating a set of rules that govern plausible cause and effect in this story. The farther you make us travel in space and time from the beginning of the story to the end, the more you have to justify, in an easily understandable way, how the hero gets to the convergent point. And that doesn’t happen here.
Some of the difficulty comes from the fact that this story is based on time travel, a technique which inevitably creates absurdities and plot holes. Time travel always involves a Mobius strip of causation whereby anyone who went back in time to change something that will happen in the future would have been so affected by the change in the future that he couldn’t have gone back in time in the first place. So it goes ad infinitum into nothingness.
Those time travel anomalies can be forgiven here, as they must be if you are going to watch science fiction at all. But there are basic questions about the hero’s movements in the plot that seem the height of contrivance. In other words, they are there because the writers have to get the hero to a certain place at a certain time, and that should never be obvious to the viewer.
For example, how do the surviving humans find the hero when he emerges from the black hole, conveniently just before his oxygen runs out? How does he travel through the black hole and show up in his home library, but on the other side? And how does he show up in the library simultaneously in two different time periods when his daughter is standing there? How does incredibly complex data involving relativity and quantum mechanics, which Murph will use to save mankind, get translated into Morse code? I could go on, but you get the point.
In a plot heavy movie like this, the last thing you want is for the mechanisms of the plot machine to show. That just takes away from the beauty of the grand design, which is really quite amazing here.
With the Nolan brothers you have a rare example of writers who not only know the craft of popular storytelling, they also push the limits of the art form. That’s why they have so much to teach us, especially in the area of plot. Of all the elements that went into the success of Interstellar, the one most important for screenwriters to study is the vortex. If you can apply this technique to your stories, your chances of success will go up tremendously.
I absolutely ADORE science fiction when it’s done well. And the issue with time travel in INTERSTELLAR is NOT a SF trick or anything else. It’s fundamental physics (Physics major in college. Duh.) As has been discussed in the science media, the Nolans hired an extremely competent physicist to consult on the wormholes, etc. and in the process of figuring out implications of the idea for the movie, the physicist actually made significant physics breakthroughs. There’s nothing wrong with the science in the movie. It’s the best we know right now.
HOWEVER, with that said, I totally agree that the Nolans have huge plot holes in their story. I found INTERSTELLAR at least an hour too long and not nearly as well done as many other viewers, but for reasons that have nothing to with the quality of the science or the coincidence at the end. (I prefer to believe there’s something like a transponder beeping in the pod that could be tracked once it’s back near Saturn.)
The biggest problem is the rationale for the entire voyage to the three worlds. Here’s the problem. It takes a vast amount of time and energy for the crew to get to the wormhole out by Saturn, go through the wormhole, find the 3 worlds, explore them, and so on. You have on the order of at least millions of people who need to be saved. How are they planning to get that many people through the wormhole to the new world, even if it’s a perfect Eden? There is NO WAY resources should have been wasted on doing the interstellar exploration at that moment.
Instead, focus on what in the movie was Plan B…get as many people to safety around Saturn as possible–even if you know it’s only temporary, temporary still being on the order of many decades or even centuries. Once there, THEN you go looking for a new world for a permanent home. Reversing the order of those two plans allows for more careful and more reasonably equipped expeditions–and removes much of the urgency of getting back in X years.
Once our hero was retrieved, it was clear that they were indeed looking for a new home from their base on Saturn. Except now you have everyone in space, outside the gravity well of Earth, where it’s much easier to figure out ways to shuttle folks from the Saturn station to the new home once you find it.
IOW, in addition to the long, slow–unbearably show–build up of the plot, the fundamental flaw in this promising story was the basic premise. Sending a crew of six people to explore interstellar worlds to “save humanity” was ridiculous. Those people (and all the resources used to send them to another star) could have and should have been part of the effort to move humanity to a new safer location around Saturn.
There are other huge, stupid, and idiotic flaws in logic of the movie. Once they get near the 3 worlds orbiting a black hole, WHY DO THEY CHOOSE TO EXPLORE THE ONES ON THE CUSP OF THE EVENT HORIZON FIRST? That’s just idiocy. The longevity of those worlds could well be on the order of a few decades, or maybe a century or two–certainly not millennia. They almost certainly can never be a permanent home for humanity. Sooner or later they almost certainly will be sucked into that black hole, not to mention the unknown gravitational impacts of being that close to a huge gravity well. Once you fall into that gravity well it’d be next to impossible for humanity to escape again. Especially if the surface conditions are far from ideal. Those planets should have been crossed off the list immediately as unsuitable.
The planet where Brand ended up was, of course, the farthest away from the black hole. All logic dictates that should be the FIRST to be explored, not the last. (And most likely the ONLY one to be explored.)
Another issue: Why didn’t they have something equivalent to satellite monitors they could put in place around the planet to monitor surface conditions FIRST before physically landing? Or even small drone planes they could drop into the atmosphere and remotely control to scope out the location first? A whole lot of grief and anxiety could have been avoided with a simple weather satellite or a drone observer.
For that matter: Why did they set up manned outposts there in the first place? Send a guy out there, have him set up a satellite monitoring weather and other surface conditions (including having a toxic atmosphere). Give him some drones and some high-resolution cameras to actually see what’s down there. But the guy stays safely in orbit until and unless long-term observations indicate that it’s reasonably likely he won’t be killed immediately. Meanwhile all that monitoring data continues to send back information FROM ORBIT. Two of the three planets (toxic atmosphere, gigantic waves) should never have had a single person land on their surface ever.
Another issue: Why didn’t anyone notice that one of the three planets was sending exactly the same signals over and over again in an endless loop? Weren’t they paying attention? For that matter, why didn’t that data include biometric information on the explorer on the planet to assure them that he was still alive and kicking? Astronauts are routinely monitored for heartbeat, breathing, etc. Shouldn’t that kind of data be included in their status updates from the surface of those three worlds?
So..my issues with INTERSTELLAR are fundamental logic problems with the plot. Vortex story structure or not, this story never did hold water because the logic flaws are way too extreme. I had all these questions occur to me while I was watching the movie, which totally destroyed it for me. Nice special effects. Nice to see some cool physics. But the logic of the story was ridiculous.
Hi there,
Just read your arguments…
Movies are not for real and rational and logic. They are to maje people dream, think, laugh and cry.
Once you are too analytic and intelligent, you loose that dimension.
John says a scene must not be real it must seem real even it is impossible. Once you are too rational or competent, you cannot access the necessary innocence we need to see movies with the eyes of a child.
Regards and respect from Brussels !
Thanks for comments on vortices. I use them in my own writing, and thought Interstellar was another fantastic example.
To your last points;
“How does incredibly complex data involving relativity and quantum mechanics, which Murph will use to save mankind, get translated into Morse code?” Dots/dashes, ones and zeros, converting to binary would be straightforward, would just take a long time. 🙂
“…how do the surviving humans find the hero when he emerges from the black hole, conveniently just before his oxygen runs out? How does he travel through the black hole and show up in his home library, but on the other side? And how does he show up in the library simultaneously in two different time periods when his daughter is standing there?”
Either because whatever entity is out there is able to manipulate time on his behalf, or the surviving humans don’t find him, and he doesn’t actually get to reconcile with his daughter: it’s all a death dream as clunkily set up by Dr Mann: “at the moment of death, you dream about your children.”
Either way, thoroughly engrossing! Happy Thanksgiving!
Personally, I loved Interstellar. People are slating it for the obvious plot holes that Mr. Truby has highlighted, but if you are going to fail, then at least fail at attempting a vortex of this magnitude.
I see basic linear stories fail all the time, when they shouldn’t. I’m willing to suspend my belief for a structure so grand.
People refer to the science, wormholes, even if the Nolans could justify more screentime to explain the book shelf, coming out of a wormhole, etc, they still would have been slated for the science, or lack thereof.
The lack of narrative drive doesn’t really bother me, because Matthew MCconaughey’s character was lost on earth, the purposeless hero effect — similar to Stallone’s classic movie, Rocky — and has to travel into space to find himself. When writing character, the biggest mistake is writing where you are, or where you are from. Where you should be writing from is the context of the character’s thoughts, feelings, which Mr. Truby refers to as Ghost and Context. MCconaughey’s character was dying like his crops, I totally got the symbolism.
And as for the bookshelf scene, the 2nd law of thermal dynamics states energy cannot be destroyed only converted, so MCconaughey’s character, once created could not be destroyed, only transformed, because energy/light is a constant, thus being able to go back and see himself.
Being slightly educated in science, I see what the Nolans were trying to communicate, and felt that for the amount of screentime involved, this side of the science should have been explained, but probably would have been slaughtered for using to much exposition; you can’t win.
I’m glad that writers are really pushing the envelope, as TV is winning the war with writing; it’s where it’s all heading, too. Especially with the emergence of Netflix, etc. I am a screenplay writer, and will not work in another medium. There’s something magical when the lights dim inside a cinema. But for all you beginners out there, that is the easiest place to break into nowadays. More TV channels than ever need filling with content.
I do have a background in stydniug literature but I am, nonetheless, spoiler-phobic. Still, I do love re-reading, so it’s not as though I think the plot is the only element of a book to be valued. There are so many elements of a work that one misses on the first reading (later readings, too). But I want to read the book for the first time as I imagine that the writer wanted me to meet it. So if the author tells me on the first page who-dunnit, then I’m fine with that, but if they wanted me to guess until the last page, then I want to read it that way. While I understand some of the points that the article raises, it doesn’t shake my stubborn spoiler-phobia.
Fantastic analysis as always, JT. I agree that some contrivances in sci-fi are forgivable (for example, Terminator’s similar mobius strip), but I disagree that they all are. A pivotal space-time rule introduced as late as the convergence point is one I can’t forgive. I’m yet to read anything that convinces me the 5d tesseract wasn’t a deus ex machina – a contrivance not in the sense that a helpful god intervened, but in the sense that there was no way I could have anticipated a fictional, paradoxical rule. And so, in anticipating the identity of the bookcase ghost, who could have possibly created an unbroken chain of logic to explain? Sure you could blindly guess it was the father, but if it can’t be properly anticipated, it’s unsatisfactory. That said, I thought Interstellar was quite a remarkable feat of filmmaking.
Great post, John. Like you, my enjoyment of Interstellar superseded matters of science. In my case, I was compelled instead by Cooper’s revelation that the advanced species trying to communicate with Murphy is actually “us”—humans who traveled into space, mastered the quantum physics of interstellar existence and are reaching back with answers that will save humans still struggling to survive on earth. In this case, of course, that person was Cooper himself.
His revelation—that the “they” operating in future space is “us”–spoke so beautifully to the vast potential in each of us. In that way, the idealized future person we each think of ourselves eventually becoming is alive in each of us now. That wasn’t the key vortex you explained in your analysis. It both charmed and captivated me, however, far after the film credits concluded.
Your plot and vortex lessons are compelling, too. (Thank you!) In all science fiction plots, however, I enjoy discovering a non-science truism that, for some reason, seems enhanced even more by the science fiction backdrop. For that and other reasons, I was thrilled to find your analysis of Interstellar in my email inbox on Thanksgiving Day. What a treat. Your insight(and those of others posting here today) offered much food for thought—but also allowed me to reflect on what I loved so much about the Nolan brothers’ wonderful film. Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for sharing your expertise, especially on films like Interstellar. As a writer and author, it is an honor to learn from you.
Agree with John´s analysis. I really loved his arguing that SF-scripts don´t have to be manuals for space travel. Sorry John, but I will steal this line from you for future occasions!
As the Nolans just took some of the easier to understand parts of Stephen Hawking´s writings, mingled them into their narrative black hole and off you go Little Kubrick.
My Problem – again, as with all major Hollywood films nowadays – is that we are dealing with a computer game here, not with a movie. It´s the quest for a simple tangible Goal through many different levels (=worlds = planets) to justify the use of a heavy handed state-of-the-art CGI overload. The whole thing is glued together with the narrative alibi of a “saving your family, i.e. mankind”-plot rudiment. It´s like popcorn: you munch it, you crave for more, it tastes ok for quite a while, but in the end it leaves you numbed, with an indigestible clump inside.
Why?
I think good movies are not about modern quantum physics. Or any scientific achievement at all, for that matter.
I propose that good movies are basically good psychotherapy. As all good storytelling. It is a statement about the human condition, showing us a way to live (or to not live) exemplified by a
specific case of problem-solving with a lesson attached. If we accept the main characters flaws as ours, and if we are willing to follow him (i.e. us) on his journey to get his inner demons out, or to straighten things out on an internal level, then we will be rewarded with human insights and
that will help us deal with our own inner Problems. In short: good movies give us hope.
Maybe I sound like a sunday teacher, but I´d really love to live to see just one movie again that serves this purpose. “CGI pour CGI” sucks, just as l´art pour l´art.
The only difference between the Nolans´ films and other CGI-Blockbusters is: the Nolans have managed to sell themselves as intellectuals. That´s their biggest achievement in my view. They can turn any lousy story into a film “to talk about” or even “to think about”, just because they made it. I think, the only thing “Interstellar” proves is that “Gravity” was a far better film with less fake emotion and less smart-assery.
INTERSTELLAR, 2014.
After reading the text and opinions I think that this film is half a realistic film and half a fiction pure film. Kind of half-breed?
It is half Sci-Fi entertaining and half very personal film, ergo, art and intellectual film.
So, I think that it may get half the box office of successful sci-fi entertaining film and half the box office for a very personal, art, intellectual film.
It may be neither hit nor a failure but both. Meaning will be neither a success in commercial film nor art film but both in the sense that many people will watch it and will not be satisfied, perhaps.
This film is not really defined, so the initial hype followed by controversy.
I am no intellectual, I do not have studies, and I am a fan of Hollywood films in general. But I find it hard to like “any” of the Nolans’ films. I mean, REALLY, Really, really! like them. I like his visuals basically, so I just follow them and if I don’t get the film I don’t care.
I am sorry to say so, I have wanted to like the two Dark Knight films, I am a fan of the Batman comics. I enjoyed the previous ones by Tim Burton. Perhaps my tastes are just simpler what can I do, I like commercial film over art and very personal film. I find them boring I have tried with no avail.
I don’t like realism or realistic fiction in movies. I find those films highly boring and when long, my back aches, I begin thinking on what I am going to do next, when I leave the theater.
It happened to me with Interstellar. I liked the visuals basically. I didn’t like the family story and trauma of abandonment of kid, In fact, I couldn’t believe it.
I think many of those subjects, because I think this film deals with many subjects, belong into books and documentaries, not in Hollywood commercial films, though Interstellar is making money, I think is also very slow and very long.
If us, the members that conform the big audience can suspend disbelief once, the Nolan films asks us for twice or thrice.
Just think at his previous bore, Memento. I saw it as a disciplined movie fan, but I didn’t enjoy it. Actually felt it was boring.
In the Dark Knight films I couldn’t stand them with that realism which was VIOLENCE not Action Film. I think people in general want Action film, not violent films per se.
I guess that if there is no other choice in the Multiplex people watches the Dark Knight because also, there are many millions of fans like me of the Batman that would like to find fun in those films though we couldn’t find it there.
Actually as an astronaut I would find banal that a kid does not allow Daddy to go and save the world as an astronaut and feel pissed off because he left behind the world that was becoming rapidly dystopian and dying. And on the eve of total destruction and then that after twenty three years would have been totally and completely destroyed . . .
So there were two lines to concentrate. One universal, the world in destruction. After 23 years that last the astronaut’s voyage the world to me would have been finished. Finite.
And the one local, very local and very personal with the egotist kid, that wouldn’t like his father to leave and keep angry after all those years when the world would be already destroyed.
My prediction is that this film can make half the money of those very personal films that become local and cannot travel and are really poor or flop at the box office; and half the money of those sci-fi films that may become hits. This because the film is half and half.
This film is also half realistic film and half fiction pure film, a risk for producers.
So, making only 462 million, after twenty days, it is going to be a slacker.
eduardo velazquez
All due respect John, but I disagree with your dismissal of the “science” in Interstellar. In a fantasy, such as “Back To The Future”, science can be disregarded, so we can sit back and simply enjoy the ride. (“Roads!? Who needs roads!!” and he rides into the sunset in his flying train!) For that matter Star Wars wasn’t sci-fi so much as fantasy – the only “science” was hyper drive, various ray guns, and some cars without wheels. But it was fantasy, so who cared?
But this is a “serious” movie. The science was intended to be understood as “real”. And today’s audiences are apt to know that nothing, absolutely nothing escapes the event horizon of a black hole, including light. Yet these guys were talking about bouncing along the event horizon like skipping a stone across a lake!
Also, why exactly is earth doomed? Drought? No rain? So what were they using to grow corn? And why weren’t all the remaining scientists working day and night to end the drought? Desalinization of ocean water for instance. (Of course, it’s possible that the government, now firmly controlled by TeaParty/christian fanatics refused to fund the research
because this was the Will of God, but that’s another movie. Sigh.)
Also again, there was both a black hole and a wormhole! Don’t you think that was piling it on just a little? And if the wormhole was created by future humans, (a biiiiiiiig job, I would think) wouldn’t it have been a whole lot easier to just give us the blueprints for the machinery so we could end the drought??
So, sorry, but the science was so absurd, that once you remove the spectacle the movie is essentially empty for me.
And Murph grows up to be a scientist and still can’t forgive her father for going on the mission? Really? Well, you know women. Not capable of logic, only emotions.
I was awed by the devotion the Nolan Bros. have to exposition that relates to nothing but itself.
What is this film really saying? Once we ruin this planet, we find another one and start the whole process all over again? Hmm, there’s got to be something more profound going on here.
Okay, maybe the film is saying that it’s okay to lie to your daughter, send her on a bogus mission, and sacrifice her life for the good of humanity? Hmm, that doesn’t sound right.
I do recall a speech or two (or three) about the power of love and how it means – something important.
But wait a minute. After all those years missing each other, crying over each other, trying to make contact with each other, didn’t Murph finally did tell her old (young) man to beat it so she could die in peace with her loved ones by her bedside. Hmm, that certainly says something about the power of love.
Well, at the end of the day, it’s a time travel thing so I don’t have to worry about logic, believability, and honest emotion playing out from beginning to end. The special effects alone should make the trip to outer space and back worth three hours of a life; hours one can never can back unless he or she finds one of those worm hole thingies.
Story convergence saved this movie for me. I completely agree with John that this film is the most ambitious plot by the Nolans yet. Logically I had almost no clue what was going on. I kept wanting to accept how the story vortex was leading me but my logic was tested. Matthew McConaughey as an astronaut in the blackhole should have imploded and died from gravitational pull instead he appears inside a book shelf back on Earth, an esoteric sub world that worked somewhat as he had his revelation that connected us to the ghost in the book shelf. I would have preferred a different story path, him dying and going on with the other plot of new colonization. The Nolans vision of time and space wasn’t much different then showing me a lot of white light and pretty pictures. Truby talks about this challenge in visionary stories. The Story convergence was so well done I forgave the time travel anomalies and get sucked into the emotional ending. Plot vortex was always my weakness, so I will watch this film again and applaud the Nolans for their great work. Logically this movie made no sense.