Interstellar from director Christopher Nolan is a pretty dark film. Opening on a dystopian near-future, Interstellar depicts humanity’s last chance for survival, big subject matter even for a Christopher Nolan movie.
Yet, the picture takes on an added layer of desperation when you consider one particular detail. Pointed out on Reddit, you might have noticed there’s no wildlife. One of the best science fiction movies of the century thus far has no dogs, cats, or any other kind of animal. Nowhere.
Farms, including Cooper’s, are all crops. That means no dairy or meat of any kind. Or eggs. Nothing. It’s something that’s discussed by some of the characters in passing, but never quite pointed out. Instead, we get to gradually understand just how desperate our situation might become if we don’t help ourselves. One of the best movies of the 2010s Interstellar might be, it’s not hugely cheery.
But of course, hope remains, because that’s the mission Matthew McConaughey’s Cooper takes on. He joins Anne Hathaway’s Amelia Brand, David Gyasi’s Romilly, and Wes Bentley from the Yellowstone cast, who portrays Doyle.
Together, they’re the crew of the Endurance, an interplanetary mission to find another hospitable rock for us to live on. Even being McConaughey doesn’t make that any easier. Interstellar might be Nolan’s most ambitious production in terms of scale, considering you’ve got time dilation, multiple planets, and some glorious visuals of the Endurance exploring the universe.
It’s one of the best drama movies because of how well it captures both human desperation and our determination, especially in the end when Cooper transcends the laws of physics. Stunning stuff, really. Nolan would go on to give us Dunkirk afterwards, on of the best war movies.
He’s not perked up much since, given we just had Oppenheimer, about the creation of the atomic bomb. Cillian Murphy leads the Oppenheimer cast, and you can read if it sounds to your liking in our Oppenheimer review.