DISCLAIMER: I'm in general, a huge Nolan fan.
There are times when you can ignore plot holes in films, and times when you can't. You can overlook some when the pacing is fast, or when the film doesn't take itself too seriously. Unfortunately, Interstellar does neither - it's unnecessarily slow and takes itself really, really seriously. And it's full of plot holes, fallacies, paradoxes, and logic taking a beating in general, to fulfill some emotional quotient - which, I must say, worked on most people.
Let's start with the whole premise the film is based on - in the future, earth's resources have been drained, and everyone has turned into farmers - with conscious efforts to eradicate science education in general to force people to go into farming. Let's take a moment here to realize just how ridiculous that premise is.
Moving on - our protagonist is a genius NASA astronaut/engineer turned farmer (because, y'know, everyone's a farmer) - and the first half mostly shows him bonding with his family, with completely unnecessary scenes to prolong the film - like taking down a lost drone (by pointing things towards it), which had no relation to the story later whatsoever. Then our hero stumbles onto a NASA facility (if you aren't a farmer, you're with NASA) after decoding things which occurred due to... uhh, gravitational anomalies. This NASA facility, as claimed by uberscientist Michael Caine, was humanity's best kept secret, though 5 minutes into that - all our hero's family members were informed about it.
So anyways, since our hero stumbled into the facility anyway, uberscientist decides to send him into space to save humanity because, well, just like that. We get to see our hero saying goodbye to his family and immediate fast forward - he's in space! No training, no nothing! Economic storytelling, certainly, and it would've worked, had the other "scientists" on board later didn't have to explain things and plans to him on the fly (which, for all intents and purposes, should've been explained before leaving) - and having conversations that were mostly like what college freshmen studying physics would have. (Oh, and discussions about love! Love transcending all dimensions - when humanity is at stake!)
Anyway, so future earth has the technology to do all this, and build robot A.I.s which were more human than most humans, but it doesn't have doctors any more, or any other visible technological advancements for that matter. All efforts to save humanity were concentrated on ONE and just ONE uberscientist, who'd been working on his cure-all formula for years. And every other scientist have just been waiting for him to solve it all himself! (And what's this? Other nations you ask? Well there ain't no other nation apart from the USA to do earth saving, is there?) This is something I particularly take offense to, scientists don't work that way.
So, Nolan throws more science at us on the fly, which everyone dodges. But in the end, everything is explained by, yep, five dimensional space! Somehow our hero gets into such a space, goes back in time (opening up a ton of paradoxes), behind a bookshelf in 5D space, and uses vague messages to communicate with his daughter back in time, instead of giving clear messages like "I'm your father back in time". His daughter, when all grown up - suddenly realizes that it was his father all along and we get no clue as to how she got to that conclusion - but hey, PLOT TWIST! And with that new information, she becomes the new uberscientist, saving everyone. How? By making an orbiting space station around Saturn (for which you somehow required "quantum data" from other galaxies and black holes?). So okay uhh... it's complicated.
There are however, some great visuals (3D would've done justice) and soundtrack in this, and hence the 5 - but ultimately nothing we haven't seen before. Beyond all that glitter, there's no gold - just a forgettable movie.
There are times when you can ignore plot holes in films, and times when you can't. You can overlook some when the pacing is fast, or when the film doesn't take itself too seriously. Unfortunately, Interstellar does neither - it's unnecessarily slow and takes itself really, really seriously. And it's full of plot holes, fallacies, paradoxes, and logic taking a beating in general, to fulfill some emotional quotient - which, I must say, worked on most people.
Let's start with the whole premise the film is based on - in the future, earth's resources have been drained, and everyone has turned into farmers - with conscious efforts to eradicate science education in general to force people to go into farming. Let's take a moment here to realize just how ridiculous that premise is.
Moving on - our protagonist is a genius NASA astronaut/engineer turned farmer (because, y'know, everyone's a farmer) - and the first half mostly shows him bonding with his family, with completely unnecessary scenes to prolong the film - like taking down a lost drone (by pointing things towards it), which had no relation to the story later whatsoever. Then our hero stumbles onto a NASA facility (if you aren't a farmer, you're with NASA) after decoding things which occurred due to... uhh, gravitational anomalies. This NASA facility, as claimed by uberscientist Michael Caine, was humanity's best kept secret, though 5 minutes into that - all our hero's family members were informed about it.
So anyways, since our hero stumbled into the facility anyway, uberscientist decides to send him into space to save humanity because, well, just like that. We get to see our hero saying goodbye to his family and immediate fast forward - he's in space! No training, no nothing! Economic storytelling, certainly, and it would've worked, had the other "scientists" on board later didn't have to explain things and plans to him on the fly (which, for all intents and purposes, should've been explained before leaving) - and having conversations that were mostly like what college freshmen studying physics would have. (Oh, and discussions about love! Love transcending all dimensions - when humanity is at stake!)
Anyway, so future earth has the technology to do all this, and build robot A.I.s which were more human than most humans, but it doesn't have doctors any more, or any other visible technological advancements for that matter. All efforts to save humanity were concentrated on ONE and just ONE uberscientist, who'd been working on his cure-all formula for years. And every other scientist have just been waiting for him to solve it all himself! (And what's this? Other nations you ask? Well there ain't no other nation apart from the USA to do earth saving, is there?) This is something I particularly take offense to, scientists don't work that way.
So, Nolan throws more science at us on the fly, which everyone dodges. But in the end, everything is explained by, yep, five dimensional space! Somehow our hero gets into such a space, goes back in time (opening up a ton of paradoxes), behind a bookshelf in 5D space, and uses vague messages to communicate with his daughter back in time, instead of giving clear messages like "I'm your father back in time". His daughter, when all grown up - suddenly realizes that it was his father all along and we get no clue as to how she got to that conclusion - but hey, PLOT TWIST! And with that new information, she becomes the new uberscientist, saving everyone. How? By making an orbiting space station around Saturn (for which you somehow required "quantum data" from other galaxies and black holes?). So okay uhh... it's complicated.
There are however, some great visuals (3D would've done justice) and soundtrack in this, and hence the 5 - but ultimately nothing we haven't seen before. Beyond all that glitter, there's no gold - just a forgettable movie.