It was quite fantastic at times but wasn't on the mark for the whole movie.
Themes!
Tons of them. Started out with a 'world going to shit due to overpopulation and degradation of our natural resources' thing that was handled really lightly and was mostly unimportant. I totally expected more heavy handed, "Those stupid people should have put more money into the future!" stuff.
Loneliness was a driving factor for most of the players in the movie, linked strongly with the other 2 big themes which were the fear/dealing with your mortality and the love of a parent. The human elements drove the movie mostly, the word "love" was mentioned quite a lot.
As a parent the arc for the main character was basically surrounding the most primal and powerful emotion we have, protecting our offspring. Coop coming to terms with losing that battle and then recapturing it served as a good, happy ending style of thing.
I thought the composure shattered idea of dying was handled quite well, even if the betrayal section of the movie was the worst. They did a great job setting up the 'hero' character and then pulling the swerve without telegraphing it too much. Again, it's a very real human thing so it was logical and plausible.
Visuals!
The comparisons to 2001 make sense now. Really breathtaking at times with a great sense of purpose. The lighting was great too, the stark beauty of space versus the dark, dank remnant of our planet. The scenes early on at Coops house looked fantastic, didn't miss a beat with the new cinematographer. No complaints here.
Sound!
Lacked punch at times in the sound effects. The score was great as always, Zimmer evidently gave a shit on this movie. Amped up a few scenes really well, with some perfectly timed hard cuts to the score. Wasn't spot on though, didn't elevate some of the stronger scenes as much as they could have. That might just be the bias of my current music ingestion harming my thoughts on it though.
Acting!
Great all round. No complaints. Insane lineup of talent, though it didn't pull me out of the movie thankfully. Topher Grace and Anne Hathaway were in just the right spot, usually they piss me off with their acts but I found them to be powerful yet subdued. Totally forgot Michael "Chris Nolans Best Friend" Caine was in this movie and started to think Evil Cliffhanger Dude took his role brilliantly but then LOLCAINE showed up and did his usual thing with a twist. Again, great. No shitty death in a truck cab scene here.
Writing!
Weird. Really weird. Not in topic but in market. Everything was plausible and they explained just enough to avoid boring the dudebro market but I felt they were trying to cover too many bases at once and as such it didn't have as much depth as they wanted it to. That said I loved it and enjoyed the direction they were hinting with most of the script. Only time I had a "this is what will happen" hook was when they started talking about black holes and I felt that he would be the ghost and save us all, hate when my brain interjects like that so it's nice it only happened once.
Only part of the movie that dragged for me was the long delivery of the BETRAYALTON by Matty boy. They handled a lot of it well though, the instantaneous joy of seeing another human being once taken out of cryofreeze established that the experience had damaged him in certain ways (although token black dude didn't get much of a chance to exhibit that stuff :/ ). Kinda wish they did the betrayal in a quicker fashion. Not sure, just didn't sit right with me and I'm looking forward to rewatching that section.
The wormhole was setup and delivered fine. That one drawing was enough to make it plausible Coop would be happy to fly in there so the audience was happy. The blackhole stuff though? Pure off the handle shit. Not sure how they could have sold that though, hard to ground the idea of a 5th dimension and WAY harder to show and experience of it. Once Coop came out into the future I felt much more welcoming towards the movie.
Moral!
Our humanity is our greatest strength and our greatest weakness. The ability to overpower the natural urge of self-preservation will determine the end point of our species, because we are awesome as fuck.
