Here’s a universal truth: you hate Interstellar. You may not realise it yet (we’ll get to that), but Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi blockbuster is the personification of everything wrong and unholy in your world. If there was any way you could uppercut this movie in the ballsack, you’d do it with a spiked gauntlet.
That’s not to say that everyone has the same reason for wanting to sucker punch a movie’s metaphorical scrotum. In fact, in Interstellar’s case, there are many possible reasons, and at least one of the following pushes your loathe button.
169 is a Lot of Minutes
Films are long; your life isn’t. For every minute you spend watching a film, a significantly more important minute of your life is lost. That’s relativity, folks.
For some, the quality of a movie decreases after the two hour mark, no matter how compelling the experience is. Every minute beyond 120 starts to chip away at them, for that is another minute that could have been spent washing clothes, working out, finishing that due essay, planning parliament positions, saving the bee population, ad infinitum.
Instead, you – suffering a case of “numb bum” at this point – have just wasted 60 whole seconds trying to remember that one actor’s name whose character has only just been introduced into the film.
“Oh yeah! Topher Grace!”
It Doesn’t Explain Enough
Like Inception, Interstellar relies on a lot of exposition. And like Inception, Interstellar requires your full attention – a surprising task for anyone expecting Gravity 2: Colossal Velocity.
Some people may think the “P-value” is how much you pay a drug dealer for an ounce of meth. That’s okay; science isn’t for everyone. Unfortunately for them, this film is only about science and doesn’t give a shit about leaving your science-ignorant ass in the cornfield dust.
If you’re in this category, you’re either going to feel lost or bored – probably both. The moment bookshelves start to fly out of black holes, the lack of a coherent explanation is going to make you frustrated. Hateful, even.
It Explains Too Much
Then there are the science buffs, those who sleep next to a life-sized plush toy of Neil deGrasse Tyson. They know their shit, and they don’t need the shit they know re-explained to them.
But Interstellar doesn’t care, turning the cinema into a high-school retrospective science lesson you’d rather not reminisce over. Even when they’re right next to Jupiter, these astronauts insist on drawing simple diagrams on a friggen’ whiteboard explaining how a wormhole works.
At this point, you’re either shaking your head at how you disapprove of the science or you’ve gone to sleep, dreaming about how you disapprove of the science.
Love is bullshit
Facts are like my heart: hard and cold. But unlike my heart, facts don’t need love. And yet, Interstellar seemingly suggests the opposite – and that drives some people into fits of McConaughate.
Don’t get these sceptics wrong; they think love is cool ‘n all but it ain’t gonna power a bloody rocket, or solve the gravity equation, or put corn loaf on the table. So when the film suggests that warm, smooshy love conquers cold, hard science, it causes a black hole of disgruntled groans, converting Interstellar’s romanticism into a vacuous void of nothing.
You may have been part of that gravitational groaning – a reaction of having felt condescended to. So for every word Anne Hathaway exhausted on her embarrassing monologue about love, the more you longed to sprinkle her with fairy dust and kick her off a 20 storey roof whilst shouting “Think happy thoughts!”
Someone You Know Didn’t Love ‘Interstellar’
You loved Interstellar. You thought it was a big, bold, beautiful, emotional, profound, world-changing, cancer-curing, orgasm-usurping experience.
And then your mate said “That was dumb.”
You cannot believe it, refusing to let that comment go unchallenged. So you grill the Nolan naysayer, asking for a finely-argued breakdown of why they thought it was not good. At this point, you’re trying to sound as composed and intellectual as you can, though your trembling red cheeks allude to a more flesh-tearing response.
Your mate doesn’t recognise your anger, going on to explain “It’s too long… Sometimes it explains too much… Sometimes it doesn’t explain enough… And what was up with all that “love” shit?”
Gathering all the focus you can muster, you prepare yourself to calmly retort: “It is a voyage based on a theory of time and space from an esteemed scientist, visualising these massive ideas on a scale that complements its enormity, resulting in a cinematically awe-inducing experience embedded in the most humane of qualities: love.”
What you actually said was “You’re dumb! Your family’s dumb! Everything about your dumb face is dumb! Go back to Dumb Town, you dummy!”
You then punch your mate in the face, resulting in a minor concussion and a charge for assault.
The fine is massive, forcing you to empty your savings account. Your new criminal record doesn’t bode well with your current employer either and they fire you on the spot. The financially-crippling situation affects your love life. After a lengthy argument, your partner leaves you.
You succumb to alcoholism, which doesn’t do your financial situation any better. Your landlord gets sick of you skipping out on rent, kicking you out with the very few belongings you haven’t sold online.
After three months of wandering the streets and sleeping on concrete curbs, you look back on your life and ponder what you did that led to your current life in the literal gutter.
The realisation hits you like a stretched rubber band, let go after years of being pinned to your forehead: it was your love for Interstellar that made you a homeless alcoholic.
Now you hate the film because you love the film. And that’s a fact.
