Interstellar: Let’s Save Ourselves

A Movie Review of Interstellar (2014)

Interstellar movie posterI recently saw the movie Interstellar (2014) starring Matthew McConaughey. It was co-written and directed by Christopher Nolan of such fame as Inception and The Dark Knight. I enjoyed the visual candy of the galaxies, planets, stars, and wormhole travel. I enjoyed the storyline between McConaughey’s character Cooper and his daughter. And I enjoyed the crazy science fiction/ fantasy storyline in which humanity sets out to explore another galaxy, amid time, space, and gravity differences.

What I did not enjoy was the final message. That humanity will save itself. Throughout the movie, another character is usually referred to as “the Others.” For the audience, this can mean God, Fortune, Aliens, or some Higher Power or Intelligence. This ‘Other’ has placed a crossable wormhole in our galaxy that will take us to another galaxy, so we can escape our dying planet (because of course we’ve killed the earth).

Cooper and Murph from Interstellar movie

Cooper and Murph from Interstellar movie

The movie reminded me of the movie Contact (which also starred McConaughey). In both movies, there is a strong widowed father-daughter relationship at the heart of the movie. Both daughters are devastated by their father leaving—in death for Ellie or on a last-ditch mission for Murph. And in both movies, the daughter is the one to detect unknown behavior. In Contact, Ellie (played by Jodie Foster) is a SETI scientist who detects a signal repeating a sequence of prime numbers. Using the information contained within the signal, an international alliance builds a complex machine thought to be capable of interstellar travel. In Interstellar, Murph (played as an adult by Jessica Chastain) is a NASA scientist who detects Morse code in the poltergeist-like disturbances in her room. Using the information contained in the code, she and others build a space station capable of traversing the wormhole.

From both these discoveries, a journey is taken that leads through a wormhole to places outside our galaxy. In Ellie’s experience through the wormhole, she encounters an alien in the form of her father. In Cooper’s experience, he ends up in a fifth dimension tesseract (a cube within a cube—the tesseract is to the cube, what a cube is to the square). In this mysterious tesseract time exists as a spatial dimension and there are windows into his daughter’s childhood bedroom at various times in her life, through which he can communicate to her as the ‘poltergeist’ and thereby save humanity.

Interstellar tesseract scene

Interstellar tesseract scene

In the earlier scenes of the movie, the ‘Other’ was left unnamed, so that the audience could take their pick of what it represents. At the end of Interstellar, this ‘Other’ is identified as future humanity, living in a fifth dimension no less, who have created the wormhole and this complex tesseract. While in Contact, the savior-figure who offered the crucial information was a benevolent alien race, in Interstellar the one to offer the information we need to save ourselves, is none other than ourselves!

First, the idea that aliens who look like us or our future selves are the source of our redemption is full of error and arrogance. It is naturalism’s pitfall—the belief in human goodness and human potential. In 1973 an updated version of the original manifesto, The Humanist Manifesto II, appeared on the scene. Its introduction gives us a clear idea of naturalism’s concept of salvation and the means for achieving it.

The next century can be and should be the humanistic century. Dramatic scientific, technological, and ever-accelerating social and political changes crowd our awareness. We have virtually conquered the planet, explored the moon, overcome the natural limits of travel and communication; we stand at the dawn of a new age, ready to move farther into space and perhaps inhabit other planets. Using technology wisely, we can control our environment, conquer poverty, markedly reduce disease, extend our life-span, significantly modify our behavior, alter the course of human evolution and cultural development, unlock vast new powers, and provide humankind with unparalleled opportunity for achieving an abundant and meaningful life.”[i]

When God doesn’t exist in your worldview, something else has to fulfill the role of Creator and Savior. And in many cases, the mirror seems to hold the answer. Secondly, the idea that information—scientific data—will be the means of our salvation is also full of error and lies.

Like most science fiction movies, Interstellar’s message—though wrapped in a cloak of love for family, community, and humanity—its main message is one of humanistic salvation. So enjoy the images of outer space, but be discerning of the meaning it is communicating while dazzling you with those beautiful images.

[i] www.americanhumanist.org

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