When Nolan’s space epic was released in 2014, critics picked at the plot holes and scientists picked at the science – now, 11 years later, it’s the internet’s favourite film. Was it just ahead of its time?
Every Saturday, for the last 18 months, Shane Short has watched the same film: Christopher Nolan’s 2014 space epic Interstellar. He’s not even sure how many times he has seen it now, though he does know he saw it 31 times in cinemas when it was briefly rereleased for its 10th anniversary in 2024. This year he has flown from his home in Hawaii to Melbourne to watch Interstellar projected on 1570 film at the city’s Imax – twice – where the regular screenings of Interstellar, even those held midweek and during the day, can reliably sell out in minutes.
Set in a future not that far from us now, Interstellar follows Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a former Nasa test pilot turned farmer who leaves his children Tom (Timothée Chalamet) and Murph (Mackenzie Foy) behind on a climate-ravaged Earth to search space for a new home for mankind. Murph is furious with grief at Cooper for picking a future for humanity over a life spent with her; as the decades pass, Tom (played as an adult by Casey Affleck) settles into embittered detachment, while Murph (Jessica Chastain) becomes a scientist and works closely with Prof John Brand (Michael Caine), the Nasa scientist who sent her father away on his mission with his own daughter, Dr Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway).
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