Fans of the mind-bending, sci-fi blockbuster ‘Interstellar’ have noticed a harrowing detail since the film enjoyed a limited re-release timed to its 10-year anniversary.
Christopher Nolan‘s space epic — which stars Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway as astronauts on a mission to save Earth — has garnered additional fan scrutiny amid its return to theaters on special 70mm IMAX film this December.
In a crucial plot point, the astronauts embark on a risky journey to a distant watery exoplanet, dubbed Miller’s planet, where just an hour on its surface equates to seven years pass on Earth.
As they carry out their mission to find a new home for humanity, their loved ones back on a dystopian Earth ravaged by blight and crop failure now age at a rapid pace.
Just three hours and 17 minutes on Miller’s planet, which experiences this ‘time dilation’ due to its close proximity to a supermassive blackhole, stretches out to equal a staggering 23 years back home.
In one tear-jerking scene, McConaughey’s character watches his children grow up via video messages sent to the team’s distant ship many lightyears away.
Now, ‘back of the envelope’ calculations by fans have discovered that only an hour and 25 minutes would have passed on Miller’s planet since the film came out in 2014.
‘That’s so insane,’ one fan said of the discovery on Reddit. ‘The entire story of Miller’s planet is just so horrific and terrifying.’
Fans of the mind-bending blockbuster ‘Interstellar’ have noticed a harrowing detail since the film enjoyed a limited re-release timed to its 10-year anniversary on special 70mm IMAX film. The shocking fact involves the quantum time dilation experienced by deep space travelers
When it was released a decade ago, Interstellar – which stars Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway (above) – was praised for its scientific accuracy with respect to astrophysics. Some said it could help students better understand Einstein’s general theory of relativity
‘The sky high waves. The time dilation. That planet was never meant for humans,’ the Redditer continued in their post to the r/Interstellar subreddit. ‘Terrifying.’
Overall, Nolan has been thrilled by the continued attention to these scientific details that cinema-goers and science fiction enthusiasts alike continue to pay to his now decade-old film.
With a small reissue appearing on just 166 screens across the US and Canada, the 10th anniversary event blew out expectations raking in $4.5 million and selling out its avowedly non-digital 70mm IMAX film presentations in minutes.
‘I was just so gratified by the response,’ Nolan said. ‘It’s really thrilling when people respond to your work at any point.’
‘But 10 years later, to have new audiences coming and experiencing it in the way that we’d originally intended it on the big IMAX screens and in particular on those IMAX film prints?’ he told the Associated Press. ‘It’s really rewarding.’
According to Nolan, he’s experienced a lot of positive feedback from the general public since ‘Interstellar’ first debuted in 2014, with many asking about a re-release — due to their own nostalgia for experiences that were lost due to the ravages of time.
‘A lot of these people were younger people,’ Nolan said, ‘who, it was clear to me, had seen the film in the home and hadn’t had the chance to see it on the big screen.’
But while some fans feel disturbed or emotionally moved by the heady concepts of spacetime and human experience explored in the film, others are mostly having fun playing with theories about the fabric of our universe.
The 2014 blockbuster used accurate mathematics and computer simulations in order to depict a giant blackhole and a wormhole tunneling through the fabric of spacetime (still image above)
‘There’s no way people on Miller’s planet have even watched Interstellar’s 2:49 [hour:minute] runtime,’ one user on Reddit quipped.
Another Redditer proposed that July 14, 2034 should be made a special ‘Interstellar Fan Holiday,’ because ‘enough time will have elapsed (since the release of the movie) to watch the entirety of Interstellar on Miller’s Planet!’
While NASA astrobiologist David Grinspoon once criticized the film for the agricultural mechanics of its global blight plot device, many physicists have praised the movie’s detailed and faithful attempt to visualize phenomena like blackholes and wormholes — as well as to accurately tell a story involving these celestial bodies studied properties.
The visual effects team for Interstellar even contributed an article for the American Journal of Physics, explaining the work that went into the computer modeling and animation for the wormhole seen in the film.
‘As we wrote this paper, we became more and more enthusiastic about the educational opportunities provided by our Interstellar experience,’ they confessed.
‘The tools we used in building, scoping out, and exploring Interstellar’s wormhole — at least those discussed in this paper — should be easily accessible [understandable] to fourth year undergraduates studying relativity, as well as to graduate students.’