Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar: A Guide to Time Travel
Christopher Nolan is known for his complex and ambitious films, but Interstellar stands out for its bold and thought-provoking exploration of time travel. The film tells the story of a former NASA pilot, Joseph Cooper, who is sent on a mission to find a habitable planet for humanity. Along the way, Cooper and his crew experience time dilation, a concept based on the works of Albert Einstein.
On the planet Miller’s, near a supermassive black hole, time moves significantly slower due to the strong gravitational field. For every hour Cooper and his crew spend on the planet, seven years pass on Earth. This means that when they return, they have traveled into the future.
The majority of the film is a linear story, but the ending introduces a complex element of time travel. Cooper is pulled into The Tesseract, built by humans from the future, and is able to communicate with his adult daughter. This is made possible by the time dilation he experienced on Miller’s planet.
In contrast, Nolan’s 2020 film Tenet features a different approach to time travel. Characters in Tenet travel back in time using a machine called the turnstile, which inverts the entropy of anything or anyone placed inside it. However, this concept is more complicated and disorienting, making it harder for audiences to follow along.
Interstellar’s time travel is based on real-world science and is easier to understand than Tenet’s. The film’s ending may be confusing, but it is still a thought-provoking and satisfying conclusion. Overall, Interstellar’s time travel is a testament to Nolan’s ability to create complex and engaging science fiction stories.
