I saw Interstellar last night for the second time in as many weekends. Both times I saw the movie with kids (16 and 8 ). And while it's a very long movie for a young kid, there's something in it for everyone. Sadly this movie hasn't captured the audiences that I thought it might. This has less to do with the quality of an amazing film, and more to do with the unfortunate breadth of knowledge and appreciation of math and science in this country. When you have almost half of the country falling for what I like to call climate change religion and politics, well... We've got a lot of work to do before we get an entire country back to what it was like in the 1960s when the U.S. was racing the Soviets to the moon.
By the way... if you want to argue global warming turned climate change, you'd better bring something more than a knife to a gunfight with me. I was trained in mathematical modeling, I grew up in a NASA family, and I know of at least 2 fatal flaws with the doom and gloom projections. But if you insist, we can take it to another thread.
The good news is that Interstellar avoids the whole current politics/religion problem of the environmental scientist ninnies, and instead presents a completely unique Vonnegut-like dystopian scenario. Better yet... it is the best use of my graduate school training in relativity physics today. If you fear you might be blown away by the advanced physics which underlie the whole plot, well you might. But there's enough of a human story to this that it teases and cajoles you to jump in with both ignorant legs. And like 2001, the visuals and the plot will keep even a child interested. Who knows... it may be a catalyst for the next generation of U.S. scientists.
Yes, I needed to explain some of what was going on to the people who saw it with me. But they were curious enough to care, and that allows them to venture into topics that perhaps they can't quite grasp today.
By all means go see it, and enjoy the discussions afterwards.
- Bill
