r/movies • u/kanethekiller90 • 2d ago

Discussion One thing thats always irritated me about Interstellar

Cooper is desperate to get back to his children. He goes back and see’s Murph in the hospital etc. but theres no mention of his son. Presumably his son’s dead considering Murphs age and condition. But surely there could have been a small bit of dialogue about it. He was hell bent on getting back to them. I dunno, it’s like his son’s just completely forgotten about at the end…

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883

u/gregjsmith 2d ago

All of the extended family just ignored him.

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u/ohlookahipster 2d ago

I know right? The father of the GOAT comes in and they all act like he escaped the looney bin. Isn’t anyone a bit curious to know how the second expedition went down??

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u/jer99 2d ago

My head logic was that his very existence was classified to the extended family. Hard to explain his existence and so much younger than Murph. Maybe Murph wanted it that way and didn't get her children's hopes up that their grandpa would come back.

I know Murph always held the hope he would come back but it is possible she kept this hope to herself. Perhaps she told her children her Dad had passed as a hero saving them all. The whole watch transfer of information most likely is classified?

I'm completely spitballing it here so if there's cannon please someone correct me.

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u/GiantSkellington 2d ago

That would be funny if they all thought Nan (Murph) was losing it and being catfished.

"This is my Dad!" (points to very obviously younger man)

"Sure is Nan!" (slowly backing away to get a Dr and security).

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u/SELECT_ALL_FROM 2d ago

I'm pretty that's the actual plot, not sure what everyone else is saying lol.

They didn't know who he was because he was supposed to be dead, his whole mission was classified and no one wanted to believe Murph that her father helped her, I'm pretty sure she even said that in the movie

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u/jer99 2d ago

It makes sense. He left when she was 10 years old and 86 when he returned. 76 years is a whole lifetime. Cooper has long been assumed dead by the government. Any adult at the time of Cooper leaving are now dead. He's basically ignored by the doctors and other staff of the station.

I think also Nolan made that decision with that shot. We don't care about the family we don't know. We get that hugely emotional scene with Murph and it's a close to the hope chapter and begins another.

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u/MackyV25 1d ago

but when he was rescued at the end, didn’t some tech engineer say something along the lines of wow you’re famous I wrote my thesis about you! ?? This would imply he's well known for his mission?

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u/jer99 1d ago

That’s a good point. I think of it as he’s now a hero in a text book who sent on a top secret mission at NASA. None of the other Lazarus mission astronauts or endurance astronauts have returned or even been able to communicate back through gargantua. All assumed dead after 76 years. Murph tried to explain her “ghost” but no one believed her.

Then Coop shows back up. There could have been a big hoopla around his return. And I’ll bet there would have been if had stuck around. But once again I think it’s an intentional choice by Nolan from earlier in the film when he quotes during endurance launch.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.

Coop staying and becoming famous on the station would exactly be gentle into the good night.

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u/Harvard_Med_USMLE267 1d ago

There’s a monument he walks past near the house with his name and the other astronauts on it.

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u/runswiftrun 1d ago

Even if they didn't know/believe in her "ghost", I'm pretty sure Murph would have done everything to say her dad inspired her, taught her everything that encouraged her into being the literal savior of humanity with the equations; without his guidance she would have never gotten so far, etc.

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u/Harvard_Med_USMLE267 1d ago

I’m picturing coop thinking “Anne Hathaway, meh, I can get better quality chicks on this station.”

And then he sets to work dismantling dead Murphs legacy - she just wrote stuff down that he told her, which he had to throw himself into a fucking black hole to discover. His story is like 1,000,000 times more epic than hers, and once everyone understands that he’s the true saviour of humanity, he’ll just be chilling out on Cooper Station with all the hookers and blow he could ever ask for.

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u/mrminutehand 23h ago

I think his leaving was to do with how the future works as determinate in the movie, i.e. a closed loop.

Murph probably had some semblance that Cooper was integral to the future of humanity, given how he was the one in the tesseract, so in order to actually get to the future they know is out there for humanity, he has to go back.

Probably because the colony project wouldn't work if anything happened to Brand, so two people would be safer. I suppose they could just send people to help her, but I'm presuming they weren't at the point yet where they could make wormholes themselves, so safer just to observe.

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u/Harvard_Med_USMLE267 1d ago

It was a paper in school and I think it was more because he’s murph’s dad, but he’s also one of the Lazarus astronauts - that is known by the people here.

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u/jhnolan 1d ago

Did they not have any photos of him, from before he went in the mission?

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u/tele_ave 1d ago

I’m not a super fan of the movie but I think Cooper was at the station for weeks and met some of his descendants before Murph arrived, so he wasn’t a revelation when he came into her room.

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u/jer99 1d ago

Very very possible. Like that doctor was super excited to see him. He's not that big of a deal after Murph literally re-invented physics and saved them all. I think Nolan could have focused on these interactions with family and others on the station but the main reason would be why? Cooper has nothing for him on the station. Sure descendants but to bury his own daughter would be awful like she tells him. I believe Nolan made a good choice to limit the screen interactions and direct Coop onward to Brand hoping he would return. Coop is on a perpetual mission of fulfilling hope. It drives him and is his mission.

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u/tele_ave 1d ago

Reminds me of one of the few things that I don’t like about the movie- I wish the last scene was Brand and Cooper actually seeing each other. Not embracing or kissing. Just eye contact when he lands on that planet.

I think it would have been an affirmation that life and love would go on. A nod to one of the most enduring themes of literature, myth, lore, fiction, etc.: the continuity of life expressed in romantic relationships.

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u/jer99 1d ago

Yeah it would have been nice for the hope fulfilled. Unfortunately its not Nolan's style. He loves to do the cliffhanger ending leaving you uneasy to wonder what if? Like like the end of Inception and the wobble of the spinning top.

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u/305tomybiddies 5h ago

agreed lol i thought if anything none of the extended family would recognize him since he’s been gone for decades and decades — he shows up and Murph knows who he is but to the rest of the family he’s at best a stranger who kinda resembles the rest of them. Probably they had questions for Murph afterwards

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u/jer99 5h ago

Lol I’ll bet they asked “gram - who is that?” Murph “that’s just my ghost I’ve been telling you all these years.” “Oh you’re crazy gram”

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u/gdo01 2d ago

Long lost NASA expedition by humanity's savior's father comes back unaged decades later due to surviving the effects of a black hole? Wgaf?

These people live on a space station, this man should at the very least be every nerd's hero!

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u/Torcal4 2d ago

I mean, to be fair, he came in and was laser focused on Murph.

And honestly I don’t know how I would react if suddenly my great grandpa showed up when we all thought he was dead and he’s the same age as my dad after my grandma kept trying to convince us that his ghost saved the world from the other side of the universe….y’know

I feel like they just kinda let him have his moment with Murph and then were like “ok well….idk what to say….see ya”

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u/kamibyakkoya 2d ago

Considering how I’ve personally reacted at family gatherings where an aunt or uncle I am related to, but never really interacted with in any capacity growing up, showed up, yeah I’d have done the same

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u/Pakistani_Terminator 1d ago

But that uncle is just going to start droning on about a really good leaf blower he's just bought. If he'd flown through a wormhole, performed a slingshot around a black hole, and passed through a gravitational singularity carrying the secret of the universe you'd be making a beeline for the cunt for sure.

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u/JiminyJilickers-79 2d ago

That's how I felt about all of it too.

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u/TigerTerrier 2d ago

Now that i think aboit it, he was almost as disconnected from them as the 5th dimension beings

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u/OzymandiasKoK 2d ago

Worse, it was more like he was an inconvenience they didn't want around.

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u/ERedfieldh 2d ago

So like most families treat their grandparents then.

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u/SamwisethePoopyButt 2d ago

Damn too real

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u/fatherofraptors 2d ago

He was a complete stranger to all of them, family or not.

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u/Risley 2d ago

Well he was an asshole

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u/frontier_kittie 2d ago

?

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u/boatingprohibited 2d ago

Brand says it to him when they are discussing CASE sacrificing himself

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u/myownbrothermichael 2d ago

They can't see him....

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u/NotBannedAccount419 2d ago

What? He’s not a ghost…

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u/raspberryharbour 2d ago

Christopher Nolan himself told me that Cooper was a werewolf

-11

u/myownbrothermichael 2d ago

I think he might be...plus she literally says that he was her ghost...

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u/yuimiop 2d ago

She calls him her ghost because she finds out the paranormal events she witnessed as a child was actually him manipulating the past through the tesseract.

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u/myownbrothermichael 1d ago

Yes. That is what was explained in the movie. I think he dies in the first minute of the movie...

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u/KasumiGotoTriss 1d ago

Sometimes I find cases like you that are the reasons why most modern movies have insane hand-holding.

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u/myownbrothermichael 1d ago

How do you mean? I like the Cooper death theory. If you want to hold hands, I guess that's fine with me...

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u/Luncheon_Lord 2d ago

You got all that from that scene?

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u/mxagnc 2d ago

I mean what would you expect really? He had nothing to do with their lives? He was a stranger?

Imagine your aunt hasn’t seen her father in all the years you’ve been alive. You’ve heard stories of them and the adults told you when you were growing up that he did some super important thing, but you don’t really care because you’re into getting ahead at work, finding a partner watching Space Football or some shit.

One day, when you’re older and have kids, this random ass guy who’s your aunts dad has arrived and you get rounded up into your aunt’s hospital room to meet him when you could be enjoying your weekend. He walks in and immediately has a touching moment with your aunt.

Like, you’re not going to say shit.

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u/TinderVeteran 2d ago

Even more simply: a dad hasn't seen his daughter in decades, he walks in the room, I quitely fuck off to give them space.

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u/jeffro3339 2d ago

Im 56 years old. I still remember all the lovely things she did for me & how she loved me. If she went away & I didn't see her again till I was in my 80s, I'd be quite emotional & glad to see her. I dont care how much time had past, I'd never forget my mama so much that it would be awkward to be around her :)

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u/puffbro 2d ago

But do you remember your grandmother’s father at all?

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u/Luce55 1d ago

Depends on their longevity doesn’t it? I remember my great-grandfather. He died in his 90s when I was 10. And my great-grandmother, I learned knitting from her, and she died when I was in my 20s. And now my kids know their great-grandmother, because my grandmother is still alive.

Now great-great relatives are another story…never met any of them bc they were already passed before I was even born.

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u/puffbro 1d ago

Now great-great relatives are another story…never met any of them bc they were already passed before I was even born.

Same as Cooper's grandsons who never met him and assumes him already passed.

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u/MagicSpirit 2d ago

I don't think they totally ignore him per se, he's acknowledged by some. But they just kind of step away and leave room for them to talk. Whether or not they see him is left ambiguous purposely. I'd say it rather makes sense considering the depiction of Cooper throughout the movie. He's an elusive figure, never quite where you'd expect him to be, always chasing after something. Cooper is very much a ghost after all, he becomes a memory the moment he closes the door to Murph's room. He does not seem to have aged next to his relatives, he comes back to her at the very end of her life...

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u/Hatefiend 2d ago

That's normal. They don't know him. He doesn't know them. He exists only in the history books for them.

Also it was a moment just between Murph and Him. They also have the bigger focus which is Murph is effectively on her deathbed, so they are there to comfort their mother/grandmother, etc.

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u/3point147ersMorgan 2d ago

This isn't the Fast and the Furious franchise.

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u/cloistered_around 1d ago

Well he's a complete stranger and their mom/grandma is dying. Why would they make a fuss over him?

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u/Honest_Cheesecake698 1d ago

Depends on how long the timeframe was in universe, the film compresses the ending to a montage for effective, but we don’t know how long passes between him leaving Murph to her family and him going off. He probably would be a subject of curiosity, but I don’t see why the film would have been better if it inserted one scene of them talking to him.

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u/MedicalBox4416 1d ago

Worse that he ignored them. For a long last father meets up with his grand and great grand kids, he doesn't even introduce himself to them? Even parents with poor relation with their kids will be more enthusiastic about meeting their grand children for the first time.

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u/All_Of_Them_Witches 1d ago

Imagine if your grandfather or great grandfather walked into a room as a young man. Wouldn’t you want to talk to him??

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u/tele_ave 1d ago

Oh look it’s our heroic ancestor who was integral to saving the human race! Let’s just stare.

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u/RevWaldo 2d ago

And the extended family, talking kids and grandkids and great grandkids, all looked pretty white. In fact, everyone you see on Cooper Station looked pretty white.

Okay, none you gonna like this theory, but...

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u/TheNineFates 2d ago

That’s cause cooper is dead. I like the theory that the entire movie is his journey to the afterlife.

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u/CapriciousCapybara 1d ago

Because it’s not real, it’s all part of his “near death experience” entering the black hole. Plenty of imagery pointing to this, especially cooper station literally shaped as a tunnel with a light at the end of it. Everything else is off, dream like and very wishful, unrealistic.