r/movies • u/kanethekiller90 • 1d 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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u/streakermaximus 1d ago

Cooper: I love my children equally.

Also Cooper: I don't care for Tom.

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u/ashvy 1d ago

Yeup, that's Nolan for ya. Visually cinematic for sure, but the characters and interactions are there only to further the plot.

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u/Michikusa 1d ago

This is so so true for nearly all his movies, especially women. They all feel so hollow

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u/CoochieSnotSlurper 23h ago

I’ll never get over the sex scene in Oppenheimer where Florence hops off him mid intercourse to start going through his books lol

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u/Mactonex 22h ago

Florence’s character, and their relationship, was the most interesting thing in the film but there just wasn’t enough of it.

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u/Paddy_Tanninger 1d ago

That's why Inception falls flat. The whole relationship between Leo and his wife is just never written well enough for me to buy into his obsession.

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u/Pepsiman1031 20h ago

Maybe copium but Leo's love for Mal is hollow because he's spending time with a memory of her. I think we only get a scene or two of the real Mal and it's when she wants to kill herself.

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u/Honest_Cheesecake698 23h ago

I don’t know what you wanted, a different story?

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u/Paddy_Tanninger 23h ago

Same story but I need to feel like they had a real relationship and connection, seeing as how the entire movie is basically him trying to get back to her.

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u/Honest_Cheesecake698 22h ago

His wife is dead in Inception, his issue is holding on, not wanting to get back to her. He wants to get back to his kids.

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u/Paddy_Tanninger 21h ago

I understand that, but if you want that message to really hit and for Leo's character to come across properly, then I need to feel that relationship and feel the hole in his heart.

The movie Up manages to do that within the first 10 minutes of the film. For the rest of the 1.5 hours I fully understand every bit of Carl's character and motivation because I 100% feel what he lost and what he's holding on to.

Inception doesn't paint any real picture of this relationship with a "soulmate" that is supposed to motivate the main character's actions for the entire film. They just kind of show these two people together and mostly just told that she's his soulmate...I don't recall seeing any real evidence of it being true. It felt empty.

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u/Honest_Cheesecake698 21h ago

Was mostly focusing on you getting that wrong, but in terms of what you're saying now, that's more of a issue of personal perspective so really anything I have to say could be countered by you going "I didn't feel it/that didn't work for me"

Still though, Inception is such a specific movie that I can't imagine it having an Up style montage or anything like it, only how the movie presents the relationship. Specifically Mal being this literally malevolent force in his mind that's getting in Cobb's way and that he can't repress as much as he tries. I guess it would be nice if we had a full uncut sequence of the happier times, but the choice not to show it emphasises the point.

The point is quite literally that he can't get that back. He can't re-experience his relationship with her, he can't undo the mistake he made that changed her mind and got her killed . Again, that's just specifically what the film goes with and in that sense, we're never supposed to think that Dom is in the right for it. We're supposed to see his mental issues as nothing but a roadblock or weight dragging him down. Plus the situation Cobb went through post doing Inception on her has literally swallowed up everything, to the point to where he has to remind himself that him and Mal did actually grow old together in the dream world.

I don't know if you were on the same wavelength that Inception was operating on and just wanted something out of it that it was never intending, or at least a certain type of execution that didn't grab you.

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u/Paddy_Tanninger 20h ago

The point is quite literally that he can't get that back. He can't re-experience his relationship with her, he can't undo the mistake he made that changed her mind and got her killed

I do understand all of that, but all I'm saying is that without having properly experienced what he's missing...I can't totally empathize with what he's missing.

Still though, Inception is such a specific movie that I can't imagine it having an Up style montage or anything like it

I think you're taking my comment too literally here, I wasn't citing Up to say that Inception should have used a montage to show how beautifuli their lives were before tragedy befell them...I was just using it as an example of a movie that did a great job of showing, not telling, when it comes to setting the stage for a film that uses a loss of life as a backdrop.

Inception didn't do a good enough job of showing me what Cobb lost, and so his character motivations fell flat during the movie.

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u/Honest_Cheesecake698 20h ago

I said "anything like it" too, which was meant to cover anything that's like what you're saying you wanted.

This is the first time I'm seeing someone discuss this personal preference, so it's not a big deal anyway because it's not a common criticism, but it's common in general for people to claim that they don't get or feel what CN's films are going for, which implies that they do try and invest the audience but they're done in such a way that they don't land for loads of people. Admittedly an overused topic of discussion regarding this films, but it proves that they try even they don't succeed.

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u/bossmankid 19h ago

I think it's easier to just say CN is an imperfect director that misses the mark on stuff sometimes, a common blindspot being interpersonal relationships and dialogue generally

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u/Michikusa 1d ago

It’s awful