Interstellar director Christopher Nolan discusses what it was like to learn that the film’s portrayal of a black hole is scientifically accurate 5 years later. Released in 2014, Nolan’s space epic stars Matthew McConaughey as Cooper, an astronaut who embarks on a mission to find a new home for humanity as Earth dies. Nolan worked with theoretical physicist Kip Thorne on the scientific aspects of Interstellar, including its depiction of the black hole Gargantua, which was proven to be accurate in 2019 when the Event Horizon Telescope captured the first-ever image of one in a faraway galaxy.
In a recent interview with the BFI, Nolan reflects on Interstellar‘s black hole being proven scientifically accurate, sharing what his reaction was to the news.
The filmmaker discusses how the black hole design in the film actually came about, revealing just how crucial a role Thorne played in its creation. Check out his full comment below:
“Kip [Thorne] insisted he wanted to talk to the visual effects guys about the black hole. I was a bit worried about that because ultimately, you want something that looks cool. It doesn’t really matter if it’s scientifically accurate. But what Kip had figured out, Kip had all of the equations that would define how the gravitational effect of the black hole would affect the light behind it and how it would therefore look. He just really needed the computing power of our visual effects company to render that.
“He worked very closely with Paul Franklin, our visual effects supervisor, and they created this incredibly realistic rendering of a black hole. They actually published a couple different scientific papers jointly about it. And then some years later, they actually managed to photograph a black hole in real life.
“It was on the front of the New York Times and I looked at it and I called Kip, and I said, ‘Well, I guess you were right. Very glad to see that you were right and our black hole holds up.’ It’s sort of become the standard way of looking at it now, but it was all based on absolutely the real science.”
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Interstellar’s Black Hole & Nolan’s Commitment To Plausible Sci-Fi
Why His Movies Always Feel So Real (Even When They’re Not)
Save for a select few installments in the larger Nolan filmography, the filmmaker has always been interested in exploring aspects of science, technology, and time in his movies. Everything Nolan makes feels especially grounded in reality, and there’s a clear effort on his part to depict more outlandish sci-fi elements as something that feels real. He famously took this approach with his Dark Knight trilogy, and his grounded and gritty take on Batman and his gadgets influenced a decade’s worth of superhero stories afterward, for better or worse.
Interstellar is a science-fiction film, but it doesn’t always feel that way. Working with Thorne ensured that the film always feels relatively true to life, including the drying up of the Earth, black holes, gravity, and time dilation. While many of the effects seen in the movie aren’t ones that people experience every day – such as time passing more slowly on Miller’s planet due to its proximity to a black hole – they’re all based on real science.
Inception is really the only movie Nolan has made that doesn’t attempt to explain the science at the center of it – dream sharing – but even Tenet features a scene of exposition about how reverse-entropy works. Even if the sci-fi premises don’t hold up to intense scrutiny, Nolan’s commitment to practical filmmaking methods often ensures that they feel plausible for the purposes of the story. Interstellar has the benefit of both – the science actually holds up and the filmmaking makes it feel real.
Interstellar
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From Christopher Nolan, Interstellar imagines a future where the Earth is plagued by a life-threatening famine, and a small team of astronauts is sent out to find a new prospective home among the stars. Despite putting the mission first, Coop (Matthew McConaughey) races against time to return home to his family even as they work to save mankind back on Earth.
- Director
- Christopher Nolan
- Release Date
- November 7, 2014
- Studio(s)
- Warner Bros. Pictures , Paramount Pictures
- Distributor(s)
- Paramount Pictures , Warner Bros. Pictures
- Writers
- Christopher Nolan , Jonathan Nolan
- Cast
- Anne Hathaway , Matthew McConaughey , Jessica Chastain , Ellen Burstyn , Michael Caine , Bill Irwin
- Runtime
- 2h 49m
- Budget
- 165 million
