Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Thoughts on Interstellar

Interstellar

Over the weekend, Christopher Nolan’s space epic Interstellar opened with a $47 million weekend — coming in second place behind Disney’s animated Marvel adventure Big Hero 6 — and ended up being a mixed bag for most viewers and critics, alike. A lot of folks loved it, but there were many more who thought otherwise.

Personally, there were isolated moments that blew my mind, especially when projected on a six story IMAX screen. This is clearly Nolan’s most ambitious project, and I admired his willingness to go big and heady for each scene. Unfortunately, those scenes didn’t add up to a whole, and I found the movie’s last act was emotionally distant (when it wasn’t supposed to be) and rang false and unearned (which is how I feel about the third act of most of Nolan’s movies, actually).

Anyway, there is one nerd whose opinion of Interstellar I was most curious about. Last year, Tyson was responsible for one of the more infamous twitter rants ever when the Oscar-winning Gravity was wowing audiences, Tyson once again took to twitter to share his thoughts on Interstellar.

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Gravity Aims for the Stars, but Falls a Little Flat

grav001The critics have been salivating over Alfonso Cuarón’s latest effort, the ambitious science fiction thriller Gravity. And don’t get it twisted: Gravity is pretty darned good. It’s visually and narratively haunting — one of the few contemporary movies that succeeds in marrying a high-concept story with the audience’s (admittedly low-brow) yearning to see things blow up. Also, Gravity is one of the year’s few films that fully takes advantage of 3D technology to establish the various environments that the characters encounter (although I confess I chose to watch Gravity in standard projection because 3D makes my head hurt).

So yes, Gravity is pretty darned good.

But, I just can’t shake the feeling that it could have been so much better.

Spoiler Alert! Please don’t read on if you don’t want Gravity spoiled for you.

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