15 Things Wrong With Interstellar

15. Extremely Contrived Set-Up

This is a particularly problematic part of Interstellar the first time you're watching the movie. The whole set-up to get Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) in the sky just seems so enormously convoluted. He and young Murph (Mackenzie Foy) find a dust trail spelling out binary code in their home, which leads them to a secret NASA HQ, where Professor Brand (Michael Caine) asks Cooper, who just so happens to be the best pilot for the job, to fly the ship. Though Brand says that they were going to fly the ship regardless, it's still a pretty ridiculous set up that Nolan asks viewers to buy into. Even once it becomes known at the end of the movie that Cooper himself created the dust binary code in the fifth dimension, does that really make it any better? It creates an irritating chicken-and-egg scenario in which one of these actions cannot exist without the other, in an attempt to paper over the fact that it's really a rather silly set-up.
Contributor
Contributor

Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.