8 Problems Which Prevent Interstellar From Becoming A Masterpiece

3. It's Tonally Imbalanced

Consistency of tone is a crucial aspect of any great movie, in which once a mood has been established the film works best only when shifts and deviations from the established tone flow naturally and plausibly. Interstellar's main flaw in this respect is in its failed attempt to merge two opposing tones into one unified whole. On the one hand Interstellar strives to be a serious science fiction movie based around plausible theories in which the cold, rational scientific mind sits front and centre. Yet on the other, particularly as you move into the second half of the film, an emphasis on the importance of family and the power of love becomes increasingly paramount. It's not hard to view the tone of the film as going from one extreme of grim portentousness to sickly sentimentality with little in the way of events bridging this gap smoothly. It can be argued that the recourse to emotional appeal is Nolan's attempt to reconcile some of the more abstruse theories emerging from quantum research and their metaphysical implications, but given that these ideas are not well articulated in the film it's easy to see this more as a concession to audience expectations for big budget movies and the need for a happy ending which can be identified outside of the hard science which has transpired.