8 Problems Which Prevent Interstellar From Becoming A Masterpiece

2. Endless Exposition

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the works of Christopher Nolan will have probably seen this criticism coming a mile off - Nolan has frequently had a problem with telling rather than showing, and a heavy amount of exposition has become almost a trademark of his films. Interstellar is perhaps his worst offender yet in this regard, bogging the audience down under a relentless assault of scientific jargon, hypothetical theories and explaining the overall plot in drawn out conversations. All too often there's the feeling that Nolan and his co-writer/brother Jonathan are holding the hands of the audience, and the film sometimes runs the risk of feeling more like an educational video for scientific ideas than it does a work of entertainment (the explanation of the wormhole to Coop using pencil and paper as they hover around its edge felt particularly forced, as if Coop wouldn't be aware of these basics before setting off on the mission). Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, which Nolan has frequently cited as an inspiration, proved that more is often less, and that sometimes not explaining everything in detail can be far more rewarding for the audience. It is a lesson that Nolan, overly keen to impress us with his array of ideas, perhaps should have heeded more astutely.