Christopher Nolan's Interstellar: The Complete Screenplay: With Selected Storyboards (Opus Screenplay Series)

Please note that this review contains several spoilers in relation to the first hour of the film's plot.I purchased this book after seeing the film twice, under the assumption that in reading the screenplay, I would understand a few pertinent plot points I missed in my first two viewings. In this respect, this purchase has more than served its purpose.INTERSTELLAR is definitely not for everyone. The film requires commitment to both thought and time, and therefore will not be to everyone's liking, including some devoted fans of the science fiction genre.I will admit I have an affinity for films that require multiple viewings for the observer to digest. I am no genius, but I was frankly amazed at how much of Christopher Nolan's INTERSTELLAR I did understand during my first viewing. When I saw it a second time, I was equally amazed at how much I'd missed, and how beautifully it all came together. I would not say that INTERSTELLAR requires a degree in quantum physics or an understanding of Einstein's theory of relativity, but they sure would be helpful. Yet it turns out that the underlying theme of INTERSTELLAR is nothing more than an exploration of the power of love and what makes us human. After my first viewing, I emerged from the theater with many questions, yet I had the feeling (and still do) that INTERSTELLAR is perhaps the greatest science fiction film ever made and even possibly the best film I have ever seen of any genre. I do not make these statements lightly. And as far as the script is concerned, reading this book has deepened my understanding of the plot, and thus enhanced my enjoyment tremendously. I am a film buff who enjoys many different types of movies, but Sci-fi, drama and fantasy are perhaps my favorites. INTERSTELLAR employs elements of each.The first hour or so of the film can be summarized thusly: Cooper (Mathew McConaughey) is a former NASA space pilot living in the near future, where a large-scale disaster (there are hints that it may have been climate change or even a nuclear war) has killed off much of the Earth's population, and left the planet unable to sustain life for more than one more generation. Dust storms blanket the planet and crops fail constantly. One by one many crops have become history and corn is all that can be grown.Cooper's daughter Murph and son Tom are above average students, but like other young people, they are encouraged to study farming to help sustain the dwindling food supply. Murph complains of poltergeists in her room and is soon attempting to decode cryptic messages that appear in the dust near her bookcase. When she and her dad discover that one of the messages contains geographic coordinates in binary numbers, they set out to discover what they may at that location.What they find is a secret NASA complex presided over by Professor Brand (Michael Caine) who is trying desperately to save the species by discovering a new, habitable planet while simultaneously exploring the possibility of launching a massive space station to receive Earth's doomed people. We soon learn that a crew of explorers has already been sent into a wormhole near Saturn. The wormhole opens into another galaxy, where several potentially viable planets await. Professor Brand convinces Cooper to leave his family and pilot a spacecraft into the wormhole, while he (Professor Brand) works on a problem concerning the space station. Cooper is accompanied on his mission by Brand's daughter (Anne Hathaway) and a crew of two more astronauts, plus two robots called Tars and Case. Murph doesn't want her father to leave, because she understands that he will not be back for many years, if at all. Believe it or not, this is only the beginning. Be warned that the movie runs a hefty two hours and forty-nine minutes, all of which require sustained attention to absorb the film's myriad details.With INTERSTELLAR, Christopher Nolan has fashioned nothing less than a modern classic, a film by which I believe future space sci-fi films may be measured. Of course, it is not apparent in the script, but the music, by Hans Zimmer, is breathtaking, and so effective as to draw the viewer directly into the story. The visual effects are stunning and the drama intense. All together, they make for a highly potent and entertaining film. During the final 45 minutes, I found myself in tears several times, particularly at the climax.I enjoyed my first screening of the film so much that I did something I think I've never done before - I went back to see it again the very next day. The second viewing was even more rewarding and helped to answer many of the questions I had after my first screening. While I did not understand it all the first time around (an understatement if ever there was one) I did understand enough to know that I was viewing something beyond extraordinary. My purchase of the screenplay bolstered my opinion of this work tremendously.The second half of the book contains a generous sampling of selected storyboards. They were also quite enjoyable. One of the highlights of the book, however, is a fascinating conversation with Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan.Highly recommended.

I've been reading lots of screenplays lately to study what great film screenplays read like. Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting, Scream, and others are required reading for those that want to learn from great films. This is the screenplay for "Interstellar," which come from the minds of brothers Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan. With their combined resumes, I thought it was worth a look into how their writing translates into the finished product.— SCREENPLAY —This is a 1" thick paperback. with the first half being the screenplay, and the second half for storyboards from the film. If you're already familiar with screenplay language, then you'll know what to expect here. A good screenplay will have you imagining a movie very closely to what ends up on screen.— STORYBOARDS —The storyboards are pencil sketches of select scenes in the film. They are semi-detailed sketches with clear direction as to how the final shot will be composed and if there are any camera movements required.— SUMMARY —This is another great screenplay book, with the bonus of the storyboards, for those that are looking to study these things. Recommended.

To paraphrase Garrison Keillor, it might be a "child of habit." That's when in Hollywood writers must put a screenplay together from other writers' previously-used ideas. Oh, it's not exactly plagiarism; it's the tyranny of being too young to have seen old movies instead of just the last few out. Evidence is that the Studios copy each other, hoping their movie will beat the others out at The Box Office. I say Others because sometimes 3 movies come out with similar tropes, like underwater or Armageddon from asteroids. I remember when RXM beat DESTINATION MOON to the theaters, and Dalton Trumbo had to write RXM under a pseudonym, producing in that case a much greater script with a message against nuclear war. Both RXM and DM had lines about The Moon being an unassailable base to blast Earth, but RXM showed what could happen in the end. OK, lets get to this INTERSTELLAR screenplay. I have not seen the movie yet, but I could not help annotating this book as I went, getting madder by the page. Sweeping away science fiction for speculative fiction is the Nolans' way of escaping from the dismissal of the usual sci-fi label on their new effort. Nice try men. It does not fly. Even the masterpiece 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY got by with the label that goes back to THINGS TO COME in the 1930s. And the screenplay convicts itself by not-so-subtle, possibly tongue-in-cheek, homages to lots of old movies. STAR WARS sequels got away with it, so why not this screenplay? I say because they appear accidental, like a sad lack of short-term memory. Both CONTACT and CONQUEST OF SPACE have crazy characters and both of them are religious fanatics. Another problem: the history of MURPHY'S LAW should not be distorted by recalling that someone took the Law and revised its meaning to a positive statement. (I and about 400,000 other engineers and scientists worked on Apollo, and Murphy's Law was always meant to explain stupid screw-ups, never optimism.) The Introduction to this book, as does Kip's whole book, slams us, the presumed audience, for not having any understanding of science. I must agree that, by definition, half the population has IQs lower than 100. But, really, some are higher, and so why kick the other half? Try this: the Intro says that "relativity is such an odd thing." Not so. When relativity was explained to a large group of children in the 1960s, the children actually had an easier time understanding the concepts than a similar-sized group of adults, who were obviously prejudiced by their "emotional core." How does that go, "ignorance is strength"? Now, "innovation comes from war"? H. G. Welles blew that idea out of the water in 1938 with THINGS TO COME. Ironically, TTC has a bad guy who warns against his government sending people to dreary planets beyond the stars. Again, new writers haven't watched older sci-fi. It's Murphy's Law, says this old "grumpy guy"! I am delighted to see the character Ms. Hanley believe in the nonsense of CAPRICORN ONE (1978). She adequately shows the ignorance of lots of fools, and tries to harm the child. The character DONALD is my favorite, as a grump like me. I agree with the idea that someday we all will be just photos and movies, but this screenplay tries to do what those Tsunami movies did, make Heaven visible. And a scientist with a daughter? The sci-fi movies with that relationship are legion. CONTACT is the best. The 1950s seemed to have nothing but scientists with daughters who help save the world. THEM was especially fun. I have several daughters and they sometimes try to save the world, with less help from, what? Ghosts from The Bulk? Optimism, not. This is a big step sideways in thinking like 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY, but I am glad that the Others are not shown. It was The Studio that tacked on The Xenomorph in IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, which worked well in 3D, scaring me as a little kid. In one scene COOPER says "Jesus --" and I say "Hello !" This might be just more of the usual cussing in modern movies, but also might be a spoiler. I was LOL when so many scenes in outer space and around Gargantua are labeled "DAY." DAY in "the heart of darkness"?? How come robots are so damn smart now that HAL was the meme? Robots dominate everything, even when the navigation module is destroyed and apparently can be replaced by human hands. As in ALIEN movies, humans handle controls best, and like in PITCH BLACK, can guide in impossible landings on any terra incognita. Another really awful thing in this screenplay is the character names. Nick names for all others but the Nolans themselves. Don't you love names that can go for male or female? Don't be confused, its just street lingo. And the ending, I mean endings, which jump back and forth like the hinges in tesseracts between times and places which are well oiled and will certainly be more eye candy. People, especially women and sensitive men, cry a lot, fall to their knees to pray to DAD, aka The Big Daddy in the Sky. No one dies but experiences scientific resurrection. Not a dream, like in the American version of INVADERS FROM MARS? No, we dance The Time Warp instead and are Glad that NASA can arrange a wonderful Surprise Party. Ending with the Sun and "dwindling light" sure sounds like the end of Clarke's CHILDHOOD'S END, which posits another way humanity might evolve and leave its nest. Steal some nice words here and there, but let the audience cry too when they see that "Brand kneels in front of a small CROSS." I wonder what non-Christians will think. Will they have a "long nap"? Why don't directors go to real science-fiction writers for screenplays? Maybe such sci-fi writers remember what had been done to other earlier writers--Black Listing and all. Another thing: why is the future Space Program done in secret, and why must the best astronaut be a retired SPACE COWBOY who is a natural-born hands-on Pilot? Sounds like DEEP IMPACT. And here, with the Earth about to go belly-up and most of the population dead or just plain out-of-work, how does NASA pay for this rescue attempt with cryo eggs and sperms, not an ARC full of lottery-chosen folks like in WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE where private funding is available? Private Industry? No. We are supposed to ignore such obvious questions. Has Congress done it again behind closed doors, like the present spending of billions of tax dollars in secret on a new stealth bomber? But in this movie a Miracle Occurs. Time is money. You and I are victims of Bait-and-Switch: Spielberg dropped out early before the screenplay. Read Kip Thorne's book introduction describing the actual history of the project. Spielberg would have done a much better job, certainly, but I don't want to start another conspiracy theory about greedy Studios. This plot is like the viral video showing a parent holding a chocolate Twix under his baby's nose then sneaking a spoonful of real baby food into its mouth down lower. Here you have praised the wrong Maker.

SO HAPPY to have this in my home library. Very intriguing to read the script and see the storyboards. First half of the book is the script and the second is story boards. I love how much story boards were included. THANK YOU SO MICH!

It's like imagining your own version of Interstellar movie in own mind.Was as interesting and attention grabbing as the movie!When reading you get to expand on concepts in your mind.

Accurate screenplay, I followed the first couple of scenes with the film and there was almost word-for-word correlation so this is not an early draft posing as a screenplay. There's a good collection of scenes in storyboard too which add to the interest. A recommended book if you're interested in screenplay construction.

No issues with the book, just wanted a hardback version

A very thick volume- more than half of the book is storyboards, which is fascinating for anybody interested in the filmmaking process. The scripts are really interesting when comparing them to the finished film- what got cut, what got changed, and same with the storyboards.

Must have for any fan of film and this one in particular

Excellent