The 2015 Oscar nominations are out and everybody is delighted and upset. Some actors, like Selma’s David Oyelowo, were obviously slighted just as some actors, like Eddie Redmayne’s performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, were honored. Meta-fictional genre-blending film Birdman also got plenty of nominations, which should make people happy who love movies about Raymond Carver and comic books. But there’s a planet-sized hole in the nominees list and that is the exclusion of one of the best and most heartfelt science fiction film in years: Interstellar. The reason why this movie didn’t get nominated for anything other than “Original Score,” is because mainstream media gatekeepers and a big portion of audiences still don’t really care for a science fiction movie about science fiction.
For those readers who didn’t like Interstellar or for those totally on-point scientists like Phil Plait who had all sorts of science problems with the film, let’s have a truce: if you’re predisposed to like Interstellar but you didn’t like it because the plot was too confusing, or it was too long, or the movie was too pretentious, or the maths were all over the place, or whatever, I hear you and might even agree with you a bit. This is not about that. This is about representation of what was an attempt to make an epic and thoughtful science fiction film dealing with the importance of space travel as it relates to the preservation of the human race generations and generations from now and as it relates to our motivations on an individual level.
Collectively, the science fiction fantasy community has stuck up for and praised movies much worse or at least on par with Interstellar, and many of them have even won or been nominated for Hugo Awards. Neil deGrasse Tyson even approves of this movie. So, if we’re collectively interested in representation of space travel as depicted in what attempted to be a hard SF movie, we can at least agree that Interstellar tried. Because the fact is, as a science fiction fan, I’d rather live in a world where Interstellar wins a lot of awards OVER last year’s Oscar darling, Gravity.
I liked Gravity, but I didn’t love it. And I didn’t love it precisely because it does what so many science fiction movies set in outer space do: it made space exploration, and by extension, science fiction, the enemy. I’ve ranted about this in more detail a few summers ago for The Awl, but my essential assertion is this: too many big Hollywood science fiction movies—even the good ones—present the science fiction element as the conflict to be overcome, which subtly creates a tendency in the genre of sci-fi movies to pit the “human element” against “the sci-fi element.” As the Doctor said in the most recent Doctor Who special, “There’s a horror movie called Alien? That’s really offensive.” From killer robots (in every popular robot movie ever except Pacific Rim) to being trapped in space until Sandra Bullock barks like a dog, to even the bizarre ending of Battlestar Galactica where the big message is to stop using computers and start farming again, there’s an almost pre-programmed knee-jerk reaction to make sci-fi stuff the enemy in your sci-fi movie. It’s hard to work against, and I really don’t blame anybody, but as I’ve pointed out before, Gravity isn’t really an interesting movie, and doesn’t really get people excited about space travel.
I’m not saying a movie should always have an agenda, but when it comes to sci-fi movies set in space, there’s a huge deficit of ones that aren’t pseudo-horror movies or kill-the-bad-guy epics. (2001 immediately comes to mind. It will turn 57 47 this year.) The last time mainstream culture sat-up and paid attention to a science fiction movie that tried to be real was 1997’s Contact, which wasn’t nominated for Best Picture either, and also did not give Jodie Foster a Best Actress nomination, which she should have fucking won. That McConaughey guy isn’t bad in that movie either, and just like Interstellar, Contact took cues (albeit more direct) from real scientistss like Kip Thorne and, of course Carl Sagan.
From a purely entertainment standpoint, Anne Hathaway’s performance in Interstellar is better and more nuanced than Sandra Bullock’s in Gravity. Matthew McConaughey is better than Clooney. David Gysai in Interstellar was better than Ed Norton in Birdman and Jessica Chastain was better than Emma Stone in Birdman, too. The writing and overall concept and the direction and scope and guts and everything is better than everything about the horror-survival flick of Gravity. Also, refreshingly, Interstellar wasn’t a navel-gazing high-concept film about the nature of art and stardom like Birdman. (Again, for the record, I like both Gravity and Birdman.) No. Interstellar was about something.
This is an epic film about the dangers of scientific ignorance and the hard pill to swallow that survival of the human race—IN GENERAL—has to be thought of in terms of multiple generations. Cooper isn’t the hero in the end, and neither is Murphy, it’s the various generations of people who had faith to invest in the human race to spread out into space, even though it seem insane. This, is not the feel-good movie of the year at all, but instead, the feel-bad-movie of the year because it’s really hard it is to think about the hugeness of existence. It’s a bummer! I know! And you’d think that the Oscars would like that, but they didn’t. Interstellar wasn’t “recognized” by the establishment of film people because it’s not a safe movie. No one wanted this movie from Christopher and Jonathan Nolan, and everybody would be happier with McConaughey or Hathaway or Chastain playing people with more purely terrestrial (read: relatable) problems.
This is inherently closed-minded. Science fiction—and specifically Interstellar—isn’t escapism or an attempt to depict non-realism, it’s a statement about looking at reality in a way that is clearer, because reality is bigger. The hyperbole of Interstellar is its strength, and by extension, the strength of all heartfelt science fiction. Complain all you want about how the film tries to equate love with science, but you do so at your own peril. Because if the big awards and the big recognitions don’t go to a movie like Interstellar at least a little bit, the love for all science fiction movies will leak out of world and into a black hole where nothing but cheap thrills and killer robots live and collect money.
Ryan Britt is a longtime contributor to Tor.com. He is the author of Luke Skywalker Can’t Read and Other Geeky Truths, forthcoming for Plume Books this November.
I don’t think the Academy should give awards or nominations for effort or for the sake of “representation,” no matter the genre. Despite some great effects and interesting ideas, Interstellar came up short in the writing and directing departments in my opinion. Give the nominations to films that really deserve it.
And saying Gravity made space exploration or science fiction the enemy is as silly as saying Cast Away made air travel or FedEx the enemy.
Interstellar was so stupid (scientifically and non) that it retroactively raised my opinion of Gravity. And I don’t think a message of “Hey, we’ve wrecked the Earth, let’s find some other planets to destroy!” is a message that science fiction should be celebrating.
Neil deGrasse Tyson approves of this movie? Is it too late to nominate it for a Razzie then? The guy doesn’t know what a planet is fer goodness sake.
I wish there was a kudos button here because I totally agree with your points. I hope that more moives like Intersteller get made because it led to a lot of great disscussions with the people around me just about so many different topics. It was enjoyable for days after I saw the movie because of that.
Completely agree with @1. Interstellar was worth watching, but simply not among the best films of the year. Whatever unique thing it represents doesn’t make it worth honoring, any more than the alternate-history-fairy-tale I tried to publish in 8th grade deserved to get published for being unique.
Gravity won awards last year because it did some technical things amazingly (the bulk of its awards were technical), and it won Best Director mainly because Cuaron got nothing for Children of Men and the Academy felt guilty about it.
Give the nominations to films that really deserve it.
It’s not like the Academy has a “stellar” track record for that in general. Time will tell which films were actually noteworthy, and which were frankly an embarrassment.
A couple of things. 2001 turns 47 this year, not 57.
And I’m assuming the “Original Score” swipe is just that it wasn’t nominated for any of the major categories, right? That its five nominations are all technical?
Intersteller doesn’t deserve a Saturn award, much less an Academy Award. Just because one reviewer thinks Instersteller is “one of the best and most heartfelt science fiction films in years” doesn’t mean that it is.
While I agree that science fiction movies often get shafted at Awards Shows, this isn’t a good example. There’s only one film that I think got short shrift this year, and that’s the Lego Movie.
I liked Interstellar well enough, but I don’t think it’s Best Picture material. It tried to be, and some things were really good and some things fell a bit short. The sciece had me scratching my head thinking, “Wait that doesn’t seem right, oh what what just happened?” That pulled the movie down. On the other hand, the father-daughter relationship freaking killed me. Murph was so much like one of my daughters that it made that part of the story very personal to me. That earned it back a lot of the points that the weird science cost it.
I’d have been annoyed to see Interstellar get Oscar nominations because of the amount of tedious, predictable, boring “human interest” it seemed to keep feeling the need to shove in, as if a science-fiction-watching audience’s interest wouldn’t be kept by mere good science fiction; that felt downright patronising.
I was glad Interstellar didn’t get nominated for the bigger awards. It didn’t deserve them; the movie was a mess. There were some awesome points but they could have easily cut twenty minutes out of it. Also, I didn’t find Anne Hathaway’s performance to be anywhere near as good as Bullock’s in Gravity, or good at all for that matter. (And, hey, I love Anne Hathaway. I’ve got high expectations.)
Now, Best Visual Effects? The first wormhole sequence alone earned that.
Side note: I really don’t get how the movie was too technical. I read somewhere that Nolan cut a lot of that, and to my mind he shouldn’t have since that was one of the more interesting aspects of the movie, viable information or not.
It’s not that the plot was too confusing, it’s that it wasn’t confusing enough. The movie had great ambitions but the writing hamstrung itself in its attempts to make itself universally accessible, which it did and got massive viewership, but at the expense of a level of open ended artistry that I think would have served the subject matter a little better. Films are allowed to make a statement, but Interstellar did so in such a heavy handed way that it felt like an advertisement for its admittedly admirable themes. Great piece of social messaging for us to come together around, but no, not “Best Picture” material.
I have to say, I also expected Interstellar to at least be nominated in the Best Picture category. For all its flaws, I found it to have a scale and an immersivity rarely achieved in movies these days. It reminded me in some ways of what cinema can be. But thinking back on it after this “snub”, I had to agree that the script problems that were easily overlooked during the viewing were indeed serious enough that perhaps the movie didn’t deserve the nomination (I do still agree that some best acting nods would not have been superfluous).
Where I have to completely shake my head at you is in your pseudo-prophetic conclusion that Interstellar should represent the future of all science-fiction or that this particular movie should herald a decline in SF love. The only thing that really will determine whether similar SF films will be attempted is not awards, it’s money, and Interstellar seems to have done quite well for itself on that front.
Unless I am very much mistaken, the current wave of superhero movies didn’t starts thanks to a heavily rewarded superhero movie, it started because the comic geek subculture (which is normally not far removed from the SF subculture) had reached enough of a mass that superhero movies made handsome amounts of money, so studios kept greenlighting the projects.
Um, check your facts?
Interstellar picked up 5 nominations, making it one of the most recognized movies of the year (tied for 6th most nominations). A lot of the rest of your points stand, but Interstellar did have some problems, like it or not. Yes, all the nominations are in technical categories, but idk if I’d really say it deserves a best picture nod, and it’s way out of the running for every other non-technical award imo.
5 nominations does not a snub make.
Interstellar was a beautifully made movie. But there was nothing in that movie that made sense. Nothing! The closest thing to an actual black hole in that movie may have been the plot. I cannot think of a single movie I have watched in cinema that made less sense, and that includes Mission to Mars and Wild Things. Given the frankly terrible plot/script and the amount of factually incorrect science it included, I think anyone that loves science fiction should be very happy it did not get any major nominations.
Back when their snub of The Dark Knight resulted in an outcry that basically forced them to open up more Best Picture slots, ostensibly in the name of a broader selection of films, I remember thinking Well, that’ll be five more non-“genre” movies we’ll see nominated every year from now on. The Academy is the Academy, and they’re not inclined to throw SF or fantasy a bone unless doing so would be less troublesome than the alternative. Then they can pretend they’re open to new things.
Not sure why Nolan suddenly ended up on the big list of people everyone hates, seemingly even before Interstellar came out. I liked the movie, for what it’s worth. It definitely deserves Best Score, Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects, but everyone knows SF movies rarely get nominated for anything but the technical stuff. I probably wouldn’t give it Best Picture, but I don’t understand the sheer vitriolic snark that gets thrown at it (and anyone who enjoyed it).
I’m glad you mentioned Contact, because I had the exact same thought when I saw Interstellar.
I actually agree with a lot of what you are saying. I enjoyed the movie and I didn’t find it hard to follow. I went with my nine year old and some really interesting discussions came out of that. There aren’t too many SF movies you can actually say that about.
Interstellar got more total nominations than Selma. If you want to talk about snubs …
Two words. Ender’s Game. Compared to the complete snub of that marvelous adaptation, Interstellar was thrown a parade.
Free @19 +1
If you want a positive space movie, may have to wait for The Martian coming out in November. If it’s anything like the excellent, fun book, we’ll see lots of positivity about science and space travel in the midst of the hero’s efforts to avoid being killed by the tough conditions.
The ‘danes don’t get science fiction, lets consider that a plus.
Hey — Mr Turner didn’t nominated for a single thing, and unlike Interstellar, as a film, Mr Turner is the best thing on a movie screen in a very long time — at least in terms of what I go to movies to see.
@1: Right on, patches.
I did love Gravity, despite the way it abused orbital mechanics. But the simple fact is, it was not a science fiction movie, so it’s irrelevant to any discussion of Oscar snubbing of SF.
But Interstellar was bad SF. It tried to be too many things at once, and that meant that it not only abused the Science part of SF, but it made it a pretty weak movie.
@9: Well, maybe if I’d known your daughter, I’d have liked Interstellar better :-)
I’m used to the Oscars snubbing Nolan films, but remember that the Academy’s failure to nominate the Dark Knight led to the awards being changed. So while they keep snubbing his movies, they did acknowledge that once that they had screwed up as they did so.
I did find Interstellar to be a much better movie than Gravity. Gravity was amazing technically, but the story of Interstellar was a lot better. It was a long movie but by the end I was amazed it had fit so much into the time. The science was just right for a movie. It was great stuff along the lines of William Sleator’s best books.
@16 – Agreed. I think his films are so ambitious that people expect a lot more than they do from other movies, and if the movie doesn’t really click with them they react very negatively despite it still being a rather amazing film.
You proceed from the deeply mistaken assumption that the Oscars® are about merit. They are not. They are a highly ritualized, intentionally televised, hours-long advertisement for the films that the studios have paid extremely well to be placed on the program. They are a reflection of expenditure of a publicity budget. On some rare occasions, there is overlap with merit, but that is pure coincidence. To treat them as anything else is to buy into the lie that gives them their power.
I really like and agree wholeheartedly with your comments about how SF movies still tend to make science the “bad guy”. It’s really getting old. I think it’s one of the reasons I loved “Her” so much, because it totally did not go that way at all. In fact it kind of took that whole singularity thing and dropped it on its head.
But as far as the Oscars thing, meh. Do people really place any value in that? (obviously rhetorical, I know they do, sadface) It’s such an obvious politics + marketing machine. So no, I don’t watch that tripe where they can rattle of designer names and who done what and show who’s our new favorite. Bah. It’s the epitome of our celebrity culture, and for that I despise it. /endrant
Thank you for making an excellent point very well, and for recognising a great work. Yes, Interstellar > Gravity, on all fronts. The haters here are also interesting. I have noted how Interstellar has evoked very powerful reactions, positive and negative, and how divisive it’s been. Why is that? I would like to see you write about that too.
You finally have a Science Fiction film with some hard science and folks don’t appreciate it, preferring to pick on his (admitted) flaws. INTERSTELLAR takes itself seriously and has grand ideas. Is it perfect? No. Is it messy? Yes, but, that is part of it’s charm.
Oh, well, I guess people prefer to just groove on some CGI raccoon scratching it’s balls.
I don’t know jack about how Academy judges a movie worth (or not) to be nominated; what I know is that for a bunch of reasons starting with T.A.R.S., the whole FX set, the music (thanks God they nominated Hans Zimmer’s score; hadn’t they done it I’d go to Hollywood to kill them all by myself) and ending with what the movie is really about (cience+love+”plot-strong-enough-to-make-anyone-who-really-cares-cry”), I FEEL in my bones that it should be nominated (at least) to Best Film and Best Director.
I did really ended the movie saying: “yeah, you can say that is as messy as a 2h 30 min movie can be, trying to tell a story that should be told in 3h 30 min, but it’s just the new canon for pure sci-fi movies and, hell, it’s awesome”.
Interstellar wasn’t nominated in any of the Big 5 categories, though, so the author’s point still stands.
And anyone thinking Interstellar was bad SF, is clueless, IMO. I loved it more than I did Gravity. It was worthy of more recognition than Gravity got.
It was plodding, maudlin and heavy handed – I try not to say anything about the science, since sadly, science in Hollywood is usually even worse than this – and so are plotholes. But in other ways it just wasn’t a good movie, and it was all that Human Interest that was the worst. The bits between leaving Earth and the awful, awful, nonsensical, saccharine ending were good, and that could have even been longer: they could have lost about 127 references to the Dylan Thomas poem, and overall length would have been the same. So yes, here’s an Oscar for trying. Sorry, they don’t actually hand out an Oscar for trying.
Well, there are movies that have come out and are coming out that put Science and Technology in a positive light. Big Hero 6 was a positive spin on Science. Disney’s Tomorrowland is another that looks like it’s going to put Science in a good light as well.
But Tomorrowland shows another reason why folks do dark science movies: The flashes of a future (or present) radically different from the one we live in illustrate the promise of a future in the 1940’s and 50’s that never came to be! (Where’s my jetpacks! My flying cars!)
A lot folks are disgruntled not getting that future, but forget that the present we live in now is unimaginable by the folks of 60 years ago. It’s like we went through a “singularity”. (Another thing that probably won’t come to pass.)
This international forum is beyond what most futurists of the 40’s would have predicted! Imagine being able to have conversations with people across the world and have your words visible to thousands, if not millions of people instantly!
Inconceivable!
We’re going through a jaded period right now, where scientists are being painted in a not so pleasant light. But soon we’ll be back to the bright light of SCIENCE! And you know what?
We’ll Show Them ALL!
Bwahahahahahahaha!
when aliens will come to Earth…goodbye religions and all its Lies
I could not agree more! Interstellar was the BEST sci-fi movie I have ever seen! Unfortunately, most people are too simple and pea-brained to appreciate it.
I can’t believe anybody attempts to skate the science or whatever of a science fiction movie. It’s just the stupidest thing you can do. Do we also have to point out that no one knows the truth of the things imagined in this movie. So trying to claim scientific inaccuracies is scientifically inaccurate! Until you can fly into a wormhole or a super massive black hole, please don’t waste our time. Theories is by and large all we have.
Interstellar is a better movie than Birdman, Nolan is a better director than Iñarritu, Interstellar’s screenplay is better (by far) than Birdman’s screenplay. Interstellar’s actors are better than Birdman’s actors. Avatar is a better movie than The Hurt Locker (by far). Avatar is a better film than The Hurt Locker (by far). James Cameron is a better director than kathryn Bigellow. Avatar’s plot IS NOT DECEPTEBILY SIMPLE. If you can not see the beauty and the deepness of Avatar’s history, you are a “sallow person”. Gravity was a better movie than the slave movie. I’m not a racist person, but an acceptable movie is an acceptable movie. Life of Pi is a better film by Argo. The Invention of Hugo is a better film than The Artist. ETC,ETC,ETC,ETC. Academy members does NOT like Science Fiction. Well… I don’t like The Oscars, and I don’t believe in them. I don’t like Bafta awards, and I don’t like The Golden Globes, and of course I don’t like Razzie’s at all. The most important thing is the movie by itself, not forgettable awards…
O f course Avatar is a better film than The Hurt Locker. Of course Interstellar is a better film than Birdman. Of course, I’m not a racist person.
Science-fiction can’t be the enemy. I don’t like Oscars awards, Bafta awards, Golden Globe awards…
I like the movies.
By the way, Interstelllar is a Science-fiction movie, is NOT a Science- science movie. Gravity is NOT a Science-fiction movie, but I love it.
I really like Science-fiction, and I really like Science. Is not the same thing. Of course I’m NOT an idiot.
This movie literally made me want to live in this universe. I agree with the narrative flaws, i agree with most of the arguments against the movie. Messy…compressed…it’s all objective. There was a post earlier that touched upon the fact that whether good or bad everyone is still talking about this movie, months, and months, and months later. That alone in itself makes it a nod. I agree that the Oscars, and the golden globes, and all that jazz are pointless. That being said, this movie, not being that hard to follow (watch a damn documentary or two), really captivated me. I don’t care if it got nominated for whatever for whenever, this movie really put on the REAL! This movie is based on scientific theory…THEORY!!!!! It is meant to suspend your disbelief for 3 hours and take you on a journey of what COULD happen. Science is messy. Hollywood is messy. So when you say a movie of this magnitude is messy, how does that equate unto our basic parameters of human understanding?… Gravity=canon………what?!. Gravity= a whole lot of in your face metaphors that by the end have you facepalming. Again, i do understand the problems with this movie; however, i feel that we go to movies, like i said, to suspend our disbelief, and if you cant do that, who are you to judge a movie in the first place? I dont judge this movie, i welcome it. It’s been a breathe of fresh air for me in a very stagnant, dying scene. Don’t get me wrong, i very much enjoyed grand budapest, and birdman, and whiplash. Just thought that this was the only movie I’ve watched that made me really question, or debate, or associate with anything that’s come out in the last fifteen years.flaws aside, with the movie buff i am, best movie of 2014 for me. Mary not be for you, but it was for me, and Oscars aside will still be.
Birdman is not a good movie at all. Interstellar is a masterpiece. By the way, moviesins.com is a big scam!