You can't make that post right after dismissing the Transformers series which is as good a model for style /= substance as you will find.

O.A.F.K.,

Your reasoning fails imo, science fiction/fantasy is probably the most cerebral and idea-packed genre there is. I don't watch a great Science Fiction when I want to turn my mind off, quite the opposite. That said I liked interstellar a lot.

Where do I say you have to turn your mind completely off? However you should have to turn your eyes on.

Sci-Fi is not within a million miles of being the most cerebral genre. You need to watch more films. Ever watched a Bergman film?

In a visual media style will equal substance. To me a great Sci-Fi film will feed the eye and the mind.

Its worth pointing out in relation to the Transformers films that s*** is a substance.

It can (and should) but that doesn't mean it always does. I can't tell if you think differently, but whatever, I'm just being a pill.

Well yea, I just wanted to point out that style v substance can be a false dichotomy.

I do vaguely remember him flying through the tesseract, maybe looking for the watch, so that makes sense.

Best post in the thread.

Loved the movie, can't wait to see it again.

The father/daughter relationship in Contact was 10x better than Interstellar because you saw their initial connection, the devastation of his death when she was a kid, her growing up and eventually meeting an alien that took the form of her Dad to ease her into what was going on. Constant theme throughout the movie and emotionally relatable. The audience had time to take in the relationship and watch it play a role in her life the whole way. Interstellar was so one note - the daughter is smart and stubborn, while deep down being a daddy's girl and missing him incredibly. Cut to adulthood and 10 minutes of science talk for exposition. Cry a bunch and we're done.

Not going to convince someone who loved Interstellar that it's not a good movie, and if you enjoyed it then there's no point to try to bring that down, but both Gattaca and Contact were so much better in every way except for visuals. Contact was awesome for the 90's but can't keep up with visuals in 2014 special effects and Nolan's grand vision. He is very good at setting up grand and eye popping scenes for sure but didn't string them together to make an awesome movie.

I agree that Nolan always misses the mark for me in terms of emotional content. He gets so close, and a lot of the ingredients are there, but there's something missing. His emotional scenes aren't contrived or overly-sentimental like a lot of Hollywood movies, but they're not genuinely moving either. It's weird. A lot of people in the industry call him "cold" and I can agree with that sentiment. He's amazing at creating style though, and it's almost guaranteed that there will be several incredible scenes in any one of his movies. Still one of my favorite directors and would never miss any of his movies.

Btw, if you liked Interstellar and want to watch another space expedition movie with similar themes with much better visuals (and moving emotional scenes!), I highly suggest Sunshine. It's directed by Danny Boyle who claimed the movie was a love letter the psychonauts. It is my favorite movie and I still remember watching it high and being absolutely mesmerized by every scene. It's a beautiful beautiful movie and you owe it to yourself to only watch it on a big screen HDTV.

Sunshine does not have much better visuals. It no way does deep space as well, it does really really close to the Sun but that is different.

Gattaca is so far beyond Interstellar that Interstellar cannot even see it. Gattaca is an 8, Interstellar is a 4. Nearly every event in Interstellar is predictable because it's derivative of other movies.