Interstellar Mixes Climate Change, Corn, And Parallel Dimensions

By Nick Venable | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

InterstellarThere’s no denying Christopher Nolan is a man who likes his secrets, but for his latest, Interstellar, which began filming this week, he was very clear in telling the world it was about wormholes and parallel dimensions. Which narrowed the plot down to…just about anything one could think of. This movie could conceivably be about dog racing or alien battles. Instead, a new description of the film that appeared in the Alberta newspaper The Fort Macleod Gazette brings drastic global climate change into the equation. As ham-fisted as Nolan can be with his film’s messages, I doubt it can be any more overstated than Elysium, though that film will be more of a distant memory by the time Interstellar worm(hole)s its way into theaters next fall.

We already know that the film has a huge cast and follows a group of explorers who travel to another dimension, or the farthest reaches of human imagination. Whichever you prefer. The new, more detailed plotline reads as follows:

Set in the future, the movie details the toll climate change has taken on agriculture, with corn the last crop to be cultivated. The scientists embark on a journey through a worm hole into other dimensions in search of somewhere other crops can be grown.

Holy shit. It’s a movie about my favorite vegetable, one that is as low as possible on the list of healthy veggies. I’d have thought potatoes would be the end all of foods that would be growing after everything else stopped. I’m not sure why, but they’re my second favorite.

We’ve seen Nolan tell some excellent stories about bad cops, good magicians, caped crusaders, and short-term memory loss, and now we get something akin to a doomed future flick. Chances are looking good that we won’t see any major fight scenes in this movie. Unless it’s people fighting over corn, I guess. If approached from a realistic standpoint, it might hopefully be as good as, say, Children of Men, which perfectly distilled a sci-fi story told through a filter of naturalism. But Nolan is a “big idea” guy,” and I can’t wait to see what he brings to the table here.

Fort Macleod is one of the sites where Interstellar is filming, and the story also describes a scene where Matthew McConaughey and John Lithgow drive through a heavy dust storm created by the film crew. If there’s a scene where tumbleweeds blow through a modern city landscape, I’m going to squeal. There’s definitely a modern dustbowl feel going on.

Beyond those already named, Interstellar stars Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, Jessica Chastain, Ellen Burstyn, Bill Irwin, Casey Affleck, Wes Bentley, Topher Grace, Mackenzie Foy, David Gyasi, David Oyelowo, and Matt Damon, the most recent addition. It seems impossible that all of these people will get enough time to become real characters, but Nolan is excellent at giving everyone but Rachel Dawes a reason to remember them. I wish Heath Ledger was still around so that he could play “climate change” in this movie.

You can find it kicking up a dust cloud in theaters on November 7, 2014.