Skip to Content

Neil deGrasse Tyson had a lot to say about ‘Interstellar’

Posted on

Neil deGrasse Tyson had a lot to say about ‘Interstellar’

NeildeGrasseTyson

Noted film critic astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has a long history of fact checking movies while still making the Internet love him. Back during the release of Titanic, Tyson noticed that the celestial pattern Jack and Rose see in the Atlantic Ocean sky didn’t match what they should’ve in that location and time of year, prompting James Cameron to go back and fix it on the DVD release. Last year Tyson went to town on Gravity, saying first on Twitter that it should be called Angular Momentum and then taking his act to YouTube. No word yet on how Alfonso Cuaron is taking the news.

But with the arrival of Interstellar this weekend, yet another space travel movie that seems to dare scientists with its convincing sounding theories about relativity, black holes, quantum mechanics and more, you can bet Tyson will weigh in.

Late Sunday evening, Tyson sure enough took to Twitter to offer his review, going even longer than he did on Gravity. In some respect, he was more kind to the science, if less kind to certain aspects of the movie. Some possible SPOILERS follow below.

Tyson’s ultimate verdict is that there’s hope yet for understanding the physics behind the movie, even if there’s little help for Nolan’s story itself.

 

 

All this is actually coming at a peculiar time for the movie, because many film critics would argue that articles nitpicking the science or historical accuracy of any film is a detriment to the actual appreciation and understanding of the themes presented in that work of art. In Interstellar’s case however, here’s a movie laying all its facts out to fanboys determined on scrutinizing every frame and unraveling its secrets, arguably inviting these sorts of fact checking articles.

Tyson at the very least provided a helpful addendum to all his tweets that many of those fact checking articles may lack.

 

UPDATE: Commenters have pointed out that it’s unclear what in this set of tweets seems at all unkind in Tyson’s comments about Interstellar. In the editing process, one tweet was accidentally omitted that slants more negative. That would be this one:

UPDATE 2: Tyson this morning appeared on CBS This Morning to talk about the movie, clarify some of his points made in his tweets and again profess his love for Contact. Watch it below:

Also, this screenshot of one of the anchors listening to Tyson talk about wormholes versus black holes FTW:

CBS Anchor