Interstellar (2014), Review Part 4: So Who Are “They” Anyway?

Will we at last find out?

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

In the previous review, we talked about how Cooper and his crew’s last attempt to save humanity from extinction was a bust. Dr. Mann had lied when he claimed his planet was habitable; then he tried to murder Cooper and abandon the crew there. Thankfully, Cooper and Dr. Brand survived and were able to fix their ship, which Dr. Mann nearly destroyed. But now, they’re heading toward a black hole, and they don’t have enough fuel to reach Edmunds planet.

However, Cooper has a plan to avoid the worst

As the ship is being pulled into the black hole, Cooper decides to use the momentum of the hole’s spin and the remaining fuel in the ship’s shuttles to slingshot them to Edmunds planet. He also means to send TARS, one of the crew’s robots, into the black hole, hoping that TARS will be able to relay data about the singularity to Earth. Cooper begins the maneuver, and everything goes as planned.

However, there was one detail he failed to tell Dr. Brand. Two of the shuttles need to be detached to make sure the ship has enough momentum to reach Edmunds planet. TARS detaches the first shuttle. And Cooper decides to detach the second shuttle himself, leaving one of the robots to fly Dr. Brand to her destination. This means that Cooper is also going inside the black hole. Dr. Brand begs Cooper not to do this, but he ignores her and detaches the shuttle. Cooper finds himself inside the black hole, while Dr. Brand and the ship head towards Edmunds planet.

Meanwhile, Murphy returns to her old bedroom…

Murphy is hoping that her “ghost” can somehow give her the last part of the gravity equation that Professor Brand failed to solve. Her only reason for doing this is that she has “a feeling.”

I found this justification to be lazy writing. There should’ve been something else — anything else — to make her want to go back to that room. Anyway, she starts pulling out the books on the bookshelf, trying to recreate what the ghost had communicated through Morse code years before.

As for Cooper, he passes out and wakes up to a mechanical voice telling him to eject. He does so and finds himself tumbling through a void. Then Cooper falls into some bizarre world that resembles a kaleidoscope. He’s eventually able to grab onto one of the strange surfaces and realizes that he’s on the other side of the bookshelf in Murphy’s bedroom, where he sees Murphy as a little girl. He eventually figures out that he can knock the book off the shelf and spells out STAY in Morse code, hoping that Murphy can convince his past self to stay home.

Of course, everything plays out as before. Remember, Murphy had tried to tell him that the “ghost” had told him to stay. But the past Cooper had just thought she was lying…

The fifth dimension of the “They”

Cooper has no idea what to do next, but then he hears a familiar voice: TARS. The robot tells Cooper that he is in the fifth dimension of the mysterious “They.”

Throughout the movie, various characters have referred to this “They,” and these characters have claimed that the group has been trying to help them. The scientists all theorized that this “They” constructed the wormhole that allowed Cooper and his crew to enter another galaxy.

TARS tells Cooper that “They” have constructed a three-dimensional world inside their fifth-dimensional reality so he can better understand what they want him to do. Together, the two discuss the problem and figure out that they can use gravity to send messages across time and space, which is why Cooper is able to knock over the books on the bookshelf.

The mysterious power of love is invoked

This is where the nonsense kicks in. The simplest thing to do is to plainly state what I think the writers are trying to say. Basically, the movie is presenting a time paradox. As far as I can tell, “They” have the ability to reach into any moment in time, but for some reason, “They” have no ability to use gravity to communicate with humans in the past because “They” have no emotional attachments to those humans.

Dr. Brand’s emotional appeal to Cooper and Romilly when she was trying to persuade them to go to Edmund’s plant instead of Dr. Mann’s planet was meant to be foreshadowing. She says love is something not yet understood, and while in the black hole, Cooper concludes that love is quantifiable. It is a force that this “They” understands, and Cooper’s connection with his daughter creates a link that transcends time and space. This link will allow him and, by extension, “They” to communicate the data Murphy needs to finish Professor Brand’s equation. So, somehow, Cooper’s love for his daughter acts as a kind of coordinates that enables “They” to pinpoint a specific moment in time from which Cooper can communicate using gravity.

But things get even more confusing. Cooper insists that these “They” are humans from the future. So, the “They” from the future—in order to preserve their present—have reached into the past to give humanity what it needs to leave Earth, creating a sort of loop that sustains mankind’s existence.

Of course this makes no blasted sense

People might consider the movie’s twist a time paradox, but I just prefer to call it double-think. The bottom line is that time needs a clear chain of cause and effect. What’s the cause and effect in this case? How could this future humanity realize the need to preserve its own existence without first going extinct? The writers may as well have tried to describe a married bachelor.

Furthermore, if this humanity is capable of transcending time but can’t interact with anything within that time without an emotional attachment, in what sense have they transcended it? It’s like being able to look at a marble without touching its surface. Can they see into the past, but that’s the end of it? If so, then how were they able to create a wormhole outside of Saturn?

And why not create some sort of gravitational anomaly on Earth? If they can do one thing with gravity, why not do something else? Why not spell out the gravity equation in the dirt outside of NASA? Why did they need to use some random astronaut’s kid to solve the gravity equation? Plus, Cooper says these people have “evolved.” How in the world did natural selection select the fifth dimension?

A future humanity couldn’t have intervened to save the people of Earth. Either Murphy’s generation found another way to survive, in which case this future humanity is not needed, or mankind died out, in which case this future humanity does not exist. I think the writers wanted a mystery—something profound that would leave the audience asking questions. There’s merit to that, but the mystery does need some kind of underlying logic so the audience can ask coherent questions. Otherwise, they’ll just be confused and annoyed. A married bachelor is not some grand mystery. He’s just a cheater who doesn’t want to get caught.

I’ll conclude this review of Interstellar next time.