TikToker finds clue in Interstellar that changes meaning of whole movie | Hacker News Reader

TikToker finds clue in Interstellar that changes meaning of whole movie

independent.co.uk

29 pointsBluestein30 comments

Fan theories are fun but usually extrapolate far too much off of innocuous (and likely accidental) clues. Post production cuts are often out of the control of the director entirely. If this was the intended meaning, it would have been far more explicit - Christopher Nolan isn't Edgar Allen Poe, he's making blockbuster movies meant for a general audience.

Can't argue that it's not an interesting interpretation though... then again, pareidolia...

I mean honestly, to me, it isn't - Dreams foreshadowing future events is an extraordinarily common film and storytelling trope and much likelier is what was intended.

Stuff like this:

> “Then the dialogue, the words his kids speak, they sound so much like private thoughts that a person would have about a parent who suffered an untimely, accidental death.”

This is actually explained by following along with the plot. To them, he was for all intents and purposes dead - he fast traveled many decades into the future where they didn't hear from him.

> Post production cuts are often out of the control of the director entirely.

How accurate is this? I could see it for movies where the director doesn't have much sway with the studio...

But I can imagine when you look at the likes of Scorsese, Coppola, The Coen Brothers, Spielberg, Wes Anderson and the like, they probably do have the sway with the studio to have "final cut" rights or at least approval.

Cuts are done by the editor of the film, usually but not always in consultation with the director.

Some directors also edit their films but that is the exception.

That is understating the facts by quite a bit. The editor will usually do an initial cut without the director, but once the director is involved in editing the two of them work very closely, often sitting in editorial together making the changes in real time. If the director asks the editor to make a change, there is basically no chance that the director won’t subsequently review and approve the change.

The director’s cut may not necessarily be the final cut, particularly with newer directors, but for someone like Christopher Nolan it almost certainly is. So however the film was edited, it can be assumed that that is exactly how Nolan intended it to be.

No, the whole reason "Director's Cuts" exists is that those represent the cut the director wanted, not the theatrical cut released by the studio (which is driven by the studio's or producer's wants).

See, for example, Alien 3, Blade Runner, and Justice League for the most notorious/well-known examples. Lesser known examples include Aliens, The Abyss, Kingdom of Heaven, Doctor Sleep, Lethal Weapon, Dark City.

Only a handful of directors at the big studios get the right to control the final cut. You'll notice the director responsible for 3 of the 4 highest-grossing movies of all time has 2 movies in that list; this is because James Cameron didn't earn the right to control final cut until after his 3rd blockbuster success.

A few studios, like Netflix and A24, adhere to the "auteur's theory" of filmmaking, and let the director have full control over the creative process of the film, including the final cut, even without an established record of hits, but this is the exception, not the norm.

Cynically, the directors cut exists to drum up hype and resales. Hence Netflix now carrying the Snyder cut of rebel moon alongside the apparently sullied plebe cut.

> No, the whole reason "Director's Cuts" exists is that those represent the cut the director wanted, not the theatrical cut released by the studio (which is driven by the studio's or producer's wants).

Again, this is a vast oversimplification. If there is a disagreement between the director and the studio, they will negotiate with each other about which changes to make. But the director is never cut completely out of the process. Even if the director doesn’t get final cut, the DGA guarantees that the director has a very high level of input and say into what the final cut looks like. If the studio tries to take creative control completely away from the director, the director can petition the DGA to have his or her name removed from the film.

Getting back to your original statement:

> Cuts are done by the editor of the film, usually but not always in consultation with the director.

That is just incorrect. The director always is consulted during the edit, and in most cases works very closely with the editor. The studio may or may not insist on changes later, but there is just no universe where the editor makes changes alone with no input from the director at all. The DGA would have a fit if that happened.

If there is a disagreement between the director and the studio, they will negotiate with each other about which changes to make. But the director is never cut completely out of the process.

There are a lot of directors who would disagree with you on that...

Disney is notorious for this; off the top of my head, Ant Man, Rogue One, Solo, and Brave changed directors because of disagreements with the studio in post-production. With the Marvels, it is widely known that the director did not have final cut of the film. Bryan Singer and Steven Soderbergh have been replaced on movies due to disagreements with studios after filming had started (and in both cases, the films at issue went on to be multiple-Oscar nominees). Cary Joji Fukunaga was replaced on It due to disagreements with the studio (but retained writing credit) right before filming started; and he replaced Danny Boyle on No Time to Die after Boyle was let go due to disagreements with the studio.

If the studio tries to take creative control completely away from the director, the director can petition the DGA to have his or her name removed from the film.

The director always is consulted during the edit, and in most cases works very closely with the editor. The studio may or may not insist on changes later, but there is just no universe where the editor makes changes alone with no input from the director at all. The DGA would have a fit if that happened.

This is just incorrect. Indeed, what you suggest is at odds with over a 100 years of film history...

The DGA does not have a fit over stuff like this because a director is not entitled to "complete creative control" or to "final cut" unless they negotiate for it, get themselves hired as editor on the film they direct (which would also involve them being a producer), or work with a studio that embraces the auteur school of filmmaking (in which the released film represents the director's vision of the film).

It's one thing to support the auteur school since it usually results in better films (counterpoint: most Netflix films), but it is objectively not the way most films are made.

> The DGA does not have a fit over stuff like this because a director is not entitled to "complete creative control" or to "final cut" unless they negotiate for it

They absolutely do. It doesn’t matter whether the director has “complete creative control” or not. If the DGA is convinced that creative control has been taken away from the director, then–and only then–will they permit the director to have his or her name removed from the film, and have the film credited to a pseudonym. The original name used was Alan Smithee, but nowadays a new alias is invented for each film where this happens.

> get themselves hired as editor on the film they direct (which would also involve them being a producer)

It’s strange how you think this is somehow a means for a director to exert complete creative control, when at least one of the examples (Doctor Sleep) you gave as a film where the director was not given creative control and thus necessitated a “director’s cut” was, in fact, edited by the director.

Look, I’m not claiming to be any sort of authority on this or anything, but my nearly two decades of experience working in features and television editorial, including working on and for some of the films and studios you’ve mentioned, tell me that you fundamentally don’t understand how the editing process works vis-à-vis directors.

> If this was the intended meaning

Directors will leave these sort of against-the-grain intepretations open for film buffs. One can similarly watch Dumbo, Encanto and Coraline as involving, past an early part of the movie, a character in the process of dying.

Yes in general this is true, but not for Christopher Nolan. Everything is intentional and he has final cut on all of his films. Not saying this theory is true, but just that this particular argument against it doesn't hold water.

Have you seen Memento?

The theory doesn't make any sense; unlike The Sixth Sense, the main character in Interstellar interacts with a lot of people. If he's dead, so are they (or they're just figments of his post-death experience).

The journey doesn't make any sense as a post-death experience, since none of the events are tied to his life (before the events of the movie), so there's no deeper meaning to the wave planet, or the ice planet, or falling into the black hole.

Also, Nolan doesn't do meta-contextual films. His specialty is the technical aspects of storytelling (see, e.g., Memento, The Prestige, Dunkirk, and Tenet), not in imbuing deeper emotional meanings into his works. Indeed, one of the big critiques of his films (excluding Dunkirk and Oppenheimer) was that they generally lack any emotional depth.

What do you mean by technical aspects of storytelling?

Structure, mostly. For example, in Memento telling the story backwards. In Inception, the nested dreams. In the Prestige, presenting the plot in the style of a magic trick (which the book does not do). In Tenet, telling the story backwards and forwards. In Dunkirk, mirroring the chaos of the evacuation with the chaotic/non-linear presentation of events.

Another commenter says that the actual released film does not have the same clip twice and suggests that the TikTok maker watched a pirated version.can anyone else confirm the reuse of the clip?

clips online also show two different shots [1][2], although the ships do seem to be identical to a fault.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5NPGC0jlRc&t=29s [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9pjBEnnh3A&t=107s

Considering the platform this "revelation" was published, I'd rather say that this guy tries to get views on his channel and 5 mins of the Internet fame, and well, he got it from the Independent.

I find more fascinating what some people tried to find in Kubrick's Odyssey: http://www.grundejerforeningentaarnborg.dk/stanley_elitens_m...

And this is why you don't pirate movies, kids. In the actual movie, it's not the exact same footage.

No way - is this comment for real? Don’t have a copy to hand to check. But if so then that’s hilarious that the proud “Tik-Tokker” (I am so sad that this is even a noun) has incriminated themselves!

Are you implying that some pirate release out there took the time to actually edit the film to change the opening scene?

Well, it would be uncharitable of me to suggest the theorist needs his eyes checked, so I made my own fan theory to explain the confusion.

But seriously, resplicing is a common tactic to avoid copyright detection. The most popular YouTube video for the captain America civil war battle is recut and out of sequence. Imagine a fan theory "ant-man only enters the fight after..." based on this video.

Oh I see what you mean now. I guess I’m in the old-school scene release download it yourself pirate mindset, preserving the best possible original release of the work in the best format available. But I forgot all about those reuploads to video hosting sites and even YouTube which kind of makes sense now.

Yeah I was bored and checked - in the opening dream sequence there is blue sky and clouds, when they go to Miller’s planet it is overcast and grey skies.

I thought that initial flight sequence was about his prior flight experience where he’d hit a turbulence and had to abandon, which later is referred to at that roundtable scene at the NASA meeting when they begin to mention the gravity clusters.

> It has amassed a cult following for both theories around its meaning

What kind of meaning? It was a good, fun interesting movie, but overall message and issues it dealt with seemed pretty straight forward?

Yeah, I can't see any deep meaning - the story is simple and provided in digestible way, visuals are good and they even were praised for the scientific accuracy. Cast is pretty fine as well tho I personally didn't like Hathaway in it and at first I raised brow for McConaughey because I'm not really associating him with such films (despite his past role in Contact). It's enjoyable on par with Transcendence released earlier that year, but again: I hardly can see any way, reasons to dismantle it for solid theories.

Fun theory but I don't buy it. Cooper meets people he never met before in his journey. You'd think if it were a trip into the afterlife he'd see his wife, or more people from his past besides Professor Mann.

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