Making Interstellar About Me

Spoiler warning for Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar"

In the not too distant future, humanity exhausts itself of all its resources. A daughter of a former NASA pilot has discovered a mysterious phenomenon in her bedroom that she calls her “ghost.” This ghost provides her and her father coordinates to NASA where they discover humanity's only hope—an idea for a new home. Two waves of brave pioneers venture out into a black hole in search of a planet (or planets) that will be sustainable for human life. Their biggest threat? Time.

I recently saw Interstellar in IMAX. The last time I saw it was on my first date with Courtney. And on that date, I honestly wasn’t paying that much attention when we watched it then. I felt nervous. While we drove to dinner, Courtney pulled the rug out from under my feet. Ten minutes into our forty-five-minute drive, she hit me with this: “Don’t you think it’s really weird that we are on a date together?” Interesting. I personally didn’t think it was that weird, but based on the firm plant of her feet on the dash, at least she felt comfortable.

A few weeks ago, I traveled on a work trip to Austin and needed an escape—Interstellar was my lifeline. It’s a lifeline to many. In an age of bad-news-by-the-hour and seemingly never-ending vitriol, Interstellar is a case study in the power of human emotion and the lengths that we will go for the people we love. Movies like this, at least at this scale and scope, don’t touch on a theme like this anymore. Maybe we have peaked and there’s nothing more to say. Maybe we don’t believe in it anymore.

Once Courtney dropped how weird she thought it was that we were on a date just minutes into the drive, my brain split in two. One half tried to process what she meant by that, and the other worked to remain present and enjoy our time together. But at least I felt confident that my dinner plans would impress her. Middle Georgia didn’t offer much, but they did have Mellow Mushroom. The giant crust and fun atmosphere would bring a new light to the night. I knew all this talk of the date being weird would wash away as we pulled up to our first destination. “Oh wow, you want to hear something funny?” she said. I honestly didn’t. “Funny” in Courtney terms really could have meant anything. “The last time I went on a date with someone, they took me to this exact same Mellow Mushroom.”

There’s a scene in Interstellar where Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) fights with Dr. Mann (Matt Damon) and is left with his helmet cracked, oxygen escaping. As Mann — the greatest coward put to film — leaves him to die, he tells Cooper that the last thing he’ll see before death is his children. We see flashes of Cooper hugging his daughter, Murphy, goodbye before he leaves Earth. Murph begs him to stay, but Cooper gives her his watch and promises to return. As Mann walks away, he turns off his radio, silencing the sound of Cooper suffocating. Cooper lays on the icy surface, embracing death. That’s exactly how I felt when Courtney said those words to me as we pulled up to the Mellow Mushroom.

We walked into the Mellow Mushroom. My mind raced. Now I needed to reconcile that I was doing a repeat date with a dude that I’m sure was a bag of trash. How am I going to spin this in a positive way for my friends? What beer did he drink? Was I drinking the same one? Did I not do enough research? I’m definitely drinking the same beer he did. How do you research something like this? Should I have let her help in the planning? Should I have asked, “Hey, where did you eat on your last first date?” No. Can’t do that. I needed to rally. Just like Cooper.

Cooper doesn’t give in. He calls for help and works with Brand (Anne Hathaway) to stop Mann’s mutiny. It’s such a thrill. After Mann’s failed attempt to dock a ranger to the main hub, it spins uncontrollably in space. Cooper has TARS (a conversational AI companion) match the spin and speed of the Endurance in an effort to dock. When TARS tells Cooper, “It’s not possible,” Cooper delivers the coldest line in the movie: “No, it’s necessary.”

My ability to snap out of my self-doubt was also necessary for this date to go well. And I really wanted it to go well. I liked Courtney for a few months before this date. The moment that really solidified this as a reality for me was when we were both in the same photography class that semester. It wasn’t just a “see you around whenever” situation. We actually spent time together now. We sat next to each other in class, walked together to and from campus. The momentum was there. When I knew I wanted to go on a date with her and watch this movie, our photography classroom felt like a perfect spot. An entire wall was a projector screen. I went into my professor’s office hours and asked if I could use her classroom after hours for this. While she was supportive (Courtney and I had been her students for years), she couldn’t allow it with the expensive equipment. “Totally get it! No problem!” My obvious and most logical next course of action was to try to rent an entire theater at our local AMC for just the two of us. “$500? Let me get back to you!”

I felt stuck. In a similar way to how Cooper and Brand did after they saved their ship. Not enough fuel to go home, but enough fuel to go to the final planet left unchecked—Dr. Wolf Edmunds’ planet. Earlier in the film, Brand makes a case for going there instead of Mann’s planet, saying, “Love isn’t something we invented. It’s observable. Powerful. It has to mean something. Maybe it’s evidence, some artifact of a higher dimension that we can’t consciously perceive.” But Cooper selfishly outs her relationship with Edmunds, and the crew votes to go to Mann’s planet—a decision that gets them back to square one. Edmunds’ planet becomes their last hope.

So, just like Edmunds planet, my house became our last hope to watch the movie. But Courtney hated my house. To be so fair, it was disgusting. I’m endeared to it for life, but eight college dudes in one house—be for real. Stacked dishes, days-old Cookout trash, sports equipment scattered throughout, a hole in the kitchen floor giving visibility to the Georgia clay below. I can’t fault her for it. I also felt pressure from my roommates for being on a date already and didn’t want to occupy the entire living room for just the two of us, so I made a makeshift movie theater in my room. I put blankets over the windows. Found the calculator I never returned to the library. I hauled two recliners right in front of a TV that I stole from a roommate's room. I even put glow-in-the-dark stars all over the ceiling because cute. I was like that sometimes. Once Courtney and I were there, we sat down, and I tried to let myself relax and enjoy the moment—knowing that I had time.

Time was running against Cooper. Since he had left and done interstellar space travel, time had run slower for him than it had on Earth. His daughter, Murphy, was at least the same age as him, as far as he knew. Cooper knew that if he could deliver the data of the black hole they traveled through back to Earth, it would give Murph the information she needed to solve the equation to get everyone off Earth. Given their fuel scarcity, Cooper and Brand had to slingshot around the black hole to reach Edmunds’ planet. Once there, Cooper surprises Brand by launching himself into the black hole with TARS to collect the data. Inside, Cooper finds himself in a prism-like space that allows him to interact with Murphy’s bedroom through time. Through gravity, he uses the watch he gave her to send the data humanity needed through Morse code. On Earth, Murphy figures in the data, cracks the equation, and saves humanity. Cooper is later found floating near Saturn and is reunited with Murph, now in her 80s. In their final exchange, she urges him to go find Brand, who is all alone on Edmunds’ planet. We see Brand burying Edmunds and beginning life on a planet that can sustain human life.

When the movie was over, I walked Courtney home. I only lived a few blocks away. It soon became really convenient. I told her I had a really nice time with her and she said the same. “I’ll see you in class!” “Yeah, you too!” And I walked home. Was that a success? I didn’t have an answer in the immediate. I told my friends it was “a nice first date.” Truthfully, I was exhausted. From the car ride to dinner, to the walk home. My mind didn’t stop for a second to be in the moment. I spent my walk home thinking of the many things I told myself I would have done differently that night.

So, what happened next? Thankfully, we had another date. It was much more relaxed. Taco Bell on a trampoline. Not jumping while eating Taco Bell—gross—just sitting and hanging out. Talking about this book we were both reading. Talking about photography assignments. The people in our class we thought were talented and those that… needed improvement. After classes, I’d start walking her home and hanging out at her place, with her friends, instead of splitting off at the intersection. That became my new walking routine. Soon we went on another date. And another and another and another. Two years to the week of that first date—we got married. Now, we have been married for five years. And in many ways we are still those two college kids just trying to figure out all we don’t know—self-doubt and all. But what we do know, and what Interstellar showed me, was what it meant to love.

Interstellar will go down in history as one of the greatest movies ever made. And this IMAX rerelease did nothing but prove that. It’s now the highest-grossing IMAX release of all time. I’m seeing so many stories online of people sharing their first-time experiences seeing it. I got to watch a group in front of me see it for the first time. I still have friends who haven’t seen it. That’s so exciting! Because, yes, it’s a movie. But dig a little deeper and you’ll find so much more. Think about how different the story would have been if Cooper had listened to Brand when she made her case for Edmunds’ planet, saying that love was a justifiable reason. Play that out for yourself for a second. Interstellar is a story about time and love. Time being our most valuable non renewable resource. Love being the core of our existence and the driving, non physical, spiritual, inward feeling that we all have. Non quantifiable, incalculable and irrational - the ultimate purpose for it all once we catch on.

A nice first date.