Interstellar Kip Thorne Featurette Explores The Science Of Deep Space

By Brent McKnight | Updated

Earlier today, we saw yet another stunning new trailer for Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, a film that continues to look better and better the closer we get, to the point where we’re about to break out the camping equipment and sleep out in front of our local IMAX movie theater. With the tidal wave of marketing, which is still dwarfed by that massive, mountain-sized all of water we’ve seen in the footage, that’s not all we get today, there’s an interactive website for you to poke around on, and one of the things you can find is a featurette that delves into the physics and science of the film.

Nolan is nothing of not meticulous in his filmmaking, and as he says in this video, every film has to have a rigid set of rules to adhere to, an internal logic that lends a sense of coherence to the work. In a movie like Interstellar, you better believe a large part of that involves actual science and scientific laws and principles. To that end, the production employed Kip Thorne, a noted physicist as its scientific advisor.

Thorne even went so far as to create the equations for bending light around the black hole and worm hole in the film to make it look as scientifically accurate as possible, which already gives Interstellar a leg up on a lot of science fiction. As almost trivial as this kind of thing seems—we won’t likely have much discussion about Einstein’s principles in the actual narrative body of the film—this is indicative of how thorough and careful Nolan is as a filmmaker. Most of us won’t know the difference, or wouldn’t until some scientist (usually Neil deGrasse Tyson in these cases) points out the flaws, but this attention to detail just shows the totality and completeness of the world Nolan is creating here.

You can check out the new interactive website HERE. We’ve played around with it a bit and it’s a pretty good time, but there’s reportedly even more additional stuff you can find if you dig far enough and explore every nook and cranny.

Here is the latest trailer, in case you haven’t watched it enough times yet. And if you can’t possibly wait until November 7, or if you’re just a fan of actual film, you’re in luck. Theaters that are still equipped to project celluloid will be getting the film two days earlier, on November 5. You can still even see it in IMAX, but in a 70mm film projection. But don’t worry if there’s not a film-based IMAX near you, because you’ll have options, including normal 70mm and 35mm film viewings.

Interstellar stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Ellen Burstyn, John Lithgow, Michael Caine, Casey Affleck, Wes Bentley, Bill Irwin, Mackenzie Foy, Topher Grace, and David Gyasi.

Interstellar