I make no secret of the fact that I cannot stand three-quarters of Christopher Nolan’s films. He’s very often an over-indulgent director, more interested in twists and turns than in actual cohesive storytelling. Yet for all that, I still give him the benefit of the doubt with almost every film he’s released. So I go into the increasing hype surrounding Interstellar with both hope and trepidation…especially after hearing how long this movie will go on for.
That’s right: the director who brought us a dark and dusty superhero movie that went on for over two hours has now broken his own record with Interstellar, a film that will run for 169 minutes (that’s almost 3 hours long). That means that Interstellar beats out The Dark Knight Rises (165 minutes) for longest Nolan film; it also surpasses Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (a measly 160 minutes), which Nolan claims was a major inspiration.
Interstellar concerns explorers who discover a wormhole that will enable them to “surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.” At that length and with that plot, there better be some aliens or explosions or something. I’m not watching Matthew McConaughey brood for nearly 3 hours.
I will grant that the cast alone makes this film far more intriguing than it would be otherwise. Besides McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, we will also see Jessica Chastain, Casey Affleck, Michael Caine, David Oyelowo, Wes Bentley, John Lithgow, Ellen Burstyn, Topher Grace, David Gyasi, Mackenzie Foy, Bill Irwin, Timothée Chalamet and Matt Damon. That’s quite an array of talent, some of whom you can catch a glimpse of in a few new images from Empire Magazine (via Collider).
Check out the latest images from Interstellar below and let us know what you think. Will you be seeing the film when it opens on November 7th?
