What is your interpretation of the ending? SPOILERS AHEAD

Christopher Nolan's 2014 grand scale science-fiction story about time and space, and the things that transcend them.
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Man this ending is pure sci fi heaven. Can you imagine all that classic sci fi authors of the past seeing this film and that grand vision at the end? They would be in tears.

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I was going through some of the theories/questions and I just wanted to add to the discussion.
This is my understanding regarding the ending. I think both plans A and B succeeded. Plan A was a success because of the information that Cooper was able to pass on to Murph, who in turn helped in solving the gravity equation. Using the solution to that equation, they were able to harness gravity and move people from earth to a space colony (temporarily? more on this later). Plan B was a success because we see Anne alive on the third planet and then we see some large tents with the implication that there are already some people there. Essentially it implies that the planet can sustain human life.

I think Cooper left towards the end because they still have to find a planet where they can move all the people from the space colony. One thing that's hard to fully reconcile is, how could the colony sustain the billions of people for a hundred years or so? Are we to assume that science had progressed so much in those years that they found ways to sustain humanity?

One other question is, how did Cooper get back to this space colony? I know we have to assume something here. But, what is a plausible theory?

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GeniusNolan wrote:I was going through some of the theories/questions and I just wanted to add to the discussion.
This is my understanding regarding the ending. I think both plans A and B succeeded. Plan A was a success because of the information that Cooper was able to pass on to Murph, who in turn helped in solving the gravity equation. Using the solution to that equation, they were able to harness gravity and move people from earth to a space colony (temporarily? more on this later). Plan B was a success because we see Anne alive on the third planet and then we see some large tents with the implication that there are already some people there. Essentially it implies that the planet can sustain human life.
Yep, it seems like both plans succeeded - Anne kept on going with Plan B since she couldn't knew that Plan A was a success
GeniusNolan wrote:
I think Cooper left towards the end because they still have to find a planet where they can move all the people from the space colony. One thing that's hard to fully reconcile is, how could the colony sustain the billions of people for a hundred years or so? Are we to assume that science had progressed so much in those years that they found ways to sustain humanity?
While they do not have such a planet yet, I think they have teams dedicated to that. My personal opinion is that he left to find Anne. Also, we don't know if there are billions of peoples on the ships - but they seem huge and there are multiples of them, so yeah mankind must have made a lot of progress to be able to send millions of peoples into space. Also, see willyjoel's theory it offers another explanation as to how many people left the Earth.
GeniusNolan wrote:
One other question is, how did Cooper get back to this planet? I know we have to assume something here. But, what is a plausible theory?
Which planet? Do you mean the one with Anne? I believe I will simply send his new, more advanced, Ranger through the wormhole and navigate on the other side around Gargantua to reach the planet.

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GeniusNolan wrote:I was going through some of the theories/questions and I just wanted to add to the discussion.
This is my understanding regarding the ending. I think both plans A and B succeeded. Plan A was a success because of the information that Cooper was able to pass on to Murph, who in turn helped in solving the gravity equation. Using the solution to that equation, they were able to harness gravity and move people from earth to a space colony (temporarily? more on this later). Plan B was a success because we see Anne alive on the third planet and then we see some large tents with the implication that there are already some people there. Essentially it implies that the planet can sustain human life.

I think Cooper left towards the end because they still have to find a planet where they can move all the people from the space colony. One thing that's hard to fully reconcile is, how could the colony sustain the billions of people for a hundred years or so? Are we to assume that science had progressed so much in those years that they found ways to sustain humanity?

One other question is, how did Cooper get back to this space colony? I know we have to assume something here. But, what is a plausible theory?
When the fifth dimension collapsed, he was spit back out of the wormhole that the future humans had created near Jupiter (Might have been Saturn, can't remember) and the space colony ship was near by. You can see the lights of the ship blinking in the distance as he's floating in space.

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I have a funny but yet interesting theory about the ending (bold words are meant to be linked):
In the final scene, we see Cooper getting alone into a spaceship in way to rejoin Brand on Edmunds's planet. And, at the beginning of the film, the FIRST time we meet Cooper is in his dream of a crash which we don't have any more details afterwards, except that the ship he was on really looked like the ship HE TOOK AT THE END OF THE FILM.
And we know that the crash happened into the atmosphere. But, WHICH atmosphere are we talking about ? Logically, it is Earth's atmosphere. But my funny theory is that it could be the same spaceship that he is on at the end and which he is in in his dream. Maybe that crash never happenned, or it already happened but he doesn't know it yet. And he dreams about it because it happened to him IN THE FUTURE (because the movie explains that time is basically a tangible dimension). In a way, the end of the film could also be its beginning ( Because Memento. And because Time is a flat circle :lol: )
Last edited by DoubleD on November 5th, 2014, 5:16 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Spoiler tags. Fucking spoiler tags for Christ sake.

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Juliui wrote:
While they do not have such a planet yet, I think they have teams dedicated to that. My personal opinion is that he left to find Anne. Also, we don't know if there are billions of peoples on the ships - but they seem huge and there are multiples of them, so yeah mankind must have made a lot of progress to be able to send millions of peoples into space. Also, see willyjoel's theory it offers another explanation as to how many people left the Earth.
Yes, I wasn't clear in that post. I intended to say Cooper left to find Anne.
But, he doesn't know if Plan B succeeded or not. So, in a way he's also indirectly going to see if life can be sustained on this third planet.
Juliui wrote:
Which planet? Do you mean the one with Anne? I believe I will simply send his new, more advanced, Ranger through the wormhole and navigate on the other side around Gargantua to reach the planet.
That was a typo which I fixed. I meant how did Cooper get back to the space colony. ChristNolan above has answered it.

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Do you think its possible Cooper at the end of the film ended up coming out of the black hole into a white hole that led to an entire new parallel universe? that might have been created when Cooper was in the 5th dimension missing around with subatomic strings thus changing the past to create a new universe. Pretty much using string theory and quantum theories..
I will need to see the film again to confirm but when cooper was floating in space after leaving the black hole there is a shot of saturn in the background with the rangers on they way to rescue. To me Saturn looked a bit odd with its color, maybe that was a sign that its not the solar system he originally came from?

leo
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Some thoughts after my second viewing
The unification of relativity and quantum mechanics by Murph allows humans back on Earth to fully understand gravity and master it. This allows them to raise big stations up in space by lowering gravity (NASA's facility was one such station being constructed), just like in the original script where they build a device to cancel Earth's gravity and send humanity in space effortlessly.

The closer we are to the event horizon of a black hole the slower time passes, until the event horizon where time stops. So it seems a good guess that beyond the event horizon time might actually start running backwards, and that seems to be the take of Kip Thorne and Nolan in Interstellar: inside the black hole, the humans from the future build a tesseract for Cooper in the present to send a message to his daughter in the past, as if inside the black hole the future happens before the present which happens before the past.

Tars calls these humans from the future beings who live in the bulk. The bulk is a term used in recent physical theories related to string theory (see the wikipedia article on brane cosmology), and it refers to a hypothetical higher-dimensional space encompassing our conventional 4-dimensional space (3 spatial dimensions and 1 time dimension). Tars calls them 5-dimensional beings, so in Interstellar the bulk consists of one additional dimension. According to the theories only gravity would be able to travel between the bulk and our conventional dimensions. In Interstellar, Cooper communicates with Murph through gravity (that is how he moves the books, interacts with the watch and makes the dust pattern in Murph's room which Cooper interprets in the beginning as a gravitational anomaly).

In the bulk of Interstellar love is a physical, tangible reality, not just the unquantifiable emotion that it is in our conventional dimensions. Brand was right. The beings of the bulk (the humans from the future) hence physically perceive the love that links Cooper and Murph in her bedroom, through space and time, and the tesseract they have built enables Cooper to interact with the other end of that link. Apparently these beings are not able to directly interact gravitationally with our conventional dimensions (because if they did then why wouldn't they communicate directly with Murph themselves?), which then leaves the question who built the wormhole? If it is them then I do not yet understand why they couldn't help Murph directly the way Cooper did using gravity.
edit: actually I think I just understood, they do state that love is the one thing that can transcend time and space, so the beings of the bulk cannot use the love that links Cooper and her daughter to communicate gravitationally with Murph in the past, but Cooper can! And that's what they help him doing. Still the question remains, is it the beings of the bulk who built the wormhole?

Cooper is sent back near Saturn through a wormhole once the beings of the bulk close down the tesseract. Cooper sees Brand in the wormhole, at the time when she was in the Endurance going through the wormhole for the first time. Cooper is the gravitational being she interacted with at that point. I suppose that the wormhole Cooper went through after the tesseract connected to the first wormhole at some point, but it is not clear to me why Cooper saw her inside the wormhole that she had went through 74 years earlier or so.

Cooper leaves at the end to reunite with Brand, who still believes she might be the last human alive, as she thinks plan A has failed and that Cooper died in the black hole. Until he reaches her she is on her own, trying to fulfill plan B and save humanity, by growing the fertilized eggs they had brought with them on the mission.
Last edited by leo on November 5th, 2014, 6:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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from my understanding, you have to remember that coop, going through the black hole, is exploring multi-dimensional travel. The wormhole allows them to bend Space. The black hole tho, allows him to bend Time. So he can travel back and communicate with his daughter. Having said that, there can be a lot of paradox. Just like in terminator john connor sending someone from the future in the past to save himself. Also the people they are referring to as "they" are ET´s. But not little green creatures but human being living somewhere else in the galaxy and in a different dimension. He is not s'avère by humans from his dimension -because he has made a huge step forward in Time- it´s obviously to me a more evolved human species. A dimension in which they made it, they saved the world. Btw coop trying to make himself stay was supposed to fail. I did not believe for a second that he will stay. because if coop does not leave earth well "our" coop does not exist in time and Space and He's simply erased... Just to play mind games but i wouldn't be surprise if a theory about coop´s dream at the very beginning and his ejection looked pretty familiar and similar in the end. "Déjà vu?" Maybe or something trickier

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leo wrote:Some thoughts after my second viewing
The unification of relativity and quantum mechanics by Murph allows humans back on Earth to fully understand gravity and master it. This allows them to raise big stations up in space by lowering gravity (NASA's facility was one such station being constructed), just like in the original script where they build a device to cancel Earth's gravity and send humanity in space effortlessly.

The closer we are to the event horizon of a black hole the slower time passes, until the event horizon where time stops. So it seems a good guess that beyond the event horizon time might actually start running backwards, and that seems to be the take of Kip Thorne and Nolan in Interstellar: inside the black hole, the humans from the future build a tesseract for Cooper in the present to send a message to his daughter in the past, as if inside the black hole the future happens before the present which happens before the past.

Tars calls these humans from the future beings who live in the bulk. The bulk is a term used in recent physical theories related to string theory (see the wikipedia article on brane cosmology), and it refers to a hypothetical higher-dimensional space encompassing our conventional 4-dimensional space (3 spatial dimensions and 1 time dimension). Tars calls them 5-dimensional beings, so in Interstellar the bulk consists of one additional dimension. According to the theories only gravity would be able to travel between the bulk and our conventional dimensions. In Interstellar, Cooper communicates with Murph through gravity (that is how he moves the books, interacts with the watch and makes the dust pattern in Murph's room which Cooper interprets in the beginning as a gravitational anomaly).

In the bulk of Interstellar love is a physical, tangible reality, not just the unquantifiable emotion that it is in our conventional dimensions. Brand was right. The beings of the bulk (the humans from the future) hence physically perceive the love that links Cooper and Murph in her bedroom, through space and time, and the tesseract they have built enables Cooper to interact with the other end of that link. Apparently these beings are not able to directly interact gravitationally with our conventional dimensions (because if they did then why wouldn't they communicate directly with Murph themselves?), which then leaves the question who built the wormhole? If it is them then I do not yet understand why they couldn't help Murph directly the way Cooper did using gravity.

Cooper is sent back near Saturn through a wormhole once the beings of the bulk close down the tesseract. Cooper sees Brand in the wormhole, at the time when she was in the Endurance going through the wormhole for the first time. Cooper is the gravitational being she interacted with at that point. I suppose that the wormhole Cooper went through after the tesseract connected to the first wormhole at some point, but it is not clear to me why Cooper saw her inside the wormhole that she had went through 74 years earlier or so.

Cooper leaves at the end to reunite with Brand, who still believes she might be the last human alive, as she thinks plan A has failed and that Cooper died in the black hole. Until he reaches her she is on her own, trying to fulfill plan B and save humanity, by growing the fertilized eggs they had brought with them on the mission.
amazing post!! thank you!! :clap: :clap:

one question though,
how do you explain the other gravitational anomalys that NASA seemed to be aware of before Coop told them about his own? they alluded that there were several other anomalys located throughout the earth (or was it throughout the solar system) that had been going on for 50 years, which is when the wormhole was discovered.. so what were they? and why was the wormhole there for 50 years prior? and why were other gravitational anomalys happening over that period of time?

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