Archive for April, 2021

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Interstellar

Posted April 5, 2021 By John C Wright

I here reprint my original review of INTERSTELLAR, as this film is a masterpiece well worth revisiting.

***

Directed by Christopher Nolan; Written by Jonathan & Christopher Nolan; and starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine Mackenzie Foy, Jessica Chastain.

INTERSTELLAR by Chris Nolan is certainly the best science fiction film, and is equal to the best films of any genre, I have ever seen. I would list SEVEN SAMURAI by Akira Kurwasawa as superior to it, and CASABLANCA by Michael Curtiz or THE BIG SLEEP by Howard Hawks, but the mere fact that I am making the comparison with these giants among cinematic masterpieces should tell you of the high regard in which I hold this particular work.

I hold it INTERSTELLAR high regard not just as a film but as a science fiction film; and more than this, as a serious or ‘hard’ science fiction film, not merely a space opera or fantasy. Like grand opera, Hard SF is an exacting and highly disciplined form of storytelling where the slightest deviation from the strictures of audience expectations mars or even ruins the story. Hard SF is hard.

Before speaking of the film itself, let me make a comment about science fiction films in general, so that my high praise will be seen as fair-minded and not flattery.

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Tenet (Part VI)

Posted April 2, 2021 By John C Wright

TENET (Part VI) The Practice of Worldbuilding

Onward to Part V

Time travel is as impossible as an Escher drawing. The staircase going up and going down cannot be the same staircase, nor can the mill wheel raise the water to fill the sluice to create the waterfall to turn the mill wheel. Escher drawings are cunning visual jokes that appeal the mathematically minded.

Despite disliking time paradox stories, there is one thing I like about time travel stories: It is the same thing I like about Escher drawings.

Given the logical constraint that the thing is starkly, simply impossible, what tricks of perspective and aspect can the artist employ to create the plausible illusion of the impossible being possible?

Certain themes and settings make the illusion of the impossible being possible more convincing. Establishing or, more to the point, not establishing the rules of time travel are part of the worldbuilding that can aid or hinder the illusion.

We have discussed the theory and practice of time travel at exhaustive length to show the possible ways the world in a time travel story can be built to attempt the illusion. Let us now, at long last, return to TENET to examine how Christopher Nolan practices his worldbuilding.

In this case, TENET avoids or outwits most of the problems of paradoxes by selecting the spy genre as the jumping off point.

And here I doff my cap in humble salute.

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Tenet (Part V)

Posted April 1, 2021 By John C Wright

TENET (Part V) The Practice of Time Travel Not Explained

Onward to Part IV

We are examining the practice of how to write a time travel story, which is, in theory, a story that should be impossible to write. There are several minor or halfway cheats by which this can be done. These are discussed below.

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