MovieChat Forums > Interstellar (2014) Discussion > Did they ruin the movie with this?

Did they ruin the movie with this?


Every movie should know what's at the heart of it's story.

To me, the heart of the story is the relationship between Cooper and his daughter, Murphy.

We have the fact that he's communicating from the future via the dust. The fact that he abandoned her for space. Her feelings of resentment. It takes her 30 years to send him a message when she is his age when he left (she looks too young but whatever.)

So he discovers that he was the one who sent the messages.

In the end, practically on her deathbed, they finally reunite.

But she says to leave within a minute. So 85 years or so pass, they finally meet, and she's like "you can go now , I have my own family" (who strangely didn't greet him.)

We then get some sort of love story, chase the girl ending . It was also a "to be continued" feeling.

I felt that the writing let this movie down.

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I loved this movie, so nothing ruined it for me... BUT yeah, I thought that was weird, too. The only thing that makes this sensible at all is that, if I remember correctly, she was surrounded by her family. Basically, she had lived her life without him, and he wasn't integral to her anymore. That's sad, but the only thing that makes sense to me. She had all this other family, even grandchildren, now. People who had been there for her all her life when her father had not.

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So you're saying, if you haven't seen your child for a long time, maybe she marry to other country, one day she is dying, but she has children or grandchildren, you wouldn't want to stay beside her?

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No, I thought it was an odd choice in the movie as well. I am just pondering why they decided to go that way and thinking about how they justified it.

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I thought it was strange that her kids and grandkids didn’t greet him. Who gets to meet their great grandpa in the prime of his life? Wild!

I suppose she was dying and they let the Dad in to say a few words but wanted to focus her last moments on sharing their lifelong earned love with her. Still the film could have done a better job with that scene.

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I get what you are saying. It may have benefitted from emphasising that bittersweet feeling more than it did of Cooper getting to finally reunite with his daughter again, but when she is old and dying. Perhaps making that scene of their reacquaintance longer, or even adding another scene of him feeling the emotion that he's missed out on the majority of her life. It felt a bit abrupt.

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It would have been more moving if it had been a powerful reunion.

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I saw the movie years ago. But I don’t think she said “you can go now, I have my own family”

I think she said something more like, “no parent should have to watch their child die. I have my own family here. You go see that girl”

So she felt that her father didn’t need the grief of having to see his daughter die. It was an act of love.

As for the family’s not greeting him, they didn’t know him. That detail just drilled the idea that he was better off going back to the girl, not staying with this indifferent family who doesn’t know him.

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I have to agree even if I like the movie as a whole. When the love angle showed up when they first went through the wormhole I thought ah shit, not this sentimental crap.

This meant the sci fi angle would eventually be explained by love or something. Ruined it a bit there. Still a good movie if I wanna watch a movie with some interesting concepts.

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I disagree with everything you just said, Murph was near her death and she didn't want her own father to watch her die. A minute is all they needed to make everything right between them and for both of them to know that they made it and that things are going to be OK. The writing was very strong and the fact that they only saw each other one more time after Cooper went into space but it was enough to make everything alright basically summarizes the strength of their bond. You don't know what you're talking about.

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Rock and a hard place with the family and the final scene. To show their actual reactions would have completely derailed the film and all the emotion they were building. They should have done something else like all the family was in the next room waiting and he could see them all through the window, waiting to come in, but they never actually meet. Maybe he passes through them as he exits and they're like "who the hell was that guy?" Then you can have your cake and eat it too.

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To me it’s stupid that she was still pissed at her dad when she hit her 30s. At that point she’d been immersed in the the big problem facing all of Humanity and had no excuse for not understanding that everyone had hard decisions to make. By the time the two of them finally met in the hospice, she ought to have apologized for being such a needy bitch.

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