The Big Picture
Interstellar is one of the most impactful films released in the past few decades, masterfully balancing unflattering pessimism about Earth’s future with inspirational optimism about the capacity of human ingenuity. The movie was a visual marvel that gave audiences a glimpse into some of the most mysterious and otherworldly aspects of our physical universe. Though the film saw humanity reach out to the far corners of the galaxy, its greatest strength was its emotionally driven and family-oriented narrative. Christopher Nolan and his brother, Jonathan Nolan, co-wrote the screenplay based on the works and ideas of theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, creating a product that included scientifically accurate depictions of space travel alongside the limitless possibilities of artistic imagination.
Interstellar is a movie that audiences can walk away from with feelings of inspiration and hope — however, that wasn’t always the case. The original ending for the film was significantly bleaker and would have blanketed the narrative in more pessimistic overtones. This conceit came in the early stages of production, before Nolan was even connected to the project, which would have presented a conclusion that would have illicited an entirely different reactions from audiences.
What Happens in ‘Interstellar’?
Interstellar was set in a future where humanity’s life on Earth was on the verge of complete doom. Environmental degradation had led to worldwide famine, forcing humanity to funnel the overwhelming majority of its resources into farming in a near futile effort to prevent extinction. Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), an ex-NASA astronaut, is one of the many who is forced to work as a corn farmer. His daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy) notices a weird phenomenon in her room: a gravitational anomaly that Cooper is able to identify as Morse code. Upon decoding the message, he discovers a secret NASA facility headed by Professor Brand (Michael Caine) and is recruited into a last-ditch mission to save humanity.
Cooper pilots a mission alongside other astronauts, including Brand’s daughter Amelia (Anne Hathaway), through a wormhole in search of a planet capable of sustaining human life. They venture into another galaxy where three planets surrounding a supermassive black hole, Gargantua, that may be able to host life. However, due to time dilation caused by the black hole’s gravity, time on Earth passes at a much faster rate than on the mission. An adult Murph (Jessica Chastain) discovers that Brand never intended to find a way to ferry humanity off the planet and had always intended Cooper’s mission to fall back on Plan B, which was the delivery of human embryos to create a new colony of humans on one of the planets. However, the first two planets scouted by Amelia and Cooper are deemed inhospitable for humanity, forcing them into one last-ditch effort at a final possible planet. Using a slingshot maneuver to propel Amelia to the last planet, Cooper sacrifices himself in order give her the necessary momentum.
Upon falling into the black hole, Cooper finds himself in a fifth-dimensional space, a tesseract, where time is a tangible construct that he is able to interact with. He theorizes that the tesseract, as well as the wormhole that allowed them to travel to that galaxy, were sent by human beings from the long distant future as a way to help humanity save itself. Cooper uses Morse code to send a message to his past self in Murph’s bedroom, leading him to join the mission in the first place. He then uses a broken watch to relay information to Murph that allows her to crack a previously unsolvable gravity equation.
Cooper survives his journey through the black hole and is rescued outside the wormhole. He awakens to find that Murph was able to use the information he sent to usher humanity’s exodus from Earth, saving the human race from its doomed planet. Amelia’s final mission was also a success, as humanity heads for her planet to start over on a new home.
Jonathan Nolan First Had Different Ending
However, the optimistic ending of Interstellar wasn’t actually in the initial plans. During a media event for the Blu-ray release of the film, Nerdist reported Jonathan Nolan’s first idea about the movie’s ending. He revealed an ending that was bleaker, albeit more straightforward, than the one they decided to go with. Originally, Jonathan Nolan “had the Einstien-Rosen bridge [colloquially, a wormhole] collapse when Cooper tries to send the data back.” Nolan didn’t expand on the details of what this means, but the conclusions that come from this are all relatively pessimistic. This ending would have removed a significant portion of the ending sequences of the film. There would be no glimpse into Cooper entering the black hole, no tesseract and fifth dimensional beings, no time manipulation into Murph’s bedroom, and no triumphant return for Cooper. The film already contained elements of darkness and themes akin to a horror movie, but this ending would have been a tonal shift that drastically altered the entire message of the film.
In addition to Jonathan Nolan’s original ending, other interesting information about the production of the film was shared at the media event. The gravitational anomalies in Murph’s bedroom were first meant to be the result of a destruction of a neutron star by a black hole. Kip Thorne explained that gravity waves like that could only be created by an event that catastrophic and were meant to be detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravity Wave-Observatory (LIGO). In reality, Thorne was a major player in the construction of the LIGO Lab. However, Christopher Nolan thought that these scientific concepts would be too complicated for the general audience, leading to compromises in the science in order to make the film more digestible.
Did Cooper Succeed in the Original Idea?
Since Jonathan Nolan didn’t elaborate on the details of this planned conclusion, only confirming that the wormhole would have collapsed after Cooper sent the data through, the success of his mission is entirely up to speculation. One possibility is that the data never gets sent back to Murph at all, which would have resulted in a complete failure of the mission. Without that information, humanity would never develop the capability to leave Earth, dooming Murph and the rest of the population to extinction.
But that ending seems so bleak and antithetical to the message of the story that it seems unlikely to be the vision. Another option is that the wormhole’s collapse doomed only one important sacrifice: Cooper. It’s likely that Jonathan Nolan intended for Cooper’s data to make its way through the wormhole and back to Murph, though he himself would be unable to follow suit. Cooper would die a hero, sacrificing his life to complete the mission. Humanity and, most importantly to him, his daughter would be saved. This ending is a satisfying conclusion to the themes and motivations of familial love that drive the film, but the fact that Cooper never reunites with Murph would be a tragic outcome that weighs heavily.
Both of these endings would have limited the physics-bending done in the final film, keeping things more grounded in the laws of science rather than theorize to the fifth dimension. Though, at the end of the day, the Nolan brothers rightly chose a triumphant and optimistic ending that allowed their artistic expression to flourish without limitation. The idea that love is able to transcend time, space, and even physical reality is a heartwarming notion that, while not scientifically accurate, creates a much more impactful and human story.
Interstellar is available for online streaming on Prime Video and Paramount+, as well as Blu-ray and DVD formats that feature hours of bonus content.