re: The official Interstellar thread (spoilers)

It's kind of changed for me.

First, I thought for sure the wormhole had to be open.

Then, I thought it was for sure closed because the writer of the original script said it was and the original script says it's closed. Also hints led me to believe it was closed.

Now, I think Nolan wants that to be left up to interpretation because that's his MO.

I think one thing is for sure, a colony has not been set up on Edmunds planet as Murph says that Brand is alone. I personally don't think they have contact with Brand or at least they point to many reasons why they wouldn't. Essentially, if it is open, I question why they haven't gone through the portal yet. It just makes more sense that it's closed and they haven't had contact with her. If it is open, I ask these questions:

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So if the wormhole is still open, why would Cooper need to steal a spaceship? Why not just go on one of the ships going to Brand's planet? It takes away from Cooper's challenge at the end of the film. It makes no sense that he would have to steal a ship. That's the whole point of the end of the movie. It's a challenge for him to explore and find Brand. Otherwise, all he has to do is hitch a ride on one of the spaceships on the way to Brand's planet.

At the end of the movie Murph says about Brand "she's alone, settling in for the long nap". She says she's alone more than once. If there were people helping her set up shop, why would she say she's alone?

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I'm convinced that Nolan doesn't even have the answers to these questions, and never will.

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especially since his family is all gone

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But it isn't gone, he's got grandkids and great-grandkids and probably great-great-grandkids. There's his motivation to come back.

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One obvious point is being glossed over. Brand hasn't been on her planet that long due to time discrepancies (a few hours, maybe days). So it's not like humanity is in a rush to get over there.

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I have no problem with that interpretation. The main thing I had a problem with was some people were saying that they had already had contact with Brand and that they had already started colonizing. This is clearly not the case as Murph says that Brand is alone. They had not yet begun to make trips to Brand's planet even if the wormhole is open.

Essentially, both endings work fine, IMO. Some think it's one way or the other. People want to think that Cooper stealing a ship and heading into space with no wormhole is suicide, while some think he's just going to explore. Some want to take the original screenplay written by Jonathan Nolan and an interview he gave as gospel and believe the wormhole is closed, while others think Jonathan Nolan didn't have a hand in the ending at all. I don't think it really matters. The core of the movie still stays the same, IMO. There is more mystery with the wormhole being closed, but more closure with the wormhole being open.

IMO, Nolan achieved what he wanted to with this movie in that he leaves it up to interpretation. This is what he enjoys doing as he says about Inception:

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Nolan adds that he tries to leave his movies open to interpretation. “There can’t be anything in the film that tells you one way or another because then the ambiguity at the end of the film would just be a mistake,” he says. “It would represent a failure of the film to communicate something. But it’s not a mistake. I put that cut there at the end, imposing an ambiguity from outside the film. That always felt the right ending to me."

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Mission accomplished, Chris. Mission accomplished.

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I don't believe so. The time part was only because of the black hole. The planet she was on wasn't close to it like the other one.

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They sling-shotted around the black hole when TARS and Cooper were dropped inside it. I'm almost positive Cooper even mentioned that time would be slowed for them and not to worry about it because it was there only option of surviving. My interpretation is Brand has just arrived on Edmund's planet when Cooper is on the space station.

Yeah. I was under a similar impression. I think that is why Cooper was hesitant to go to it in the first place because it would have cost them a lot of "Earth Time."

Well...she hadn't aged at all considering about 90 years had passed on earth.

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Yeah. I was under a similar impression. I think that is why Cooper was hesitant to go to it in the first place because it would have cost them a lot of "Earth Time."

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He was hesitant at first because they only had enough fuel to go to one planet if they wanted to make it back to Earth. I don't think either of the planets' time was affected by the black hole.

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But since time doesn't technically "exist" in a linear way in the black hole, the time it took to get to the black hole would be how long she waited not while he was in it.

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I take the view that his exit from the black hole - more or less coincided with Brand's arrival on the Edmund's planet - Cooper waited a couple of weeks to see Murph and by the time he gets there and wakes her up from cryo-sleep - roughly the same amount of perceived time will have passed for both of them.

Perhaps convenient, but that is the happy ending most of will naturally imagine, I suspect.

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One obvious point is being glossed over. Brand hasn't been on her planet that long due to time discrepancies (a few hours, maybe days). So it's not like humanity is in a rush to get over there.

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This is what I took from it. Brand has yet to send out the signal that she is on a habitable world. The space station was just circling Saturn waiting to go through the wormhole when they get the signal.

Ok then that would make even more sense why they are orbiting Saturn. They don't know what planet she is on.