The reason I call it deus ex machina is because Cooper thinks he's just sacrificing himself when he launches into the blackhole.
Here's my problem with this argument. This would make sense if there were no earlier mention of fifth dimensional beings, or the crew interacting with them, or their actions literally being the entire plot mover throughout the film.
But since the whole movie continually moves around the actions of these beings, we should probably know that at some point, Cooper is going to interact with them.
The twist is that they aren't other beings at all but simply Cooper himself.
Brand is painted as the likely hero of the story,
No... I think it's safe to say that you definitely misunderstood the final act if you came away with Brand as the hero. That certainly wasn't the intention of the film.
and seems like she will be eventually given the end scene because I assume it's the people on that planet who will eventually figure out how to place whatever the hell it is that is represented in three dimensions by the tesseract
I'm not sure what you mean here.
(although maybe I'm wrong and the equation Murph solves would allow that to take place) that let's Coop send the data back to her.
No. Cooper sends the data back simply by manipulating gravitation. He finds himself able to do this by existing within the Tesseract.
But I guess you're right that it's more a case of Chekhov's gun, since the bookcase is the first shot in the movie.
I suppose you could say this.
Again, the whole metaphor of books being the way we communicate information across time is a thought provoking idea, but I don't think they do the best job communicating that idea in the third act.
Books were a relevant point of the film, but not the driving narrative. It would've been out of place to focus on such a notion in the third act, which is entirely about love between a father and child.
I don't deny that she would understand Morse code or that she go back to the "well" that started it all, but to notice such a tiny thing like the hand of a seemingly "broken" watch moving a certain way seems like a little much, at least for me as the viewer.
That is why Nolan spends 45 minutes of exposition explaining to the viewer that she is very familiar with Morse code.
To me the viewer, I would have noticed it too. A keen affinity for pattern matching is common among those who are scientifically and especially mathematically inclined.
Go look at her when he runs out of the house. She looks and sounds like a crazy person, and her brother embraces her not with a look of happiness because she's right but completely stonefaced.
I think this is pretty obvious why that's the case.
She realized the pulses were not random. She realized it was Morse, and that someone was using gravity to control her watch.
How do you expect her to act?
What I mean by logic is the very legit, complex science that permeates the whole movie.
But the point is that such science does not negate the aspects of love that humans have believed in since the dawn of civilization.
And there's the rub with the movie. Either you are open to this or you aren't, but folks who walk into the film expecting to see Star Trek generally walk out scratching their heads.
Yes, it's a science fiction movie, but that doesn't mean it can only live within the realm of present-day science.
Yes, love and the human spirit is a huge component of the story, but there is also a gigantic emphasis on science and they take a lot of time explaining it in the movie.
Love and the human spirit is what the movie is about,
in it's entirety.
Science fiction is a vehicle for telling the story, nothing more. Again, just as was the case for 2001: A Space Odyssey.
They also spend time on how the people on Earth have turned on science and are burying their head in the sand when facing their problems, and even the people on the recently built station are, in the mind of Cooper, too worried about restoring/honoring the past than looking to the future and potential advancements.
They do, but I think you are conflating the idea of scientific advancement with the notion that love is a completely rational biochemical thing rather than something more.
It's fine if you believe that; but the entire point of the movie is that love is more than just a collection of synapses and chemicals in your brain.
Cooper and Brand's numerous expositions are directly designed to illustrate this to the audience.
That's what pushes Cooper to leave the station in pursuit of Brand (in addition to whatever feelings he has for her).
No.
Cooper leaves the station because Brand is trapped orbiting a Black Hole, sleeping on a dead world, for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
He goes to her to save her life. She need not sacrifice it any longer since humans can travel the galaxy now.
So again, imo, the ending just seems too rushed, in that it abandons explaining the science part of the third act in favor of getting across their central metaphor.
The entire point of the film is culminated in the third act. As is the case for most films. To suggest they shouldn't have focused on the central tenet of the movie makes little sense to me.
Again, I think you, like many people, don't really understand that this movie uses science as a backdrop to a larger story about the human spirit. You can't tell such a story purely from a scientific standpoint; at least, not in 2014 you can't - as science has little to no understanding of such concepts.
Again, the best film to compare this to is 2001: A Space Odyssey. I think you really should watch it first to understand the narrative. This movie, like 2001, is not intended to hold to a completely scientific perspective of reality, but instead, explore the larger scope of what might be a reality that encompasses some metaphysical quality like a transcendent love.
Cooper, or some future humans, places the wormhole at much later in time though, right?
Cooper places the wormhole himself.
Also, doesn't the last scene imply that there was a good planet that would be inhabited by people eventually? Love (and Brand) was right, wasn't it?
No.
Cooper goes to recover Brand, and also because she's the only person left from his time period.
But, humanity will not relocate there because it's an awful place to live. With a completed theory of gravitation, humans can literally go anywhere. Why would they live there?
None of the planets were meant to be colonized. The only reason the wormhole was placed there was so that Cooper would eventually travel into the black hole.
My point though was that simply in a pacing sense, I think they could have combined the planets and had one that caused them to lose a ton of time and also caused them to fail the mission due to a rogue, selfish astronaut. That might have given him more screentime (since I'm sure the studio was pressing him on the three hour running time) to give the third act the time it deserved, since that's what the movie is really about not the shock twist that Matt Damon is a bad guy.
The third act was at least 45 minutes long, IIRC.
I'm not sure what more you felt needed to be said or done in the third act? You say rushed, but you also say it lacked scientific grounding.
Again, I don't think you really get the movie if you're looking for scientific grounding within the narrative of the film.
It's pacing is fast, but that's to be expected since it encompasses the climax of the movie.
Interstellar, on the other hand, needed some tightening, imo.
I really don't get this, considering the movie it's remaking literally has an intermission.
I've been meaning to do this, just haven't come across 2001 on any of my streaming platforms. I'll have to find it someway though, and I'll comeback then with my definitive review for you.
Lol.. download it bro..
Kubrick won't mind, I assure you.