Neil Tyson and Bill Nye on 'Interstellar' and the Environment

Spoiler Alert: In our latest “How Tweet It Is” video, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye discuss one of Neil’s tweets about the “Mysteries of Interstellar: Can't imagine a future where escaping Earth via a wormhole is a better plan than just fixing Earth.” While neither disagrees that a worldwide environmental blight could happen, it’s what we do about it that was less believable. Or, as Bill says, “Why leave the freaking Earth, people? This is where we make our stand.” Plus, find out “a little more somethin’ somethin’” about another one of Bill’s problems with the movie.

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[Akasan]

Thank you CinemaSins for bringing me here!

[SciFiMisc]

I love that one of Bill's major complaints is the lack of boning Anne Hathaway

[QuantumBraced]

I think at the end of the movie they were on a rotating space station, not a moon of Saturn, which explained the weird construction. But I agree, if you have the technological capability to transport billions of people off of Earth, you certainly have whatever it takes to fix the climate or whatever is causing trouble.

[loosekarrott]

The cornfield chase was an image. It was foreshadowing the journey to come, the wormhole, the cutting through hyperspace. The track that played during that scene was interrupted just as it was about to reach its peak, when Tom almost drove the car off the cliff (this, too, is foreshadowing his later development.) At the very end of the film, the track plays again, and is allowed to finnish, to go all the way up. But you worry about the Anne Hathaway sex, Bill.

[xxxxx]

Man. I still wish the full podcasts were in video here on youtube.

[stm]

Mystery of interstellar: in a world where we struggle to make crops, why do we run over so much corn and set more of it on fire?

[MegaPinoy]

The people that is hating on Bill because he wanted the movie to be as realistic as possible, why couldn't they just give a better reason to leave the planet?

[Weisser]

I disappointed Bill didn't like interstellar. :(, Interstellar is one of the best movies ever made in the science fiction genre while maintaining a level of realism

[raviram]

Filmwise, would you rather see a movie about sceintists  developing blight resistant crops or one with Matthew McConaughey kicking ass in space?

[Nuvendil]

The end of the movie was Cooper Station a massive colony ship. The reason physics was weird was because it was spinning to create artificial gravity but was just small enough to where a really high pop fly could cross the center and fall up into the other side of the ship. The ship was on route to the wormhole in order to travel to Edmund's planet.

[MrJeppe]

"Can't imagine a future where escaping Earth via a wormhole is a better plan than just fixing Earth."
The book, "The Science of Interstellar", explains this by outlining just how far-reaching the consequences of the blight are. Not all of it made it into the final film, making it seem to some like a meaningless threat. Summary of the blight's complete backstory here.

"... and go live on a moon of Saturn where balls fall up?"
I'm honestly surprised at this one. Surely Bill Nye of all people is familiar with the concept of a cylindrical space habitat with centrifugal gravity.

"The corn is gonna sustain all of us, through some sort of genetic modification you get all of your nutrition out of corn..."
Corn isn't the only food left, it's just the last of the major domesticated grains. Recall that Murph was sipping some kind of soft drink at NASA just after the Miller's world scene.

"Why did we drive through the field for 10 minutes..."
The scene only lasts about 1.5 minutes. It's a character-establishing moment showing Cooper's skills & relationship with his kids, and also tells us something about the world they live in. It shows how they're becoming increasingly reliant on repurposing aging technology now that all the mass-production lines are gone.

Bill Nye isn't really a scientist, he is a science advocate. He's also an amateur film critic. Funny that he's bemoaning a film that is trying to do what he does, prop up science and bring space travel into the mainstream. No, it's not 100% realistic, the plot might stretch a bit, but its telling a story. Is the concept of a crystalline rectangle being the origins of intelligence on earth a stretch? Yeah, yet 2001 is one of the greatest sci fi films of all time. Yet another film that does the best it can to get things right while playing with fringe science.

From reddit user /u/sto-ifics42

[JamBear]

Bill Nye, I'm about to finish a PhD in chemistry and it was all because of you. Thank you so much for being such an influential figure in my life.

[Komebackid]

I believe the reason they took down the drone in the beginning was to extract the battery and use it for hardware on his cornfield. Thats why he said it needed to "adapt"

[DoctorZisIN]

Bill, this is a space travel movie. If the premise were to stay and fix the earth, it would be a "fix the Earth" movie.
Also, think about it, if it were possible to travel to a planet with an Earth-like atmosphere and life in it, it is possible that it would take less effort to send people to that planet than to fix ours. Even without the threat of extinction. If such planet were found and somehow a means to get there were discovered we would go. Absolutely we would, just to see what's there. Not to mention that with our species spread over two planets our chances of survival over time would double.

[captaintalon]

Dr. Tyson you are always welcome on CinemaSins! Loved your guest narration on the sins for Gravity and Interstellar. Hope you come back again sometime and bring Bill with you as well.

[obimezu]

Cinema Sins brought me here! And @3:08 reminded me of Chocolate Rain lol

[lucifelmartell]

I love Mr.Tyson, and i love the movie Interstellar. I saw it 40 times in theatre religiously every night. I honestly want to ask every theoretical physicist on this planet the question - If all of you physicists came together and made a scifi flick, Do you honestly think you will be able to sit for 3hrs and watch it ?
I am an Assist.Director in india, an aspiring film maker and there is a reason why i respect people like James Cameron and Christopher Nolan. Once i wanted to hit space and see the universe as a child, shit teachers drove me further away from subjects i found hard. I was centuming biology but was hitting the deck with physics and mathematics. And the harder it got further i went. Later career explorations and choices obviously went the other way .
Sitting in theatre watching Endurance crossing saturn so huge, looming in the background .. i wept the first time i saw it, i was in awe like a boxer puppy tilting my head in angles to just absorb that wormhole. And yes i cried again looking at Gargantua up close, and it reminded me that probably in this lifetime this is s good as its going to get for an average person like me. this is as close to saturn, a wormhole and a black hole i'm going to get in this life, and i was brimming with gratitude for just the fact that somebody thought of doing this and i got to see it and all of them woven into this beautiful plot. That's when i decided i'm gonna watch it everyday from now on till it was in theatre. And that night i went back and started downloading all the highschool Physics and mathematics textbooks and have started studying them again. Trigonometry and Algebra are still f**king intimidating but i'm slowly getting there.
Basically this movie is inspiring to a 30year old bum like me imagine what it could do for kids these days. If this movie can inspire few more kids ask for a telescope instead of xboxes then it has served its purpose.
I am probably never going to find or invent anything, i am never going to win a nobel prize but still reconnected to my childhood love.
I really don't get what Bill Nye is whining about. That premise inculcates nothing into people's minds. Do we need to be more sensitive and responsible towards our planet, ofcourse yes, infact what it delivers is keep on going like this this is how you might probably end up. The movie is about a last resort situation, where humanity's wastefulness over irrelevant technology " 6 billion people trying to have it all " has brought earth to its brink. Endorsing this film doesn't mean humanity is giving a giant middle finger to planet earth, in fact it deters them from doing so.

[youtubeforcinghandlessucks]

Mysteries of Interstellar:
First they launch from Earth using more or less a conventional multi-stage rocket. Then they go on to land on and launch from other planets with a single stage infinite fuel impossible shuttle. A shuttle that is even able to enter and exit orbit around a black hole with such a strong gravity that the time dilation factor is 7 years to an hour. That is a lorentz factor of over 60000, or in other words the potential energy difference in that gravity well is so enormous that when converted to kinetic energy it will take you to above times the speed of light. Remind me, what was their problem evacuating from Earth's gravity when they have such magic shuttles to begin with?

[bruceaeroustile]

Have some imagination mister bill bye. It is a space movie. It wouldn't be right if they spent 3 hours of the movie on earth and fixed the problem.

[BradleyCarls]

They weren't on any planet or moon, they were on a space station using artificial gravity. That space station was orbiting Jupiter I believe, but that had nothing to do with it. Seemed completely logical to me.