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An eagle-eyed TikToker has found a clue in sci-fi epic Interstellar that changes the meaning of the entire movie.
Directed by Oscar-winner, Christopher Nolan, the movie explores themes as diverse as quantum physics and black holes, to death and time travel.
Starring Matthew McConaughey as Joseph Cooper, as he tries to reunite with his daughter Murphy, the 2014 blockbuster was one of the year’s highest-grossing films at the time. It has amassed a cult following for both theories around its meaning and its soundtrack composed by Hans Zimmer.
Cooper travels through time and space to come back home to “Murph” but Nolan fan @Stark_Verse believes the Oppenheimer and Dark Knight director has left a clue in the movie that unravels its entire meaning.
“I just rewatched Interstellar and I noticed what seemed like a mistake,” he began. “I just cannot unsee this.”
He shares clips from the movie that are seemingly reused. The first is of an aircraft at the beginning of the film when Cooper has his crash dream sequence, the clip then appears to be repeated an hour into the film, when his crew are entering Miller’s planet’s atmosphere.
“So the same footage is being used twice, in completely different contexts,” he explained. “It’s the exact same footage, and at first I thought this was a simple mistake but then I realised this is Christopher Nolan, Christopher Nolan wouldn’t use the same footage without a purpose right? It didn’t make sense until I looked at it from another perspective.”
He then goes on to break down the opening scene showing a crash where he says “that person inside that crash realistically should have died, so what if that’s what actually happened?”
Shedding light on how this changes the entire meaning of the film, he said, “What if Cooper actually died in that accident right in the beginning of the movie?
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“And I usually dismiss these ‘Cooper’s death’ theories but I continued watching the movie with this theory in my mind and, Oh boy, does it change everything.”
The TikToker suggested that everything from this point onwards reflects Cooper’s “journey into the afterlife”.
“He can’t stay on Earth, he has to leave, the Lazarus mission hints at Cooper’s death and his journey into the unknown. On the Endurance [the name of the ship Cooper flies] the crew always refers to ‘The Big Sleep’, which is a clear metaphor of death.
“Then the dialogue, the words his kids speak, they sound so much like private thoughts that a person would have about a parent who suffered an untimely, accidental death.”
Delving deeper into how this theory holds together and is apparent throughout the film right until its conclusion, he continued: “When Cooper is in front of Gargantua, Tars tells him, ‘See you on the other side Coop’.
“Doctor Mann tells Cooper right before you die you see your children and after Cooper crosses Gargantua’s event horizon symbolising the final transition, he sees Murph in the Tesseract and when Murph is on her deathbed, he is there to greet her on the other side.
“I always thought it was so weird when he entered the room full of people, that no one seems to notice or even acknowledge Cooper, it’s almost like he’s a ghost.”
@Stark_Verse praised his hero as he said, “That’s the thing about these Nolan movies. They make sense in so many different layers, you can peel off the layer of science and it still makes sense in science and you can peel of the same scene philosophically and it also makes sense and then you apply the same thing spiritually and it also makes sense. I just can’t unsee this.”
