KarmaPolice
Footballguy
I hear you on both points, but I still think the Mann stuff is a bit silly for a few reasons. Again, nitpicks and I am probably being harsher because of how well thought out most of the stuff is. Agree 100% on the docking sequence though.The scenes on Mann's planet I feel were there to illustrate just how arduous the undertaking was. Here you have the leader of the first expedition, a revered NASA astronaut and engineer who was simply broken by the idea of never again seeing home once he realized his planet was not suitable. Also, without this scene we wouldn't have had the amazing docking sequence that came after.Just spit balling on that one. I was more thinking about how to get what I feel is the better landing emotional stuff towards the end. I forget we get all I describe with 1hour left in the movie.Watching now. What if story-wise the gravity planet was last, shifting a bit of the emotional heft closer to the end?
I don’t know what purpose that would really serve except to introduce pacing issues. Having the 23 years of videos, then the tesseract stuff, then meeting with Murphy all back to back would be a bit much emotionally all stacked at the end.
Edit: also they had to do millers planet first because they would not have had enough fuel to swing back.
I watched last night, and my answer is basically the same - mostly it's Mann and the black hole/tesseract stuff. It always lasts longer than I expect, and then the movie ends shortly after that leaving a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
I appreciated the tesseract and black hole stuff after reading Kip Thorne's book on the science of the movie.
I should add that book to my queue.