Out of all his filmography, Interstellar stands as Christopher Nolan’s most emotionally heavy work, thanks to the bond between Cooper and his daughter, which remains the central focus of the space opera. However, the film’s emotional core didn’t hinder Nolan’s commitment to its scientific accuracy, at least for the most part.
As a result, Nolan worked with real experts to avoid scientific fallacies within the story, especially regarding one story bit that pushes the plot forward.
Christopher Nolan spent hours discussing the practicality of corn blight with biologists
The sheer scale of Interstellar makes its fixation on scientific accuracy all the more impressive. However, the scene that did raise some eyebrows had nothing to do with Cooper’s space venture but the reason why they had to leave in the first place.
Considering it’s the crop blights that push this risky expedition in motion, Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is notable for dishing out his viewpoints on sci-fi projects, argued:
Whatever effort it takes to find another Earth, it seems to me to be a bigger effort than just telling the biologists [to] come up with a serum that could fix the crops.
When posed with this question, Kip Thorne, who worked closely with Nolan on the space opera, confessed they did consult with some of the best biologists regarding the practicality of crop blight leading to human extinction (via StarTalk).
We said, ‘Okay, we will bring together the best biologists we can, who are experts on these kinds of things… We had a conversation that lasted about three or four hours at the Caltech Faculty Club the aam about what would be the best backstory.
Thorne further added that during the whole discourse, the biologists couldn’t completely rule out the possibility of vicious generalized blight, which further solidifies the key driving point of the narrative.
Christopher Nolan had some aid from Zack Snyder for Interstellar
Apart from resorting to some of the brightest minds in the scientific field, Christopher Nolan also took some help from Zack Snyder for Cooper’s farm. Having worked together on Man of Steel, for which Snyder grew 100 acres of corn, the 300 filmmaker aided Nolan, who was adamant about growing 500 acres of corn for the Cooper farmhouse (via THR).
Luckily, Zack [Snyder] had grown a bunch of corn, so I said, ‘How much can you really grow practically?’And they had done a couple hundred acres [for Man of Steel], so we looked into it; we found that where we wanted to build our farmhouse really close to the mountains [outside] Calgary.
Not only did Nolan’s commitment to practical visuals make Interstellar a treat, but the crew also turned a profit with the huge cornfield, as they were allowed to sell it for a hefty price.
Interstellar is available to stream on Max.
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