I've always been fascinated films about the space and quantum physics, so I was shocked to be very underwhelmed by this when I saw it, even though it got high praises from some reviewers. Years later, after gaining much better understanding on those two subjects, I still find this painfully underwhelming. It's not horrible, it's just... despite the intensity all the elements of the film try to conjure up, it feels like hitting on a beautiful grand piano but the resulting sound is a dull thud on a wooden block.

First of all, the plot. I know most, if not all, mainstream films touching on big concepts such as the black holes, will be immensely cringey. But when I learned that Kip Thorne was a consultant and producer, I knew it wouldn't be all ridiculous. Sadly, that's only partially true. The visuals of the black hole is simply amazing, mind you this came out before the first real imaging was published. And the space travel is at least probable due to wormhole - low probability of one existing but at least it's not completely improbable. Then come many fairly ridiculous scenes - traveling through the wormhole, seriously, why does it look like just a very intense ride at Disneyland? And the journey through the black hole? What? Is is... is that what happens after spaghettification and being bombarded by x-rays and gamma rays? Looking impeccable like Matthew McConaughey back from a swim in Hawaii? Then of course (!) the answer is love. What started so promising just becomes The Fifth Element and Terminator. At least the focus of the Fifth Element isn't on sound physics concepts but camp and fun and style and action. And within a few decades, we went from not fully grasping gravity to.... building five-dimensional hipster library?

So many other elements of the film are also immensely predictable. The betrayal? Completely saw it coming, and it's not even presented in a surprising way. Soundtrack? Swelling and fine, but absolutely nothing groundbreaking. The budding relationship between the astronauts, even the most cliche rom-com might try to avoid being so obvious. The worst of all is the ending. Sugarcoating, stereotypically happy kumbaya Hollywood ending. So cringey I was literally wincing.

And the script, who wrote these lines? They sound like people constantly reading overused quotes from a listicle.

The film unfolds in an intense, Nolan fashion. It's not a good kind of intensity. It's not born out of creativity, great subject matter presented in a lucid way, or mesmerizing audio/visual tricks. It's like a guy who walks in a room and demands to be taken seriously simply because he proclaims "I'm a serious guy."