(spoiler alert)
I didn't hate the experience, I still spent 3h not looking at my watch, but it is very frustrating when they pretend they are trying to make it sort of accurate. I love a lot of movies who play a different card, and that's fine, but when they go into details about some things, and then pretend a drone has been flying for 100 years and I don't consider that nitpicking, and do something like that pretty much every 5mn, it does degrade the experience. For example, the last part of the movie, at least, was so far fetched that it only becomes poetic, and it becomes way less frustrating. 2001, Gattaca, Star trek, all these movies manage to find a good balance of invention while keeping enough scientific credibility for the realistic parts; to me when a movie doesn't do that, it feels like they consider the viewer is stupid and they can throw at them illogical things that are not even difficult to notice for anyone a little bit physicist. I recently watched Elysium for example, and it was pretty cool, so you can do sci fi without giving your viewer wrong information to either eat, or get angry at.
About the 3 planets, they have kind of a luxury because they have 3 positive planets in the same system, and the first one they choose is the one that is described as being on a close orbit with a massive black hole, with a time dilation so big it means they will pretty much not hear about earth anymore and be alone. It just does not make much sense especially when you see how they take the decision. Also, at that time, they still had the Plan A in mind, not only the plan B, so choosing this planet is equal to dismissing plan A altogether. 24h on the planet and earth would have already gone through several generations already. Not to mention such a time dilation means you are so close to a black hole you're pretty much crashed under billion of G of gravity but that's a liberty Nolan took and that's one of the least extremes so I didn't care about this one.
The problem with it, is, it could have been a real sci fi movie about explorers trying to find an escape door for the human race. It could have had the pace and maturity of an Alien, but it's an action movie in space, with irregular scenes, and the mandatory american hollywood movie ending with "love transcends space and time, so just follow your love instinct to save the world" monologue that lasts 3mn and felt awkward. Or maybe it was a bit before the end, I don't remember, I just remember this part being awkward at that moment in the movie. Another thing that makes it fall into the action movie in space thing is they escape from the planet with 130% of the earth gravity without a problem like they have a Star trek pod or something, while escaping earth with 100% of gravity in the first place needs a whole Titan V booster with 100 tons of fuel to burn or something like that. Sure it's a liberty Nolan took because he wanted a scene with a rocket launch but it is low par to play the "okey now let's ditch this, the shuttles are now futuristic style and can land and leave any planet". There is something like that every 5mn into the movie.
That is why for me this is a good entertainment, but not a good movie that will transcend generations. I sort of liked Inception and loved the Black Knight, but this movie didn't convince me how it could have. Sure I prefer it over any other hollywood movie, any day, we have had recently, but it's still a frustrating movie because it had a bigger potential. Now you can think I'm only over-analyzing, but so many other sci fi movies just make me fall into their magic because there is little or almost no WTF moment to distract you from the plot. To me, it's like playing a game with a major bug or graphic glitch every 5mn.
There were obviously holes here and there but I don't really care. The sound design and cinematography were top, top notch. Real pleasure to see and hear.
