MovieChat Forums > Interstellar (2014) Discussion > Can someone please explain this paradox?

Can someone please explain this paradox?

posted 8 years ago by EyeInSky
104 replies | jump to latest

I have a question concerning one of the plot points revealed towards the end of the movie (SPOILERS AHEAD):

Cooper and his daughter discovered piles of dust in her bedroom, which was soon interpreted to be the coordinates to NASA. Cooper and daughter go to NASA. Cooper is offered mission to fly to wormhole. Cooper accepts. Flies through wormhole, which dumps his crew off at Gargantua supermassive black hole. Cooper and TARS go into black hole's event horizon and are sucked deeper & deeper. Cooper becomes saved in 4th & 5th dimensional tesseract while TARS studies properties of black hole's gravity (which is helpful information for earth's stations lifting off).

Okay, got it. BUT!!!....

Cooper (while immune to dimensions 1-3 of deadly black hole) still exists in dimensions 4 & 5 inside the tesseract. He can freely travel across a window of time, and he can also influence gravity (okay, this is very cool and I'm still good with everything). Cooper first regrets going on the mission, but later realizes the mission's importance. He gives the daughter a long-winded morse code answer to the gravity problem (I'm still okay with everything).

*** HOWEVER !!! ***

It is COOPER that gives HIMSELF the coordinates to NASA!!! He influenced the gravitational "pull" of the falling dust and created those NASA coordinates for himself and his daughter to see!!!

So here lies my problem...

I have no issue with the continuous "loop" of Cooper giving himself the coordinates to NASA, but this is PROVIDING THERE IS SOME WAY FOR COOPER AND HIS DAUGHTER TO DISCOVER THE NASA SITE IN THE FIRST PLACE APART FROM 4TH-5TH DIMENSIONAL COOPER GIVING HIMSELF THE COORDINATES!

The only reason why he is able to do it is because he's in the 4th / 5th dimension of the tesseract while in the black hole. A journey he would never go on unless he discovered the NASA site on his own. So are we watching the movie after the loop has been established - and we are seeing Cooper #2 through Cooper # infinity playing itself over & over again like a broken record?

I would like to know how Cooper #1 was FIRST able to give Cooper #2 the NASA coordinates in the first place. Is it possible that Cooper #1 died an eventual death (by whatever natural causes), and it was first his spirit giving away the information of the NASA coordinates (and later on it was Cooper #2 giving both the NASA coordinates AND the gravity equation)?

I'm very stumbled on this, so any help is appreciated.

[–] garyb-84741 8 years ago

I had the same issue... after looking through all this I now have a massive headache lol. It was a great movie though even if I don't get it.

[–] garyb-84741 8 years ago

I would also like to know why the future people needed to create the wormhole and black hole to save themselves? I mean they have already made it to the future right? Oh my aching head.

[–] shelliiaae 8 years ago

I think this is a lot of peoples issue...and it kind of brings in the Grandfather paradox...where, if your grandfather doesn't exist, then how can you exist to go back into time to begin with etc etc. so I guess the simple answer is that for whatever reason, the future humans need this event to play out in every other dimension/reality for them to exist at all, and so they're just giving a helping hands of sorts to other multiverses?? No idea lol, or maybe it's something to do with helping Cooper in his personal journey...as you notice at the end, this entire giant "window into the past" created seems to be JUST between him and Murphy, so that kind of leads to the idea that it's set up for HIM, rather than for THEM? Who knows though!

[–] garyb-84741 8 years ago

I totally agree... with the last three words of your post, lol. I prefer the theory Murph at a lot of pizza and had a weird dream!

[–] lexob9 8 years ago

simple answer: its a paradox. its a plot hole. it doesnt make sense. end of story. look, i know it sounds dry but on the other hand it explains everything without the need to fill pages(not that i didnt enjoy reading some of it)

and explanation that plan B made it all possible also doesnt make it ok because in order for plan B to work wormhole was needed. only future beings can create wormholes and they cant if humanity doesnt survive. its ok though, real paradox as plot hole is very much acceptable. there are worse kind of plot holes out there

[–] EyeInSky 8 years ago

This is true, and good point.

The reason for this long debate is because everything presented in this movie is stated to be in accordance to the physics supported by current science (Astrophysicist DeGrasse Tyson, Kip Thorne, etc.).

The notion (as stated to me by BB) states "given how everything played out apparently makes any & all paradoxes irrelevant". Or something to that effect.

I just wish Christopher Nolan gave us (as the audience) just a tiny bit more detail and explanation so that what we see CAN make logical sense, and not seem like a paradox or plot hole. We're basically just watching the ongoing "loop" of things that have ALWAYS happened... and because of this Cooper really had no free will or choices in the matter. Any choices and actions he made were just an illusion because he was always going to make those choices. No free will, while possibly scientifically correct, makes for a more lackluster and less enjoyable story (IMO). Still a great and very ambitious movie though! I'm certainly happy to own this in my collection, and it will be watched more times over years to come.

[–] stalingradsniperz 8 years ago

And Now for Something Completely Different...

[–] lexob9 8 years ago

did NDT say everything was 100% in accordance to the physics? not counting paradoxes i can think of at least one other thing that was not accurate, or just exaggerated. landing on the water planet with speed their ship had shouldn't been possible

in order to stay in orbit, and have that big time dilation, the planet had to move at almost the speed of light(0.9999999999% of c to be more exact). gravitational time dilation only becomes significant at very high speeds. so ship had to accelerate to that speed to land on the planet. and remember, light takes about 10 minutes to get to saturn, and they took several months to get there. that doesn't sound near the speed that was needed to land

with regards to free will. i dont know, its a tricky subject. if you think about it, if future really is already determined we shouldn't have free will either, future would unravel as planed but it'd still feel spontaneous, we wouldn't know that we dont have free will. so why when it happens in movies should become a problem? i mean, it maybe already determined but its still a surprise until you know what it is

[–] petebart-27741 8 years ago

Great discussion. I hope we can read this when the boards close.

[–] soma-2 8 years ago

Great discussion. I hope we can read this when the boards close.

OMG. I thought you were joking. But sadly, it's true.

http://www.imdb.com/board/announcement

How pathetic that IMDB would close down its boards. This is literally best place in the world to have intelligent, informed discussions about movies.

Social media will never make up for the loss of the boards.

[–] wayneski 8 years ago

Interesting....( and they want to close this board )

Restrepo (2010) Thank you Hetherington

[–] Frogfisher 8 years ago

I think the problem arises when people start viewing an influence on the past as a loop.
From any characters point of view time is not a loop but rather a continuous string that we all follow. It is so because time will always continue after the end of the story we are observing. The loop is only there if you watch for the period of the film and don't expect time to continue beyond that.

In this film they cleverly used gravity to affect the past, but even more important at no time is the source of the information Coop passes to himself actually from him, he gets the coordinates and the data on the black hole from TARS. He is just passing the information along. So somehow this means that he is passing information along from the future... but not something he learned from his own past. Sure he knew that the information was given to him in this past, but he does not possess the information, TARS does. I think that somehow balances it all up.

Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.