Interstellar (2014)

In director Christopher Nolan's lengthy, gripping, and dazzling sci-fi family drama - it was set in a future dystopic time period in the year 2067, when massive crop failures and incessant dust and sandstorms on the scorched Earth threatened humanity's existence with worldwide famines. It had become a veritable Dust Bowl. The tagline was about how mankind was facing extinction: ("Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here"). It was a gripping tale about survival in outer space, and the attempt to colonize a new world.

The film was authentically-researched to bring together art and science, using the advice of CalTech astrophysicists, among others.

• widowed engineer and former NASA pilot Joseph ("Cooper" or "Coop") Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), now a farmer/homesteader, lived with his two young children: teenaged son Tom (Timothee Chalamet), and his 10 year-old daughter Murphy or "Murph" (Mackenzie Foy as young girl)
• in "Murph's" bedroom, he was signaled by a supernatural 'ghost' - communications were in the form of dust patterns on her bedroom floor that signified binary code coordinates
• "Coop" (with his curious daughter) were summoned to the indicated location - a secret underground NASA facility-laboratory headed by NASA scientist - Professor John Brand (Michael Caine), Cooper's former supervisor/mentor; there under the guidance of Professor Brand, a group of astronauts and scientists were on a search for other planets that would sustain human life
• "Coop" was informed that a group of 12 scientists were sent 10 years earlier through a wormhole (that mysteriously appeared 48 years earlier near the rings of Saturn) into another distant galaxy; was the wormhole possibly created by a benevolent alien intelligence?
• a new mission had to be launched to Saturn to find out whether three of the astronauts had discovered potentially-habitable planet-worlds
• "Coop" agreed to the lengthy mission on the space-station Endurance, with seeds of human life (with 5,000 frozen embryos), that meant separation from his family for years. He set off with fellow crew members-astronauts, including Brand's strong-willed daughter biotechnologist Dr. Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway), two researchers: co-pilot Dr. Doyle (Wes Bentley) and Dr. Nikolai "Rom" Romilly (David Gyasi), and the wise-cracking, decommissioned militarized security-robot TARS (voice of Bill Irwin). TARS was a talkative, witty, boxy, monolithic-shaped robot with a voice like HAL (with nods to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)) and a computer screen; a second robot named CASE ( (voice of Josh Stewart) was TARS' twin, although more quiet and reserved
• the four long 'fingers' or planks of TARS allowed it to walk in different configurations - a two-legged gait, a "crutch walk," a scissors kick, and a full-on four-legged gallop
• as time passed during his absence, his young daughter Murph (Jessica Chastain as adult) became a brilliant Planet-A NASA scientist who communicated with her lost-in-space father
• "Coop" realized that he was the "ghost" in Murphy's room - due to their differing time periods. And through his wristwatch gift given to young Murphy before he left, "Coop" was able to send her a Morse Code message; he sent messages to her via books falling off the shelf, and by moving hands on a watch - enabling her to ensure the survival of humanity through a mass exodus
• after various catastrophes, subterfuge, failures, double-crosses, deaths and challenges during his space adventure, "Coop" (with TARS) eventually landed on one of the new planets in a distant galaxy, and began the alternative Plan B to prepare the planet for repopulation and human settlement
• in the film's conclusion, "Coop" reunited with his now-elderly daughter (Ellen Burstyn) on an orbiting space colony-settlement circling Saturn