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Interstellar: A Relatively Unserious 10-Year Retrospective

Do not go gentle into the spoilers, silliness, and slingshots around Saturn.

Dylan M. Austin
13 min readApr 28, 2024
astronaut Cooper in an abstract visualization of making the first “handshake” across timelines
Image: Paramount / Warner Bros.

Imagine being named after Murphy’s Law, the belief that anything bad that can happen will happen. What a bleak message this sends to a child once they’re old enough to hear jokes about how they were an accident (read: unwanted pregnancy, or, colloquially, “Oh, shit. I forgot we don’t have birth control in the apocalypse.”)

At one point, Murphy asks her father why she was named after bad luck, and he tries to put a hopeful spin on it. Gaslighting? You tell me.

Imagine that, but also instead of your dad going off to get a pack of smokes and never coming back, he yeets himself into another galaxy by way of NASA to save humanity. But then, you spend all your teenage and young adult years thinking he did so knowing he had no chance of returning. Gaslighting? You tel–

young Murph crying as Cooper leaves

If you’ve seen the movie Interstellar, you’ll know this is an important element of the film, though not the primary plot line — but it does raise some questions about, spoiler alert, men being trash.

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Dylan M. Austin
Dylan M. Austin

Written by Dylan M. Austin

Copywriter and content strategist in Seattle. Run-on mixed metaphor. Gay, autistic dog dad with ADHD (and too many plants).

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