Religious Aspects of the Movie Interstellar

Religious Aspects of the Movie Interstellar

Interstellar, the sci-fi adventure movie about a team of explores who must venture through a wormhole in space to ensure the longevity of humankind largely has to do with science. What the movie also inescapably coveys to the audience is deeper themes of religious aspects.  A movie centered on the idea of science that shares the stage with religious aspects is rare in todays age because science and religion don’t always get along that is why I think discussing what the aspects were throughout the movie makes for an interesting topic. The three points ill be discussing throughout this paper covering the religious aspects of the movie Interstellar are comparisons to the Christian Holy Trinity, the “church like” feeling one feels watching a movie with no direct reference to God, and larger life questions the movie raises.

        A brief summary if you haven’t seen the movie, Interstellar is based in the future when Earth has been drained of all its natural recourses and space travel must be the last option in order to find a more suitable planet for humankind. A former pilot and present day farmer stumbles across the ruins of the believed to be shut down NASA program. They task him to pilot a team through a wormhole t find a suitable planet. The man leaves his son and daughter to take on a mission knowing that he literally did not know when he would be back. Throughout the film, there are a number of paranormal events that take place to the means daughter, Murph, such as books falling of shelves in a weird way. There is even a scene when the team is being piloted through a black hole where an entity seams to reach out its hand out of thin air and shake the hand of a pilot. This all is explained in the end. The man ends up being away from his family for 70+ plus years and finally returns when his daughter is near the end of her life. All of these details play an important role in laying out my three points of discussion.

        The first religious aspect of the movie id like to touch base with is the early mentioned “church like” feeling while watching the move. The main character in the movie hangs onto the idea of love throughout the film. His love of his family and daughter keeps him driven and focused the whole movie so a major sense I felt watching the movie was that of love. You wan to see him make it back to his daughter after he promised her at 11 years old, that we would come back and would love her forever. You, of course, root the whole time for them to be reunited and in the end they are. The idea that love might be enough to save us is a similar theme found in religion and church. Another often overlooked aspect of cinema in general but defiantly as far as the point I’m trying to make is the score or music of the film. Composed by famous writer Hans Zimmer, the score is appropriately reminiscent of that of church organ music. The music is deep, eloquent, put together in a way that grabs your mind and imagination is heart felt ways during the film. Some other biblical references are found in spots of the film too. NASA’s “Lazarus” missions deployed 12 astronauts into the black hole to different plants to find one that was suitable. This is a stinking resemblance to the 12 apostles Jesus had for his gospel. The team sent out as the last hope, the one the main character piloted, had a plan B option if their last hope of a new planet was a bust and that was a plan of embryonic development with sperm samples and them overseeing the plan. Although masked in a more scientific way, this is eerily similar to the story of Adam and Eve.