I recently saw Interstellar and Gravity. I’m behind on movies, I will admit, between working a ton and finishing up Grad school, things fall by the wayside.

I’m going to get this out of the way, I liked both of them. They would make a great double feature in my opinion and they each raised some interesting thinky thoughts. (WARNING FOR SPOILERS, because you would think it would be obvious but you have to warn some folks.

First let’s talk Interstellar.

I used to want to be an astronaut. I wanted to go to the moon. Still kind of do, but like architecture, it was too much math. But it was nice to travel along for the ride with Cooper, Brand, and everyone else.

Interstellar was a thinking piece. I’m still talking about it with my mom and how time is relative.

Time is relative.

Time is relative.

I’m sure my brain did a hard reboot during the Blackhole sequence of the film. I expect this from Christopher Nolan though. He likes to cause hard reboots and I love. I love when science fiction takes a moment and tries to present the world as something we have never seen and gives us theories that the common man has never heard of. This is good, this is what science fiction should be.

Sci-fi, good sci-fi is a way to explore the human condition in depth. To get back to our primal base. We can see concentrated emotions, like pure rage, pure fear. We see this in Interstellar but you know what we don’t see? Faith in a higher power.

I notice this when the characters kept saying “They”. “They chose Murph.” “They led us here.”

In the words of my mother “Who is they? Aliens? Are we talking about aliens?”

Because the question stands, who is they? The film never tells us. We are just tI think that They is God or the very least, a higher power.

Christopher Nolan actually made a profound statement about God even though I have a feeling he didn’t mean to.

Now, these are my thoughts and I will not be offended if you think I’m wrong. I am a 8-year veteran of Baptist Sunday School. Which means I know a lot about the Holy Trinity[The Father, The Son, and the Holy Ghost] and the books of the bible.

Here’s my thinking process about this:

1. Cooper needs help to save humanity. (The Father)
2. Murph is 10 when Cooper leaves and 33 when she saves humanity. (The “Son” because Jesus was 33 when he died.)
3. Father and Daughter communicate via “her ghost” which is Cooper in a different dimension of time (Holy Ghost)

This film could be a religious allegory. It would be a very loose one but it would be one. Which I find odd because this film goes hard in believing that science is humanity’s only hope.

Gravity, however goes the opposite direction.

There are constant mentions(visual and verbal) about faith and God. Ryan prays for help. In every ship, there is a religious relic left behind by previous crew members. I find it funny because while God was not waved in the face of the viewer, He was there. Which is how I prefer my God in film.

Present but no overaggressive.

I did like Gravity because it was not something to make me think, it was a lost in space story. It was an adventure and sometimes sci-fi doesn’t need to questioning life. Sci-Fi could also be about the result that new technology has on us as people.

In this case, Gravity was about not having an undertrained doctor up there and don’t try to blow up a satellite.