INTERSTELLAR (2014)

INTERSTELLAR. Christopher Nolan, dir., co-script with Jonathan Nolan, prod. (one of three). USA/UK: Legendary Pictures et al. (prod.) / Paramount Pictures (USA, Canada dist.), 2014. See IMDb for details on production and distribution.[1]

Most relevant here for TARS and CASE ("Case" from the protagonist of W. Gibson's Neuromancer?[2]), which the Atlantic reviewer described as "two robots that seem to have wandered in from another movie altogether: wisecracking aluminum boxes that amble like Gumby and gleam like high-end kitchenware."[3] They have the function of R2D2 as a plug-in spacecraft navigator, but they are also like a monolith from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, but in low-finish stainless steel, with low-luminosity readouts — and voices — and more seriously intended than R2D2 as a detachable center console for spacecraft. They also move in the manner of a jointed toy (sometimes at high speed) and at least one of them has a trace of cinematic DNA of a wise-ass US Marine grunt. They are worthy of study as a robot that is strongly humanoid but without being human shaped.

Comparisons with HAL 9000 of 2001 might be of scholarly use, if unfair to the INTERSTELLAR robots. Note also in INTERSTELLAR what comes across as ambiguity of feeling about containment within mechanisms: neutral with some negative undertones for realistic, somewhat Industrial hibernation sarcophagi (again, cf. and contrast 2001), to ambivalence for space habitats for humanity as necessary and nice for the survival of the species, but really not suitable for adventurous, pioneering Americans. Subtracting the jingoism, cf. and contrast such habitats in the stories of Ursula K. Le Guin as in "Newton's Sleep."

5. DRAMA, RDE, 07/XI/14; finishing, 29Aug21