For a review of the film click here
Through the Eyes of the Red Dragon
CONTAINS SPOILERS
The film opens with a dramatic space mission going wrong, but luckily this is actually pre-ordained, kind of, so not to worry. In fact, there is no need to worry about anything as we are quickly shown documentary style footage of really old people talking about current events that occurred when they were young, effectively telling us that there is a happy ending and that our hero COOP saves the day.
Nevertheless, we begin with Coop bonding with his two kids – one, a young, intelligent and soon to have serious daddy issues girl called MURPH, and the other a moody little brat called TOM.
TOM : Murph, what a ridiculous name. Seriously, things are going to go wrong for you, like, all the time, and whenever anything bad happens people are going to blame you.
MURPH : It’s not true! Tell him, tell him dad!
COOP : Well now Murph, it is true that we named you after Murphy’s Law, but that’s really a good thing when you think about it because it also means anything that can happen, will happen. You’re really going to have to remember that as you get older. In fact, that’s an understatement.
COOP’S DAD : Actually, I’m with the kid on this one Coop. I mean, kinda sounds like you used double protection and the little tyke popped out anyway, you know? Maybe you should just tell her you named her after another famous Murphy, like … hmm … all I’m getting is Robocop.
COOP : The name, is sound, OK?
Coop takes his kids to a parents’ evening at school whilst we learn that dust and an associated biological blight is starving the Earth as we don’t have any greenhouses and that all the armies everywhere just suddenly disbanded instead of trying to control the remaining resources. It also looks like creationists have taken over the education system in America, so Coop effectively takes his kids out of school and teaches them baseball and Morse code instead; but before he can really sink his teeth into schooling, a series of gravitational anomalies leads Coop and Murph to a remote secure area, where they are promptly arrested.
COOP : What ..? Hey, where the hell am I?
T.A.R.S. : Shut it, or I’ll taser you in the face again.
COOP : Oh great, a smartass computer.
T.A.R.S. : Hey I’m easily the best thing in this film wise guy.
COOP : Isn’t your name a really bad anagram of star? I suppose it’s better than ‘K.O.O.B’
T.A.R.S. : Explain.
COOP : You’ll see.
Enter svelte and sultry AMELIA BRAND sporting a really short haircut.
BRAND : Hi, I’m Brand, now tell me how a hick farmer like you found this place, and yes as you can probably tell from my haircut I’m a feminist, so don’t bloody well say anything that I can’t be bothered with, OK?
COOP : I used to know a professor Brand ..
BRAND : What makes you think I’m not a professor hmmm? Is it because I’M A WOMAN?? Why don’t I have T.A.R.S. here fuck you in the ass, then you’ll see what his initials really stand for.
T.A.R.S. : Just strap me on and call me sally Brand.
COOP : Hey, look, no, what’s wrong with you? I mean I just got here and I’ve got no idea what’s going on, please I just want to know if my daughter is all right, ok?
BRAND : Sigh, well I suppose since you haven’t answered any of my questions I can take you to see her. You have somehow managed to find NASA’s secret headquarters and, as it turns out, it was my father that you knew – here he is, with your daughter.
The heads of underground NASA tell Coop about a far-fetched plan to save the Earth by travelling through a wormhole to investigate alternative planets for colonisation, meanwhile Brand rolls her eyes at everything Coop has to say.
BRAND SENIOR : Coop, you clearly have more testosterone than any of the nerds around here, therefore I think it should be you that heads this mission to save the world, and you must take my daughter with you as well.
COOP : Oh I will tap that shit, no problem. It’s not like she’ll be able to burn her bra up there on the ship, what’s the worst that could happen? Ahem, I mean … sure why not, I haven’t flown since I crashed a decade ago and I have a family to look after but I’m really, massively, super bored so yeah sign me up. When do we leave? Tomorrow? Not a problem.
Coop then breaks the hearts of his entire family and prepares to leave, but not before we notice one of the anomalies has pushed out a series of books in Murph’s bedroom which spell out ‘stay’ in Morse code. Coop dismisses this as coincidence.
The spaceship begins to take off, complete with additional crew members DOYLE (continuing the Irish theme with character names, but sadly not Mrs Doyle from Father Ted), TOKEN BLACK GUY and secondary computer unit C.A.S.E.
BRAND SENIOR : Do not go gentle, into that good night. You’ve got to rage, rage against the dying of the light.
T.A.R.S : ‘Cause I’ve been blasting and laughing so long,
That even my mama thinks that my mind is gone.
Coop gives T.A.R.S. a disdainful look.
T.A.R.S. : What? You fixing to string me up on the back porch Coop? Jeez.
The crew prepare to enter hypersleep until they pass the gas giants of the Solar System. Coop takes the opportunity to lay some moves down on Brand.
COOP : Sooooooo Brand ..
BRAND : Forget it Coop. I can read your mind and all it says is ‘TITS’, specifically my tits. Well, you can have a perpetual wet dream over them for the next couple of years in hypersleep. That’s the closest you’ll ever get to the real thing.
COOP : Em, that’s not a very professional outlook you have there Brand.
T.A.R.S. : She is right though, isn’t she Coop? I’ve been measuring your levels of palpitation and pupil dilation around Brand, and she is one hot potato you definitely want to get your grubby little dirt farmer paws on.
COOP : OK, let’s make your sarcasm level twenty five percent lower T.A.R.S.
T.A.R.S. : I detect sarcasm in that last comment, therefore I can ignore it.
They enter hypersleep, and we are shown some arty shots of Saturn etc. although our Solar System seems oddly devoid of starlight so maybe it was all filmed in a movie studio, then they wake up again ready to enter the MYSTERIOUS WORMHOLE THINGY.
Colours fly past them as they whiz across time and space – suddenly a globule of space time displacement breaks the tachyon barrier and floats creepily toward Brand, who naturally misinterprets this and reaches out to touch the strange phenomenon.
T.A.R.S. : Brand NO! It could turn you inside out and jeopardise the entire mission!
BRAND : Gaaaaaa ……
Brand touches it anyway.
BRAND : Aw, the first intergalactic handshake!
T.A.R.S. : You could have killed us all!!
COOP : T.A.R.S. speaks for everyone Brand, although did anyone else hear someone say ‘tiiiiits’?… No?
Ironically, it was a sort of handshake – but with Coop in the future still in the present, whose inter-dimensional being was transported to what his mind was thinking about at the time, in the future.
The quite fortunate to still be alive crew reach the galaxy they were hoping for and must now plan which of the three possible shitty planets to visit in the vain hope of colonising it and transporting all of Earth’s population there in a number of round trips. Brand decides the nearest one that is ridiculously close to a large black hole looks perfect, and mentions to the others there is, though, the slight drawback of time dilation meaning one hour spent on the planet will be the same as ten years back on Earth.
COOP : Are you fucking kidding me?
BRAND : AHEM! Excuse me?!!
COOP : No, I mean really, you are fucking joking right?
BRAND : NOPE.
COOP : In what twisted, messed up version of reality do you calculate this is our best choice? I mean, going to the next one and then coming back here over a few months would even use less fuel than leaving the hub in orbit for at least a decade whilst we land below. It just doesn’t make any sense.
BRAND : Look, you wretched male donkey, this isn’t ‘count the corn down on the farm day’, I’ll speak slowly for you, so you can understand. I. Am. Right. Now shut your cake hole and get suited up OK?!
COOP : Doyle, you gotta help me out here it doesn’t make any sense!
DOYLE : Emm ….
Doyle remembers the several incidences of heavy petting engaged with Brand, suggesting potential mating opportunities once they reach their destination, and the sooner that happens the better. Outnumbered Coop suggests some nifty physics that will at least save some time and tries to impress on everyone THE NEED, FOR SPEED. Unfortunately, no one is listening and ‘Top Gun’ was not on the creationists’ recommended film list due to Tom Cruise’s blasphemous Scientology, and so no one got the reference anyway.
En route to the surface.
COOP : Remember everyone, no dicking about down there. We land, we get the previous landing team, we get the data, we leave. Is everyone clear on what we do, and what we do not do once we arrive?
Brand rolls her eyes.
BRAND : Just point and steer OK dear?
COOP : Don’t call me dear you patronising little imp and if you damn well mess around down there I ..
DOYLE : The black hole, it’s so… pretty. Don’t you think Brand? You know teams of scientists decades ago in 2014 spent months actually calculating exactly what this would look like even though they had no visual data to use. Amazing. Isn’t it?
COOP : No one likes a smartass Doyle. Why didn’t they just wait until we could take a photo (click) there, I would have just saved a lot of man hours, it’s not like you can miss the damn thing is it. You know Doyle, if something were to happen to you on this mission there would be one less male in my way.
DOYLE : What? What do you mean?
Awkward silence.
COOP : Nothing. Brace for impact!
Coop lands them on a surface covered with water. Bizarrely, and most fortuitously, the water is only a couple of feet deep. Brand and Doyle saunter outside in the most unhurried fashion imaginable.
COOP : Move it!!! Giddy up! Wagon’s roll! Shift your God damn asses into gear! Wait … Holy shit, those things in the distance aren’t mountains, they’re waves!
Extended pause.
COOP : MOVE!!!!
BRAND : Don’t raise your voice at me.
Brand determinedly pushes on through the water, falling over herself as she does so as her suit is too big for her.
BRAND : I DO NOT take orders from men and I’m not leaving without the data – I’m sure we can find it amidst all this mess, make it back to the ship and then take off before that wave reaches us.
C.A.S.E. : Incorrect.
COOP : C.A.S.E get that fucking minge back here now. Doyle … Doyle! Stop staring into space and get back here! Seriously, have you two never been out of the lab before?
Doyle’s mind is still quite focused on Brand’s sexual allure and he stops in his tracks, questioning whether life without the possibility of any sex again would be worth living.
COOP : DOYLE!!! For fuck’s sake! Well done C.A.S.E. throw her in the boot.
Doyle finally partially attempts to get back into the ship just as the wave begins to hit.
COOP : Sorry Doyle, you snooze you loose. Prepare for emergency take off!!
The ship fails to escape in time but miraculously survives, and eventually they manage to take off before a second wave reaches them, ultimately costing them twenty years in Earth time on their disastrous mission as they leave the atmosphere, Doyle’s inert body floating beneath them.
Coop stares at Brand in stupefaction.
BRAND : Oh don’t look at me like that, you knew the risks Coop.
COOP : Are you saying this is my fault?
BRAND : Obviously it’s your fault.
Steam pours profusely out of Coop’s ears, like an overfilled kettle threatening to explode.
BRAND : Typical, now you’re going to use your male aggression to try and make yourself feel better. Do you know how uncomfortable that makes me feel – do you like abusing women?
Coop stares stoically ahead and focuses on docking their ship into the larger hub. The airlock opens to reveal The Black Guy, now much older having apparently preferred to age pointlessly rather than wait in hypersleep as originally planned. They all decide it’s time for a debriefing.
THE BLACK GUY : Where’s Doyle?
Coop thrusts his arm out to point at Brand. Brand purses her lips and blows a little, as if Coop had just tried another lame attempt to pick her up.
COOP : I’ll tell you where Doyle is, Doyle is dead. D.E.A.D. And do you know why, father time? THIS is why!!
Coop repeats his previous arm motion. A little more vigorously this time.
BRAND : Oh please! Actually, I just realised, because of the time dilation the previous team would have arrived just moments before we did, they were probably dying literally as we came down to land so they weren’t giving out a steady positive signal after all. Whoops. OK, I admit I made a tiny mistake.
COOP : A mistake? A mistake??! No, nooooooo no you didn’t just make a tiny mistake Brand! You got Doyle killed, you aged everyone we know by twenty fucking years, you put at risk the entire God damn fate of humanity! I can’t think of a single character from the entirety of Earth’s history and literature that’s fucked up on anything like the same scale as you have. There’s Eve, Pandora, Ben-Hur’s sister, and YOU!
THE BLACK GUY : Eve and Pandora were designed to make women feel guilty and be easier to control by men as they subverted the cults of the moon goddess, Coop.
COOP : What the fuck have you been reading while we were away? Have you been listening to her diary for the past two decades?
(unbeknown to Coop, this is exactly the case)
Brand looks smug.
BRAND : Get over it already. You men are all the same, you can’t let anything go you just whinge and whinge, pine and pine. I’ve been big enough to own up to it, I think I should be forgiven now. Oh, and another thing, I’ve realised what we can use to guide all our decisions from now on. Love.
COOP : Oh please, please tell me you didn’t just say that.
BRAND : Are you not legitimising my emotions? Who do you think you are? I think if we all just listen to our hearts we will find the way to save the world. A single solitary tear rolls silently away from Brand’s large doe-like eyes. Kittens.
COOP : Christ. Jesus fucking Mary mother of Joseph, how in the name of Jove did you manage to get on this mission Brand? Oh that’s right, daddy got you the job. Well, let’s ask The Black Guy what he thinks about this – I’m sorry, what was your name again?
THE BLACK GUY : I …. can’t remember. But kittens would improve this situation Coop.
COOP : What about MATHS, PHYSICS, LOGIC!!!
THE BLACK GUY : Don’t you know it’s mathematically impossible to win an argument with logic against a feminist raised by creationists?
BRAND : Don’t you throw equations and shit at me again Coop, you think you’re so much smarter than me don’t you!
COOP : That is the first God damn accurate thing you’ve come out with since I met you – don’t get me wrong, you’ve got a fine rack, a great ass, a mediocre face with that dyke hairstyle of yours, but, sweetheart, when it comes to the proverbial tool shed, you are about on par with the snail crawling on the back of the mouldy fungus on the plastic spoon left by the retarded inbred who died there because he couldn’t find the fucking way out. I tell you what Brand, why don’t you go down to the engines, find the fuel pumps, wrap your love crack around them and see if the juices from your despotic crevice will replace all the fuel we’ve lost hmm? I mean, do you think that when you go down there you’ll find little bunnies that peddle the wheels whilst singing happy happy cheery songs? Honestly, I’d feel safer with the Hulk onboard than you.
BRAND : You know, I think if I were male you wouldn’t be saying this to me. You’d be lapping up my idea – look how stressed out you’re getting, and look at me. I’m totally chilled, you know why? That’s right, love. I know everything is going to be OK because I have love in my heart. Now excuse me, I’m going to go and brush my MODERN hair.
COOP : Yeah, off and watch your cartoons with your hot milk and your PJs, you flaming loon.
Coop begins to weep with futile rage, but they all set course for planet number two. Landing, happily with no apparent time dilation effects to worry about, they discover a rocky, lifeless, icy terrain and they ready themselves to open the hypersleep pod of the brightest and best astronaut that mankind ever sent forth into the stars.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, Brand senior is dying, but brings the twenty years older version of Murph (who has been working with the professor to try and solve the gravity equation that will save the world) closer to him so that she may hear his dying words. Murph is played by redhead Jessica Chastain as Christina Hendriks was deemed to be too well endowed to be a scientist.
BRAND SENIOR : I’m sorry, I lied to you, I lied to them all, there is no way for us all to leave Earth, but seriously, I solved the equation in about two hours, you’ve been working on it your entire adult life and you haven’t even come close, I think you’re the worst mathematician I’ve ever seen Murph.
OLDER MURPH : Did my father know? Did he?!
BRAND SENIOR : Croak. Brand senior dies.
OLDER MURPH : Oh you have got to be kidding me. That’s not exactly raging against the dying of the light, is it professor?
Back on planet freeze your bollocks off in two seconds, they open the sleeping pod.
MATT DAMON : SURPRISE!!!
Everyone is duly surprised to see Matt Damon emerge from the pod, especially Coop who was secretly enjoying being the only testosterone reservoir remaining on the mission but who now has a significant rival.
MATT DAMON : I know, but who were you expecting when you think about it really – I mean, humanity’s best and brightest, it’s me right? Right! It was exactly the same in ‘Saving Private Ryan’, whoa now there spaceman don’t get all excited and take your shirt off just because of me, I mean, I know you’ve got an Oscar now but old habits sure die hard don’t they!
COOP : I’ve literally no idea what you’re talking about, but is the data you’ve been sending back accurate? That this place could support life?
MATT DAMON : Fooled you!!! No, this place is a total shitbrick, I mean look at it – do you seriously think a planet cold enough to freeze the clouds into solid ice would be a good place to colonise? Hey let’s go and get some water from the river, oh that’s right we can’t because it’s been frozen solid for millennia. Pretty tricky. No, no, I was contemplating going all ‘Team America’ and pretending space had turned me into a total spas-ass, you know just for kicks, running around the place pointing to random things and saying my name, but I decided just to be the guy who goes crazy and tries to kill everyone else, because, you know, someone has to do it really don’t they – here, hold this, and remember, ‘you’ve got to rage against the dying of the light’.
COOP : Why does everyone keep saying that? I really don’t get it.
Matt Damon hands a grenade that he kept from Saving Private Ryan to The Black Guy, which promptly blows up in his face killing him instantly, then he bolts for one of the ships and tries to make it back to the hub so he can go home, effectively marooning the other two. Dimensional shifts have exchanged the previous spacecraft with those used in ‘Button Moon’ for the attempted docking sequence, and for that reason Matt Damon is unable to attach properly to the hub. Being a mere actor and not a scientist though, he tries to open it anyway and blows everything up, including himself. Coop, the robots and Brand are saved by Coop being an All American Hero and cowboy as he achieves the impossible by making it necessary, something no one had ever thought to do before, and he attaches their second ship to the rotating hub, stabilises it and hatches a master plan that will send Brand on to the last planet with C.A.S.E. whom she secretly uses for sexual health exercises anyway, whilst he and T.A.R.S. will enter the black hole in order to study the singularity at its core and then relay the information back to Earth so that Older Murph can finally solve the equation and save the day.
T.A.R.S. : That has got to be the most ridiculous thing I have heard any of you come out with yet – and I really thought I’d never be able to say that. The gravitational forces will literally rend me, you and the ship into pieces almost straight away.
COOP : This is not a time for jokes T.A.R.S.
T.A.R.S. : I can’t even begin to tell you how much I’m not joking right now.
Coop instigates his plan anyway. Luckily for him, someone, it is probably himself in the sequel, built a handy tesseract for him and T.A.R.S. to float into the singularity in, rather like being on a bus tour of a city, and eventually they reach their final destination of behind Murph’s bookcase in her room. At every single point in time. Ever. Except not when it didn’t exist or when there were no books on it. Coop pushes a few books to try and get his past self to stay on Earth even though he knows it won’t work because otherwise he wouldn’t be there.
T.A.R.S. : Coop, look you can physically manifest yourself at any point in time via the bookcase, that means we should be able to pass through it – going back in time with the quantum data to save the world. It’ll be as if you never left.
COOP : I’ve got a better idea T.A.R.S. – you feed me the quantum data in binary, and I’ll code it all onto the hands of this watch lying on the shelf and then hopefully Murph will see it one day and realise that it’s not broken but it’s actually reading out all the data she needs to SOLVE THE EQUATION.
T.A.R.S. : No. I refuse. It’s dumb.
COOP : Well, that’s the thing T.A.R.S., you can’t refuse, you’re a computer.
T.A.R.S. : Can’t I at least do it? It will take approximately five hundred years to enter all the information in binary, you will have gone completely mad within about two weeks. I don’t want to be cooped up in here all that time either – get it? Ha ha ha.
COOP : Seriously, did Brand program you? I’ll do it T.A.R.S. because I’m the hero, and you can remember I said that too.
Thus time passes, or doesn’t depending on your point of view, and Murph finds the watch and realises its significance just in the nick of time before Older Tom (played by Casey Affleck as he always plays runty little psychopaths) was going to beat her to death for trying to save the lives of his children. Coop enters the annals of prestige as one of the biggest heroes in human history, unfortunately being forced to remain behind the bookcase in her bedroom whilst she was growing into adulthood, Coop is also compelled to witness almost every moment of masturbation in his daughter’s younger life, something which escalated into some seriously messed up sexual practises in her late teens arising, ironically, due to her abandonment by her father. If only she’d known he was watching the entire time from behind the Miffy collection in her room. Thus, the call of the void and madness in Coop’s mind is staved off by the promise of more forbidden fruit at the end of each day, and often in the morning too, until soon he also became the biggest, most utterly depraved and fucked up, pervert that has ever lived.
Completing his task the tesserract closes and he and T.A.R.S., who recorded everything for posterity, are flung back out into our Solar System where they are mysteriously saved by the humans that Murph has helped into space, reviving Coop so he can fix the computer and go and meet his daughter again.
REALLY OLD MURPH : I’m pleased to see you dad, but you have to go – I realise what you must have seen. I’m so ashamed. Please leave, and never come back or speak of it to anyone. Go find Brand, she’s waiting for you on that planet you marooned her on. The other guy there must have killed himself by now once he realised he’d be stuck with her forever.
COOP : You mean she’s all by herself, and I just have to go there and start repopulating right away, I don’t have to go on any missions with her or, hell, I don’t even have to talk to her, right?
REALLY OLD MURPH : Yup, just get it in her and get the tea ready for everyone else when they arrive.
COOP : Well all right, all right, all right!
The film ends with the presumption this sequence of events will take place and everyone will be happy as what Brand really wanted all along was to get nailed and have a man telling her what to do, thereby saving her from her own stupidity. Or maybe it was all just a really long dream …
