This is the movie I've been waiting for for a very, very long time. It's one of the few truly science-positive movies that Hollywood has produced in recent years. It's one of the few science fiction movies that is both honest and positive about human nature. We're awesome, but we're not innately special. Brand's "Love transcends everything" theory was given the weight it deserved (Read: None whatsoever) and the theme of how life was about more than just survival was well played. Turns out, Mann's diatribe about the survival instinct was one of the most important

Scientifically, the movie was pretty solid. The orbital maneuvering had some holes, and there was one time where they really screwed up with the centripetal gravity. Down to Earth, there were some nitpicks to be had, like combines harvesting unripe corn or a drone with solar cells that could power a whole farm. None of this rose to the level where it bothered me. I feel that the movie delivered on 98% of everything it promised, from cutting-edge CGI of an accretion disk to slow, beautiful shots of spaceships docking in silence.

Something that struck me as I was leaving the theater was the idea that something similar might have happened on Earth before. Micheal Caine's character said that the blight breathed nitrogen, a trait that (among others) would let it outperform oxygen-breathing life. This is just like how blue-green algae developed on Earth and quickly drove anaerobic life to near extinction. All that remains of that lost chapter in evolutionary history is a few microbes that thrive in absence of the toxin oxygen. Botulism, for example.

If humanity had died, the dust storms would have erased our presence from the Earth. A billion years from now, nitrogen-breathing multicellular life might arise. Native metals would have been replenished by then, as well as the deep wells of hydrocarbons we've done our best to deplete. But any intelligent life that arises would have a hard time of climbing out of the stone age. Hard to burn hydrocarbons without oxygen.

10/10, we need more science fiction like this.

PS: Does anyone else think that Christopher Nolan has a weird love for scratchy voices?
PPS: Cooper meeting his daughter again brought tears to my eyes. Him going the extra mile to resurrect TARS almost had me bawling.