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A review by tvil
Interstellar: The Official Movie Novelization by Greg Keyes
4.0
Interstellar is one of my favorite movies of all time. Watching it at the local Cinematheque prepremiere was perhaps my greatest cinematic experience. And yet, when rewatching it recently, I felt that the movie moved far too fast to do its sprawling plot justice. Of course, just shy of 3 hours, the movie could hardly be longer. Luckily there’s a novelization! Actually, this novel is a quick read, and if you’re a fast reader it might not last you a lot longer than the movie itself.
When I watched the movie for the second time as mentioned, I watched it with my wife, who had actually read the novelization but not watched the movie. She enjoyed the movie a lot, but in my opinion you should watch the movie first, so there’s no sense for me to talk about the plot here. And really, if you’ve watched the movie, you’ll know yourself if you’d like to read this novelization or not.
It’s pretty much just a page-by-page retelling of the movie. If you loved the movie as much as I did, you’ll want to devour both this and THE SCIENCE OF INTERSTELLAR. If you thought it was OK, this book won’t give you anything the movie didn’t. It’s literally a line-by-line reading of the spoken script, with good descriptions and prose to weave it together.
The book adds little to the film, however. We get some glimpses into the characters’ minds, and some things are explained rather than inferred, but don’t expect any extra chapters following side plots from the movie here. It’s a faithful adaption, but some things just can’t be adapted from a visual (and aural) medium. Also, some things that verged on plot holes in the movie, but that were dismissable because of the limited time, feel fairly out of place here. Just simple stuff like inserting a briefing scene before the mission where Cooper was explained how the wormhole worked and what time dilation was, would make some things seem less dumb when you read them in a novel.
I love books, and I love the images they can create in my mind. I will never know how the images this book could have created would be if I had read the book first. For another movie, that might not have mattered. In Interstellar, though, the cinematography and the music itself are enough for me to urge you to just go and watch it.
When I watched the movie for the second time as mentioned, I watched it with my wife, who had actually read the novelization but not watched the movie. She enjoyed the movie a lot, but in my opinion you should watch the movie first, so there’s no sense for me to talk about the plot here. And really, if you’ve watched the movie, you’ll know yourself if you’d like to read this novelization or not.
It’s pretty much just a page-by-page retelling of the movie. If you loved the movie as much as I did, you’ll want to devour both this and THE SCIENCE OF INTERSTELLAR. If you thought it was OK, this book won’t give you anything the movie didn’t. It’s literally a line-by-line reading of the spoken script, with good descriptions and prose to weave it together.
The book adds little to the film, however. We get some glimpses into the characters’ minds, and some things are explained rather than inferred, but don’t expect any extra chapters following side plots from the movie here. It’s a faithful adaption, but some things just can’t be adapted from a visual (and aural) medium. Also, some things that verged on plot holes in the movie, but that were dismissable because of the limited time, feel fairly out of place here. Just simple stuff like inserting a briefing scene before the mission where Cooper was explained how the wormhole worked and what time dilation was, would make some things seem less dumb when you read them in a novel.
I love books, and I love the images they can create in my mind. I will never know how the images this book could have created would be if I had read the book first. For another movie, that might not have mattered. In Interstellar, though, the cinematography and the music itself are enough for me to urge you to just go and watch it.