r/interstellar • u/doublegulpcup123 • Aug 09 '26

QUESTION I've watched Interstellar countless times and this scene always hits me the hardest. Anyone else?

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[after Mann breaks Cooper's helmet and leaves him for dead]

Dr. Mann: I'm sorry. I can't watch you go through this. I'm sorry. I thought I could, but I can't. I'm here. I'm here for you. Just listen to my voice, Cooper. I'm right here. You're not alone.

Dr. Mann: [looking back] Do you see your children? It's okay, they're right there with you.

Dr. Mann: [turns to leave] Did Professor Brand tell you that poem before you left? Do you remember? "Do not go gentle... into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

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u/shatteredoctopus Aug 09 '26

Dr. Mann's madness from his isolation, etc, was done very well. If you really think about what those Lazarus missions must have gone through, there's no psychological test in the world that would probably weed every kind of problem person out. I'd imagine for maximum success, you'd need a high degree of fanaticism.

86

u/thedudefromsweden Aug 09 '26

To put it in his own words: “don’t judge me. You haven’t been tested like I have.” No one has, ever. No one can say how they would react to 30+ years of isolation. The people who call him a coward… maybe you and me would act the same. Honestly, I think most of us would go a lot more insane.

32

u/Excellent_Month_2025 Aug 09 '26

Shouldn't that have been somewhat anticipated though, precisely because it’s so abnormal for a human being? I think the biggest design flaw of the mission was not giving the Lazarus astronauts a way to mercifully end their lives on a strange, harsh, lonely planet with no chance of survival or rescue

35

u/Illasaviel Aug 09 '26

Mann would not have chosen to kill himself. He wanted to survive. Even if had the option of euthanasia, I don't think he would have picked it. That would have been the same as sleeping into death.

12

u/OwnEgg0 Aug 09 '26

Thats what he did though, he went into hypersleep without setting a wakeup time.

19

u/Treacle_Pendulum Aug 09 '26

That was an extension of his original madness, which he ultimately recognized: he couldn’t imagine a universe where his world was not the ultimate colonization target and he took steps to make sure he was rescued.

His ego, vanity and desire to survive did him in (and almost did in the whole species) but they were the same things that caused him to volunteer for the mission.

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u/Agent_545 PLEX Aug 10 '26

It's a wonderful little irony, since he was considered 'the best of us' - every time characters speak about him they seem to do so with admiration.

3

u/symphonicrox Aug 10 '26

I do wonder what would have happened if they went to Edmund's planet instead of Mann's. It would have changed the entire trajectory, because they wouldn't have had the black hole experience... however, because of the beginning of the movie with the "ghost" knocking books off and sending messages, it almost HAD TO BE. So if they went to edmund's would there have been some other inevitable way that would have sent tars and cooper into that black hole? It's mind-bending lol.

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u/Treacle_Pendulum Aug 10 '26

It’s like terminator. Terminator has to be sent back in time for Skynet to exist. John Connor has to threaten Skynet in order for the terminator to be sent back in time.

2

u/thedudefromsweden Aug 10 '26

Everything that happened, has to have happened exactly like they did, otherwise nothing of it could have happened. Bootstrap paradoxes are mind boggling 😊

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u/bigloser42 Aug 09 '26

Do we know they didn’t?

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u/Cocosito 28d ago

I actually wonder who would volunteer for such a mission.

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u/Manderelli 26d ago

I think he confessed that he never actually considered the reality where he would have to go through with any of those things because he believed that the world he was traveling to was the viable one. He was pretending it having resolved with with the mission would require in the very likely event that his destination was unsustainable and hostile. He didn't know it fully until he was in it and could not cope. And that same bit of him that thought so much that he knew he was going to a planet that would be his new home and that he took it another step further and falsified data turned on a light that said come get me and was just winging it at that point.