In the realm of astrophysics, there is a man so esteemed that his scientific opinion is pretty highly regarded whenever a film that operates in that discipline is released. That man, as you may have guessed, is Neil Degrasse Tyson – the director of the Hayden Planetarium, as well as host of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey and StarTalk Live. Tyson has not only sounded off on films like Gravity and Titanic, but he's also now weighed in on Christopher Nolan's outer space opus Interstellar.
The results are very positive, and when we say "very positive" we mean that Tyson's series of Tweets this past Sunday (compiled thanks to Entertainment Weekly) has America's favorite astrophysicist praising the film on scientific factors, such as its depiction of the theory of relativity and zero G activity. What follows is a couple of the choice tweets that Neil Degrasse Tyson broadcast this weekend (despite the fact that he saw the film in advance,) and it starts with this apt comparison to 2001: A Space Odyssey:
While scientific accuracy is Tyson's specialty, even he's aware that women are pretty under-represented in these sorts of movies. That said, he does make an interesting point about the film's main characters:
Out of all of the tweets that Neil DeGrasse Tyson dropped on the public, these last two are the best indicators that even he understands that the public might need some extra reinforcements for the plot as well as the science.
While Neil deGrasse Tyson enjoys films like Interstellar and Gravity, he isn't afraid to do his job with the material they give him. Considering that theoretical physicist Kip Thorne worked with Jonathan and Christopher Nolan to make the film as accurate as possible, it's no surprise that the former film fared better over the latter - though both had about the same level of involvement with the folks at NASA. The moral of the day: if you're going to make a science fiction film that's supposed to be grounded in hard sci-fi territory, make sure to hire an expert to help you flesh out the idea. Otherwise, you might be on the receiving end of Neil deGrasse Tyson's Hammer of Truth.
Interstellar is in theaters now, and The Science of Interstellar is in bookstores now. If you'd like to listen to more of Neil deGrasse Tyson's thoughts on movies, TV, and anything science related; you can listen to him at StarTalk Radio. And yes, he does cover superhero movies too!
