The third "they"
The movie Interstellar runs deep with current known science and also notions of time (in a manner that is not well-enough understood by science). In the movie, there are several discussions that refer to "they" as the architects (my word) of the events within the movie. "They" is used to refer to the creators of the wormhole, the same wormhole that brings humans to a distance galaxy to find habitable worlds. "They" is also used to describe the creators of the tesseract within Gargantua Black Hole into which Cooper falls. There's actually a third "they" used by Brand (daughter of Professor Brand) where she unknowingly shakes Cooper's hand while she's in the wormhole and while the tesseract collapses around Cooper. She mistakenly refers to Cooper as "them".
The second "they"
While in the tesseract, Cooper hypothesizes (or guesses) that "they" are future descents of humans. When viewing the movie's narrative superficially, "they" are the ones who set everything up to allow colonization of distance worlds, and also to allow Cooper to survive within the Black Hole long enough to send back the necessary data to solve Professor Brand's equations. The movie does not provide any further explanation, but does hint that Cooper's guess is not 100% accurate. This hint comes when he becomes third "they" during the aforementioned handshake with Brand. Also, Tars specifically calls the creators of the tesseract by the moniker "Bulk Beings".
Cooper's explanation for "they" is flawed. If "they" are our descents and also the creators of the wormhole, this forms a "Bootstrap Paradox". If the wormhole didn't exist, we'd have no ability to save humanity in order to have our descents create the wormhole.
Getting stuck on this Bootstrap Paradox assumes this movie presents the final and accurate explanation for "they" or the "Bulk Beings'. However, if the creators of the wormhole are different from the Bulk Beings (creators of the tesseract), the paradox evaporates.
The first "they"
Cooper was right in his guess that we were solving our own problems. We got our selves to the wormhole. We investigated several habitable worlds on the other side. Cooper himself fell into the Black Hole and interacted with Murph. However, what's the moment that prevents the paradox and allows Bulk Beings to exist? This moment is when Brand colonizes Edmond's Planet. Her colony saved the human species, but not humans on Earth. Her colony's eventual descents (the Bulk Beings) had to finish the job. They had to enable the survival of humans on Earth. They did so by creating the tesseract for Cooper inside of Gargantua.
So, who are the creators of the wormhole that kicked off human survival? Who are the first "they" of Interstellar? My best guess is that "they" are simply an interested party who provided us with a way to save ourselves, if we are ready to be saved. The first "they" of Interstellar are different non-human related beings who were possibly even more advanced than the Bulk Beings.
No comments:
Post a Comment