What We Learned (and Didn't Learn) from the New 'Interstellar' TV Spots

Hungry for any bit of new information about Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar? We watched (and re-watched) the five TV spots released this past weekend for the sci-fi epic, out Nov. 7. There are several moments of what looks like previously unseen footage, but there’s not much that’s really revelatory.

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The “walking” contraption (at right) is pretty darn cool — but how does it climb stairs?

The broad outlines of the plot are clearer: The Earth is experiencing a life-ending ecological disaster and an intrepid group of astronauts (including Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway) are sent on a last-ditch mission to find a new haven for humanity.  We definitely see more of the walking-Tetris-block contraption (above) that accompanies McConaughey as he surveys the alien planet — it seems to be a fusion of the self-stabilizing walking “dog” currently under development by the Pentagon and the sleek geometric shapes piloted by the extraterrestrials race in Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence. (Intentional or not, many other scenes recall sci-fi films of the past, including the famous “stargate” sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey and the NASA spaceship slipping beneath the surface of the lake at the beginning of the original Planet of the Apes).

Related:  'Interstellar': Shades of Other Space Epics, Including 'Gravity'

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Finally, after a long journey to Saturn, the wormhole that leads to distant stars 

What’s conspicuously missing from the clips is any new information on the very thing that gives the movie its name: the “wormhole" that makes interstellar travel possible. (Journeying between stars would be impossible without such a portal.) The wormhole is possibly the glowing mass observed outside one of the spaceship’s portholes (above) — and we know, from previous trailers, that it exists in the shadow of Saturn. But that’s about all we can be sure of right now. And given that the discovery of a wormhole was the basis of the original script — that briefly held the interest of Steven Spielberg) — it seems possible that this reveal might be kept for the movie itself. A spoiler denial we’re totally okay with.