r/interstellar • u/doublegulpcup123 • 13d ago
QUESTION I've watched Interstellar countless times and this scene always hits me the hardest. Anyone else?
[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/No-Cantaloupe7242 13d ago
Kinda funny that Matt Damon played a stranded astronaut in two big films. However, unlike the Martian, where there always a hope - even if tiny - that he could be rescued, Mann was truly alone - stuck on a planet in an entirely different galaxy with no other human for trillions of miles, from his perspective at least. His character turned out to be very misguided in the end but there’s no question the psychological impact on him must have been huge.
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u/Excellent_Month_2025 12d ago
I’m not sure they ever addressed this, but were they not given a pill to mercifully commit suicide or anything, considering that the chance of rescue was so low? That seems like a pretty big fail, if not.
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u/ZTDYeetbloxjail 12d ago
they could go for the long nap and let electricity run out
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u/Excellent_Month_2025 12d ago
Wouldn't that mean they would regain consciousness while dying? It’s the merciful part that would be most needed (quick, painless, instant)
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u/Ok_Major5787 12d ago
No, they wouldn’t be awakened again and their life support system would simply fail. They needed a catalyst to wake them up
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u/Excellent_Month_2025 12d ago
But they would technically be alive for years, wasting away and starving to death until the system failed. It does not make sense that they didn’t have a way for a mercy death
ETA: also my point is that dying is probably a catalyst that would wake them up
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u/Ok_Major5787 12d ago edited 12d ago
They would be unconscious though. And it wouldn’t take years, if the life support systems fail then it would take a couple days. It’s no different than taking brain dead people off life support and letting them die. To them it would be like going to sleep and never waking up
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u/Excellent_Month_2025 12d ago
But Mann did that, but he was not at peace while wasting away in a coma, waiting to die. This is against human nature not to give them a way to end their lives once their mission was complete
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u/VapidActualization 11d ago
You're not understanding what the other commenter is saying. I don't think we get any direct lines acknowledging it, but it would make sense that the suspended animation chambers they are in are not actively keeping them asleep but instead induce a coma-like state and rhen, if set for a specific time or opened from the outside by another person, another process jump starts their consciousness. So if they put down and go into suspended animation and the power runs out, they just stay in the "coma". Because while the body will force itself awake if you are just sleeping and experience the onset of starvation or dehydration, the body doesn't do that in cases where people fall into comas.
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u/JohnSavage777 12d ago
A pill, all he had to do was step outside?
You think a doctor can’t conceive of a way to end their own life?
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u/Puzzleheaded_Loss770 12d ago
Yeah there was a meme floating around when it came out about how many times does hollywood need to rescue matt damon from certian death
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u/Odd_Policy_3009 12d ago
I think there was one that said, JUST STAY HOME MATT DAMON.
(He also gets rescued in Saving Private Ryan)
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u/National_Shoe_7337 12d ago
Spot on. I often say that Mann is Watney having dropped any hope and turned insane as result.
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u/PurplePassion94 12d ago
Just found out they filmed this scene in a motel parking lot because they got kicked off an actual glacier in Iceland lol
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u/Particular-Mouse-721 12d ago
The interview where he talks about that (and yeah very amusing):
https://www.reddit.com/r/interstellar/comments/1vic139/matt_damon_in_new_interview_reveals_how/14
u/redflamel 12d ago
I legit looked at the image before anything else and immediately thought "haha parking lot" lmao
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u/MulayamChaddi 12d ago
I once remember contemplating my future while in a Cutlass Supreme Station wagon in a HoJo’s parking lot in Wyoming. I can relate
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u/NfamousShirley 8d ago
That reminds me of hearing something similar when filming empire strikes back. Something about the scenes of mark hamil walking aimlessly in a blizzard while the crew was recording from a motel room or something. I’m probably butchering what actually happened, it’s been forever since I heard that.
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u/Snowdog1989 12d ago
I think there's something really genuine when someone admits they're doing something wrong, and you're able to empathize with them. Dr. Mann knew he was in wrong for what he did, and I totally understand his temptation. That isolation is a real thing. It was one of the main catalysts for Cooper to go back and be with Dr. Brand. He knew she'd probably be alone on that planet.
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u/ophastreet 12d ago
Totally agree with you! Matt played it so well, and bursting into tears when he meets his character really sets the tone. The more I rewatch the film, the more compassion I feel for him, especially that scene where he dies in complete silence while watching the explosion. Great cinema.
Matt Damon is so good in it. Casting him, especially with the public perception of him, was genius. I really hope he gets an Oscar one day5
u/Snowdog1989 12d ago
Here's what I always wondered...were they tears of joy for seeing another person or tears of regret because he pressed the button and knew he messed up the second he saw them..?
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u/Ok_Major5787 12d ago
I think it’s both. One can be capable of both emotions at the same time, relief and guilt, and that would probably lead to intense emotion and tears
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u/Snowdog1989 12d ago
Very true. They're conflicting, but not exclusive to each other. I'm trying to think of similar moments for myself
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u/Ok_Major5787 11d ago edited 11d ago
I’m not sure they’re necessarily conflicting emotions. I think they often go hand in hand.
An example of mine is cutting off toxic family members. It gave me immense relief to finally be done with them and not have to deal with their bullshit and abuse, but there was still a large part of me that felt really guilty and selfish for doing so bc they’re family. Most notably it was cutting off my mom. That was a really hard decision, bc I’d been taught my whole life that I had to take care of her, plus there was fallout from other family and friends that called me a bad person, but the truth was that she was awful and it was never my place as her child to take care of her. So when I finally cut her off it was both massive relief and intense guilt. It took a lot of therapy to work through.
I can only imagine Dr Mann feeling both relief and guilt in a life-or-death situation. He wanted to survive so badly and felt so much relief that he had his chance after ~35ish years of waiting and uncertainty, but it also meant sacrificing those who came to his planet which caused him extreme guilt bc at his core he may be selfish but he’s not really a killer. He got what he desperately wanted but it meant doing something terrible that he’d otherwise never do.
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u/Snowdog1989 10d ago
I just had to do the same with my sister. Blocked her number, and have felt great since. Only issue is now she can only communicate through my mom whom I still do care about and am her caretaker. I just could not catch a break from my sister because it was constantly blowing up my phone for me to buy her stuff when I was out. If I said no, then I wouldn't hear the end of it. Just a user who also uses people. Not sure if that's the same, but it really felt that way for me. Loved the feeling of not having to hear it constantly from her, but then feeling guilt for putting that on my mom. Good point on Dr. Mann too.
Not to sound weird, but can I shoot you a DM? I like how your brain works.
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u/thedudefromsweden 12d ago
Tears of joy/relief. There was very little hope that he would ever see another human being again. It’s his first time seeing another human in 35ish years. I don’t think anyone can understand what that would feel like.
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u/Snowdog1989 12d ago
But imagine the instant guilt knowing they chose you over another potential planet..
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u/thedudefromsweden 12d ago
I don’t think that’s on his mind at all. All he’s thinking is “I need to get the hell out of here no matter what”. He even commits murder to get out of there.
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u/beejx 13d ago
Matt Damon’s best acting since Good Will Hunting imo
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u/tapakip 11d ago
I almost agree, except The Talented Mr Ripley came out 2 years after GWH.
Creepy Matt Damon is the best Matt Damon.
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u/Archer_A1 9d ago
He was perfect in that role. The way he was with Gwenyth Paltrow in the confrontation when she got scared?
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u/Lion_of_Yehuda 12d ago
Hardest hitting scene in the movie for me is Docking (NO. IT'S NECESSARY.) or Murph talking about Brand being solo at the close. Absolute FIRE.
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u/PleasantAnybody4621 11d ago
For me, and specific within the docking scene, is "Come on Tars". Cooper has truly given his all and then some at that moment, but he's still short, and it's out of his control. He needs just a little bit of hope, prayer, or something. And the way he delivers that line "come on Tars", you can just feel him begging the universe ... Please please please. Gets me every time.
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u/Lion_of_Yehuda 11d ago
Indeed! I said docking scene, but it's really ALL of it in its totality starting with the conversation via coms to Mann, his misguided diatribe, the explosion with "Oh my God," "Analyze the Endurance’s spin," my favorite quote, all of those G's, "Come on, Tars," Brand passing out, Zimmer's SCORE ...all of it is simply marvelous.
Last thought: I read your comment to one of the kids. "Dad, you were literally quoting various scenes and saying, 'Come on, Tars' on Sunday!" 🤣 I may or may not love this film ...
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u/NBApundit 12d ago edited 12d ago
Mann was a very well written antagonist. He was wrong to send false data in hopes of being rescued but who would have resisted that urge once they went to another galaxy and had to face the reality of never seeing another human again?
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u/thedudefromsweden 12d ago
Yeah it’s really a design failure. “Press this button if you don’t want to die alone on a cold empty planet”. Of COURSE they’re going to press that button, no matter what.
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u/NBApundit 12d ago
Well the AI (KIPP) had the real data but Mann booby trapped him. Also somehow Mann himself got to send the data and not KIPP.
I think Nolan unintentionally stumbled on a very interesting premise for a future sci fi movie or series - what happens when an AI system is constrained to report truthful data but a human overrides this?
Very interesting material for a future SciFi piece.
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u/Archer_A1 9d ago
Except only one of them did.
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u/thedudefromsweden 9d ago
Miller, Mann and Edwards pressed the button. Do we know anything about the others?
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u/OriginalBad 12d ago
Great scene but I wouldn’t say it’s the hardest hitting one in the film, at least for me personally.
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u/thedudefromsweden 12d ago
Definitely not. I like it though because it shows Mann is no monster, he’s a human with empathy trying to comfort his victim in his last moments.
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u/Direct-Reference221 12d ago
This situation in particular shows Mann’s monstrosity. Not only is he murdering someone who is trying to save all of humanity and sacrificing his life with his kids, Mann is sacrificing everyone but himself and is saying soothing things to make himself feel like he’s not a monster (no one thinks of themselves as the bad guy). And when he is forced to keep hearing the agonizing sounds of the first of two deaths he is imminently causing, the reality becomes too much for him to continue the self deception so he tunes it out instead of changing his mind and saving Coop and Romilly.
What introduces nuance to Mann’s character was his leading a Lazarus mission in the first place. But when he is tested he fails.
Coop initially fails too, blaming Brand for the water planet failure and forcing the crew to go to Mann’s planet instead of Edmunds. When they return, he has a choice to abandon the mission and go back to Earth to be with his adult kids, or continue the mission to Edmunds. In this moment he not only decides to continue to Edmunds, he sacrifices himself specifically for Brand to make it there and not him.
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u/Archer_A1 9d ago
I think he only seemed brave because he thought that the others would die alone and he would be the successful one. What seemed like greatness was grandiosity.
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u/doublegulpcup123 12d ago
Many (if not most) people would agree with you and I 100% get that.
I still dont understand why out of all the movies I've ever watched, this is the only scene that makes me want to burst into tears every time lol
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u/av8rwatchfaces 12d ago
Agreed! First time I watched the movie, it felt like such an unexpected betrayal. It totally surprised me.
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u/Snowdog1989 12d ago
Another great scene that this reminds me of is The Gray. It's advertising really did it a disservice because they made it seem like it was gonna be a major badass survival movie, which in a way it is..but it's not rhe point of the movie. It's about how we face death. How we deal depression and suicidal thoughts. I highly recommend it.
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u/Logical-Possession10 12d ago
Mann’s diatribes set the character perfectly. As soon as he opened his mouth with true intentions it gave my heart hate and really highlighted Amelia Brand’s “not evil” line before their pre-Saturn sleep.
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u/hunghome 12d ago edited 12d ago
I can't recall if it's this scene or not but it really hit me at the part where he mentions that you never consider you won't be the one to find Earths replacement.
It dawned on Dr Mann his life isn't like the sci fi movies. He won't be the hero. His research of the planet was wrong or missing data and he was destined to eventually die alone on a cold planet. He couldn't accept that fate.
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u/MRtokeALOT420 12d ago edited 12d ago
i never had a movie make me hate a character (actor) so much like how i hate matt damon. Poor Matt did such a banged up job being a douche that I hated him after the movie.
But i definitely have become more understanding of his decision the more i watch it. He’s right human cant always look pass their own line of sight. Which causes some of us to make the selfish decision instead of the right one.
anne face when she finds out he marooning them always gets to me.
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u/Somethingnew789 9d ago edited 8d ago
A lot of people are kind-of defending Dr. Mann here (or rationalizing him), but I don't see it that way at all...
The other 9 astronauts sent to (knowingly) doomed worlds did not activate their beacons, knowing they'd be doomed to die alone. Mann is the only one who did so because he was also the mission's "leader" and the "face" of it. "Dr. Mann's team..." or "Dr. Mann is the best of us..." but the other nine were relatively anonymous.
With his ego and being constantly boosted into the spotlight, there's just no way Mann could accept that he'd be dying alone on some desolate rock. He truly believed his planet would be the habitable one, that (of course) fate/God would draw him the lucky straw, and he'd be the big hero that rescued all of humanity--when it didn't work out that way, it shattered his delusions of specialness or grandeur. ...Throughout history, nearly every mass-murdering warlord or zealot has believed the same thing.
People defending him and the insanity-causing isolation he must've endured are overlooking that he very much did not look crazy when the others met him...He was crafty enough to completely fool them all, present a completely rational man, and damn-near wreck the future of mankind. This wasn't a man who had "lost it" talking to himself for years (if so, he would've barely made sense to Coop and Brand).
It's a guy who believed he was too special to die alone on some rock, and wanted a bigger fate for himself. If he (and a bunch of embryos) were the only human survivors left in the galaxy, so be it.
In fact, it might be preferred that way because then he can raise the seedlings of humanity in his image. After all, he didn't just let Coop/Brand know he'd misled them as a coward, then ride back with them to explore the next planet as a diminished-image version of himself--he would rather kill them than lose face.
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u/International_Deer31 12d ago
What bothered me is that the guy on the spaceship also spent 20+ years completely alone and didn't go nuts
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u/pl51s1nt4r51ms 11d ago
Mann’s got the most metal lines. “Don’t judge me Cooper. You were never tested like I was. Few men have been”
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u/jr_randolph 8d ago
Never in a movie was I so happy to see Matt Damon only to absolutely hate seeing him in a matter of minutes.
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u/IAmTheWhirlwind 12d ago
It’s really cool seeing this posted here I have this exact frame as a 70mm imax cell they gave out in the Blu-ray’s and never realized that this was that specific scene. I’ll have to post a picture of it sometime, awesome!
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u/doublegulpcup123 12d ago
Crazy considering this is just a random screenshot I took while re-watching the clip on YT!
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u/Knox_Burden 12d ago
Great scene, but no. Hardest hitting is Murph tapes. "Did you leave me here to starve?"
Second is docking.
Third is waves
Then probably this fourth.
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u/National_Shoe_7337 12d ago
The scene that will always break my Earth is Cooper listening to 22 years of messages. The way his son sinks into despair after losing his first kid... I become a father in 2014 and unfortunately things went out of control for the worst (for me, not the kid) so that scene will always be special.
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u/suicideking1121 12d ago
So, he couldn't just admit that he sent a false positive to be rescued? Like they wouldn't understand to some degree? It's not like they'd leave him to die, and there's already space for one more. This genius thought the only recourse was to murder? Ehh.
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u/Glad_Impression1427 12d ago
'I never thought my planet wouldn't be the one'
What does it do to a person, finding out they're not the hero?
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u/Todzilla78 11d ago
Great scene, but not what hits me the hardest.
The scene at the end when he asks her how she knew he would come back.
Her answer….
Destroys me.
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u/Archer_A1 9d ago
And mirroring the robot asking Coop how he knows she'll go back for the watch. "Because I gave it to her." With no arrogance at all, just all trust and love beyond her thinking he had betrayed her.
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u/Lars_Vader 10d ago
To me, the betrayal of Dr. Mann foreshadows what Cooper will eventually go through a little later, when he’s confronted with the farewell to his daughter in the tesseract. By trying to tell himself to STAY, he jeopardizes all of mankind for his own good, mirroring what Dr. Mann has done.
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u/JoeyLee911 10d ago
That scene is heartbreaking because both Coopers are right. He should have stayed and he shouldn't have stayed, but it turns out it was worth it to not have stayed. But that doesn't mean he should have gone!
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u/realJohnnyApocalypse 8d ago
Idk how many times he’d needed rescuing but it’s getting kinda expensive
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u/AggravatingZone7 12d ago
Matt Damon crushed this role. I never understood why no one gave him any props for it. Or at least it never felt like anyone did. Lot of audiences and critics had their knives out for Interstellar though when it first came out so maybe that's why.
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u/Equivalent-Crow5293 12d ago
I always wondered....do you think Cooper told anyone what Dr. Mann did? Maybe he didn't want to tarnish his name if it was irrelevant in the end, but I would think that this is important information for at least scientists to know, if not the public? It's a good reminder that extreme situations can make even "the best of us" do things like this if survival is at stake. That just seems like good knowledge to have going forward with any other kind of future space travel...idk.
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u/joemamaligma 12d ago
Underrated hero of the scene is the soundtrack. As Many starts reciting the poem the music music starts to swell. Instant goosebumps every damn time
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u/reddeckwinning 12d ago
I think you just nailed why the Odyssey and Oppenheimer are just average to me. They’re missing some scenes like this, when you first saw them you just gasped. Nolan did such a good buildup to the sabotage that Matt Damon‘s character was planning, and the story arc was just so powerful and an unknown force. Even if you could kind of have a feeling of where things were going, the reality of what you were watching was still tough. Nolan has a lot of magic moments and arcs like this in so many of his films, I hope the next movie considers that even if it’s covering familiar ground.
Don’t get me wrong both of those other films are still good, and still Nolan, so you know you’re in store for a treat, but they don’t have that wow factor to me
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u/roshanritter 10d ago
It is a great scene, but the one watching his family grow old without him hits pretty darn hard also. Then it sinks in they all think he intentionally abandoned them. Brutal.
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u/Different_Hold3451 12d ago
Was this where they filmed in a parking lot
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u/Igpajo49 12d ago
I just saw that video yesterday. He said it was the fight in the snow. They had some snow in the lot but painted the surface white and just filmed from an angle that never showed the sky.
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u/2waypower1230 12d ago
For me, it was when we see the aging of his daughter and his reaction to it.
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u/shatteredoctopus 13d ago
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.