Interstellar

My dad was a farmer.

Like everybody else back then.

Of course, he didn't start that way.

Computer says you're too tight.

Nah, I got this.

Crossing the Straights.

- Shutting it down, Cooper. - No!

- Shutting it all down. - No, I need power up!

Dad?

Sorry, Murph. Go back to bed.

- I thought you were the ghost. - No.

There are no such things as ghosts, babe.

Grandpa says you can get ghosts.

That's because Grandpa's close to being one himself. Back to bed.

Were you dreaming about the crash?

Get your butt back in bed, Murph.

The wheat had died.

The blight came and we had to burn it.

And we still had corn. We had acres of corn.

But mostly we had dust.

I can't describe it. It was just constant.

Just that steady blow...

...of dirt.

We wore little strips of sheet...

...sometimes over our nose and mouth...

...so that we wouldn't breathe so much of it.

When we set the table, we always set the plate...

...upside-down. Glasses or cups, whatever it was...

...upside-down.

Shake a leg! Murph, move it!

Tom, 4:00 today, you and me in the barn, Herbicide Resistance 101.

- Check? - Yes, sir.

Not at the table, Murph.

Dad, can you fix this?

- What the heck did you do to my lander? - Wasn't me.

Let me guess. It was your ghost?

It knocked it off. It keeps knocking books off.

- No such thing as ghosts, dumb-ass. - I looked it up. It's called a poltergeist.

Dad, tell her.

It's not very scientific, Murph.

You said science was about admitting what we don't know.

She's got you there.

Start looking after our stuff.

Coop.

All right, Murph, you want to talk science?

Don't tell me you're afraid of some ghost. No, you got to go further.

You got to record the facts, analyze, get to the how and the why...

...then present your conclusions. Deal?

- Deal. - All right.

- Have a good day at school. - Hold up.

Parent-teacher conferences. Parent.

Not grandparent.

Slow down, turbo!

- That's not a dust storm. - Nelson's torching his whole crop.

Blight?

They're saying it's the last harvest for okra.

Ever.

He should've planted corn like the rest of us.

Now, be nice to that Miss Hanley. She's single.

What's that supposed to mean?

Repopulating the earth. Start pulling your weight, young man.

Why don't you start minding your own business, old man?

All right, Murph, give me second.

Third.

- Find a gear, dumb-ass. - Grind it!

Shut it, Tom!

- What'd you do, Murph? - She didn't do nothing.

- Blew a tire is all. - Murphy's Law.

Shut up!

- Grab the spare, Tom. - That is the spare.

Get the patch kit!

- How am I supposed to patch it out here? - You got to figure it out.

I'm not always gonna be here to help you.

What's going on, Murph?

Why did you and Mom name me after something that's bad?

We didn't.

Murphy's Law?

Murphy's Law doesn't mean that something bad will happen.

What it means is whatever can happen will happen.

And that sounded just fine with us.

Get in.

Get in, let's go.

What about the flat tire?

Yeah.

It's an Indian Air Force drone. Solar cells could power an entire farm.

Take the wheel, Tom.

Go, go, go!

Keep that aimed right at it.

Faster, Tom. I'm losing it.

Right at it.

Stay on it.

Here we go.

Nice one, Tom.

Dad?

I almost got it. Don't stop. Don't stop!

Dad!

Tom!

You told me to keep driving.

Well, I guess that answers the old "if I asked you to drive off a cliff's' scenario.

- We lost it. - No, we didn't.

What to give it a whirl?

This way.

Go.

Let's lay her down right there at the edge of the reservoir.

Nicely done.

How long you think it's been up there?

Delhi Mission Control went down, same as ours...

...ten years ago.

So for ten years?

- Why did it come down so low? - I don't know.

Maybe the sun cooked its brain or it was looking for something.

- What? - Give me a large flat blade.

Maybe some kind of signal? I don't know.

What are you gonna do with it?

I'm gonna give it something socially responsible to do...

...like drive a combine.

Can't we just let it go?

It wasn't hurting anybody.

This thing needs to learn how to adapt, Murph...

...like the rest of us.

- How's this work? You guys come with? - I've got class.

This one needs to wait.

- What did you do? - They'll tell you about it in there.

- Am I gonna be mad? - Not with me.

- Just please try not to. - Relax.

I got this.

Little late, Coop.

Yeah, we had a flat.

And I guess you had to stop off at the Asian fighter plane store.

No, actually, sir, that's a surveillance drone.

With outstanding solar cells. It's Indian.

Take a seat.

So...

...we got Tom's scores back.

He's going to make an excellent farmer.

Yeah, he's got a knack for it. What about college?

The university only takes a handful. They don't have the resources to--

I still pay my taxes.

Where's the money go? There's no more armies.

Well, it doesn't go to the university.

Look, you have to be realistic.

You're ruling my son out for college now?

- The kid's 15. - Tom's score simply isn't high enough.

What's your waistline? About 32?

- About a 33 inseam? - I'm not sure I see what you're getting at.

It takes two numbers to measure your ass but only one to measure my son's future?

Come on. You're a well-educated man, Coop.

- And a trained pilot. - And an engineer.

Okay, well, right now we don't need more engineers.

We didn't run out of television screens and planes. We ran out of food.

The world needs farmers. Good farmers, like you.

- And Tom. - Uneducated farmers.

We're a caretaker generation, Coop. And things are getting better.

- Maybe your grandkids will get to be engin-- - Are we done here, sir?

No.

Miss Hanley's here to talk about Murph.

Murph is a great kid. She's really bright.

But she's been having a little trouble lately.

She brought this to show the students. The section on lunar landings.

Yeah, it's one of my old textbooks.

She always loved the pictures.

It's an old federal textbook. We've replaced them with the corrected versions.

Corrected?

Explaining how the Apollo missions were faked to bankrupt the Soviet Union.

You don't believe we went to the moon?

It was a brilliant piece of propaganda.

The Soviets bankrupted themselves pouring resources...

...into rockets and other useless machines.

"Useless machines."

If we don't want a repeat of the excess and wastefulness of the 20th century, then...

...we need to teach our kids about this planet, not tales of leaving it.

One of those useless machines they used to make was called an MRI.

If we had any of those left, the doctors would've been able to find...

...the cyst in my wife's brain before she died instead of afterwards.

Then she'd have been the one listening to this instead of me...

...which would have been a good thing, because she was always...

...the calmer one.

I'm sorry about your wife, Mr. Cooper.

But Murph got into a fistfight with several of her classmates over this...

...Apollo nonsense.

We thought it best to bring you in and see what ideas...

...you might have for dealing with her behavior.

You know what? There's a game tomorrow night.

She's going through a baseball phase.

Her favorite team is playing. There will be candy and soda and...

I think I'll take her to that.

How'd it go?

I got you suspended.

- What? - Cooper.

This is Cooper.

Coop, those combines you rebuilt went haywire.

Just reset the controllers.

I did that. You should come take a look.

One by one they've been peeling off the fields and heading over.

Something's interfering with the compass.

Magnetism or some such.

Nothing special about which book.

I've been working on it, like you said.

- I counted the spaces. - Why?

In case the ghost is trying to communicate.