One of the biggest surprises from Comic-Con 2014 (so far, anyway) was seeing Matthew McConaughey walk onto the stage in Hall H to talk about his starring role in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. Even more surprising was McConaughey introducing Nolan himself, who despite directing the Dark Knight trilogy and Inception, has never appeared at Comic-Con.
Nolan took a few questions from the audience and talked about some of the inspiration behind his new film, and then unveiled a new trailer, which he said wouldn’t be released to the general public for “quite awhile.” Obviously, we can’t bring you the trailer itself, but we can tell you about it.
While the first trailer for Interstellar was a bit ambiguous, this one gives us a bit more information. The Earth seems to be suffering from a severe drought, as nearly everything and everyone is covered in dust and dirt. We see McConaughey’s character, Cooper, working in a field wearing a bandanna over his nose and mouth, and we see several shots of dust storms ravaging the ramshackle wooden houses of a small town.
Cooper is apparently being launched into space to look for other inhabitable planets, and it appears the mission will be a long one: there’s a moment where’s he’s trying to get his children to talk to him, telling them they need to fix their problems before he’s gone. And then after a countdown, we see images of a space shuttle launch.
Anne Hathaway appears briefly as what we presume is Cooper’s co-pilot, and we get a few images of them in the spacecraft, as well as several stunning glimpses of outer space. The last 45 seconds of the trailer is a pure visual feast, with a sweeping score that suggest a truly grand adventure awaits.
But details on that grand adventure will have to wait, as Nolan told the audience he wanted to be very careful not to show too much. It’s likely that there will be some major sci-fi elements at play in the finished product, but Nolan seemed determined to keep those under wraps and allow the audience to discover it for themselves.
Interstellar opens on November 7.
christopher nolan comic con 2014 interstellar matthew mcconaughey sdcc 2014