Christopher Nolan's black holes, wormholes and tesseracts may not prove to be top-sellers at the American box office this past weekend. Elsewhere, however, moviegoers turned out to be a geeky bunch as they favored the celebrated director's 'Interstellar,' despite mounting complaints about the space drama's incomprehensible dialogue.
Estimates of ticket sales from around the world show the film raking in an additional $106 million from cinemas all over the world, bringing its total revenue to $321.9 million since it hit the silver screen last Wednesday. The $165 million movie made a total of $224.1 million in sales from international movie theaters, with China bringing in the bulk of the cash as moviegoers spent a total of $42 million, despite the fact that it was not shown in 3D and some parts of the dialogue being difficult to hear amidst the movie's background sound.
In South Korea, 'Interstellar' garnered $35.9 million followed by the U.S. with $29.2 million, making the film the third highest-grossing film in the American box office after the Farrelly brothers' 'Dumb and Dumber To' and Disney's 'Big Hero 6.' The film, which stars Matthew McConaughey as Cooper, a retired NASA test pilot turned farmer, made $19.3 million in the United Kingdom and $16.8 million, $12.8 million and $9.6 million in Russia, France and Germany respectively. Total domestic sales in the United States, handled by Paramount Pictures, reached $97.8 million. Warner Brothers takes care of the international distribution.
In IMAX theaters around the world, 'Interstellar' is also proving to be a blockbuster. In China, the film broke the country's record for biggest 2D film release and is doing just as well in many other IMAX markets, including Germany, France, the U.K., Singapore, Australia and South Korea.
The box office success of 'Interstellar' coupled with mostly positive reviews from critics is not without its pain points. Some professional reviewers have pointed out that dialogue can at times be "dull" and "clunky," while some moviegoers have taken to the Internet to say that they could not understand most of the dialogue because the background sound was too loud to hear the characters talking.
Nolan, however, says that is the way he meant the sound to be. The director says that he wanted the film's viewers not just to watch the film but to treat it as a visceral experience where they are given the opportunity to journey through the characters' roller coaster of emotions and not just hear what they are saying.
"[For instance], the experience of being in the cockpit is you hear the creaking [of the spacecraft]; it's a very scary sound," he tells Hollywood Reporter in an interview. "We wanted to be true to the experience of space travel. We wanted to emphasize those intimate elements."
Nolan cites one example: the scene in which Professor Brand, Michael Caine's character, lies in his deathbed with Jessica Chastain's character Murphy, Cooper's physicist daughter. Some have criticized the film's sound because they were unable to hear correctly what Professor Brand was telling Murphy as he lay dying, but Nolan says the scene achieved its "creative intent," which was to be "truthful to the situation."
"We are following the emotional state of Jessica's character as she starts to understand what he's been saying," he says. "Information is communicated in various different ways over the next few scenes. That's the way I like to work; I don't like to hang everything on one particular line. I like to follow the experience of the character."
"Broadly speaking, there is no question when you mix a film in an unconventional way as this, you're bound to catch some people off guard, but hopefully people can appreciate the experience for what it's intended to be," Nolan adds.
