Interstellar: A Look At Its RPG Elements

Around a month ago, I finally got to watching Interstellar and it got me thinking about how much that movie played out like an RPG (role playing game).

[Spoilers of the movie below]

Intestellar's Story:

In Interstellar Christopher Nolan creates a well thought out futuristic universe. Earth's population find themselves in another dust bowl where food staples are becoming extinct. The population is slowly dying off due to the dust and mankind is on the brink of giving up. Matthew McConaughey's character, Cooper, is fixated on his family and trying to raise his daughter and son with the help of his father-in-law.  Cooper, however, used to be an electrical engineer, and loves chasing down stray "runaway" drones and other tech.

His daughter, Murph (or Murphy, in reference to Murphy's law), and himself discover the location of a secret NASA facility where they are trying to send astronauts to potential habitable planets. Earth is apparently dying and a need for a new place for the human race to continue existence is vital.

He is sent on a journey with other people who have their own jobs and specialties to three different planets that have already been visited by other astronauts. Their job is to collect the data and see if each planet can hold life.

They eventually come across a planet where gravity is so great that one hour is equal to seven years  back on earth. They try to make a quick grab for the equipment (which houses the data to determine the habitability of the planet) and find that the planet sees pretty habitable albeit the planet is full of water. The notion quickly fades away when they find that the mountains off in the distance were actually gigantic, ever-flowing waves. This puts the ship and the crew in disarray and what was supposedly a "quick" trip costs the crew over two decades.

The next planet they arrive at is cold, but liveable. The team wakes up an ex-NASA astronaut Dr. Mann from cryo-sleep and are relieved to here that the planet was inhabitable after all. Things then take another turn for the worse when Cooper finds that Dr. Mann lied about the planet being inhabitable. Dr. Mann also tries to kill Cooper as well. Dr.Mann proves to be mentally unstable and tries to kill all of the crew and steal their ship so he could go back home. But Mann wasn't a good pilot and ends up killing himself when he tries to board the ship.

With time, fuel, and their party wearing thin, Cooper decides to send the last surviving (Amelia Brand played by Anne Hathaway) member to the last remaining planet. In order to do this, he sacrifices himself to a black hole so that they could use the black hole's pull to launch them to the next planet. Cooper gets sucks into the black hole but that is not the end of the story.

It's revealed that inside a black hole is a hub of all memories of Cooper and maybe everyone else in the world as well. Cooper has access to different times in his life, one particular moment is when he leaves his daughter to start his journey with NASA. The viewer then realizes that the signals that lead Cooper and Murph to the NASA headquarters was actually done by Cooper in the future. Somehow (and I'm unsure how it happens), older Murph figures this out and is able to create a solution for fast travel to other planets.

Cooper blacks out and wakes up in a hospital bed in a new planet. He is reunited with his daughter who is now on her death bed. Cooper finds out where Amelia is, and the movie ends with him in flight to Amelia and Amelia heading back to a small excavation site on a habitable planet.

The RPG Elements:

The main thing this movie really sells is the the creation of a party and the journey. The journey just seems as epic as regular JRPG. Most JRPGs require the part to join up and save the world. This is seen in Interstellar with the crops going extinct and the dust slowly killing people off. The party is formed in the beginning of the movie but they do interact with other characters as the journey progresses.

Crono Trigger has the smarty pants, the woman who has the power of love, the robot, and the all do-good main character. All Interstellar is missing is a frog and a cave woman. 

The movie even has the tropes of a common RPG. You have the main character who wants to just save the world (and ends up sacrificing himself to do this). You have the genius, you have the robot that is also comic relief. It even has the party member who is the traitor as well. Lastly, you have the girl who believes in love and, in the end, love trumps all.

The movie also makes sure to include vastly different environments that the crew experiences. There's a world completely covered in water, there's a ice world and then there is a Mars-like planet at the end.

It's all there. And it's one of the first Sci-fi movies that really spoke to me as a video gamer rather than just another movie-goer.

The only issue that detracts it from being a sci-fi JRPG is the tone. The movie is always depressing until the very end. There are a lot of mistakes and disaster at every planet they travel to. Most JRPGs start off with a small tragedy but quickly turn the tone to a more optimistic outlook on the journey.

Final Fantasy VIII had their RPG adventure go all the way to space. 

There are many flaws with my reasoning, I understand but I couldn't help but draw the parallels. There's very few movies that really give off that vibe (including video game movies). Anyways,
just my two cents.