Matt Damon Owns the Best 20 Minutes of Interstellar

If you asked me to isolate the single best stretch of Interstellar, I’d point to the whole sequence that runs from the moment we land on Dr. Mann’s planet to the moment we say goodbye to him. It’s got high-stakes, a surprise the audience wasn’t expecting, a betrayal, and a set piece that turns the score into a character of its own.

It starts with a planet intro that quietly deceives you. We’re flying through what look like clouds, and then bonk, the clouds have turned into ice. It’s a small moment, but it sets the tone for the next 20 minutes, nothing here is quite what it first appears to be, starting with the landscape itself.

Then comes our intro to Dr. Mann, which might be the biggest surprise in the entire film. Nobody knew Matt Damon was in this movie going into release week, he wasn’t on the poster, he didn’t do press. So the first time that pod cracks open on a first watch, there’s a genuine moment of wonder… we’ve already met the whole cast by that point, who is this going to be? Then Damon’s face pops up and it’s an instant, warm surprise. We all love this guy. We’re trained to expect Damon as a good guy, so the second we see him we’re bought in on Dr. Mann’s integrity without a shred of doubt.

Pay close attention to Damon’s reaction as the crew tells him why they came to his planet. Watch him plot his scheme and his lies in real time once he realizes they screwed up. It’s a beautiful piece of acting.

We’re set up to believe Dr. Mann and that’s exactly why it hits so hard once his real intentions come out and he attempts his escape.

The act closes with one of my all-time favorite set-pieces: the docking scene. It was established earlier in the movie that Cooper needed both TARS and CASE just to dock safely at the start of the film… now Mann is going about it entirely on his own.

The stakes ratchet up again, Mann is clearly too cocky, but part of you still buys it, because everyone’s been hyping him up the whole movie… he is the best of us. He doesn’t dock correctly: imperfect contact, imperfect contact, and then boom, the explosion, sound cuts out completely, Mann is gone, and the Endurance is spinning out of control.

We just watched that exact maneuver kill Mann, and now the movie wants me to believe Cooper can pull it off at high speed? Even the robots are telling him it’s a lost cause, it’s not possible. But Cooper just locks in: no, it’s necessary.

Kick in Hans Zimmer’s organs from outer space, yet another reason to see this movie in IMAX, the score escalates in intensity and makes every single moment feel like the most important one as Cooper completes the impossible. Come on TARS. I forget to breathe during this whole scene!!

That’s why this sequence is the best part of the movie. It’s not just one good scene, it’s a full arc, casting twist into character betrayal into the tensest set piece in the film.