Page - 57 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/01

and therefore it could be used to travel back into the past (see fig. 1). The only ca- veat to the theory is that creating such a wormhole would require colossal amounts of energy, far beyond anything our technology could be expected to supply in the foreseeable future. Thorne claims that since time travel is physically possible, though we may be many generations away from being able to investigate it experimentally, it is no longer the purview of science fiction writers alone. In the past, serious scientists tended to turn their backs on an idea that they deemed too farfetched to be given any time or attention. Times have changed, and many physicists nowadays see time travel as an important subject that should not be ignored.12 Thorne himself attested in the preface to the book he wrote about the film Inter- stellar, “As a child and later as a teenager, I was motivated to become a scientist by reading science fiction by Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and others.”13 Although, in turn, the film is largely rooted in speculative science, a narrative analysis reveals that it also draws much of its inspiration from Judeo-Christian sources, particularly the narratives of the Old Testament. The End of Days and Apocalyptic Era The film opens on a reality where Earth’s resources have reached a state of deple- tion that has forced human society to revert to agrarianism, and even in this state human life is on the brink of collapse. It is clear to both the scientists and the lay 12 Thorne 2014, 133. 13 Thorne 2014, ix. Fig. 1: The wormhole, Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, US 2014), 00:59:12. 56 | Bina Nir www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/1, 53–69