Page - 60 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/01

It turns out that NASA volunteers who had been sent on a previous exploratory mission through the wormhole, the “Lazarus” mission,19 had identified three po- tential planets for human settlement circling around a super massive black hole named “Gargantua”. Those planets are “Miller”, “Edmund”, and “Mann”, named after the three astronauts who had scouted them. Brand, believing that it is too late to save the Earth, lets Cooper in on his vision of how the “end of the world” will unfold (00:29:17); that prospect is the reason why NASA has been secretly planning to build a ship to allow humanity to escape the dying planet and start anew some- where else. Brand then recruits Cooper to pilot the “Endurance” spaceship, which will venture through the wormhole to confirm the scant data transmitted back by the astronauts of the Lazarus mission (00:29:52). Brand presents two alternative outcomes of the Endurance mission – Plan A in- volves the return of the Endurance with the necessary information to decide which planet if any is suitable for human settlement, followed by a mass exodus through the wormhole using giant space stations. If, however, the Endurance cannot make it back to Earth, or the exodus plan cannot be executed for any reason, Plan B will go into effect. Plan B involves the Endurance crew resettling whichever planet they find suitable for human life with the 5,000 frozen embryos carried aboard the ship (00:33:45). This plan implies that humanity will start over on one of the planets on the other side of the wormhole in case there is no way to save the people living on the planet today. The two alternatives bear more than a passing resemblance to the biblical story of the flood and Noah’s ark, even thoughith the biblical flood framed as punishment for the moral degradation of human society. Noah is chosen to en- sure the continuation of life upon the Earth after the flood: And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth […] And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. (Genesis 6:5–8) The film mentions three missions undertaken with the aim of saving humanity. The first, the “Lazarus” mission, whose volunteers were the first explorers sent by NASA through the wormhole is reminiscent of the biblical tale of the spies – the 19 The name given to the mission attests to the presiding sentiment about Earth’s impending fate and the chances of coming back from it. In the Christian tradition, Lazarus was a man Jesus raised from the dead: “And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go” (John 11:43–44). Biblical Narratives in Interstellar | 59www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/1, 53–69