Movie Smarts

Interstellar Quiz: How Far Does Your Memory Go?

Fifteen chances to prove that all those movie nights paid off.

Published 2026-10-24 Updated 2026-10-24 15 questions

Interstellar: Dad's Taking the Long Way Home

Earth is running out of good options, and a father is offered a journey that could help people survive somewhere else. Leaving his family is painful enough before the trip starts doing strange things to time. Far from home, the crew faces choices that no training session could make comfortable. It is a space adventure with huge views, hard decisions, and the worst possible problem with keeping in touch.

Give your memory a moment. Time works normally for this part.

1. Who directed Interstellar?
- Christopher Nolan
- Denis Villeneuve
- Alfonso Cuarón
- Ridley Scott
The script began as a project for Steven Spielberg, written by Nolan's brother Jonathan with the physicist Kip Thorne consulting. Spielberg moved on, Christopher Nolan took it over and folded in ideas of his own, and he shot it on film, much of it in IMAX.
2. Who plays Cooper?
- Brad Pitt
- Matthew McConaughey
- Christian Bale
- Matt Damon
McConaughey was in the middle of the run that had just won him an Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club, and Interstellar came out the same year. Matt Damon is in the film too, in a role kept out of the publicity, and Christian Bale, Nolan's Batman, is not.
3. What is Cooper doing for a living when the story begins?
- Driving trucks
- Farming
- Teaching physics
- Repairing ships
Blight has been killing crops one species at a time, and dust storms sweep the farms, so the former NASA pilot now grows corn. The talking-head interviews at the start are real survivors of the 1930s Dust Bowl, borrowed from Ken Burns's documentary on it.
4. What is the name of Cooper's daughter?
- Brand
- Anne
- Lois
- Murph
Murphy Cooper is named after Murphy's Law, which her father insists means that whatever can happen will happen, not that whatever happens will be bad. She is played at three ages, by Mackenzie Foy, Jessica Chastain and finally Ellen Burstyn.
5. Which crop is the last one still growing on Cooper's farm?
- Wheat
- Soybeans
- Corn
- Okra
Wheat went years earlier and the okra is dying as the film opens, leaving corn as the only crop the blight has not reached. Nolan had hundreds of acres of real corn planted in Alberta for the farm scenes, and the production sold the harvest afterwards.
6. Which planet is the wormhole near?
- Saturn
- Jupiter
- Neptune
- Mars
The wormhole was planted near Saturn decades earlier by the unseen 'they', and the Endurance takes about two years to reach it with most of the crew in hibernation. Kip Thorne had it rendered as a sphere rather than a hole, which is how one would really look.
7. What is the crew's main spacecraft called?
- Prometheus
- Hermes
- Discovery
- Endurance
The ship is a ring of modules that spins to give the crew gravity, and it shares its name with Shackleton's Antarctic ship. Discovery is the ship in 2001, Hermes the one in The Martian and Prometheus the one in Ridley Scott's Alien prequel.
8. What is the huge black hole called?
- Gargantua
- Leviathan
- Eventide
- Singularity One
Kip Thorne's equations were fed straight into the rendering software, and the result showed the glowing disc bending over and under the hole, accurate enough that the team published scientific papers on it. The name comes from Rabelais's giant.
9. On Miller's planet, roughly how much Earth time passes in one hour?
- Seven days
- Seventy years
- Seven years
- Seven months
Miller's planet sits so deep in Gargantua's gravity well that one hour on the surface is seven years back home. The detour ends up costing twenty-three years, and Romilly, who stayed aboard the Endurance, has aged all of them when the others return.
10. What major hazard covers Miller's planet?
- Enormous waves
- Dust storms
- Acid rain
- Lava flows
Gargantua's pull drags a shallow ocean into waves the height of mountains, and what the crew take for a distant range on landing is one of them rolling in. The scenes were shot in knee-deep water in Iceland, the country that also supplied Mann's ice planet.
11. What is the name of the rectangular robot with adjustable humor settings?
- HAL
- TARS
- Bishop
- KIPP
TARS was a practical prop, a heavy block of metal that Bill Irwin, who also provides the voice, walked around the set in person before being painted out. Cooper dials its humor setting down after one joke too many; KIPP is the matching unit Mann left behind.
12. Who plays Dr. Mann?
- Cillian Murphy
- Wes Bentley
- Casey Affleck
- Matt Damon
Damon's casting was kept out of the trailers and posters so that Mann's rescue would play as a surprise, and he was on set in Iceland for only a short stint. Mann has faked his data to lure a rescue; Cillian Murphy, a Nolan regular, sits this one out.
13. Which crew member dies on Miller's planet?
- Romilly
- Brand
- Doyle
- Mann
Doyle, played by Wes Bentley, is caught by the second wave while the crew scramble back to the Ranger. Romilly dies much later, when Mann's booby-trapped KIPP unit explodes, and Brand is the one still alive at the end, setting up Plan B on Edmunds's planet.
14. What object helps Cooper send information to Murph?
- A wristwatch
- A music box
- A toy airplane
- A compass
Cooper gives Murph his watch before leaving, and from inside the tesseract he uses gravity to tick its second hand in Morse code, spelling out the quantum data she needs. Hamilton, which supplied the watch, later sold a replica named the Murph.
15. Who composed the organ-heavy score?
- Max Richter
- Hans Zimmer
- John Williams
- Clint Mansell
Nolan handed Zimmer a single typed page about a father leaving his child, with no mention of space, and Zimmer wrote the core theme from that alone. The organ is the one at Temple Church in London, and the pair had worked together since Batman Begins.

All the answers

1. Who directed Interstellar?

Christopher Nolan

The script began as a project for Steven Spielberg, written by Nolan's brother Jonathan with the physicist Kip Thorne consulting. Spielberg moved on, Christopher Nolan took it over and folded in ideas of his own, and he shot it on film, much of it in IMAX.
2. Who plays Cooper?

Matthew McConaughey

McConaughey was in the middle of the run that had just won him an Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club, and Interstellar came out the same year. Matt Damon is in the film too, in a role kept out of the publicity, and Christian Bale, Nolan's Batman, is not.
3. What is Cooper doing for a living when the story begins?

Farming

Blight has been killing crops one species at a time, and dust storms sweep the farms, so the former NASA pilot now grows corn. The talking-head interviews at the start are real survivors of the 1930s Dust Bowl, borrowed from Ken Burns's documentary on it.
4. What is the name of Cooper's daughter?

Murph

Murphy Cooper is named after Murphy's Law, which her father insists means that whatever can happen will happen, not that whatever happens will be bad. She is played at three ages, by Mackenzie Foy, Jessica Chastain and finally Ellen Burstyn.
5. Which crop is the last one still growing on Cooper's farm?

Corn

Wheat went years earlier and the okra is dying as the film opens, leaving corn as the only crop the blight has not reached. Nolan had hundreds of acres of real corn planted in Alberta for the farm scenes, and the production sold the harvest afterwards.
6. Which planet is the wormhole near?

Saturn

The wormhole was planted near Saturn decades earlier by the unseen 'they', and the Endurance takes about two years to reach it with most of the crew in hibernation. Kip Thorne had it rendered as a sphere rather than a hole, which is how one would really look.
7. What is the crew's main spacecraft called?

Endurance

The ship is a ring of modules that spins to give the crew gravity, and it shares its name with Shackleton's Antarctic ship. Discovery is the ship in 2001, Hermes the one in The Martian and Prometheus the one in Ridley Scott's Alien prequel.
8. What is the huge black hole called?

Gargantua

Kip Thorne's equations were fed straight into the rendering software, and the result showed the glowing disc bending over and under the hole, accurate enough that the team published scientific papers on it. The name comes from Rabelais's giant.
9. On Miller's planet, roughly how much Earth time passes in one hour?

Seven years

Miller's planet sits so deep in Gargantua's gravity well that one hour on the surface is seven years back home. The detour ends up costing twenty-three years, and Romilly, who stayed aboard the Endurance, has aged all of them when the others return.
10. What major hazard covers Miller's planet?

Enormous waves

Gargantua's pull drags a shallow ocean into waves the height of mountains, and what the crew take for a distant range on landing is one of them rolling in. The scenes were shot in knee-deep water in Iceland, the country that also supplied Mann's ice planet.
11. What is the name of the rectangular robot with adjustable humor settings?

TARS

TARS was a practical prop, a heavy block of metal that Bill Irwin, who also provides the voice, walked around the set in person before being painted out. Cooper dials its humor setting down after one joke too many; KIPP is the matching unit Mann left behind.
12. Who plays Dr. Mann?

Matt Damon

Damon's casting was kept out of the trailers and posters so that Mann's rescue would play as a surprise, and he was on set in Iceland for only a short stint. Mann has faked his data to lure a rescue; Cillian Murphy, a Nolan regular, sits this one out.
13. Which crew member dies on Miller's planet?

Doyle

Doyle, played by Wes Bentley, is caught by the second wave while the crew scramble back to the Ranger. Romilly dies much later, when Mann's booby-trapped KIPP unit explodes, and Brand is the one still alive at the end, setting up Plan B on Edmunds's planet.
14. What object helps Cooper send information to Murph?

A wristwatch

Cooper gives Murph his watch before leaving, and from inside the tesseract he uses gravity to tick its second hand in Morse code, spelling out the quantum data she needs. Hamilton, which supplied the watch, later sold a replica named the Murph.
15. Who composed the organ-heavy score?

Hans Zimmer

Nolan handed Zimmer a single typed page about a father leaving his child, with no mention of space, and Zimmer wrote the core theme from that alone. The organ is the one at Temple Church in London, and the pair had worked together since Batman Begins.