I just left the threatre seeing this. I didn't read the reviews in this thread, nor did I read critic reviews so I don't know what the consensus is. I guess to describe my overall feeling is best illustrated with this smiley
Mind you science and space are my passion so I'm going to enjoy the movie regardless. I guess I wish I knew more of the background, so I knew what led to the blight. I also felt the whole coop going to space seemed a bit rushed. Ultimately I think the wormhole and all events were in a way were a loop in time. Some future beings, who we in essence saved, created the wormhole so we could travel through it and fulfill the mission. You have to suspend reality for several things, namely going through a blackhole and not be crushed. I still have to process some thoughts and read through this thread, but for now it's a 3/5. I don't know if the general audience will gravitate to this like they did inception. To the uninitiated this is a lot to wrap their heads around.
I think the background was purposely left ambiguous, because Nolan didn't want to send out an blatant social/political message like it's climate change's fault or it due to that. The truth of the matter no matter HOW it will happen, it WILL happen to where the planet WILL die or human existence will be threatened due to the inability to sustain living on the planet no longer. It could happen naturally or unnaturally.
With that said, I have the educated guess the reason for the blight, the repeated massive dust storms, and the significant population drop within a 3 generational time span was due to a nuclear war. Of course it never outright stated it, but it was implied something to that effect was what had happened. Cooper's claim when he was growing up, people were running amok in panic, Dr. Brand's statement that NASA was initially decommissioned due to its refusal to bomb nukes from the stratosphere onto innocent people, as well as his admission that bringing in more people into building the space station was due to them not building any more bullets or weapons. In fact, it is reasonable to believe that the main reason why he created the hoax mission, knowing that it was mathematically implausible (according to Dr. Mann's claim that Prof. Bland solved the equation prior to them even leaving for the planetary mission) was due to convincing the government end the war. This was how NASA was able to get those droids like TARS & CASE which were initially combat soldier robots.
Also, OF COURSE you have to suspend belief, because it is still
science fiction, so the element of make believe will be intertwine with the hard science. With that said, and Kip Thorne stated this while conversing with Nolan in one of the behind the scenes of this film, there's NOTHING concrete as to what exactly will happen once entering a black hole. All of it is educated speculation, which gives someone an artistic license to interpret how they would like to interpret due to it all theory anyway. There's nothing to ever suggest wormholes exists, just the mathematical idea that it
could.
With that said, scroll above.... I explained my strong belief that Cooper did not survive while entering the black hole. That his soul was transitioned into the 5th dimension, and the 5th dimensional "Gods" brought him back to life.... like Lazarus. But that's my own theory.