Interview: Christopher Nolan talks on his 'Interstellar' challenge and tackling final frontier post 'Dark Knight'

After recasting the superhero genre with a dark realism in the "Dark Knight" Batman trilogy and dissecting dream manipulation in "Inception," director Christopher Nolan is tackling the final frontier.

"Interstellar," out in U.S. theaters on Friday, has taken Nolan into what he described as the furthest exploration of space in film. The movie balances an intimate father-daughter relationship within the backdrop of an intergalactic journey to save mankind.

Nolan, 44, talked to Reuters about casting Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey as his leading man, the challenges of constructing "Interstellar" and the effect of "Gravity."

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Q: What does Matthew McConaughey embody as Cooper?

A: He has the right stuff. Cooper, he's a pilot, and the great thing about the American iconic figure of the pilot, the Chuck Yeager, (is that) there's a little of the cowboy about him. And I think Matthew embodies that wonderful, earthy sense of an everyman who has great integrity and is extremely competent, somebody you trust to guide you through this story and take you through this journey.

Q: What was your biggest challenge in balancing an intimate family story with an intergalactic journey?

A: The biggest challenge in that respect is creating a reality on set so that the actors, who are very much the human element of that - they're the intimate, emotional element of that - so that they can actually connect with the larger scale of the film, they can see it, touch it, taste it.

So we tried to build our sets not so much like sets, more like simulators, so the actors could look out of the windows and see the real views of what would be going on there, they could experience the ship shaking and reacting as they flew it.

Q: Why did you choose to set 'Interstellar' in a future that bears close resemblance to the present world?

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Interview: Christopher Nolan talks on his 'Interstellar' challenge and tackling final frontier post 'Dark Knight'