Interstellar IMAX rerelease: The movie that changed Christopher Nolan’s career.

Artists don’t just build their audiences; they train them. Although Nolan became a father in 2001, Interstellar was, according to Emma Thomas, his producer and the mother of his four children, the first movie he made to “watch with his kids.” It’s a slightly funny statement considering that Interstellar is a lengthy heartbreaker about the looming extinction of the human race and the follow-up to Nolan’s three movies about Batman. Related From Slate What Christopher Nolan’s Movies Are Really About As the elderly astrophysicist who mentors both Cooper and his daughter, Michael Caine tells Murph that he’s afraid not of death but of time. But just as Cooper’s wormhole provides him with a shortcut through space-time, Interstellar’s Spielbergian origins gave Nolan a way to speed-run the path from puzzle-box mysteries to misty-eyed dad movies. “It’s observable, powerful … it has to mean something.” Restating complex ideas as cloying truisms is one of Hollywood screenwriters’ favorite tricks, and no matter how choked up McConaughey’s performance gets you, it’s hard not to wince at the clumsiness of a sentiment like “Once you’re a parent, you’re the ghost of your children’s future.” But the depths that Interstellar allowed Nolan to access are worth the occasional sentimental clunker, and the ability to tap into emotions without needing to explain them has made his movies since then richer and more intuitive.