In the mid-21st century, Earth faces a dire environmental crisis. Dust storms and widespread crop failures threaten humanity’s survival. Former NASA test pilot Joseph Cooper has turned to farming to support his family, consisting of his father-in-law Donald and his two children, Tom and Murph. Cooper struggles to adapt to a world where scientific advancements are dismissed, and Murph’s teachers even insist the Apollo moon landings were fabricated.
During a dust storm, Murph notices unusual patterns of dust on her bedroom floor, which she attributes to a “ghost.” Cooper examines the anomaly and determines it is caused by gravity. The patterns reveal a set of geographic coordinates, which lead Cooper and Murph to a hidden NASA facility. There, they meet Professor John Brand, who explains that 48 years earlier, a wormhole had appeared near Saturn. The wormhole provides access to a distant galaxy containing twelve potentially habitable planets orbiting a supermassive black hole named Gargantua. Previous missions, known as the Lazarus expeditions, sent astronauts to explore these planets, with three reporting promising results: Miller, Edmunds, and Mann.
Professor Brand recruits Cooper to pilot the Endurance, a spacecraft tasked with colonizing one of these planets using 5,000 frozen embryos. The mission is humanity’s last hope for survival. Brand assures Cooper that he is working on solving a gravity equation that will allow Earth’s remaining population to escape using massive space stations. Despite Murph’s emotional objections, Cooper agrees to join the mission, promising her that he will return. Before leaving, he gives her his wristwatch so they can compare time when he comes back.
The Endurance crew includes Cooper, Brand’s daughter Dr. Amelia Brand, scientists Romilly and Doyle, and two advanced robots, TARS and CASE. After a two-year journey to Saturn, they traverse the wormhole and enter the new galaxy.
Miller’s Planet
The first stop is Miller’s planet, located close to Gargantua, where time dilation causes one hour on the planet to equal seven years elsewhere. Upon landing, the crew finds shallow water and remnants of Miller’s expedition. However, a massive tidal wave strikes, killing Doyle and damaging the lander’s engines. By the time they escape, 23 years have passed on the Endurance, where Romilly has aged alone while conducting research.
Mann’s Planet
With limited fuel, the crew must choose between the planets visited by Edmunds and Mann. They select Mann’s planet, as Mann is still transmitting signals. During the journey, Cooper receives recorded messages from Earth and learns that his son Tom has grown up, married, and lost his first child. Meanwhile, an adult Murph, now a scientist working with Professor Brand, discovers that Brand has lied to everyone. Brand confesses on his deathbed that solving the gravity equation requires data from inside a black hole, making a mass exodus from Earth impossible. The Endurance mission was always intended to be humanity’s last hope.
On Mann’s planet, the crew awakens him from cryostasis. Mann insists the planet is suitable for colonization, though its surface is icy and hazardous. During an excursion, Mann attempts to kill Cooper, revealing that he falsified his data to be rescued. Mann escapes in Cooper’s lander and tries to dock with the Endurance. However, his inexperience causes a catastrophic failure, killing him and severely damaging the station. Romilly is also killed by a booby trap Mann had set.
Cooper and Amelia Brand manage to regain control of the Endurance through a perilous docking maneuver. The station is now critically low on fuel, forcing the remaining crew to use a slingshot maneuver around Gargantua to reach Edmunds’ planet.
Gargantua and the Tesseract
The slingshot around Gargantua exposes the crew to extreme time dilation, costing them 51 years. To lighten the ship and ensure Brand reaches Edmunds’ planet, Cooper and TARS detach their lander and fall into Gargantua’s event horizon. Instead of being destroyed, they find themselves inside a mysterious structure called the tesseract, which appears as an infinite array of Murph’s bedroom across different moments in time.
Cooper realizes the tesseract was created by advanced beings from the future to allow him to communicate with Murph. Using Morse code, he manipulates the second hand of the wristwatch he left her, transmitting the data TARS collected from inside the black hole. This information enables Murph to solve the gravity equation, giving humanity a means to escape Earth.
The Resolution
The tesseract collapses after fulfilling its purpose, and Cooper is ejected from Gargantua. He wakes aboard a massive space station orbiting Saturn, named Cooper Station, where humanity has relocated. Cooper reunites with an elderly Murph, who is now on her deathbed. She tells him that he has accomplished his mission and urges him to find Amelia Brand, who is setting up a colony on Edmunds’ planet.
Cooper and TARS take a spacecraft and leave to rejoin Brand, who has begun establishing humanity’s future home on the habitable planet.
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