The 2008 draft of Interstellar varied wildly from the one Christopher Nolan brought to the screen.

We take a look at what changed…

NB: This article contains major spoilers forInterstellar.

Whatever your opinion ofInterstellar, its difficult to fault the scale of Christopher Nolans odyssey.

From its genesis,Interstellarwas a movie with big ideas.

This naturally begs an interesting question: what wasInterstellarlike when it was still a Steven Spielberg project?

In broad terms, this is all familiar stuff.

But even in these early pages, things are subtly different.

For one thing, the ghosts Murph finds loitering in Coopers house are conspicously absent.

Cooper follows a signal emited by the probe, and finds NASAs base beneath an overgrown Santa Cruz Island.

Here, elderly scientist John Brand and his biologist daughter Amelia explain what theyve been up to.

None returned until now.

The tone is of an unfolding adventure rather than a solemn tiptoe into the unknown.

It could be that this is Spielbergs popcorn-infused lightness of touch coming through in the screenplay.

Shortly before Cooper and Murph find the underground base, they spot some red berries growing on the ground.

Dont touch them, Cooper advises, not realising theyre strawberries.

Just as they realize this, things start to go wrong.

Then Coopers team realizes that the Chinese had captured the Americans probes to keep them from discovering the planet.

To make matters worse, they have a stowaway on board: one of the Chinese robots.

Cooper manages to disable it, but not before the robot has ejected most of the Endurances nuclear drives.

Im sorry, the robot says, chillingly.

Youll probably recall that the cinematic version ofInterstellartook a turn for the head-scratchingly abstract in its final third.

The 2008 screenplay is, again, strikingly different.

At Gargantua, the crew on the Endurance discovers a second, much larger wormhole.

These almost invisible beings guide the Endurance to something entirely unexpected:

A gigantic space station.

TARS delivers a further revelation: the Chinese robots built the space station over the course of four millennia.

The treasure theyd reported back about was time.

Enough time to let us save ourselves, Amelia says.

One of these was the gravity rig.

Another is the ships energy source: its powered by a tiny black hole.

Theyd even figured out how to build wormholes, dozens of them.

Exhausted, he begins to succumb to the freezing cold.

Cooper wakes up aboard another space station, this one cylindrical and teeming with activity.

There are cornfields stretching up its curved interior.

Cows graze in pasture.

The Earth may be gone, but thanks to the information stored on Coopers probe, humanity has survived.

Cooper himself is still a man out of time.

Murph, Tom, and everyone he knew are long gone.

But hes given a small consolation.

Interstellarends with cautious optimism.

Then theres Cooper, whose hunger for exploration remains unsated.

Whats most intriguing about Jonathan Nolans early draft is that the grand speeches of the final film are missing.

There are no readings from Dylan Thomas.

Discussions about the mechanics of wormholes and spacetime are kept to a minimum.

Amelia Brand doesnt get her speech about love being a universal constant.

Round and round it goes, the snake choking on its own tail.

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