Cooper is the one chosen to pilot us out of this slow-grind apocalypse, as the head of a reconnaissance mission that counts as the definition of experimental: it involves diving into a wormhole that was mysteriously placed within human reach two generations earlier. His companions on this expedition are introduced in the various forms of Anne Hathaway, Wes Bentley, David Gyasi and a pair of obelisk-droids known as CASE and TARS, whose resemblance to the black monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey is a long way from unintentional. Bill Irwin, the actor who gives his voice to TARS – much the more loquacious of the two – operated these machines on set as a hydraulic puppeteer, but they can also perform more acrobatic, CGI-assisted feats of rapid rotation: as surplus military machines, they’re reminders of human conflict from a planet that’s just about given up the fight.