'Interstellar' trailer: Matthew McConaughey has to save mankind

The first movie that comes to mind after watching the first revealing trailer for Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar is Contact. No, Matthew McConaughey doesn’t play a hunky spiritual philosopher like he did in that 1997 film, but his hunky rural engineer has a special bond with his daughter not unlike the one shared by Jodie Foster and David Morse. This time, the roles are reversed, though, with the father rocketing through time and space.

In the clip, audiences finally learn the stakes driving Nolan’s latest movie, which he wrote with his brother, Jonathan Nolan. Basically, the Earth is running out of food, as environmental change seemingly has transformed the planet into a giant dust-bowl. “We must confront the reality that nothing in our solar system… can help us,” says Michael Caine’s professor, who aims to recruit McConaughey’s Coop for a vital mission. “We’re not meant to save the world; we’re meant to leave it.”

We’ll have to wait longer to understand why McConaughey is chosen, but he reluctantly volunteers to be one of the interstellar astronauts (along with Anne Hathaway) sent into the void to save mankind. Will he make it back to his daughter, Murphy?

Watch the clip below: