‘Interstellar’ Clip: Matthew McConaughey Told Rockets Are “Useless Machines”

One of the first clips from Interstellar has debuted online via Time magazine, which posted the latest look at Christopher Nolan‘s highly anticipated space epic online along with its cover story about the film.

The video doesn’t feature any stunning special effects or space travel but it does provide a sense of the world Nolan has created, as Matthew McConaughey looks bewildered and offended when he’s told by his daughter’s teacher that his child is being taught that “the Apollo missions were faked to bankrupt the Soviet Union.”

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The teacher explains that that’s what the “corrected versions” of textbooks say in the film’s future U.S., which is why it was problematic that his daughter brought in one of his old textbooks, which includes a section on lunar landings.

“You don’t believe we went to the moon?” McConaughey’s Cooper asks.

“I believe it was a brilliant piece of propaganda that the Soviets bankrupted themselves pouring resources into rockets and other useless machines,” the teacher counters. “And if we don’t want a repeat of the 20th century, then we need to teach our kids about this planet and not tempt them with tales of leaving it.”

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Cooper then explains that another “useless machine” that used to exist was an MRI, and “if there were any of those left,” the cyst on his wife’s brain might have been discovered before she died and not after.

“Then she’d be the one sitting here instead of me, which would have been a good thing because she was always the calmer one,” Cooper says as the clip ends.

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The Paramount/Warner Bros./Legendary Pictures film follows McConaughey and Anne Hathaway‘s characters as they travel into space to find an inhabitable planet before ecological problems doom Earth.

Jessica Chastain and David Oyelowo, seen here as the principal of McConaughey’s daughter’s school, also star in the movie, which hits theaters on Nov. 7.

Watch the full clip below.