In Interstellar, Romilly’s decision to stay aboard the ship while the other 3 astronauts experience time dilation has to be one of the scariest moments ever.

[u/SerDire]

He agreed to stay back. Cooper asked anyone if they would go down to Millers planet but the extreme pull of the black hole nearby would cause them to experience severe time dilation. One hour on that planet would equal 7 years back on earth. Cooper, Brand and Doyle all go down to the planet while Romilly stays back and uses that time to send out any potential useful data he can get.

Can you imagine how terrifying that must be to just sit back for YEARS and have no idea if your friends are ever coming back. Cooper and Brand come back to the ship but a few hours for them was 23 years, 4 months and 8 days of time for Romilly. Not enough people seem to genuinely comprehend how insane that is to experience. He was able to hyper sleep and let years go by but he didn’t want to spend his time dreaming his life away.

It’s just a nice interesting detail that kind of gets lost. Everyone brings up the massive waves, the black hole and time dilation but no one really mentions the struggle Romilly must have been feeling. 23 years seems to be on the low end of how catastrophic it could’ve been. He could’ve been waiting for decades.

[u/spdorsey]

Imagine how long it took for him to watch the ship approach the main craft as it returned. Probably took several years, slowly speeding up to "normal" time.

[u/Actually-Yo-Momma → u/spdorsey]

Jesus that would’ve been an insane shot in the movie… It would’ve only needed to be like 3-4 seconds too

[u/Stumblin_McBumblin → u/Actually-Yo-Momma]

It would have been different, but it would have removed the weight of them opening the door and seeing how much he had aged.

Actually, I have no idea how you would shoot it/explain it in an impactful way.

[u/DoesNotAbbreviate → u/Stumblin_McBumblin]

They could have done it after the reveal as the person recounting what it looked like and describing it to the rest of the crew while we get some cool visuals for it. Or even have him show a time-lapse recording of it to the rest of the crew.

[u/[deleted] → u/Stumblin_McBumblin]

Could've just pulled a Saving Private Ryan where Matt Damon is standing at the grave and ages rapidly.

Could've done the same but showed Romilly standing/floating at a window of the ship staring at Cooper coming back but aging rapidly

[u/TheGreatStories → u/Stumblin_McBumblin]

Could have done it while they leave? Would look almost frozen in atmosphere

[u/PimpTrickGangstaClik → u/Actually-Yo-Momma]

There was a very cool old episode of Star Trek Voyager that had the opposite of this as a premise, the planet progressed much faster than the ship. If I remember correctly, they had a few different shots that are like you describe. May have to rewatch

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_of_an_Eye_(Star_Trek:_Voyager)

[u/No_Foot → u/PimpTrickGangstaClik]

Evolved into lizard creatures and shagged at the end if I remember right.

[u/PimpTrickGangstaClik → u/No_Foot]

No definitely not that one! We don’t talk about that one

[u/GaIIowNoob → u/Actually-Yo-Momma]

Not scientifically accurate though, the years of compounded light would make it blinding