Watch Matthew McConaughey Try to Save Mankind

The world has put a lot of faith in Matthew McConaughey ever since he proved that he's more than just "that guy who's always shirtless," but trusting him to save our entire universe? That's a whole lot of confidence to have in someone whose most talked-about moments last year were beating his chest and rambling about Neptune. Yet it seems we're doing just that, as in the first trailer for McConaughey's Interstellar , the actor is tasked with finding a new place far, far away for humans to live after Earth ran out of food. Somehow, we don't think saying "alright, alright, alright" is going to be enough to help him with this one.

Until the trailer's release on Friday, little was known about Interstellar, other than the fact that it stars McConaughey, is directed by Christopher Nolan, and maybe, possibly, sort of has something to do with time travel. The teaser trailer, released in December, was frustratingly vague, the only information being a quote about "overcoming the impossible." Now, though, with a full, three-minute preview on our ends, a lot more can be grasped about the plot of Interstellar — well, as much as any trailer for a Christopher Nolan movie will allow you to learn, anyway.

The clip shows McConaughey's rural engineer being tasked with finding a new place somewhere in the solar system for humans to live, after food became scarce and Earth turned into a giant dust-bowl. Michael Caine is a wise professor who recruits McConaughey for the mission, convincing the reluctant father of two that "we're not meant to save the world. We're meant to leave it."

And so, along with astronaut Anne Hathaway, McConaughey boards a spacecraft that heads into a wormhole, previously described by Nolan as a "celestial shortcut" to far away portions of space we'd otherwise never be able to get to. Whether the engineer makes it back to Earth, like he promised his daughter, is unknown.

Interstellar also stars Jessica Chastain, Casey Affleck, Matt Damon, and Ellen Burstyn, among others, but you wouldn't know it from the trailer, save for a blink-and-you-miss-it shot of Chastain looking sad in a field. It's clear that despite the surplus of A-listers, this is McConaughey's movie through and through. And even in just three minutes, it's obvious why; the Oscar-winner is compellingly watchable as a regular dad who happens to be way over his head. Basically, Interstellar is like Armageddon meets Contact meets Frequency. What more could anyone want?

Interstellar comes out Nov. 7. Check out the trailer below:

Image: Paramount