I’d have been much happier if they’d just set the whole thing in a competely alternate universe or “20 minutes into the future”, and replaced the various spacecraft with entirely fictional satellites, or better, kept a completely realistic setting, and written a different story around the same themes.
I really enjoyed it. I did feel kind of dizzy from all the spinning around.
The operation manual for the Soyuz looked like instructions for Ikea furniture 
. Are they really like that? Seemed pretty user friendly considering not everyone onboard the ISS can read russian.
Definitely yes to your second question. Not sure about the first.
I was nauseated a bit when things began to unravel. The action was pretty stunning, and I always enjoy Clooney, but the plot was so straightforward that in the end the movie won’t stick much with me.
Thanks for the answer. Another question or more of a comment.
Sandra Bullock’s character was a mission specialist, installing some sort of upgrade to the Hubble Space Telescope. But they also mentioned that she worked at a hospital. The Wikipedia article says that she was a biomedical engineer. (It reminds me a bit of Kelly McGillis’s character from Top Gun, who was an astrophysicist and an instructor of naval fighter pilots.) Did her expertise seem appropriate?
I didn’t think it was the Hubble. I thought they said something in the beginning about the Cannon station, which doesn’t exist, but since they are inventing it for the movie I figure they can put it anywhere they want.
I believe they did call it the Hubble, or the HST at one point.
They definitely said it was the Hubble.
Understood, but it’s not like Cuaron didn’t think about it:
We hear Mission Control–its communication apparently restored–on the radio after the splashdown saying “rescue mission under way.” So all Ryan has to do is sit tight for a bit.
By the way, there have been five Oscar nominations for cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki but no wins…you can pencil this one into your scoresheet now.
About freaking time, too. The man’s a genius.
Just got back from seeing ‘Gravity’ in 3D. It was spectacular. Highly recommended.
It’s almost impossible to say anything about the movie without spoiling something because there are critical bits of drama all the way through it.
Technically the movie is a masterpiece. The CGI work is amazing - I totally believed every second of it. I don’t know if any of it was shot in the ‘vomit comet’ in real zero-g, but I couldn’t tell the difference between any of the zero-g scenes, so it looks like it doesn’t really matter any more.
As for scientific accuracy, sure there are a few things you can nit-pick, but none of the errors are gratuitous. There’s no feeling that mistakes were made just because the filmmakers were lazy or clued out. That’s what really bugs me in movies - when errors are made simply because the production crew didn’t think the audience would notice, or didn’t care, or were too clued out to know better.
In the case of ‘Gravity’, the subtle inaccuracies were all in service to the plot. For example, I don’t think it’s giving anything away to say that the shuttle is hit with a debris cloud from an exploded satellite. The debris is going tens of thousands of miles per hour relative to the shuttle. At that speed, you’d never see it. Certainly not like you do in the movie. It would be going 10-20 times faster than a rifle bullet.
But obviously that would make the whole thing less dramatic and more difficult for people to understand. The same goes for the orbital mechanics - sure, they’re simplified. But if you tried to get all those transfer orbits correct they’d feel ‘wrong’ to a lay audience, and they would make the movie confusing so I get it and it didn’t bother me at all.
How about talking about what they got right? For instance, sound. Not just the silence of space, but the muffled sounds that can be heard when you touch something noisy due to acoustic coupling through the space suit. They got that right. Sound fading as atmosphere is depleted, the thrumming of all the little motors and pumps, the mechanical sounds - all of it sounded right. They should win an Oscar for the sound.
Then there’s inertia. They did a great job with that. Things have mass, and can’t be stopped easily. Trying to pull someone with a tether results in a tug, then a stretch of the line, then an acceleration towards the other person, then another tug… All that stuff just seemed perfect.
There are other debatable accuracies and inaccuracies to talk about, but I think I’d wait for a spoiler thread for that. But overall, the movie was a joy from a scientific accuracy standpoint, and I say that as someone who is extremely bothered by gratuitous scientific errors in movies. I think it’s fair to say that most of it can be fan-wanked away or justified as being necessary to the plot without being jarringly wrong.
My only real complaint with the movie was that some of the dialog was a little corny and felt tacked on to give the actors more to say. But that’s not what this movie is about, so it didn’t really bother me.
In any event, go see it. It’s the best movie I’ve seen this year.
I will echo the spectacular comment above. Also upthread someone mentioned that reviewers said it was the perfect moviegoing experience - in IMAX 3D it most definitely was. The 3D was never obtrusive and added depth to space and shuttle scenes. One of the few movies where I thought 3D was done well.
The story was straightforward and fairly simple, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Doing a simple story well is far better than doing a complex story poorly. And I thought Bulloch and Clooney were wonderful in their roles.
Do yourself a favor and see it in IMAX 3D - I’m pretty sure it was invented for a movie like this, where the awe inspiring visuals of space will leave you breathless and convey the isolation like nothing else.
I was just getting ready to denounce the nit-pickers, but then I read Sam Stone’s post above. So, yeah, that. Awesome movie. Really good ride from beginning to end. My friend and I were white knuckling it through the whole thing. It had a couple of schmaltzy moments, but they really didn’t detract from the experience. It’s a completely different movie from 2001, they shouldn’t even be compared except as good movies that should be seen on the big screen. It isn’t a treatise on orbital mechanics, but it is a very good suspense-survival movie.
I liked how it made clear how inhospitable and dangerous space is, something most sci-fi movies gloss over.
Also, it had a personal impact on my friend:Her ex recently died from chronic alcoholism and she feels some guilt–unjustified IMO–that she didn’t do enough to save him. Watching Sandra Bullock’s reaction to Clooney dieing was especially poignant for her.
Starship troopers had a scene in it where the pilot of a big ass ship on a collision course with an asteroid waits til the last second so move out of the way…is there a name for this dumbass trope? Because there is no way a veteran of multiple space walks would ever make that mistake.
Visually Stunning,
Plot, boring, it is not like we don’t already know how this ends.
Acting, boring.
See it in 3d imax if you are going to.
I agree that it’s probably the best to see it in IMAX. Definitely visually stunning.
As for the acting, I wouldn’t say it was boring. I don’t think the Best Actress Oscar hype is deserved - the acting was solid, but not IMHO the best of the year. My only dislikes about the acting were actually me disliking a few lines in the script:The lines about how “I’ve never prayed - no one ever showed me how” and then the bit where she’s “talking” to the (dead) Kowalski about how he’ll meet her daughter in heaven. But I never like how Hollywood writes atheist characters - they always screw it up. But that’s a script issue, not an acting issue.
As for the plot, I don’t know how you can say “it’s not like we don’t already know how this ends”. I read a lot of science fiction and I had my own guesses (or worries) about how they would end it, and I ended up being wrong.
Not sure if this thread has open spoilers, but:[spoiler]I thought it would be like Open Water, and they’d all die without getting rescued. I didn’t like that, but it’s what I thought would most likely happen.
I was also a little worried that they’d excessively Hollywood-ize it and have some kind of ridiculous “rescue mission” in space to save the characters.
Having the ending it did with only the Ryan Stone character surviving by using the remaining spacesuits/Soyuz/etc… and a lot of luck was not my first guess as to the direction they would take it. Sure it’s not 100% reality based since they had to change orbital mechanics, etc… But by Hollywood standards of “realism” I was thrilled by how they did it.[/spoiler]
Regarding the question about the location at the end:
I don’t know if this is the location within the movie, but according to the credits it was apparently apparently Lake Powell.
Saw it in IMAX 3D. Great flick. Well worth the exra cost for visuals and sounds.
Won’t post too much here yet but didn’t they keep referring to Clooney as “Lieutenant” such and such? I must have misheard that because there’s no way a guy who’s been on multiple shuttle missions could possibly be a Lt. Even if it was LT Commander that still isn’t really possible.
What rank was he supposed to be?
I just meant that I would have been shocked if she had died. Hollywood did not disappoint as usual.
Also, why the radio blackout? You don’t need comm satellites to talk to either the shuttle or ISS. I can do it from my backyard with 5w and a handheld antenna. NASA and the AF have comm stations circling the globe with high gain dishes and enough power to talk to Mars, much less stations in LEO.