No movie is inherently good or bad; it’s all entirely subjective. It’s entirely possible to think a movie, beloved by most, is trash, and visa-versa.
You mean “centrifugal” force. The centripetal force is imparted by the tether, and does not cause the tether to extend.
Of course, we all know that the centripetal force is the real force, and the centrifugal force is only an apparent force, actually inertia, but acting like a force in a rotating frame of reference. But without that apparent force, the real force just doesn’t happen.
Haven’t seen the movie yet. Looking forward to it! Glad to hear it’s at RedBox.
The physics didn’t bother me, in the movie. The main problems were that the astronauts were idiots, that the male character had all the answers while the female character had no real value as a human (yet he sacrifices himself for her), and that the cinematography and budget were wasted on a disaster porn film.
That’s not a very valid criticism, imho. Clooney was the experienced pilot/astronaut, Bullock was the “cargo specialist” or whatever. Of course he had all the answers related to driving around in space. And, istm, the less experienced of the two had to be the one struggling to survive to make the story work.
Seasoned actors gave good performances. The CGI was well-designed. The script makes sense as a story and is compelling. It’s possible for anyone to dislike anything, but that doesn’t mean they’re justified.
Gravity most certainly has serious flaws in the script department, and some of the events that move the plot along simply couldn’t have happened that way, but it is ridiculous hyperbole to claim it “the worst space-themed movie ever made”. I’m pretty sure I could come up with at least a few films that even the OP would agree were less worthy.
I know that people feel they have to juice things up when expressing an opinion; a move wasn’t just flawed or clichéd or mediocre in some aspect, it was THE WORST POS EVERHHH! and that two hours one spent on it was some giant imposition rather than just some tiny fraction out of the tens of thousands of hours one has already wasted on equally mediocre things. Yeah, I get all that, but it isn’t really very valuable information as a topic for discussion.
While I’m wishing for things that will never happen, if the only adjective one can come up with to describe a film is that it “sucks”, then you really are bringing nothing of interest to the table and needn’t bother.
The wife and I loved Gravity and would both have voted for it for the Best Picture Oscar over 12 Years a Slave.
Well, technically, it was what was keeping them, the shuttle, the stations and everything else in orbit, let alone the moon itself, from flinging out in all directions.
And yeh,
that bit at the end.
On the BluRay special features, Alfonso remarked how he wanted the imagery and camera work to look and feel like that you see on Nova. Keeping the intensities/exposures of the sun, moon, earth and even the magnitude and position of the stars as close as possible to reality.
This was one of the few parts which made me 
And like Whiteknight, The only thing I could think of was that the ISS was spinning due to the disaster and accidentally deployed Soyuz chute, so there was angular momentum pulling on Clooney, and by extension, Sandra, loosening the chute cord’s grip with every second.
In his defense, he was light-heartedly joking about breaking the MMU record. Also, perhaps since it was a “new design” he was stress testing it in orbit as part of a dual mission while fixing the Hubble?
He sacrificed himself, because it was circumstantial. Had their positions been reversed, she would have had to let go to save Clooney. Besides, as mentioned, Clooney was a veteran Mission Commander on his last flight before retirement. Bullock was a medical engineer on her first space mission.
All that said, I thought it was a technical achievement in filmmaking, applause due for a dedicated director and production crew to get as much of the details of orbital space flight and its visuals as realistic as possible. Even the way sound was only heard through their coms, or as muffled vibrations in the things they were physically touching (when in vacuum).
I also liked the symbolism they deliberately worked in throughout—themes being motherhood/mother earth, birth, life & loss, the womb, and (wo)man’s painful evolutionary crawl from the sea to land (end sequence).
Mrs. Evil Captor and I both watched Gravity in the theater, in 3D … it was EXCELLENT. We thoroughly enjoyed it, though we have our doubts about it translating well to a smaller screen.
To the person who feels that way, it certainly can be. No performance is objectively good or bad; script making is also subjective; and that goes especially for it being compelling.
I didn’t get the impression that anything was pulling him away. I remember it as:
They’re passing the station at high speed. She manages to grab onto loose material, but decelerating them to a standstill (relative to the station) causes said material to unravel. They now have to pull on that material get acceleration towards the station, but the deteriorating state of the ad-hoc tether suggests that it won’t remain intact / attached when pulled hard.
The only ways to reduce the stress on the tether would be to go slowly, or to reduce their mass. As I remember the scene, they’re on a deadline, so going slowly isn’t an option. The dude with the maneuvering pack is over 2/3rds of their total mass, and the pack isn’t easily removed (if even possible without help), so…
Given that the entire plot hinges on the pack’s capability to do enough velocity change to make a substantial orbit shift in a short time frame, the playful buzzing isn’t very wasteful, since it’s a tiny fraction of the pack’s total capacity.
I liked the “it’s a prototype!” lampshade. I can get behind classic sci-fi tropes.
A clip of the scene in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYDaIyfitn8
I agree with this. I do not think I would like the film at all on a small screen; teh immersion would fail.
We saw it in regular 2D – just do not like 3D – and it was still good. On a TV screen, I dunno. Might still look good on of the bigger screens.
So I finally watched it this evening. I really liked it, as I expected to.
Yeah, that scene where he lets go is contrived. As soon as they stopped stretching the lines holding them, they’d both have bounced back. I admit that in the very last scene where they show the big picture, they are still moving slowly away from the station. But when he lets go she springs back. Yeah, that’s half the force, but … nah, I don’t buy it.
The only explanation I could imagine that would work was if they’d been at a much greater distance, and either directly above or directly below the station, because if I have it right (probably not) in either case their velocity would be wrong for their higher or lower orbit. Probably wrong, because I’d think that would pull them toward the orbit of the station, not pull them away, so scratch that. Don’t mind me, I’m just thinking out loud here, and not doing it so well. In any case, they’re clearly horizontally displaced from the shuttle.
But I give it a pass. It’s crucial for the plot.
[spoiler]When he showed up later, I was incredulous. The odds were more than astronomical. It just wasn’t possible! But that worked out to my satisfaction. I also liked the sound cutting out there.
I also don’t buy being able to do a successful reentry on the fly with no ground support, with controls in a foreign language. And having the good luck to land near land rather than in the ocean. But hey, it’s fiction. 
[/spoiler]
Now I’ll have to finish reading the other thread to see just how wrong I got it.
Oh yeah, one other possible minor flaw. The Chinese station, which is hitting the top of the atmosphere, would be decelerating, so stuff wouldn’t be floating around weightless in there so much as drifting towards the front. I watched for that and didn’t see it, but maybe it was …
I got it from Netflix last week and I remarked more than once while watching is how freakin awesome the flick would be in IMAX.
I knew what was going on with that scene as soon as she took her hands away from her face, and her nose wasn’t bloody. Brief exposure to vacuum is survivable, but it’ll still do some damage. When it didn’t, I knew that it was only imagined.
I so desired to see this in IMAX, but I just moved to the Memphis area and was crestfallen to not find one anywhere in the area.
Still looked and felt great on my 52" LCD screen and Bose sound system.
Alas, I pine to see it in IMAX…