Gravity Review: In Space, Everyone Can Hear You Dream
I saw “Gravity” yesterday – in all its glory – in 3-D on a monster screen. I did so in the middle of the day so as to get the perfect seat. As it happens, any seat in the theater would have been perfect – with or without 3-D – this movie is that good.
In watching the film I immediately felt myself pulled into the world that this film created. Only two other films have ever managed to do that to me: “Avatar” and “2001: A Space Odyssey”. When I first saw “2001” during its initial run, I was lucky enough to see it in Cinerama – the IMAX of the day. I was already interested in space, but that experience left me changed forever. I can imagine how “Gravity” could have a similar effect on young people today.
Many people have compared “Gravity” and “2001” – with good reason. The sheer visual artistry of both films, seen in their own respecitve moments in time, leaves you forgetting to think how they did it. It was the perfection of the imagery in “Gravity” as well as the realistic flaws that just sucks you in. Indeed, it is so compelling that the craftsmanship put into this film served to shut off the space cadet software running in my brain – you know, the tendency to start looking for technical nits on the canvas and ignoring the entire painting. “Gravity” tells a simple, but very human story told against the backdrop of life (and death) in space.
Yes, there are some technical issues that would ordinarily undermine the story – in a lesser film. I am not going to get into them (so as to not spoil the story). The trailer that has been out for months shows lots of things being smashed to bits – including a Space Shuttle and Hubble Space Telescope. To those who would look for the flaws, lets just assume that this is an alternate future where we replaced Columbia, moved Hubble to a new orbit near ISS, and China was a little busier -sooner. Get over it. Do you folks sit through “Star Trek” looking for technical flaws? You enjoyed “Space Cowboys” too, yes?
Oh yes, poor Doug Wheelock and Scott Parazynski. They spent so much time on that risky EVA fixing one a solar array on STS-120 and yet the film smashes their delicate handiwork in seconds. Also, I think a lot of people will have a deeper understanding of what Mike Foale and Jerry Linenger went through on Mir back in the day.
Watching the film I was also reminded of “Marooned” and “Silent Running”. A little bit of “Alien” too – espeically when you take into account the mounting personal strength that Sandra Bullock put into this role. She started out a bit frazzled but she was in full Ellen Ripley mode at the end.
The film was made with no official NASA involvement. Indeed, I am told that NASA sent out feelers and was politely turned down. Other than the NASA logo and astronaut Andy Thomas’ name at the end, this film was made without overt NASA influence. As I write this, the film has made a very impressive opening day showing at the box office – rather strong for an October opening. There has been lots of glowing buzz on TV. An astronaut (Mike Massimino) got the “person of the week”award on ABC News yesterday even though he had nothing to do with the film (he did make a series of difficult Hubble EVAs though).
So, what has NASA done with this windfall of good karma and positive vibes for space exploration? Nothing. It cannot say a thing – not even tweet – because Congress has silenced the entire agency in the most crude and stupid fashion imaginable.
How ironic. At a time when NASA could really use a shot in the arm, “Gravity” is just what the PR doctor would order. Yet I think this enforced silence at NASA will not dampen the impact of “Gravity” or what NASA will be able to do with this interest in space exploration once it is given back its voice.
You see, in space, everyone can hear you dream. No one can ever stop that – not even Congress.
I saw “Gravity” today in 3-D. I enjoy the beautiful view of the Space and the Earth, all space crafts, technical issues and emotions. I am long time Space Exploration enthusiast and I like this movie.
I just wonder why they put Space Shuttle in the movie. It’s good space craft, but for better or for worst it’s history now – I would rather see Orion “Plus” with some exploration module or Dragon-2 or so…
I disagree that “Gravity” could be compared with “2001: A Space Odyssey”. I recently saw again “2001” and would say the amazing feeling that already old movie looks like it done just few years ago…
“2001: A Space Odyssey” was excellent vision of the future (from 45 years ago!) – it’s amazing how Arthur C. Clarke and “designers” of the movie show The Technology to be…
Well, “Gravity” showing the sad story and the sad state of Space Exploration, without imagination into the Future…
Anyway, the “Gravity” movie is good, but I’d like to see view for next generation of Space Technology. Maybe those movies need participation not NASA, but visionaries like SpaceX team.
I would also highly recommend Gravity. Can’t imagine that Gravity won’t win the Oscar for special effects. Its also interesting that 2001 also got right (in the sense that HAL stole the show)that computer technology would be the exciting technological frontier for the next generation and not space.
Gravity was good. It’s a Hollywood movie. I’m not going to nitpick teh orbital mechanics like some will. It had good pace, and teh scenery was beautiful.
Who’s gonna get excited over a capsule? Besides, The Space Shuttle is like the Blackbird:until you come up with something better, it is the undisputed space champ.
Imagination into the future? Ender’s Game will give you that.
Unfortunately, I doubt young people would rush to see the movie. The only thing that I think will attract young people is its similar physics and equipment to Attack on Titan (no offense to Isayama and WIT, the action are awesome), but AoT is not a really popular show outside the geek squad. You will get better luck with Ender’s Game. But of course, I could return to school Monday and see everyone taking about the movie.
Clearly people are rushing to see this movie, including young people, as it’s broken the October opening weekend record with 55 million+
But there is a lot of old people in this world.
Will ask around tomorrow to see the amount of people went and watch the movie.
So I asked around the school.
No one watch it. Most doesn’t have plans to watch it. Some have seen the trailer.
Last weekend being the weekend before finals may have play parts to it.
One of the instances when I hated being correct.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Saw it last night, excellent film. My only problem is that it presents all the dangers of human space flight but little to none of the wonders. You walk away feeling that the only thing to found outside of this planet is danger and death.
I saw lots of wonders.
I’m with jski…I saw no wonders. I saw a lot of computer-generated stuff, but no wonders. I know Hollywood’s pretty much moved over to CG for darn near everything now, but a CG’d Earth still looks like a Playstation game to me. Especially after getting to see the real thing in Space Station 3-D and Hubble 3-D.
Space is filled with dangers and death..at least for the near future..
Point taken. While everyone is fusing over Gravity, it’s still LEO. Not to take away from it and from anything that might get fellow citizens awake to space.
And everyone loves Sandra Bullock.
They never put it in a theater near my home and I live 25 miles from Washington DC. Have to watch it on a little screen on pay per view. Odd marketing strategy.
Mild spoilers follow. I’ll try not to reveal any major plot points…
So, I’m going to go against the grain and say that I really didn’t enjoy this movie very much. I mean, a good portion of it has to do with the glaring technical inaccuracies and factual errors – I mean, seriously, every single major plot point required the bending of laws of physics or facts. Every. Single. One.
I will admit, though, that as a guidance, nav, and control engineer, that’s my curse to bear. Most people out there won’t see the errors, and it probably won’t ruin their enjoyment of the movie.
What I will focus on though is the lazy, hackneyed, stereotypical characters. Kowalski was your typical 1-dimensional space cowboy…but fair enough, he wasn’t the main character. Now, I’ve heard rumblings that Sandra Bullock should win awards for her performance as Ryan Stone, the main character, and I tend to agree, if only for her effort in salvaging what she could out of such an insultingly weak character.
Yep, I said insulting…I thought that the character of Ryan Stone was a slap in the face to every woman that’s ever flown in space. I mean, think about it…was Kathryn Sullivan moping about while she was on her spacewalk? Would Susan Helms have ignored a direct order from the CDR to drop what she was doing and return to the airlock? Would Sally Ride have needed a man to give her a pep talk to stop her from giving up? It was a good thing that Stone had a big, strong man like Kowalski around to save her! And, the icing on the cake happens when Stone gets to the ISS airlock and doffs her EMU. Instead of wearing her LCVG underneath the suit, we get a token cheesecake shot of Bullock clad in tight shorts and a tank top. Sure, it was probably just yet another technical oversight…but whatever it was, Ryan Stone just doesn’t resemble the strong, confident women I’ve had a chance to meet that are a part of NASA’s real-life astronaut corps.
Also, computer animation still looks like a Playstation game, but I’ve mentioned that elsewhere.
Geez, Its a movie not a documentary lighten up.
Directors and movie makers count on the audiences “suspension of disbelief” when making movies and aren’t meant to be taken literally.
But why should I lighten up? Why am I not allowed to desire a certain level of faithfulness to source material? For that matter, why do art and accuracy have to be mutually exclusive? Are we not allowed to hold our storytellers to a higher standard than that? Why can’t we have stories that are accurate as well as enjoyable?
Because the story is more important than the accuracy?
Because Hollywood is not required to be faithful to “source material”. Art only imitates life. It’s wrong to assume or require art to exactly duplicate life. Most importantly, because your standard is not necessarily the majority standard. If you want stories told your way, right your own stories.
You’re right, Hollywood is not required to be faithful to source material. Likewise, I’m not required to like something just because the “majority” likes it. I don’t expect a movie to be exactly right, but I’d at least like to see a fair attempt. Apollo 13, for example, wasn’t perfect, but there was a lot of attention paid to detail. For instance, apparently their reproduction of MOCR 2 was so good that old Apollo flight controllers walking onto set couldn’t tell the difference (other than the obvious change in location, of course). Having to bend a fact or two is probably inevitable to make any movie work, but having to throw accuracy out the window for every single major plot point just strikes me as laziness. Art and reasonable accuracy can coexist in movies; it’s been done plenty of times before (Apollo 13, Titanic, and Master and Commander, just to name a few). However, it takes some effort on the storyteller’s part, and I appreciate that type of effort.
Also, everyone seems to be hung up on my dislike of the technical inaccuracies. If you recall from the rest of my original post, even ignoring the inaccuracies, I still thought the story was weak. One-dimensional, cookie-cutter characters, and nothing resembling actual character development (Deus ex machina isn’t character development, it’s laziness). Never mind that the movie was just a series of iterations of the same repeating cycle of Sandra Bullock mopes/big, scary cloud of debris appears/stuff blows up/Sandra Bullock has trouble grasping handholds/lather, rinse, repeat.
> Its a movie not a documentary
but then many in general public get the two confused.
It’s the responsibility of schools (by teaching science properly) and individuals (to actually learn science) to address that, not Hollywood.
It’s called a transformational arc. She started in a bad place (sick and tired and grieving) and ended up in a different, better place. That’s good character development and good storytelling.
The following does contain a major spoiler, and has been rot13’d for your protection. Use http://www.rot13.com to decode. (If you don’t want to decode…in short, the character development was lousy).
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But yes, I do get it. Gravity was really a story about a personal transformation, veiled as a disaster movie in space. I just don’t think it was a very good one.
Well… it’s too bad
Alfonso Cuarón did not have A.C.Clarke and Fred Ordway as technical advisers on the film, there were ‘fix ups’ that could have been deployed, but even Cuarón noted that he was not Kubrick.
Compare this film to Armageddon (1998) where Michael Bay’s only technical consultant was a demolitions expert!
Bay seemed to have no interest in physical reality , so Gravity is a diamond compared to that ‘Space Junk’ film Bay made!
Seriously? Europa report had nowhere near the verisimilitude of of Gravity, or anything like the sense of immersion. And at the end of the day, it was just another monster movie. It was a fine B-movie, but Gravity outclasses it in every respect.
Watch both. They’re equally worthwhile.
I’ve not seen the movie but this film looks to be an exception of a space movie without alien space monsters and laser beam battles.
You liked Avatar? Felt to me like a high-tech version of Dances with Wolves. I honestly thought Costner did a better job directing; had to since he had to use reality rather than CGI to tell the same story. Looking forward to seeing Gravity, though. I don’t like 3-D, but may just give it a try on your recommendation.
Avatar grossed $2,782,300,000 – so someone liked it.
😉