"Gravity" the movie (spoilers)
Kamamura
Join Date: 2013-03-06 Member: 183736Members, Reinforced - Gold
Join Date: 2013-03-06 Member: 183736Members, Reinforced - Gold
I saw this movie in cinema and while it was good for a few occasional laughs, I was shocked by how popular this silver screen atrocity actually is. This rant is full of spoilers, so watch out. The main spoiler is the movie itself anyway.
Perhaps it is just my age - I grew up on novels by Clarke and Asimov, and I am used to take flics that present themselves about being serious on the "sci" part of sci-fi on their word. But "Gravity" is just one big goof - I don't understand how people admit that a man falling on the ground from several miles of altitude will leave but a splatter, but at the same time, they are ready to believe that colliding with a space station in a similar or greater velocity is somewhat survivable - better yet, that you can grab its edge prince-of-persia style, and claw your way to the airlock. Not that you actually had the means to achieve such velocity - the EVA-like jetpack that is presented in the movie is certainly incapable to let you move from orbital station to orbital station like a starfighter. And you can fly around it just for fun, and the mission control totally does not care, and when all hell breaks lose, you don't end up dying like an idiot with an empty fuel tank. Why? Because you are George Clooney, so you die like a hero, with style.
Also - there is only momentum in space, an object either stands still, or moves forward with the same speed. If you get caught on a space station, hanging on a silly rope for a while - and someone cuts that rope - you don't resume flying in the original direction, because your momentum is spent. Just pull out a yo-yo, and see for your self what should happen in a universe where Newton's laws still apply.
Et cetera, et cetera. The goofs just don't stop.
Acting-wise, I am ready to admit Clooney's undying charm, but Bullock is just a bellow average actor whose weak monologue just does not manage cannot move the plot forward. Not that there is any plot - she just hops from space station to space station that keep on exploding and manages to land with a Chinese lander in the end, because apparently, Chinese landers are exact same copies of american landers including the button layouts, so you just need to apply memorized keystrokes, and you are good. Hahaha, what a fresh joke, at least the Chinese were smart enough to substitute the English texts on the buttons themselves, or their own astronauts would keep dying like flies. The tropes do not end there - all this misfortune is caused by evil Russians, who, instead of moving their old satellite to a collision course with the atmosphere, burning it in the process as usual, insist on blowing it with a missile of a very nasty kind that just floods the orbit with deadly shrapnel capable of wrecking satellites in minutes. Goodbye GPS, goodbye space flight.
The cinematic torture ends with a hope, however - if you are a formerly hot young lady, you can bend the laws of physics just with the purity of your heart.
Now please explain to me - how can so many people, many of them with high school or better education, can take this movie seriously enough to call it "best sci-fi of all times"?
Perhaps it is just my age - I grew up on novels by Clarke and Asimov, and I am used to take flics that present themselves about being serious on the "sci" part of sci-fi on their word. But "Gravity" is just one big goof - I don't understand how people admit that a man falling on the ground from several miles of altitude will leave but a splatter, but at the same time, they are ready to believe that colliding with a space station in a similar or greater velocity is somewhat survivable - better yet, that you can grab its edge prince-of-persia style, and claw your way to the airlock. Not that you actually had the means to achieve such velocity - the EVA-like jetpack that is presented in the movie is certainly incapable to let you move from orbital station to orbital station like a starfighter. And you can fly around it just for fun, and the mission control totally does not care, and when all hell breaks lose, you don't end up dying like an idiot with an empty fuel tank. Why? Because you are George Clooney, so you die like a hero, with style.
Also - there is only momentum in space, an object either stands still, or moves forward with the same speed. If you get caught on a space station, hanging on a silly rope for a while - and someone cuts that rope - you don't resume flying in the original direction, because your momentum is spent. Just pull out a yo-yo, and see for your self what should happen in a universe where Newton's laws still apply.
Et cetera, et cetera. The goofs just don't stop.
Acting-wise, I am ready to admit Clooney's undying charm, but Bullock is just a bellow average actor whose weak monologue just does not manage cannot move the plot forward. Not that there is any plot - she just hops from space station to space station that keep on exploding and manages to land with a Chinese lander in the end, because apparently, Chinese landers are exact same copies of american landers including the button layouts, so you just need to apply memorized keystrokes, and you are good. Hahaha, what a fresh joke, at least the Chinese were smart enough to substitute the English texts on the buttons themselves, or their own astronauts would keep dying like flies. The tropes do not end there - all this misfortune is caused by evil Russians, who, instead of moving their old satellite to a collision course with the atmosphere, burning it in the process as usual, insist on blowing it with a missile of a very nasty kind that just floods the orbit with deadly shrapnel capable of wrecking satellites in minutes. Goodbye GPS, goodbye space flight.
The cinematic torture ends with a hope, however - if you are a formerly hot young lady, you can bend the laws of physics just with the purity of your heart.
Now please explain to me - how can so many people, many of them with high school or better education, can take this movie seriously enough to call it "best sci-fi of all times"?
Comments
It was such a visual delight to see in theaters too.
That first shot, 12 minutes, loved it. Apparently it took flipping eons to render.
It was one of those films where I desperately want to see the making of. Here's some gubbins for those also interested in how they do these things. http://www.fxguide.com/featured/gravity/
I can stomach some bullshit and scientific flaws in a movie (for example the debris hitting the same spot over and over) but at that point, this movie was just too much.