A good movie, but certainly not a great movie.

Saw it in HD 3D. Fantastic visuals- worth seeing. Not a lot of meat on the bone, otherwise.

Yeah. One thing to keep in mind is that they have these pests called "directors". Sadly, some of them have no taste and they can make a film where the characters suck, mainly because that's what their "vision" was. Lots of good actors have been in crappy movies. If you add up Bullock's top 5 grosses, you'll end up somewhere around a billion and a half, which ain't bad.

Gravity yanked in about 55 million in its first weekend. Not bad. In fact, it may be a record for an opening at this time of year.

I'd love to see a documentary about how they made the thing. It looks amazing.

JR

WARNING. Please by-pass, if you want to avoids certain film details..............



Veteran Astronauts are already chimming in on the reality end. Bullocks velocity after releasing her teather was a "too late to capture" scenario. Still, without the seat of your pants suspense this movie provides, does it matter?! I am sure the space nuts will have many interesting things to say regarding the technical end (not actual film making of course) but of her survival antics (space station hopping). When watching this you have to question just how much training an Astronaut gets to handle most scenarios, like how do you handle air-locks, start up a Soyuz Spacehip, can I really use a fire extinguisher to propel myself around space, are user manuals multi-lingual, and could you really remove a space suit like in seconds??

Personnally I thought she was going to be eaten by Alligators at the end!!

Great movie

I figured a gator or shark would swim by to scare her and the audience. ;)

When Clooney finally came to stop he would have been stopped. Nothing would be keeping that teather tight and pull him away.

I thought it was a fresh water lake somewhere deep in Africa! Probably made more sense for a herd of Water Buffalo on the shoreline!!

Neal DeGrasse Tyson has some snarky comments on the technical aspects of the film, but even he liked it.

I am NOT a fan of 3D (I'm old enough to have gone through three rounds of 3D films). However, this film needs to be seen in 3D, and I imagine I'd have liked it even better in IMAX. Very worth the time to see. Not a masterpiece; just a very very good use of technology.

Sandra Bullock was allegedly not the first or second choice for the role, but she did a good job.

I've spent the last couple of weeks working in the "International Space Station" on the new Christopher Nolan film. The last thing I wanted to do was spend more time looking at blinking panels, air lock chambers, etc. on my day off. It did very well at the B.O. and will have legs, maybe I'll see it in a few weeks.

i noticed the big flaw that NTD pointed out. almost all satellites go from west to east. why there would be a debris field that goes east to west is quite puzzling. another thing is the speed...i know orbital speed is really friggin high, just looked it up 17,000mph. so head on collision would be at 34,000mph. you wouldn't even see it coming.

another NTD pointed out is how shuttle, ISS, and chinese station are soo friggin close. it only takes 10minutes to go from one to the other.

another is how merely minute after the chinese station is hit by the debris field, it's suddenly already reentering into the atmosphere. space stations are on semi stable orbit heights. getting hit and destroyed doesn't deorbit you.

aside from the technical errors, the point is, i didn't like the movie. the story wasn't capturing. the characters weren't memorable. the only thing i can tell u about bullocks character is...she's from illinois and her daughter died. she's a medical doctor...something. and she's diagnosing malfunctioning computer boards by visual inspection, something even best buy geek squad will tell you is idiotic to do.

Interesting point Krystar

.......debris field was following the same path as the stations, but NASA (voice of Ed Harris) stated during the initial warning that the debirs field was traveling at roughly 20,000 mph. The speed at which the debris was going past the ISS, Chinese SS, etc was way, way too fast, relatively speaking!

Oh well, we have to keep remembering its hollywood and nothing as spectacular in filming since Avatar.

I'd give the movie a little more leeway on the technical details. Satellite paths are all over the place as can be seen in the photo of some of them. Space junk travels every which way, as can be seen in the animation in the link. Hard to believe that we can track all that crap... Have a collision between two moving objects on different paths and god knows where all of the debris will head. The relative velocities between the ISS, or a shuttle, and a piece of space junk can be huge, or next to nothing. It depends on the speeds and paths of the individual items. They've actually had to move the ISS before, to dodge a piece of a Chinese satellite.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1381167713.jpg

http://leo-lowearthorbit.com/2013/03/28/space-debris-animation/

JR

that's the thing though. the collision that originated with the two russian satellites would have to be already going on the east-to-west trajectory. that means even before the collission debris field, the shuttle, ISS, would have been on a near headon collision with the whole intact russian satellite/satellites every 90minutes.

Well, and then you have the notion of a compact debris field all going one direction, when it presumably would have been going in a wide 3D arc.

Well, the director made a choice between a documentary and a work of fiction. So, don't think of these things as mistakes.

From this interview: 'Gravity' reality check: Alfonso Cuarón and Sandra Bullock talk fact vs. fiction (video) | collectSPACE

Cuarón didn't just adopt the changes to orbital inclinations and procedures without first trying to make them work.

"We did a draft where we tried to respect everything," he revealed, adding that the end result was a towering script. "Everything was just about explaining to the audiences all of that stuff, so we had to try to create a balance."


Hey, it's a movie... an excuse to escape from reality for a little while and eat some popcorn...

JR

Yeah, but the aersospace technocrats would have gasped in the beginning to see that both helmet shields were up which should have fried them both in the beginning! To the writer, they had to expose their faces to capture the emotion and drama. Notice Sandra's hair did not move in zero-G? who cared? I still think a water buffalo or two on the shoreline would have been great......

It was afterall, great cinema.

It is a vehicle for some 3D effects. That's all.

More comments from a space geek: https://twitter.com/neiltyson

Another comment from the same space geek:

"I enjoyed Gravity very much".

JR

Neil Tyson isn't just a space geek.... He is THE space geek. If the scientific inaccuracies didn't bother him, it's good enough for me. ;)

I think it is much like Avatar.

I knew Avatar was going to have the predictable plot. The visuals were worth it all.

The plot for Gravity is exciting. Like watching a James Bond movie where the bad guys try over and over to kill him and he always survives and everything gets "blown up real good."

Go see it in 3D IMAX. your eyes will be amazed.

Check out Neil deGrasse Tyson was a tad critical of the new movie Gravity... - Imgur

I saw it last night. Yes, there are many technical details to be argued but that's not always why I watch movies. I thought it was a great detachment from daily life and the visuals are amazing. I kept wanting to pause it and admire the views. Thought Bullock and Clooney did very well. I saw it in standard display but I think I'll take my son to the Imax 3D showing.

Saw it in 2D with my wife.

I'm not a space geek but I do work at a science museum and have more than a passing interest in space.

Even to me the thing with him unclasping because he was drifting away and pulling her with him made no sense, also hard to believe all those air locks and controls had commonality.

However in most movies there is a suspension of reality to some bit (except for zombies... we all know zombies are real right?)

It certainly wasn't boring and I would recommend it.

Oh, and do astronauts really wear underwear under their spacesuits? Pretty sure there are a few layers under the spacesuit right?

yes but who wants to see SB in long johns?

7 Oscars...

JR

This was my take as well. Stunning visuals, "meh" story/plot/dialogue...

Because all you guys have degrees in Astrophysics and are experts in orbital mechanics...


All you ladies need to chill out. Its a MOVIE. I enjoyed it. Sandra Bullock is hot as well.

couple of actors and a green screen?
not deserving of the accolades, in my opinion.
ymmv.

God forbid I should ever go to a movie, for the visuals...

Maybe you don't appreciate the difficulty of that opening shot. Never been done before...

JR

Point well taken.

I watched it on a plane a few days ago. It seemed like a very average movie. Not terrible but not great either. I was suprised to see it was nominated for so many awards. I was more suprised to hear it won alot of them.

Sandra's but and legs looked pretty good as far as I could tell from the in flight entertainment

A plane's in-flight entertainment "system" isn't exactly the ideal place to watch a movie known mainly for it's stunning visuals... some movies really need to be seen on the big screen but YMMV.

I likely wasn't very clear in my arm chair quarterback's short review, but my angle is that I enjoyed the visuals immensely (and said so), I just felt that the rest wasn't a match for such beautiful cinematography. And while Sandra is indeed a beautiful woman, Clooney's voice really started to annoy me. I didn't feel compelled to see it more than once.

But they walked away with a mother load of awards, so WTF do I know? Not much...

Yeah, if you didn't see this in IMAX 3D, you should have. (Sandra's very fine butt and legs, notwithstanding). Maybe it will come around again.

Sort of like listening to Dark Side of the Moon on the single speaker in the dash of your mom's '73 Caprice Estate wagon.. Not quite optimum...

And, sometimes a plot takes a backseat. I can think of a lot of really great musical pieces whose lyrics don't matter to me either, one iota.

JR