Ok, I finally went to it after everyone urged me too. Like Galactic Penguin it was my first 3D movie ever.
And my feelings are very mixed at this point.
The 3D thing worked well, and yes, true, it's spectacular. I smiled at my seat neighbour reaction when his brain told him he was hit by a debris. I wasn't affected by this, probably videogames experience (I remember I had similar reactions when I first played Doom on a small CRT a looong time ago). The Earth views are nice, also.
Now the casting. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Weird. Somewhere I didn't found them convicing, maybe even more Clooney than Bullock. I highly suspect the French voices to ruin a good deal of the ambience. I couldn't tell what, but I felt there was something a bit wrong there.
The "story". Well, it's where it hurts a lot. Basically there is no story. A russian missle hit a satellite that triggered a "chain reaction" and that's it. We have to deal with an absolute lack of background. I know that it is somewhere wanted to "drop" the spectator in space, but still. The only elements come from S. Bullock's character, which lost a daughter and that led her to a depressive state. It doesn't fit. Astronauts or Cosmonauts recruitement processes go through extensive psychological tests. She would have had no hope to get up there without a therapy of several years, given her completely wasted state. And G. Clooney is really too much in a "space cowboy" role, which doesn't fit to him at all. Clint Eastwood was credible as a "space cowboy", obviously. Not Clooney, he is too "nice" for that. The few dialogs between the characters are very formal and empty. Again, I think this is wanted, but still...
Realism and documentation work. OK, all the spacecraft are very well done, even the interiors. As the title suggests, the physics are decent too. I appreciated the scenes where the Soyuz is manoeuvered with RCS jets. Real white exhaust plumes and not the usual "orbiteresque default plasma flames" we all have seen too much. Sandra Bullock, however, is made of stainless steel. She endures trauma after trauma that would bruise the skeleton of anybody into small bits. At some point it's too much. Hypoxia and CO2 intoxication, collisions against all sorts of objects, no pre-breathing procedures, exposure to extreme temperature changes, drowning, that's endless... At the end some people where laughing at it and yes, that becomes a bit ridiculous. Now some technical points.
- Why and how the Soyuz-TMA chute deployed in vacuum and got wrapped around the ISS panels ?? Hard to believe.
- Clooney's ultra-jet-pack. Even though he runs out of fuel, he makes circles around the Shuttle for hours, then uses it extensively.
- Day & Night follow at an incredible speed. Of course the lighting effects are spectacular and I understand it was necessary, but again, hard to buy.
- The ISS, Hubble, the Chinese station, and the blown satellites appear share the same orbit, and exactly the same inclination. Impossible. In the movies those three objects share a "cube" of roughly 100 km of side. Collisions would be inevitable even without the help of debris.
- All satellites get wasted. Problem is, the ISS flies a 400x400 km at 51.6° inc. orbit (roughly), while the GPS satellites that don't work any longer fly a 36,000 x 36,000 at 0° inc. orbit. All the fleet can't be wasted like that in 1 hour. That scenario made me think to a massive solar flare more than anything else.
- Pseudo-Sokol EVA's. Look very very easy. I say Sokol because it is obviously not the massive Orlan-M, that probably doesn't fit the 80 cm Soyuz hatch clearance anyway. In fact, that suit looks a bit like Russian suits of the 60's. I doubt it can protect it's wearer from space more than a few minutes.
- Using the Soyuz SA retrorockets as a propulsion mean. Strong doubts about the possibility of any accuracy. Supposing that the ship is correctly oriented.
- Even if she survived all the bad luck she gets from the beginning, Bullock's character life should end in the bottom of the swamp. No way to get free from a spacesuit, even a Sokol, underwater. Period.
- I liked the "weight" effect when her body finally rests on the ground, but why they made her rise and walk ? It ruins it ! She should be left on the shore happy but half-dying after all what she got through.
And, endly, it looks like a list of all went wrong into spaceflight. Randomly you find all these : Mir's fire caused by the oxygen candles, intoxication caused by toxic smoke in the Soyuz SA, Soyuz capsule sinking into a lake that almost killed cosmonauts, Hubble woes, space debris collisions, faulty propellant gauge... Yes, all that happened for real, but not at the same time !
So I know I'm a bit harsh, but the movie lost me at some point. My favorite sequence, I think, was when Bullock is in the crippled Soyuz, tries to get away from the ISS and drifts away, preparing herself to die. Good immersion at this point. I must say I had a doubt when the imaginary Clooney invites himself into the Soyuz. Bullock's ungeared head being exposed to explosive decompression and hard vacuum for 30 good seconds, plus rapid recompression, that was too much.
Edit : just read this :
The scenario. My God the scenario. I haven't seen space photography that good in a LOOOOONG time. Makes you wish to take Earth for a date, pay her ice cream and cuddle her. The Blue Marble is the other protagonist of the story.
The hardware. Gravity is heavy on hardware hardcore porn. If Apollo 18 was the Hustler of hardware porn, Gravity is the Private Penthouse of hardware porn. There's so much hardware porn here I'm not even sure it's legal. Of course, as an astronautics fan I could probably spend hours watching Sandra Bullock ride that Soyuz until it's really spent, docking and undocking with the ISS on all ports. Seriously, there's some great spacecraft-on-spacecraft action. The microgravity money shots are there.
Satisfying ending too. But I'm not discussing it now because I need another cold shower. Phew!
:rofl:
But I totally agree ! :lol: