"Gravity" (currently 98% positive ratings on RT)

[ImpulsE69]

I see the Michael Bay crowd finally got themselves into the theater this weekend, and were disappointed by the lack of explosions and teenage boobs.

Well..I DO have to admit that teenage boobs would have added at least a point to my overall score...

 

[ImpulsE69]

Spoiler

Yeah, and that goes along with the lack of a "higher power" focus & ending. If movies are headed toward the athiest/agnostic ending route, then man, we're in for some boring, emotionless endings. I mean, I'm sure you can write them differently even if that's the case, but even if you're not religious, it's nice having that warm-fuzzy feeling at the end of a movie - that there is a greater reason to life than just living and dying and going through the motions, that there is someone looking out for you out there, that it's not all completely pointlesss & meaningless. The ending to Gravity was like: "So...science, yeah! And uh, no family for her. Yay she made it to earth. The end." It didn't feel like she grew very much or that she really learned anything meaningful at all. You have a bit of a triumph at the end but it kind of feels meaningless, partially because you don't really care about the main character.

So now making it through a crazy impossible scenario and going on living is no longer a good enough reason? :hmm: I didn't miss the no higher power part at all. Never gave it one thought until people started bringing it up here. It sounds more like expectations set by personal beliefs. I was kind of surprised they didn't

Spoiler

have her kiss the ground.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Spoiler

Yeah, and that goes along with the lack of a "higher power" focus & ending. If movies are headed toward the athiest/agnostic ending route, then man, we're in for some boring, emotionless endings. I mean, I'm sure you can write them differently even if that's the case, but even if you're not religious, it's nice having that warm-fuzzy feeling at the end of a movie - that there is a greater reason to life than just living and dying and going through the motions, that there is someone looking out for you out there, that it's not all completely pointlesss & meaningless. The ending to Gravity was like: "So...science, yeah! And uh, no family for her. Yay she made it to earth. The end." It didn't feel like she grew very much or that she really learned anything meaningful at all. You have a bit of a triumph at the end but it kind of feels meaningless, partially because you don't really care about the main character.

Spoiler

What? The quest for survival is the oldest struggle in human history. Your statement makes no sense at all. Do you think that people who have no family lead meaningless, worthless lives? That our existence is only validated through what it means to other people, or in the eyes of a higher power? I very much cared about whether Sandra Bullock's character survived, and it had nothing to do with the details of her personal life. The movie is about watching someone struggle to survive and that's just what she did. Adding supernatural elements would have ruined it.

Honestly, they could have cut out even more of her personal details and I wouldn't have minded. I don't care if she had a kid who died, or if she's divorced, or if she has a happy family waiting for her back on the surface. That's window dressing to me, but I understand why they wanted to add some element of a human interest story. And the whole point of the movie is that, even if you feel like you have nothing to live for, you shouldn't give up on life.

 

[Printer Bandit]

What is the purpose of human life?

 

[CZroe]

What's with all this "no reference to a higher power" crap when the movie compared the Russian and Chinese "higher powers" and

Spoiler

she specifically talked about delivering a message to her daughter in the afterlife? She gave up to be with her daughter (turned off oxygen) and then decided to live.

It was as cliched as any other in that regard and yet people are complaining that it's the exact opposite.

 

[zinfamous]

You know, I never really thought about that.

Spoiler

If the debris was flying UP from lower orbits, you'd expect there to be a single wave and then it would be over.

If the debris field was in a different orbit that crossed the one the characters were in, then the chances of it actually hitting them would be very low. Like hitting one flying bullet with another bullet.

It's basically depicted as if the debris is "sitting" in one spot, and the astronauts move through it once per orbit. That may work for meteor showers, where the Earth travels through debris fields in interplanetary space, but in low earth orbit, it wouldn't be able to sit in one spot and it wouldn't be able to orbit twice as fast as the astronauts either (it would escape orbit entirely).

Spoiler

Isn't a chain reaction involving various satellites at different orbits? What I gathered from Clooney's back-of-the-spacesuit math when he explained the 90 minute interval, was that there were several debris fields, representing the various satellites that were struck, and each field of debris would reach them every 90 minutes based on speed and distance from earth.

Again, I think much of this is too nitpicky, as perfect science is far from the point of this film.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Spoiler

Isn't a chain reaction involving various satellites at different orbits? What I gathered from Clooney's back-of-the-spacesuit math when he explained the 90 minute interval, was that there were several debris fields, representing the various satellites that were struck, and each field of debris would reach them every 90 minutes based on speed and distance from earth.

Again, I think much of this is too nitpicky, as perfect science is far from the point of this film.

Spoiler

It takes about 90 minutes for an object in low earth orbit to go all the way around the earth relative to the surface. I think that's what they were getting at. But the problem is that everything else is orbiting too, so the space junk would not "come back" every 90 minutes. That would require the astronauts to be "not moving" when of course, they are also whipping around the earth every 90 minutes.

Now that I visualize it more, I'm sort of seeing what may have happened. A Russian missile begins the chain reaction and causes debris to fly out in a ring of debris, which hits other satellites, creating more debris waves and so on. One of these waves hits the shuttle. As the debris keeps going, it collides with satellites on the other side of the planet from where the characters are, which break up and send out still more debris waves. It's not the same debris field orbiting around the earth that hits the characters every time. Each time, they're getting hit by pieces of different satellites.

The problem is that satellites are roughly evenly distributed AFAIK, so that would mean that there should be a constant bombardment, not a wave every 90 minutes. The fact that they chose every 90 minutes implies that they were thinking of it in a way that doesn't actually make sense as I described earlier.

 

[glenn1]

Spoiler

It takes about 90 minutes for an object in low earth orbit to go all the way around the earth relative to the surface. I think that's what they were getting at. But the problem is that everything else is orbiting too, so the space junk would not "come back" every 90 minutes. That would require the astronauts to be "not moving" when of course, they are also whipping around the earth every 90 minutes.

Now that I visualize it more, I'm sort of seeing what may have happened. A Russian missile begins the chain reaction and causes debris to fly out in a ring of debris, which hits other satellites, creating more debris waves and so on. One of these waves hits the shuttle. As the debris keeps going, it collides with satellites on the other side of the planet from where the characters are, which break up and send out still more debris waves. It's not the same debris field orbiting around the earth that hits the characters every time. Each time, they're getting hit by pieces of different satellites.

The problem is that satellites are roughly evenly distributed AFAIK, so that would mean that there should be a constant bombardment, not a wave every 90 minutes. The fact that they chose every 90 minutes implies that they were thinking of it in a way that doesn't actually make sense as I described earlier.

It's a plot device, not a peer-reviewed theory in a scientific journal. If pure scientific accuracy interferes with the entertainment value of the movie, I can see why they made that artistic choice.

 

[AstroManLuca]

It's a plot device, not a peer-reviewed theory in a scientific journal. If pure scientific accuracy interferes with the entertainment value of the movie, I can see why they made that artistic choice.

Yeah, it didn't hurt my enjoyment of the movie, just something I'm realizing now that I think about it more.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

It's a plot device, not a peer-reviewed theory in a scientific journal. If pure scientific accuracy interferes with the entertainment value of the movie, I can see why they made that artistic choice.

It interfered with my enjoyment heavily, because it was just such bullshit plot device that made no sense.

And then somehow it knocks out ALL the communication satellites just like that?

It's like having a plot device where the titanic didn't sink because of a torpedo. It sunk because a German submarine torpedoed it to death.

It might sound cool, but all of 5 seconds of thinking makes it completely stupid.

 

[Paratus]

To clear up some confusion on orbital mechanics of debris:

Spoiler

Orbital debris will return every 90 minutes in the case of an astronaut losing an item with low drag. It's actually a risk that if an astronaut drops a bolt on EVA it'll comeback and hit on the next orbit. Of course the relative velocity will be slight.

The cascade they talked about, caused by the weapons test, is a real concern. If you blow a satellite to little bits as the pieces slowly fall out of orbit they could hit other satellites and cause more debris. This is what happens in Gravity. Of course in real life this would take YEARS not 5 minutes.

Also remember, the comm satellites the shuttle and station talk too are in geosynchronous orbit, 10's of thousands of miles up. The shuttle and station fly around 200 miles up. There's no way debris from geosynchronous orbit would be interfering with low earth orbit operations.

We are having some issues with the debris from the Chinese missile test from a few years ago, and few exploding Russian rocket bodies. But that just means we have to reboost the station more often than we'd like.

 

[M0oG0oGaiPan]

this is a pretty interesting read

http://www.vulture.com/2013/10/astronaut-fact-checks-gravity.html

 

[Wingznut]

this is a pretty interesting read

http://www.vulture.com/2013/10/astronaut-fact-checks-gravity.html

Very good read. Thanks!

I really don't like picking on this movie, because I really loved it — but the fact that Sandra wasn't wearing either a liquid-cooled ventilation garment or a diaper under her spacesuit was an EVA faux pas. She came out in this form-hugging Lycra underwear, which I must say looked really good, but she wouldn't have been well postured to withstand the temperature extremes of minus 200 in the shade and up to plus 300 in the direct sunlight. And she wasn't even wearing socks, which I thought was interesting. Frostbite would be a real threat there.

I think I preferred her Lycra underwear compared to a diaper.

 

[Kaido]

Spoiler

What? The quest for survival is the oldest struggle in human history. Your statement makes no sense at all. Do you think that people who have no family lead meaningless, worthless lives? That our existence is only validated through what it means to other people, or in the eyes of a higher power? I very much cared about whether Sandra Bullock's character survived, and it had nothing to do with the details of her personal life. The movie is about watching someone struggle to survive and that's just what she did. Adding supernatural elements would have ruined it.

Honestly, they could have cut out even more of her personal details and I wouldn't have minded. I don't care if she had a kid who died, or if she's divorced, or if she has a happy family waiting for her back on the surface. That's window dressing to me, but I understand why they wanted to add some element of a human interest story. And the whole point of the movie is that, even if you feel like you have nothing to live for, you shouldn't give up on life.

Spoiler

Not at all, and I agree on the backstory. My point was that it just wasn't a very compelling ending to me, exactly the point on your last sentence - even if you have nothing to live for, you shouldn't give up on life. And because they didn't pursue the religious angle, I think they should have pursued why not giving up on life was so important. It felt more like a knee-jerk "I want to live!" type of survival requirement (and thus why we are left wondering why she didn't kiss the ground, haha) rather than a really good "here are some reasons you should still live, even if life is hard", you know?

I think a lot of people struggle with reasons why they should go on, with suicide, with loneliness, with depression, with getting lost in work and not having to deal with life, etc. I think this movie would have been a really good opportunity to showcase some motivational debate points as to why you should go on living, even when you don't necessary have a reason, or feel like your reason was taken away (in her case, because her child passed away). Instead, all we got was a short "keep on truckin'" speech from the George Clooney hallucination. It just didn't feel like a very strong reason to push through all that, other than the built-in instinct to survive and not die. I think the ending would have been a lot stronger had they made it more motivational for her to live. They could have drawn from psychology or even just browsed articles on Wikipedia for ideas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_suicide

The movie just felt kind of "meh, she lived" at the end to me, instead of holy cow! She lived through all that, pushed through, was triumphant, and now has a reason to live! I just would have liked to see more compelling reasons for her to live so that the ending was more satisfying, that's all.

 

[Kaido]

So now making it through a crazy impossible scenario and going on living is no longer a good enough reason? :hmm: I didn't miss the no higher power part at all. Never gave it one thought until people started bringing it up here. It sounds more like expectations set by personal beliefs. I was kind of surprised they didn't

Spoiler

have her kiss the ground.

Spoiler

Well that's my point - it doesn't have to be religious, I just felt like she needed a stronger reason to live. As the story developed, they made it clear that she was focused on her work because she was kind of indifferent to life, and that work provided a sort of escape for her - something that comes into clear focus when she thinks she's going to die in space and realizes she doesn't want to die, but she doesn't feel like she has much reason to live, either. Her daughter died unexpectedly and then she spent her free time lonely, driving in her car aimlessly and listening to the radio, no real reason to go on other than she continued existing. So not only was she lonely, but she didn't have a big draw in life other than her work, and when her work put her in a situation where she could die, she was forced to start thinking about if it was worth it or not.

So before Clooney showed up in the capsule, she opted for a slow suicide listening to a family on the radio and connecting to the happiness she had before. Then Clooney shows up and says you gotta keep on going. Then it turns out she can make it home, makes it out of the water and onto land, and then...I dunno, I just wasn't feeling the motivation for her to go out and live life, you know? It was more like "opportunities happened for me to get home, and I realized I shouldn't just give up and die, so here I am". I think it would have been way more powerful had she realized that live was, in fact, worth living, that it was OK that bad things happened, that she could be happy in her personal life even though loved ones had parted. There's plenty of really strong reasons they could have used but didn't. I think it would have been a better movie had it ended on a stronger note like that.

 

[Kaido]

this is a pretty interesting read

http://www.vulture.com/2013/10/astronaut-fact-checks-gravity.html

Wow that was a really detailed article, nice link!

It did make me nervous when George Clooney was flying circles around the spaceship in his jetpack suit in the beginning, especially in 3D - it felt like one wrong move and you're blasted into space forever! :biggrin:

 

[Kaido]

It interfered with my enjoyment heavily, because it was just such bullshit plot device that made no sense.

And then somehow it knocks out ALL the communication satellites just like that?

It's like having a plot device where the titanic didn't sink because of a torpedo. It sunk because a German submarine torpedoed it to death.

It might sound cool, but all of 5 seconds of thinking makes it completely stupid.

Spoiler

It was kind of weak writing, I was like wait, are all of the satellites set up in a row like dominoes, so they just topple over each other in space?

 

[Wingznut]

It was kind of weak writing, I was like wait, are all of the satellites set up in a row like dominoes, so they just topple over each other in space?

It would be an awfully boring action movie if there were no disaster, don't you think?

 

[Kaido]

You know, I never really thought about that.

Spoiler

If the debris was flying UP from lower orbits, you'd expect there to be a single wave and then it would be over.

If the debris field was in a different orbit that crossed the one the characters were in, then the chances of it actually hitting them would be very low. Like hitting one flying bullet with another bullet.

It's basically depicted as if the debris is "sitting" in one spot, and the astronauts move through it once per orbit. That may work for meteor showers, where the Earth travels through debris fields in interplanetary space, but in low earth orbit, it wouldn't be able to sit in one spot and it wouldn't be able to orbit twice as fast as the astronauts either (it would escape orbit entirely).

Spoiler

Yeah, but eh, it's a movie The domino effect is what threw up a flag for me. Space is pretty big, you would have thought the scientists would have spaced our the satellites a little further from each other haha. I think either a meteor shower would have been better, or if something larger broke like the ISS - like if the dead satellite hit the ISS, broke it into a billion pieces, and then went on a collision course with the main characters.

Movies are funny things, because we get people like real astronauts and scientists who comment on how fake it is and how wrong all of the science is, when the point is really just two hours of entertainment, to a lesser or higher level of consumer technical believability - and then of course we nitpick it to death on online forums haha. I think someone earlier in this thread said that scientist cutting down the movie's science on Twitter is probably the same guy who goes to Disneyworld with his kids and tells them Mickey Mouse is simply a sweaty, underpaid actor in a suit

 

[Kaido]

It would be a pretty awful action movie if there were no disaster, don't you think?

See my post above - maybe just a slightly more plausible explanation like a dead satellite hitting the ISS or a meteor shower.

But I'll allow the domino explanation because it took out Facebook on earth :biggrin:

 

[Kaido]

What is the purpose of human life?

I think that question definitely could have been explored further to provide a more compelling ending, especially given the myriad of belief systems that people have. And especially since American is such a melting pot of ideas, theologies, believes, and motivations - it's a where you can choose to be anything from a Neo Nazi to a treehugger.

 

[Wingznut]

Movies are funny things, because we get people like real astronauts and scientists who comment on how fake it is and how wrong all of the science is, when the point is really just two hours of entertainment, to a lesser or higher level of consumer technical believability - and then of course we nitpick it to death on online forums haha. I think someone earlier in this thread said that scientist cutting down the movie's science on Twitter is probably the same guy who goes to Disneyworld with his kids and tells them Mickey Mouse is simply a sweaty, underpaid actor in a suit

Well said. The Vulture article that M0oG0oGaiPan linked is an excellent read. The astronaut admits that the movie was entertaining, as he goes over many of the scientific flaws. But he answers the questions as someone who is talking to people who are just curious, instead of someone who is being overly critical.

It's an action movie, never intended on being 100% scientifically accurate.

 

[Wingznut]

Can we stop with the spoiler tags yet? I mean, if someone doesn't want to be spoiled, and they are still reading this far into a 300+ post thread on the movie... Then it's their own damn fault.

 

[Kaido]

Can we stop with the spoiler tags yet? I mean, if someone doesn't want to be spoiled, and they are still reading this far into a 300+ post thread on the movie...

110% agree - don't click on a discussion thread if you don't want to read what happens!!! lol

 

[Kaido]

Well said. The Vulture article that M0oG0oGaiPan linked is an excellent read. The astronaut admits that the movie was entertaining, as he goes over many of the scientific flaws. But he answers the questions as someone who is talking to people who are just curious, instead of someone who is being overly critical.

It's an action movie, never intended on being 100% scientifically accurate.

I forget which book on screenwriting it was, but there was a good discussion in it about being true to your story universe. You're not going to have alien abductions in Grease, right? You have to be consistent with the rules of the universe you create. I think that's what causes a lot of debate in movies - when things within the story glaringly violate the story atmosphere that was initially created.

Personally I don't have any major complaints about Gravity, I thought it was a lot of fun. My only real gripe is that I think they should have continued with the psychological horror stuff, like spinning off into space (that horrible sinking feeling you get of never being able to get tethered again!) or seeing the hole through the dead astronaut's head - yikes! I think that would have taken it from a movie that I enjoyed seeing once and turned it into a movie that I would have enjoyed seeing over and over again and adding to my home collection.

And really, story is the keystone of movies. I think Gravity could have improved by tweaking the satellite story, by having a more plausible reason why she couldn't just jerk Clooney back (using "gravity" haha), and by having really compelling reasons to go on living at the end. There are plenty of movies that end with "yay I'm alive" with no other reason than that and they are excellent because they push you emotionally into that corner, but (at the risk of over-discussing it at this point) it just didn't feel very strong at the end. Let me give you an example:

http://imgur.com/gallery/Po7i1

This photographer photographed his wife's real-life journey with cancer (make sure to click "View Entire Album" as you scroll down to see all the pictures). Tell me how you feel after the last few pictures. Very impactful. The same impact can be achieved in writing stories, and I think the movie could have benefited from a more moving ending like that. Also, RIP to the girl in the pictures