Sunday, 26 January 2014

Let's talk: Gravity





Spoiler Alert: If you have not seen Gravity then do not continue. Seriously, stop now; put on something nice, get out of your house and watch the film. Bring a friend. Oh and watch it in 3D.

Unless NASA reduces it's recruitment requirements drastically (who knows, maybe one day they'll want to put a fat blogger on the moon), then watching Gravity will be the closest I get into space. For the time being I have to be content with looking up at the stars with my telescope. When it's not being pointed at someone's window..(just kidding)..

I guess I could always put my spare $250,000 to good use and book a seat on a Virgin Galactic flight but it might be a touch disappointing compared to what Sandra Bullock goes through in Gravity. Technically we're all already in “space” since Earth is technically a “spaceship” travelling at roughly 900,000 Kilometres :O I know....mind blown.

Gravity is now part of my top 5 favourite space films. The list is as follows:

  1. Gravity
  2. Sunshine
  3. Apollo 13
  4. Armageddon
  5. RocketMan

Don't judge me on those last two! I like what I like. I know most people didn't like Armageddon but it was the 90's and the World was going to be destroyed in 2000 so I couldn't afford to be picky. Also, I may have gotten a touch emotional at the scene where Bruce Willis had to say goodbye to Liv Tyler. As for Rocketman? Well...I liked the special effects in that film.

But let's get back to Gravity; I get distracted easily and if I find myself not enjoying a film then I have to resist the urge to take my phone out or try to keep from falling asleep. Gravity was not one of those films, it held my attention the entire time. And with a running time of 91 minutes the film is the perfect length; not everything has to be over 2 hours long.

The film did take a while a while to “start” since there was a fair bit of dialogue in the beginning. I must admit I was a little worried for awhile. But the moment the shuttle crew gets the first warning that a satellite had disintegrated I was hooked. I will say that if you're someone who suffers from agoraphobia/claustrophobia you probably wouldn't enjoy the expanse of space or the point of view from inside the space suit.

And the best part of the film was the silence of space because we all know that in space no one can hear you scream. Even though there weren't loud explosions in Gravity it didn't reduce the tension one bit. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. I like the use of imagery in the film; the moment when Sandra Bullock makes it to the ISS and she takes off her space suit. She goes into a foetal position and as she hangs there with the cables floating around her, she looks like a foetus in the womb.

I know there was some “controversy” when Neil DeGrasse Tyson made some observations about the film. He suddenly found himself trolled on Twitter; I guess everyone's a critic (including me apparently.) I'm neither an astronaut or a astrophysicist so the facts of Gravity don't really matter to me. Unless it's about Man of Steel.

For 91 minutes I was in a state of suspended disbelief; which speaks highly of the merit of Gravity. Which was a lot better compared to the experience of watching White house down where by brain basically went “Wtf, wtf, wtf,wtf” for most of the film.

One tiny criticism (which of the film that I may have is that astronauts don't really wear tights/spanx. In reality, most astronauts wear what is called a Maximum Absorbency Garment; or diapers to us civilians. I will say that Sandra Bullock looks just as nice in an American space suit as she does in a cosmonaut space suit.

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