Movie Gravity

[VQ]

I saw "Gravity" today. It was pretty good... but it definitely takes some liberties with reality.

Which ones stood out to you the most? (I am assuming that anyone reading this thread is not worried about spoilers)?

The silliest one for me was when [spoiler]they got rid of Clooney - they could have made him need to sacrifice himself without losing the physics quite as much[/spoiler]. I like that Michael Massimino says the shuttle bay and HST looked spot-on, though.

Very, very pretty movie though.

[Echnaton]

I am assuming that anyone reading this thread is not worried about spoilers)?

Wrong.

[gtvc]

No spoilers please!!! I just wanted to know if the movie was accurate 

[BazBear]

No spoilers please!!! I just wanted to know if the movie was accurate 

I haven't seen it, but I read an interview with the director where he stated he tried to keep it based in reality as much as possible, but he did admit taking some liberties in the interest of storytelling.

[VQ]

Wrong.

Sorry.

No spoilers please!!! I just wanted to know if the movie was accurate 

Accurate in some senses. Angular and translational momentum were mostly conserved, sound in vacuum (aside from radio traffic) was limited to dull thuds and vibration, and while an airlock repressurized environmental sound slowly came back. The models of the actual space objects (Hubble, ISS, shuttle) are beautifully (and apparently faithfully) rendered.

The movie notably simplifies orbital mechanics, and changing in and out of space suits is much too trivial. Space junk whizzes past at an animated speed of just a fraction of what it actually would be. Neil deGrasse Tyson also points out that it comes from the east, which is improbable. Some of mission control's information at the beginning is pretty obviously for the benefit of the audience and not the astronauts.

[gwiz]

Just seen it yesterday.  The depictions of the hardware and the general views from orbit are all superb, but even assuming for the sake of the plot that the space stations and Hubble have been moved to similar orbits, the problems of rendezvous are brushed under the carpet.  For most of the time the dynamics of interacting objects are good, particularly the tethered ones, apart from where the plot requires that they be ignored.  The unconventional rocketry brought into use when the conventional stuff fails would again give a lot more problems than shown.

Enjoy it for the spectacle and the superb use of 3D, but as with a lot of films, you just have to suspend your disbelief here and there.

[ka9q]

I'm finally watching it for the first time. I'm about 1 hour in, and I can only think of two different words:

Incredibly.

Incredibly.

Stupid.

It'll take me a while to think of anything else to say.

[gillianren]

Personally, I was fairly impressed. 

[LunarOrbit]

It's not perfect, but in a world where movies like "Armageddon" exist, calling it "incredibly stupid" seems a bit harsh.

They had to diverge from reality a bit otherwise the movie would have been about 10 minutes long. Debris strikes Space Shuttle... no hope of rescue... the end. But there are few movies that get as much right as Gravity did, so like Gillianren, I was impressed.

[Luke Pemberton]

They had to diverge from reality a bit otherwise the movie would have been about 10 minutes long.

Exactly. It's a vehicle for a story about human resilience, not an accurate take on the physics of orbital mechanics.

[gillianren]

Oh, and I would have rather Sandra Bullock got the Oscar than Cate Blanchett, but then, I don't like Woody Allen.

[ka9q]

In talking about this with some other friends I think I understand my reaction a little better.

In computer graphics there's a very well documented concept of an "uncanny valley". As animation of a human becomes more accurate it actually becomes less appealing until it finally mimics a real human closely enough to evoke the same reactions. This is why Pixar generally avoided human characters until fairly recently. Even then, they either made them look intentionally cartoonish or (as in Wall-E) used real human actors.

I can thoroughly enjoy a space opera like Star Wars, Star Trek and Wall-E because no real attempt at realism is ever made. But Gravity has an amazingly real visual look. That caused me to judge it by a completely different set of standards by which it fails completely. I could spend weeks documenting the physics blunders and wildly absurd plot holes.

I was sort of holding it together until Clooney's completely pointless and unnecessary (and physically impossible) self-sacrifice scene. Something in my brain just snapped at that moment.

[LunarOrbit]

How much of the people was CGI, and how much was actually real? It's my understanding that the actors heads were real, and only their bodies (when wearing spacesuits) were CGI.

[ka9q]

My understanding is that it was almost entirely CGI, with the actors seen only by green screen.

But even though there were plenty of little visual nits like abundant stars in a daytime sky (even with the sun in frame!)  the real problem with this movie isn't a lack of attention to visual detail but too much visual realism that squarely conflicts with the utter absurdity of every major plot element. It puts us squarely into the "uncanny valley" of space fiction.

[Glom]

For me, it was after Clooney's death that I was able to get into it because at least Clooney was gone from the movie.

The day time stars were annoying. The rest looked so good but the fakeness of having day time stars took me out of it.