Saturday, March 08, 2014

Gravity - 0 MT

You know how movie titles normally relate to the movie in some way? For example, "Takers" is about people who take stuff. "Money Train" is about a train full of money. "Star Wars" is about terrorists fighting to overcome the established power because they want to live by their religion's strict and exclusionist doctrine without presenting any kind of alternative system of government or proposed law ever in the whole trilogy... but up in space.

Well, by that rationale, "Gravity" should really be called "Gumby astronaut on the point of hyperventilating panic for the entire damned movie". It should not be named after something that is conspicuously absent from the movie. It's like calling it "Rainbow Slushy" since slushies also fail to feature in this movie.

Sandra Bullock plays Ryan Stone, because heroes and heroines can't have girly names, like Daisy Lillie, they have to be tough sounding, like Brick Steele or Matt Kowalski (George Clooney's character), or Taylor Nails, even if they carry on like Precious Moonbeam Waters for 100% of the movie.

Anyway, Ryan (not-a-man) Stone is some computer geek fixing the Hubble Telescope with her pals when space junk happens by destroying everything. Thankfully, (from an accurate science point of view), there is no noise but everyone and most everything except her and her pal stone-cold Kowalski get destroyed. After stopping Stone hurtling into space, Kowalski helps her as they float their way to the International Space Station. And here's where I get worked up enough to write about this movie.

You see, the two astronauts are tethered together and they hurtle towards the ISS at a frightening speed but Stone manages to hold onto it before they shoot by, stopping dead, hence stopping Kowalski as well, who is in front of her in their crazy orbit (which can be thought of as being below her because being in orbit is about falling and missing the Earth). Now, they've stopped, meaning an equal and opposite force has been applied to their motion, and they should hence be safe, all falling towards Earth (and missing) at the same rate. Which means that relative to the ISS they're just floating. Which Stone is. And yet something is still pulling them harder than the ISS. Some mysterious, previously unknown gravity-like force, really, which inspires Kowalski to make like so many others dangling on ropes before him: he lets go and flies off into a non-Newtonian demise.

This leaves our heroine with no air left save what's in her suit, but the determination not to let Matt's death be for (astro)naught (boom boom!) So she finds a side door to the ISS, comes in, breathes the sweet, sweet air of salvation, and then sets the damned thing on fire. No joke.

So this means she has to jump over to some Chinese space station, or something improbable like that, which she does. She then flukes the right control sequence in the escape pod (the manual is in Chinese) and fires herself back to Earth where she lands in a lake. She then sinks the escape pod, before wandering aimlessly away from the only device with a homing beacon on it.

In short, Ryan Stone is a liability who cost a seasoned astronaut his life, burnt down the ISS, sank a Chinese pod, and then wandered off to die alone in the barren wastelands of Wherethefuckistan, where she landed. Quite why this film won so many awards is beyond me.

0 Money Trains, as this matches the score description to the right to a tee.

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