Review of Gravity (2013) by Another V — 27 Mar 2016

Gravity is an interesting and well done space thriller. I wish I had seen this in theaters. The dizzying spins, angles, and views of Earth would've been spectacular on the big screen.

I was surprised at how few actors there actually were in this. It was primarily about Sandra Bullock's impressively fit character Dr. Ryan Stone, surviving catastrophic destruction of her team's spacecraft along with losing her entire team. For a while, she is accompanied by Matt Kowalski played by George Clooney.

While Stone struggles to cope with the situation, Kowalski remains upbeat and confident. Stone goes through some emotional ups and downs as she fights to survive. We never see weakness in Kowalski for the short time he is with her. Even as he stares death in the face, he's as positive, upbeat, and "we're going to do this" as you can possibly get. Is it just me or would he make a great dad? Your little league team might be losing badly but somehow he'll still make you feel like a winner.

When Kowalski decides he needs to sacrifice himself so that Stone can live, Stone disagrees. I agreed with Stone; my reaction was: "Wait, no, don't do it; you'll both make it!" But, sadly, he disconnects. Oh, wow. So this is about one astronaut surviving, alone, against all odds.

One close call after another keeps the tension going.

The visit Stone experienced by Kowalski after he had most likely died was an interesting twist and brought another element to the story. In many real life stories where people are pushed to the edges in difficult survival situations, they later report they survived because they were visited by a deceased loved one or person of significance who provided support or guidance. Bringing that into the story ties it in to real life mystical survival stories.

Stone's Earth landing was perfect, and her struggle out of the water reminded me that a real life astronaut had a similar landing. I think it was Gus Grisham.

Of the various incidents that seemed a bit far-fetched in survivability, Stone's making it to the Chinese craft while low on oxygen and managing to successfully figure out how to initiate landing in time was the part that was most over the top, for me. I didn't mind too much though. I'd much rather see her land on Earth in one piece than die in space. I was also surprised by how much damage was done to the International Space Station and the shuttle: both completely destroyed. Wow. Would Russia really do something to cause that level of damage? I'm pretty skeptical, as Russia is active in their space program and use of the ISS. The US even uses Russian launches to bring our astronauts and supplies into space these days, don't we?

So how do I like it compared to Interstellar and The Martian? I think I liked both of those others a bit better because there were more characters and character interactions, although Bullock and Clooney were fine in this. Although Stone's survival of this disaster seemed a little far-fetched, I don't know that it was less realistic than Watney's survival on The Martian. It was, of course, a lot more realistic than Interstellar, which took some big leaps away from realism for a while.