As an avid movie lover, I always find myself getting excited when film companies release new trailers and advertisements. My interest sparked when I saw a trailer for a new space thriller, Gravity.
The movie begins with Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), a good natured veteran astronaut on his last flight before retirement and Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), a brilliant but nervous medical engineer on her very first voyage. The pair are on a seemingly run-of-the-mill mission when they get a message from Houston alerting them that a Russian satellite exploded, and has created a domino effect .The pair work to shut down the mission, but run out of time as the debris from the satellite hits them at full force, destroying the ship and leaving the team lost in space.
Less than fifteen minutes into the movie, Director Alfonso Cuarón (who directed the third Harry Potter installment and also Pan’s Labyrinth) takes you from sitting in your seat to helplessly tumbling through zero gravity, with the help of IMAX 3D and the stunning special effects. But once the adrenaline runs out, you’re left with a flat storyline and an audience who would rather sleep or text away the boredom during the next hour and a half of their life.
The movie seems to be making itself up as it goes along. It’s essentially just a random series of melodramatic events that were put together to create a plot. There’s barely any character development, and when there is, it’s an uncomfortably-placed sob-story thrown in the middle of conversations, which I guess is to make the viewer feel some kind of sympathy for the character. And there’s times where the camera will switch back and forth between first and third person, making it feel you’re watching an interactive movie at a museum and leaving you with a giant headache.
In the movie industry, it’s all about what’s bigger and better. Nobody really bothers with coming up with an interesting storyline or like-able characters. I mean, there’s nothing in this movie that attached you to the characters in such a way that you care whether they live or die. But at least it looks cool.
