Yep, that’s exactly the idea. It’s called the Kessler Syndrome, and was one of those terrifying Star Wars-style (Reagan, not Lucas) ideas like X-Ray Bombs that would have made space travel so much suckier. Imagine the brave new world Sandra Bullock now has to live in, no GPS, no communication satellites, no satellite TV, no weather satellites, no space telescopes…
Because, if that’s true, it sounds like it’s the makings of a really good sequel. GRAVITY 2: the return of the orbiting space debris. Tag line: George Clooney wants to sit with you in space.
He’s a Spaaaace Ghost! Orbiting from coast to coast!
I think you could probably just move those satellites to a different orbit, right? Also I think most of them are in a different orbit from Hubble anyway. Along with the space station. So we’re all safe but she’s really dead and it was just a dream. But it looked awesome!
I suppose I expected a few things to maybe comeback at later times and they never did. I suppose that’s like good horror movies that don’t always tell you why something is happening. But sometimes the expectation of a follow up can leave you a bit down.
[spoiler] They mentioned the Russians launching a missle at one of thier satelites starting the chain reaction. I almost expected that to be a pre-emptive strike to blind the world so they could launch an attack. I nearly expected to see Bullock make it back to earth only to see a rain of missles following her during re-entry.
Of course with my imagination, I almost expected Clooney to stay with her through the rest of the way home then after crashing the pod in the ocean, both Bullock and Clooney woudl be talking with each other and when the camera shot switched to the rescue chopper’s perspective we only see her talking to nothing. Follow this with a post credit shot of Bullock on Piers Morgan Live with Clooney sitting next to her guiding her answers even though its clear he’s not there. In reality I’m glad they didn’t take it farther than his scene in the capsule that was perfect for the tone of thier movie. I just need to write my own now. [/spoiler]
I think I finally figured out why I liked this movie so much. For one, it made me feel like I was a kid again, back when “going to the movies” still meant “going to see a spectacle.” But what I think really did it for me was that this is the first movie that I can remember seeing where it actually made outer space feel like the vast, eternal void it actually is. It left a definite impression on me of the scope of the thing, whereas movies like Star Wars/Trek make everything seem a lot closer, smaller, and terrestrial.
I love how the earth, which served as a horizon line, kept shifting in position from shot to shot. Sometimes it created a border on the left side, sometimes on top, sometimes diagonally, and so on. It was disorienting and added to the sense that we were in space.
Most of those are at MUCH higher orbits; geosynchronous orbit around earth is ~25000 miles, I think, whereas the space station, Hubble, etc are at a few hundred miles up at most. A debris ring in LEO would prevent you from replacing satellites in geosynchronous orbit that had run out their useful lifetimes, but it wouldn’t wipe them out.
Very well put. When we did the podcast, I likened it to the first time I saw a live musical (Shut up! Stop laughing!) or the buzz I got from seeing the CG in action in Jurassic Park. But “made me feel like I was a kid again” is a much more concise way to explain it. To paraphrase that old chestnut: the golden age of cinema is twelve.
I had some complaints about some of the sound on Gravity, which was weird considering I think the sound design is excellent, and the music is too. The latter is so freaking loud in the wrong places, however, that it made me question things.
All that aside, this little video just knocks me out. An editor friend of mine shared it with me and it really speaks to why the sound design is so brilliant, and why they made the decisions they made.
Thanks for the link, xtien. Loved it. They didn’t address your issue with the loudness, unfortunately.
I loved the loudness, myself. It helped make the times when I couldn’t hear things, like the wing of the pod ripping through an entire panel of the ISS, even more dramatic. Just my 2 cents!
So Gravity from the satellites’ point of view would be more like Children of Men?
(“Last one to die, please turn out the lights”)
You’re right, of course. I did slightly more research and found a map of satellite orbits.
I had thought that the area affected by the Russian missile and satellite explosion would be like going to a bowling alley, throwing a strike on lane 10, and that strike knocking down all the other pins all the way down to lane 1. This recalibrated map would mean that the Russians were only at lane 2, which still knocked down the pins where Clooney and Bullock were drinking beers and bowling on lane 1. That still spoiled their evening, of course.
That’s a pretty good point. I wonder if that’s what drove the decision? I need to see this movie again. Soon.
My main quarrel is with how when Ryan is asked what her favorite thing is about space, she says, “The silence.” And then the score goes to eleven. I realize that has to be on purpose, I just hate the choice. Or will until I understand it. Matt says his favorite thing is the view, right? What if the screen went black when he said that? I just don’t get the choice, and it continues to bother me. It’s like having an itch you can never scratch.
I took that a different way. When someone is talking to you and you say you enjoy the silence, that’s like telling them to leave you alone(don’t bother me). I thought she was just annoyed with his nonstop prattle. I don’t blame her, if I was stuck in space with someone like that I’d probably be annoyed with him before we even reached orbit.
I liked the movie. It’s basically Open Water in space, but the visuals are insanely off the charts. The only thing sad about the visual accomplisment is that I don’t see how it can be applied to other types of movies. It’s not like bullet time from The Matrix, where everyone can start throwing it into their movies. Without that Earth orbit setting, few humans to be seen, and smallish space objects I don’t think it would look anywhere near as good.
Yeah this guy (a real astronaut) has something to say about that scene. Essentially he liked the movie, but points out some of the holes in the authenticity of its physics, etc.
Yeah everyone hates the physics in that scene so this probably makes no sense but they were not at a standstill. The ropes that were wrapped around her leg were coming loose and she was about to slip away with him so he lets go and she gets pushed back.
Watched it. Decent, but you know… overrated, from what I’ve been hearing about it for the last weeks.
As I feared,while the direction is good and the technical quality is excellent, the bare-bones plot, the lacks of characters and the obviousness of it (yeah, including metaphors, they aren’t that hard to notice) it makes for a not very interesting movie.
