Gravity (2013)

I think there's two type of people. the first dreamed of being an astronaut ever since being a little kid, wanted to visit Orlando not to see Disneyworld but to go to Cape Canaveral and see a space shuttle launch, and would sign up for an interstellar one way colonization ship in a heartbeat, even if its solo. We were mesmerized by how Gravity looked on an imax screen in 3d and for 90 minutes were completely immersed being in space.

The second type, not so much. but then again different people are into different things, I don't really get much into car shows like Top Gear or sports shows/movies but I can understand how some people do really, really get into them.

Araysar_sl said:

I think people are overstating the difference between Imax + home theater for this movie. I watched this with 3D glasses on a 90 foot screen at Chicago Navy Pier Imax and while a pair of shots I remember seemed really cool like a bolt slowly tumbling towards me and droplets of water in zero gravity - the remaining scenes didnt really take advantage of that kind of stuff. I watched the screener at home on a 42" LCD and didnt feel like I missed out on anything.

The reason people keep having this argument is because they feel there's a need to validate this movie in the absence of any other aspects that would normally be discussed: good plot, good characters, good dialogue - all these things that Gravity lacks entirely.

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exactly this. it's the people that when asked what they liked about a movie say "the special effects" is the reason why more and more shitty movies with horrible plots and soap opera bad dialogue and acting keep getting made.

The opposite can be argued: there are a lot more movies with good plots than there are with amazing direction and stunning visuals.

Also, if the plot and dialogues of Gravity are indeed sub-par, the tension is amazing. There are long stretches of the movie where you just can't breath or blink.

Szlia_sl said:

Also, if the plot and dialogues of Gravity are indeed sub-par, the tension is amazing. There are long stretches of the movie where you just can't breath or blink.

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Tension? Like when she's at 1% oxygen and decides to just watch smugy mcsmugson float off to his death instead of scrambling for her life? That was like every scene of tension. "Oh I'm about to die, lemme prolong this scene super long by doing stupid shit no one would do to keep the tension going"

It was terrible. The movie was so bad that when smuggy found her capsule or whatever it was she finally landed with, in the insane vastness of space, I actually didn't expect it to be the dream it so obviously was because the movie was so bad I thought there is nothing these retards wouldn't do for dramatic effect (like have smugs mysteriously get oxygen and somehow find her shuttle and somehow float there)

If its the visuals that make this movie so special, why would you watch this instead of one of the Imax movies that are set in space?

Big Phoenix_sl said:

Movies do not need to rival Shawshank Redemption in order to be good.

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But they need something other than pure spectacle to be worth watching for those to whom a depiction of space for its own sake fails to overawe. To me it just felt like an empty setting that has been established in films and my imagination over the decades and as such not particularly enthralling. Debris zipping around for 90 minutes doesn't entertain me, for 10 minutes sure but 90, no. Had this been my first exposure to the concept of outer space and big budget CGI then I might feel differently but I still doubt that I'd ever watch it more than once. The real divide is between people who are bored of such spectacle and those who can enjoy it as the grand multimillion dollar light show that it is.

This back and forth puts me in mind of the Life of Pi for comparison as both films are essentially the same at their core: lone protagonist caught in a hostile, blank and deadly environment. A story of perseverance and survival but one oozed character and created a bond with the viewer while the other (IMO) completely failed to do so.

To be fair, they are not bitching about the presence of spectacular elements, they are bitching about the fact that these spectacular elements are enough for some people to enjoy Gravity.

I'll not defend Superman, but The Avengers also had effective comedy elements and very clever writing (most notably the way the plot paired the superheroes in many different combinations and each time explored what sparks could fly when bumping them together).

this movie was horrid

Big Phoenix_sl said:

Please, the number one complaint in the superman thread was "omg so many people would of died too much destructioN!!" when there was just about equally as over the top destruction and chaos in the avengers.

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What I remember of that thread was Astro saying mass destruction was out of place in a Superman movie.

That's three occurrences of spectacular destruction in movies, but in The Avenger the perception was it was a cherry on top of a movie that had other qualities, in Superman it was attacked for being a super faux pas and in Gravity it is dismissed as being the only quality of the movie. I don't remember many people in the Superman or in this thread saying these scenes failed to be spectacular, whether or not they liked the movie.

This movie came out a decade ago, and I finally got around to watching it tonight (in 3D). It was pretty damn entertaining. An "anything that can go wrong will go wrong" type of situation. I liked it.