[Cinema] Alfonso Cuaron, Sandra Bullock & George Clooney's 'Gravity'

Okay..based on the hype it got I thought it was overrated. I couldn't even feel for the characters so it didn't matter to me what happened to any of them. I watched in IMAX 3D as well and was really expecting some insane experience, but was let down. Maybe it's all the hype that maybe killed it for me, or idk..but didn't feel this movie at all. woof woof..

 

Saw it two days ago on IMAX 3D and it is worth the hype. There were a few basic science issues, for a movie that aimed for realism, but this should go down as one of the best science fiction movies.

 

Should have been Chandler Parsons and Jeremy Lin.

 

You're right about the physics here. Once the tether was fully extended, there was no force pushing him away. All she he to do was give a slight tug on his arm and he would have started floating right back towards the station. In addition, once he let go, he wouldn't have just started floating off - he would have just stayed in place.

 

They tried to make it as emotional as possible lol

 

Should we be spoilering this?

Spoiler

I didn't get that part either. One read could be that since his mass was much larger than hers (body size and jet pack) that he had greater inertia so she couldn't pull him back but as you note at that point his motion was stopped. Unless the point was that his inertia was still pulling them both and eventually she would pull free along with him. If that was the case then it didn't seem clear.

Gravity is a much better movie than Mission to Mars but in both movies they tried to make these dangers of zero G realistic. Mission to Mars handled it much better by showing Tim Robbin's astronaut missing a hand hold and drifting out at a rate too fast for Connie Nielsen's astronaut to get to him without risking her own life. In both cases the idea was an astronaut sacrificing himself to save another but in Mission to Mars it seemed much clearer why Tim Robbins had to sacrifice himself.

 

Spoiler

I just thought it was because his mass (and the jet pack) and hers all together was too much and the rope would not hold them. I'm not sure, though, how he came up with that conclusion.
He was not already stopped at that moment, or at least not in relation to the station and the parachute rope. He looked stopped because she was moving with him at the same speed, dragging the rope the entire time. Once he unhooked, the rope continued to drag her and they (him and her) started to separate.

 

I don't think we need to spoiler this at all, and I think you and Major (and a lot of internet critics) might be missing one possibility of the physics.

Your analysis is correct about their relative motion *if* the system they are connected to has no rotational motion at all. now, just about everything at that time in the movie has at least a *little* rotation. Then, all bets are off. If they are extended like that on a tether, and the system is rotating, then the astronaut's decision was indeed beneficial and the smart call, as it decreased the required tension in the tether, and indeed the resulting motion (kind of) would have ensued. (Wrong trajectory, actually, but close enough.)

That was my take. I just watched this (gorgeous and amazing technical feat of a movie) and I kept my eye out for this scene based on this thread.

 

I understand what you are saying but from what I saw it looked like their relative motion was stopped. I understand that since they are rotating there is going to be centrifugal force on them but how much there was and relative to the tension in the rope wasn't clear.

I am not hung up on the movie over this but it was one area that I think could've been done better.

 

I don't think I've explained myself well, but I agree it could have been done better.

I'm just saying it is consistent for their relative motion to have stopped (they were attached), and then for them to move apart given the chance, if they were tethered to a slowly rotating system. It is a "centrifugal" effect, in essence, like a tiny dirt clod being flung from the wheel of a moving bicycle.

 

Did you see it in Liemax? or Imax? Edwards Marq'e is the only place in Houston with a legitimate IMAX screen. I saw the movie at Edwards and it looked amazing.

 

I explained this earlier. In space when they were stopped, they really weren't still relative to earth. This is because the shuttle, station, etc... are moving around the earth at like 17,000+ miles per hour.

To put is simply, Clooney did not fly away from her, instead the station, the tether, and Bullock fly away from him.

As for the tether, if the station is moving at 17k+ miles per hour and the tether and astronauts are moving slightly slower then that relative speed difference can cause the tether to break.

 

Science aside, it was a beautiful movie.

This is why 3D exists.

I had to have a beer afterward. Too much adrenaline.

 

In zero gravity, once he had reached the end of the tether, there was no more motion on his part, there was no 'pull' he had to stop, there was absolutely no reason for him to break the tether. This was just a storytelling conceit and nothing more. It was actually a pretty foolish mistake, although I understand why they did it. It would have made more sense if a piece of debris had cut the cable prior to his momentum being stopped. But they had to have the 'self-sacrifice' angle for the story, or so they believed.

Shrug. It was a minor quibble, the movie overall was magnificent.

 

Not for more quibble, but see my note about rotational motion above. If the station had *any* rotational motion at the time they were tethered, then it was not a completely unrealistic depiction. Cheers.

 

I totally understand that.

But in the movie, they were not rotating. It was depicted as linear motion, as though he had a gravity which exerted a constant pull. Of course, if they had been depicted as rotating, then yes, there would have been inertia sufficient to exert a 'pull' against her.

But that's not what was in the movie.

 

well, okay. the POV took turns between an extended view at a distance or a character-based POV, accelerating or racing around or spinning with the character in question, so it's ambiguous. But we agree that, if it was supposed to be rotating and that's why the extra inertia was there, it was a FAIL in terms of story-telling. Sounds like we both also agree that the movie was amazing regardless.

 

Watched it in iMax

The rope part was dumb but overall a great movie. Can't believe it didn't even hit me that they only used two actors the whole time until after the movie.

 

Alternate scene

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