Realism and space drama collide in Cuarón's 'Gravity'

"Don't let go."

Gravity has been praised ever since it's initial release, and rightly so. It's difficult to tell from the trailer what the movie's about, but in retrospect, the trailer does say it all. What do you do if a disaster leaves you stranded with no hope of rescue?

The near future. A shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope goes terribly wrong when a massive, fast-moving debris field destroys both spacecraft and everything else in its path. The two surviving astronauts, a rookie mission specialist (Bullock) and a veteran mission commander (Clooney), must mount their own rescue or face imminent death in the cold vacuum of space.

The plot of the movie is a classic survival story about rising above adversity. Because of this, Gravity really isn't an action film, but when things do get exciting, they do so very rapidly and on a big scale. Bullock's character is clearly not ready to deal with the situation she's facing, yet she must since failure really isn't an option. Like other survival movies, the characters perform one dangerous maneuver after another to reach their ultimate goal of getting home. This aspect of the plot provides some decent character development, giving Bullock some backstory to help explain why she's acting the way she is.

One of the film's most-discussed aspects is its realism. In short, it's pretty close to the real thing, much more so than most Hollywood space disaster movies. Are there issues with the science and physics? Of course. The producers went to great lengths to get the majority of the details right, from astronaut jargon to physics, but also had to take creative liberties to sustain the story. It's rare to find movies that aim for realism, especially in a sci-fi setting such as this, so kudos to the producers for getting that right.

The visuals are simply extraordinary, especially in 3D. Much like Avatar, Gravity utilized a huge amount of CG to create the world our two surviving astronauts float around in, and had to develop revolutionary new techniques to do it (for example, in many shots, only the faces of the actors are real). This adds quite a bit to the film's sense of realism, since nothing looks, well, fake. It's one of those films that you can't truly appreciate unless you've seen it on the big screen of a movie theater.

If you're looking for a breath-taking space drama that's a bit closer to home, check out Gravity. Just don't watch it as your in-flight movie to the International Space Station :-)