What Goes Up...

We went to see Gravity the weekend it came out (about 2 weeks ago) and attended a very nice IMAX / 3D equipped theater (at one of our favorite venues - AMC at Newport at the Levee  by Cincinnati). While 3D plus IMAX inflates any movie-going experience, there were definitely mixed feelings about this one. The action was great - not much bother about plot - this film was a non-stop sprint for survival without any explanations per se. The science was suspect; much ado was made about the debris field orbiting in the wrong direction (a la Neil deGrasse Tyson) but no one seemed to notice that the shuttle fleet has been retired for two years and it certainly looked as though they were using one of the old shuttles as opposed to something that Elon Musk might have up his sleeve. So does this mean that the disaster already happened and someone is keeping it a big secret?

A $25 billion investment digitally shredded in about two scenes...  

BTW - we had the unique distinction of being at Cocoa Beach (or slightly south at Patrick AFB) to film the last shuttle launch. Damn if that shuttle didn't fly right into a cloud - oh well- at least it didn't fly into the space station, we think.

Doesn't look much like a shuttle does it, Elon?

So anyway, how about that Sandra Bullock? She survived the worst husband ever only to have to escape from one exploding spacecraft after another. She certainly did a good job with the limited (and somewhat far-fetched) material given to her. But what about Putin, isn't he going to get upset after being blamed for the destruction of just about everything in near-Earth orbit? Will he jail the production team and cast if they ever tour Russia (like he did to Pussyriot?). That remains to be seen.

While we must admit this was an entertaining film, it certainly doesn't warrant becoming an Oscar contender (as is being talked about now). Although if they had inserted a plea for more NASA funding (as a way to have possibly avoided the catastrophe in space) then we might have been able to get behind a nomination. 

Perhaps the saddest way to look at the film is as a metaphor for our collective ambitions for Space exploration - they all seem to have coming crashing down...

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