These movies look good

[The Supreme Canuck]

So I've been posting some angry and not altogether happy stuff recently. Thought I'd take some time out to post a couple of trailers for movies that I'm really excited about.

Gravity

There looks to be a bit of a problem with the orbital dynamics of the situation, but other than that, the trailer looks damned solid.

Europa Report

Similar to Gravity, and apparently it's been out on iTunes for a while now... but I'm waiting until it hits theatres. Again, a couple of technical errors (the rocket looks like an Atlas V, which is far too small for the mission and craft in the film, for example), but overall it looks great.

I mean... two hard (well... harder) science fiction space horror films in theatres in the next few months? Sign me up.

And, heck - I'm in the mood to talk about things we're looking forward to. Anyone else have a film they can't wait to see?

[FZR1KG]

Problem with both of these is that they combine space with fear and terror.

Can't wait for people to start using movies as a reason not to fund space research.

Still, I'll be watching them as SciFi movies are rare as hens teeth lately.
Gravity to me looked like "open water" in space.

[geonuc]

I'll be in the theaters to watch them, for sure. I ain't ascared of space.

[The Supreme Canuck]

Problem with both of these is that they combine space with fear and terror.

Can't wait for people to start using movies as a reason not to fund space research.

Still, I'll be watching them as SciFi movies are rare as hens teeth lately.
Gravity to me looked like "open water" in space.

Yeah, I get that. It's hard to get butts in seats for a movie about exploration, though. Or at least that's what Hollywood tells itself.

[SciFiFisher]

Problem with both of these is that they combine space with fear and terror.

Can't wait for people to start using movies as a reason not to fund space research.

Still, I'll be watching them as SciFi movies are rare as hens teeth lately.
Gravity to me looked like "open water" in space.

Yeah, I get that. It's hard to get butts in seats for a movie about exploration, though. Or at least that's what Hollywood tells itself.

Not without some type of emotional hook anyway. Fear is usually a sure bet. Romance i.e. love and passion are also good $$ earners. The super hero motif can resonate with on a number of levels... Ocassionaly fear mongering or "hate" can really bring in the butts too.

For example, a good space movie was Apollo 13... "Houston We Have A Problem" is now a cultural reference that virtually everyone gets. Hell, it practically installed a meme of its own on our cultural id.

The primary emotion played on the fear that everyone on the mission would die. In this case the "monster" is the cold impersonal and unforgiving environment that Space is. The fact that all these nice ordinary mission control people suddenly became heros appeals to the audience too. After all, if you can get people thinking "I could be that guy" then they will keep thier butt glued to the seat.

Of course, Apollo 13 type movies don't sell well in Hollywood. Because sometimes its hard to get the audience to respond to them.

[SciFi Chick]

It has been a looooong time since I actually looked forward to a movie with great anticipation, but I am actually planning to go to the theater for this one.

47 Ronin

[geonuc]

Well, I thought Gravity was pretty damned good. It's not about fear and the horror of space. It's more about survival and determination. And Sandra Bullock puts in a stellar performance, which is absolutely a requirement for the movie to succeed as she and George Clooney are the only actors you see.

[The Supreme Canuck]

I'm also pleased to see that it's still opening at #1 at the box office, weeks after it came out. Quite aside from anything else, it shows that an "older" female actor (read "over 25") isn't immediately toxic at the box office. Apparently that's a thing Hollywood believes...

[SciFiFisher]

I'm also pleased to see that it's still opening at #1 at the box office, weeks after it came out. Quite aside from anything else, it shows that an "older" female actor (read "over 25") isn't immediately toxic at the box office. Apparently that's a thing Hollywood believes...

Hollywood is shallow, venal, and narcissistic. But, they also tend to stick with what sells. As long as Sandra Bullock and George Clooney bring in the movie audience they will be top billing.

[Sigma_Orionis]

I'm also pleased to see that it's still opening at #1 at the box office, weeks after it came out. Quite aside from anything else, it shows that an "older" female actor (read "over 25") isn't immediately toxic at the box office. Apparently that's a thing Hollywood believes...

Hollywood is shallow, venal, and narcissistic. But, they also tend to stick with what sells. As long as Sandra Bullock and George Clooney bring in the movie audience they will be top billing.

Por los Reales Baila el Mono

[gethen]

Hollywood is shallow, venal, and narcissistic. But, they also tend to stick with what sells. As long as Sandra Bullock and George Clooney bring in the movie audience they will be top billing.

Of course you're right, but having just seen Gravity, I must say that my friend and I were both struck by how little face time George Clooney had in the movie. He was in full space suit for the duration and there were times that we were not sure who was under that helmet until he (or she) spoke. Bullock spent a fair amount of time out of her suit of course, but I left the theater thinking that Clooney's role was a lot like doing the voice over for an animated feature.

All in all, liked it.

[SciFi Chick]

After having everyone I know and respect tell me that Gravity was a must see in theaters, I ventured out to a theater for the first time since I've been back in the U.S.

Color me disappointed. It was primarily very boring, and the bad science was just insupportable. I'll be revisiting Apollo 13 to get the bad taste out of my mouth.

[FZR1KG]

I just couldn't get past the bad physics in Gravity so it pretty much killed it for me.
Not sure why they did that but they got things pretty good at the start of the film and then its like they fired the science guy and hired a woowoo to get the science right. I just don't know why they did it since its not like it would have made a significant difference in the plot to get things right.

[pumpkinpi]

After having everyone I know and respect tell me that Gravity was a must see in theaters, I ventured out to a theater for the first time since I've been back in the U.S.

Color me disappointed. It was primarily very boring, and the bad science was just insupportable. I'll be revisiting Apollo 13 to get the bad taste out of my mouth.

I found the story not very interesting, and of course the science was way off. The latter can totally ruin a show for me. For example, I was excited to watch the TV show Heroes based on previews. But then I watched a very early, or even the first scene--the premise was that a solar eclipse brought out all of the Heroes' powers. The shot of the solar eclipse had the Moon completely covering the Sun in just a few seconds, and it was visible all around the world. I turned if off.

I didn't start watching it until halfway through the first season--because Christopher Eccleston was a guest star for a couple episodes. I'm glad I started to watch it. It was a great first season.

So my point is, there are things that for me can make up for bad science. In Heroes, it was The Doctor. In Gravity, it was the visuals. The CGI of everything was spectacular. I knew it wasn't real but there weren't any parts that I was looking at it and thought "that is obviously fake."
And the scene when they first got hit, and she was spinning around--it got my heart racing.

I can't wait for it to come out on BluRay.

[geonuc]

I'll agree with pumpkin's final point. If bad science is something you can't endure in a movie/TV show, then your choices are pretty limited. As I mentioned above, I thought Gravity was a great film, mainly because of Bullock's performance. The bad science? Yeah, I saw all that and it just amused me.

[code monkey]

i think hat the term is 'willing suspension of disbelief'. sometimes he story, acting ... is enough to carry you along.

[FZR1KG]

*****Spoiler alert*****

I'll agree with pumpkin's final point. If bad science is something you can't endure in a movie/TV show, then your choices are pretty limited.

Its not so much that I can't suspend belief its when they go internally inconsistent.
E.g. They get the physics pretty much right at the start but then they abandon the physics that they defined at the start in order to either increase the drama or provide special effects.
That peaked when that bad physics was being used to kill off a major character and it bugs me because all the while I'm sitting there thinking, pull the damed cord, you're in zero G and not moving relative to one another. A light tug is all it takes. Instead they dragged the scene on and on trying to hype up the drama which just left me longer and longer to dwell about the stupidity of it. Now had they wanted to fix it and make it believable, make the station rotate with them attached. The graphics would hardly cost a thing and they would have kept internal consistency and not even had to change the plot any.
Then there was the crying scene where her tears left her eyes and just floated towards the camera. Ok, I get its for 3D fun but it was really distracting and unbelievable. If they wanted 3D fun, I say spin the station and have stuff come off it towards the camera. Again, internal consistency and realism without much effort and without causing people like me to wonder who on Earth missed the opportunities to get things right with little or no effort at all yet they spend considerable effort in making things wrong.
E.g. the debris flying around the world in 90 minutes. Ok, first its not 90 min but I can suspend belief in a little math errors. The visible debris just ruined it for me. I understand the need for visuals but its like presenting a war movie where projectiles travel as fast as paper planes. I don't get it, apart from a few movies that did that well (the Matrix for example) everyone knows that bullets travel so fast they can't be seen. Space debris that can orbit the planet in 90 minutes make the speed of bullets seem slow. I managed to ignore the fact that you wouldn't see them coming even if their speed was so slow. See I'm not that fussy.

Then the re-entry scene. Head butts the wall.
I've skipped a whole load of others but it got to the stage they were making more mistakes than anything else.
But the part that gets me the most, is that they spent a shit load of time and money on getting the space craft right and that's according to real life astronauts. By that they refer to the buttons being the right buttons to push, the levers to be the right levers to move etc.
So they went out of their way to recreate something accurately where only a few people would notice, then totally screwed it up where a large majority are forced to notice. Even my MIL had to complain about the death scene and she knows little about physics, but, because they presented the physics at the start she expected something that didn't happen but should have.

I am guessing that the tech guys recreated the craft as much as they could because they love that shit. The graphics guys did as much as they could and it showed because between those two the movie was five stars.
The director however has the final say in how its presented and that's where the ball was dropped and for me it was made of crystal and shattered. For others that ball was rubber and it just bounced back and they played bounce with it through the movie. All I got was lots of crystal balls breaking regularly.