Movie: Gravity

Yes, I believe there is something called "quality" in filmmaking (or any other endeavor, actually) which is quite apart from one's opinion of it.  I am not of the "relativist" mindset that thinks everything is a matter of opinion only.  Those people are the Christians who deny global warming and evolution and think that at any moment a miracle could change physical reality.

Nope, good movies exist.  Bad movies exist.

There are lots of really low budget movies that are fabulous -- "Return of the Secaucus 7" or "The Business of Fancy Dancing" or "Spring Forward" to name just three -- and there are lots of big budget blockbusters that suck ass ("Reds," "Ishtar" or "Prometheus" among hundreds of candidates).  And not every disaster can be laid at the doorstep of studio executives.  

"Showgirls" is a perfect example.  Verhoeven has previously done "Turkish Delight," "Soldier of Orange," "Spetters," "The Fourth Man," "Flesh and Blood," "RoboCop," "Total Recall" and "Basic Instinct."  He was not a novice without previous success.  He should have known what he was doing, and how to make a good/commercially successful film.

And he can't blame the material.  Joe Eszterhas wrote the script and Verhoeven had an ample budget of $45 million.  

It's just that, at every point where a decision had to be made, every person on the production made the absolute WORST decision they could.  The cumulative effect of this train wreck of -- not incompetence, what would you call it?  Intransigence? -- is a movie that is just stupifyingly bad.

"Gravity", to bring this back to the thread, may not have been a thrill-a-minute after the opening 10 minutes, but it was at least competent.  In fact it was flawlessly brought to screen.  It was believably staged and nicely shot and well-acted. Howard called it "The Perils of Pauline" but that plotline is common in cinema ("Alien," "Panic Room," etc.)  It's not an unsuccessful formula.

If he chose not to like it, he still cannot call it a "bad film."  It just wasn't to his liking (which I believe he said).

In fact, I think it was a very good film - and I liked it.

Of course the ending was predetermined -- most films are.  "Titanic" anyone?  Bueller?  Bueller?  (I thought THAT was a very good film too.)

NoCoPilot wrote:

In fact it was flawlessly brought to screen.

Technically, maybe it was. But story-wise, they took a couple of cheap shots.

Consider the lead-in of the Russians shooting down one of their satellites while other countries had people up there doing tricky stuff. In reality, space is the one place where all involved countries cooperate. There's no way that any country would have pulled a surprise move like that. They should have come up with another reason for the shrapnel.

But even letting that go, when our heroine started randomly pushing buttons on the Chinese craft and - shock! - managed to do just exactly the right thing to return to earth safely, well, that was just too much. The writers should have spent a little more time on that. All they had to do was provide a translation pamphlet or something; anything more reasonable that random button pushing.

I asked a much younger and much more discerning person about the movie. She said, "Awesome in 3D but terrible script."

That is my problem with the movie. I think they had a good story possibility, but lousy writers. They could have done better: it's just script writing, it ain't rocket science.

Remember, Sandy had trained on MIR. At one point in 'Gravity' they say the Chinese escape pod was a copy of the Russian. Switches in the same place, just labeled differently. If you watch closely Sandy mentions this, and mistakenly hits hit button above the one she wants, but soon realizes her error.

Now the whole plausibility of returning to earth with no help from Houston... Well let's lust say its fiction, umkay?

Regarding the plausibility of the Russians shooting down one of their satellites, the Chinese did exactly that. Don't tell me it's implausible.