Old Story New Setting

Rating: 5/10 (7 October 2013)

There is hardly anything technically wrong with this film. The 3D, the amazing special effects deserve all the credit they will get. And the acting was flawless. Directing was first class.
The plot, that is the story however was nothing new and loaded with the usual clichés. Will Hollywood ever free itself from clichés and stereotypes? Gravity tells same story that we are already familiar with: Protagonist being pretty much alone in a very hostile environment and facing their mortality and summoning up what it takes to survive reflecting on their past. In this case survival means overcoming a series of pitfalls (major ones) which to his viewer represents a bridge too far and very much what Hollywood will reach for to make a thriller. Reminds me of Ahnold as a superhero... I digress.
As I watched the movie immediately began about a couple of people on some ocean mission in perhaps the Southern Ocean and finding that that the ship they were working on was hit by a rogue wave from an unpredicted storm and the female protagonist (of course it now has to be a female to be PC) was forced to get into a life boat and make her way to a rescue boat which it turns out was also devastated by the storm which blew through and she next tries to get to another ship for safety and so on and so on... finally driven ashore by the storm landing next to the shore on a hauntingly beautiful but almost alien looking part of earth. I could well imagine the protagonist and the Cloony character going through exactly the same conversations and mental work... to survive at sea and one falling overboard and disappearing.
The survival in the face of repeated disasters in a hostile environment is a story we've read, seen or heard before. I found absolutely no new insight into the human condition or what survival is about under hostile conditions. You either give up or try anything and everything to survive. And these stories are remarkable but this one is hardly credible and asks the viewer to accept way too much *coincidence* to advance the plot. There are real accounts of survival which would make a compelling movie and probably have been made into films (though I haven't seen them). Does fantasy trump reality? For the sci fi lover I suppose the answer is yes.
No way would the author let the Sandra character get into the first pod and make it to the ISS and safety. Indeed that would have been an awesome and possibly a credible story of survival but hardly what the current generation of sci fi viewers and lovers of action flicks would pay for... they simply want fantasy and the unbelievable to pass for a glimpse of reality. They want their super heroes! Putting this story in orbit was not enough... It had to be the perfect storm on steroids.
The film is compared to Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyessy and is hardly in its class. Technically yes, even more advanced, but not in terms of having the viewer transported to a whole different place in the very distant future... where men have evolved very little. No new human condition concepts in Gravity.
Hollywood people have made enormous progress in the technology of cinema, but seem to sink into the same story frames and clichés. Acting, directing and dialog as well. Scripts? I don't think improvement too in many cases. Gravity is a perfect example of this (problem? and why I attend Hollywood films less and less with the exception of a few film makers who produce excellent experience in all ways that cinema can.
Aside from seeing the space environment, which was stunning, I was mostly bored and knew exactly what was coming. When a film is so predictable it loses my interest.