Would it be any good without 3D?

Rating: 7/10 (11 January 2014)

There's a story about the early days of mass cinema where the audience fled the venue when a train was shown heading towards them. Watching Gravity reminded me of that story because in spite of millions being spent on CGI, and the film being a next-generation 3D flick, I was still sitting in a cineplex wearing cheap, uncomfortable, plastic polarized glasses that I'd paid an extra two bucks for.
Gravity doesn't overplay the 3D: there are just enough bits of wreckage, teardrops, frogs and spanners and dental braces floating towards you to make it fun, but essentially it's a suspense/survival movie - the story might just as well be set in a submarine, or up a mountain for all the logic or relevance there is of Clooney and Bullock being in space. Funny that although it's a three-dimensional movie, the orbits of the satellites had to be contrived to be two-dimensional, otherwise the flitting-from-wrecked-satellite-to-wrecked-satellite shtick wouldn't have worked.
But the opening scenes do give you a feeling of what EVA must be like, even if they're not accurate. Gravity does make you feel things you didn't expect, which can't be bad.
But in the end Gravity, however well put together, is not groundbreaking in any way beyond the advanced integration of 3D CGI, which means you should only hire/buy/visit it if you want to be able to say you were there in the early days of 3D CGI integration, like those people who ran away from the steam train back in 1903(?).
10 stars would mean 'perfect', which it isn't. 5 would mean 'average'. which it isn't. A seven, I suppose, which means good, but not outstanding.