Science? We don't need no stinking science

Rating: 3/10 (28 July 2017)

Is it just me? Did I miss something? After all the hype and Oscar wins I finally got around to seeing Gravity three years late and what a disappointment it was. It is beautiful to look at with super special effects but other than that it is a very poor film. The dialogue is poorly written and poorly delivered, Bullock's acting is wooden, the plot is preposterous and, worst of all, the science is non-existent. As far as the film-maker's are concerned Newton was never born; they certainly refuse to accept his 3rd Law of Motion. They almost never get the motion right for space and indeed one major plot point relies on the commander of the mission apparently having no knowledge of physics....when he's at the end of the tether and tells Bullock she has to let him go to survive, he is stationary - there will be no forces acting on him at all, so his tether wouldn't be under tension like he's hanging off a roof; if he just jerks gently on the tether with his arms it will impart enough force to put him in motion back towards Bullock and the space station - he certainly wouldn't start moving away from the tether just by letting go. As for Bullock being able to undock, fly, separate and re-enter both Russian and Chinese craft after 6 months astronaut training as an electronics equipment mission specialist, well.....words are beyond me - she wouldn't have been trained to fly the Shuttle let alone foreign craft. Space debris flying fast enough to orbit the earth in 90 minutes would be lethal down to a millimeter in size - the smallest speck would hole a spacesuit yet all the astronauts are in the middle of clouds of such debris that decimate the Hubble, the shuttle and a space station. The Chinese space station could never be in a stable orbit that would decay enough after 90 minutes or so to burning up on reentry. I can see it would be an exciting and tense film for children and the dim-witted but I'm afraid sentient adults will be gnashing their teeth throughout the film.