Genre:
Science-Fiction
Director:
Alfonso Cuaron
Starring:
Robert Downey Jr, Sandra Bullock, George Clooney
Release Date:
Friday 04 October
Gravity is a 2013 3D film co-written, co-produced, co-edited
and directed by Alfonso Cuarón. The film stars Sandra Bullock and George
Clooney as surviving astronauts in a damaged space shuttle.
Cuarón wrote the screenplay with his son Jonás and attempted
to develop the project at Universal Pictures. After the rights to the project
were sold, the project found traction at Warner Bros. instead, and the studio
approached multiple actresses before casting Bullock in the female lead role.
Robert Downey, Jr. was also involved as the male lead before leaving the
project and being replaced by Clooney.
Gravity opened at the 70th Venice International Film
Festival in August 2013. Its North American premiere was three days later at
the Telluride Film Festival. It is scheduled for wide release in the United
States and Canada on October 4, 2013.
Plot
Medical engineer Dr. Ryan Stone is on her first Space
Shuttle mission accompanied by veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski, who is
commanding his final expedition. During a spacewalk, debris from a satellite
crashes into the space shuttle Explorer which mostly destroys it, leaving them
stranded in space with limited air. The debris keeps hitting other satellites,
causing a chain reaction of destruction and silencing the satellites necessary
for the two astronauts to receive communication with Mission Control in
Houston. Nevertheless, both Kowalski and Stone continue to transmit "in
the blind" to Mission Control, in the hopes that Mission Control can hear
them, even if they cannot hear them back.
Stone tumbles out of control after separating from the
shuttle's cargo bay arm. Kowalski, who is wearing a thruster pack as part of
his spacesuit navigates to Stone and retrieves her. The two tether together,
and make their way back to Explorer, where they discover the shuttle has been damaged
beyond repair, and the rest of their crew are dead. They then decide to use the
thruster pack to make their way to the ISS which is nearby in orbit. Kowalski
sets the timer on his suit for 90 minutes, estimating the debris that destroyed
Explorer will orbit the Earth and come back around in that amount of time.
Kowalski is ever calm and efficient in the crisis,
continuing to reassure Stone that they will both make it back to Earth safely.
On route to the ISS, the two discuss Stone's life back home and the death of
her young daughter in a schoolyard accident. As they approach the ISS, it is
clear that the ISS crew has evacuated due to the debris field causing damage.
One Soyuz module for delivery ISS crew and returning them to Earth is missing,
used by the ISS crew to evacuate the station. The other Soyuz module has been
damaged, and its landing parachute has been deployed as a result. It becomes
clear that the remaining Soyuz module cannot return them to Earth safely.
As they get close to ISS, both of their air supplies are
near empty, and there is one thruster burst left in Kowalski's pack. He fires
the thruster, and Stone is able to grab onto the ISS, however, Kowalski's
momentum is pulling Stone away from the ISS, and she is losing her grip.
Kowalski asks Stone about her minimal piloting training, and instructs Stone to
use the Soyuz capsule to travel to a nearby Chinese space station and get help
there. Kowalski says that even if the Chinese have evacuated, they use a return
module that is based on the design of the Soyuz, and Stone's limited training
will get her home safely. Kowalksi then disconnects his tether from Stone,
sacrificing himself so Stone can get aboard the ISS safely.
Stone boards the ISS, which has been damaged but still has
an oxygen atmosphere. Stone makes her way to the Soyuz module, but a fire from
sparking wires aboard the ISS causes a fire. She tries vainly to put out the
fire, and get aboard the Soyuz. Once aboard, Stone tries to thruster away from
the ISS, but the parachute cables are tangled and keeping the Soyuz from
getting free. Stone puts on one of the Soyuz spacesuits and spacewalks outside
to release the parachute cables from the capsule. During the spacewalk, the
satellite debris has orbited the earth, impacting with the ISS and the Soyuz.
Stone barely makes it inside the Soyuz and thrusters away, just as the debris
field impacts and destroys the ISS.
Stone goes over the emergency manual, and uses the thrusters
to line the Soyuz up with the Chinese station. She attempts to fire the main
Soyuz rocket to navigate to the Chinese station, however the fuel tanks are
empty. Stone tries to use the Soyuz radio to contact earth, but she is only
able to reach a farmer who does not speak English on a short wave frequency.
Stone resigns herself to her fate of dying, and turn off the oxygen flow in the
cabin to hasten her eventual suffocation. She begins to fall asleep, running
out of oxygen, when she sees a vision of Kowalski outside the capsule. Kowalski
enters the capsule, to Stone's amazement that he could still be alive. Stone
tells him that there is no fuel left for the main rocket, but Kowalski, ever
the optimist, tells Stone that the capsule still has re-entry rockets that
cushion the landing of the capsule before touchdown on land, and that they will
use those to navigate to the Chinese station.
Stone begins to thank Kowalski, when she suddenly realizes
she is alone in the capsule. Stone realizes she hallucinated Kowalski in her
oxygen-deprived state. She turns the oxygen flow back on in the Soyuz, and
using the information about the landing thrusters she remember in her
hallucination, fires the thrusters and makes her way to the Chinese station.
Realizing she is going to miss the station by several dozen meters, Stone picks
up a fire extinguisher and opens the Soyuz hatch while the capsule is still
pressurized, blowing her across the distance. She navigates to the Chinese
station using the fire extinguisher as a makeshift thruster. Stone boards the
Chinese capsule just as the entire Chinese station, having been pushed out of
its stable orbit by the satellite debris, starts to burn up on the upper edge
of the atmosphere. Stone successfully enters the re-entry commands in the
Chinese capsule's computer, and the capsule begins its decent towards Earth. On
the way down, Stone hears Mission Control over the radio tracking the capsule
and promising rescue teams are being dispatched.
The capsule splashes down in a lake in an uninhabited part
of the Earth. Stone opens the capsule hatch, but the water rushing in nearly
drowns her, pinning her against the wall. Once the water pressure equalizes,
she slips out of her spacesuit and swims to the surface, where she swims to
shore. While the remains of the Chinese space station and other satellite
debris streak high in the sky overhead, Stone takes her first shaky steps on
dry land, acclimating herself back to existing in the earth's gravity.
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References.
External links:
"Main Page." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 1 Oct. 2013. Web. 1 Oct. 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page>.
https://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi
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