Acclaimed astrophysicist and generally awesome human being Neil deGrasse Tyson took to Twitter last night to lambast the new outer space thriller Gravity, and it was spectacular. [Possible spoilers]
Starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, Gravity is the story of two astronauts surviving from a damaged space shuttle on a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Sure, a movie about astronauts surviving in a space disaster sounds right up an astrophysicist’s alley, but its typical Hollywood space movie trappings caused Tyson to get all Mystery Science Theater on it.
Here are a few snippets of his priceless review:
The film #Gravity should be renamed “Angular Momentum”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 6, 2013
He starts off taking light jabs at the title, but things only get better from there as Tyson finds the film has many mysteries to ponder.
Mysteries of #Gravity: Why Bullock, a medical Doctor, is servicing the Hubble Space Telescope. — Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 6, 2013
Apparently, this one was explained near the beginning of the film, but Tyson was unimpressed with the reasoning.
Mysteries of #Gravity: How Hubble (350mi up) ISS (230mi up) & a Chinese Space Station are all in sight lines of one another. — Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 6, 2013
I guess no one told him that Hollywood doesn’t always care about “facts.”
Mysteries of #Gravity: Why Bullock’s hair, in otherwise convincing zero-G scenes, did not float freely on her head.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 6, 2013
Nor does it necessarily care about physics, even if the movie is called “Gravity.”
Some of his comments may seem like minor gripes, but this one about a major point of the movie is pretty ridiculous. The astronauts continually try to reestablish lost contact with the ground, but they never really should have lost it.
Mysteries of #Gravity: Satellite communications were disrupted at 230 mi up, but communications satellites orbit 100x higher.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 6, 2013
Finally, he sums it all up with the real burning question about the relative popularity of space movies and actual space.
Mysteries of #Gravity: Why we enjoy a SciFi film set in make-believe space more than we enjoy actual people set in real space
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 6, 2013
Here at Geekosystem, we enjoy both real and pretend space very much, and we feel his pain.
So, while one word reviews are largely DVD-box-quote fodder and rarely indicative of a movie’s quality, I think Tyson sums up Gravity‘s number one box office placement adequately in a single word: mysterious.
My Tweets hardly ever convey opinion. Mostly perspectives on the world. But if you must know, I enjoyed #Gravity very much.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 7, 2013
And so did we, thanks to you.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson via BuzzFeed, image via John Roling)
Meanwhile in related links
- Watch Neil deGrasse Tyson and others talk about things that are happening in real space.
- Find Neil deGrasse Tyson and other excellent people on Twitter in #FollowFriday.
- Or, look at ridiculous things found by actual space telescopes.
