Only people as old as me will remember what a big deal the movie Alien was when it came out. For many reasons: the gritty realism of the ship, the "it's just a job" attitude of the crew, the biological, visceral horror of the monster(s). But the main thing was the fact that there was one survivor, and it was a woman. As hard as it might be to believe nowadays, that was a first, and it was a Big Deal.
Right from the first minute, Gravity invokes Alien. There is a little prologue text, just a few lines, but it plays on the Alien catchphrase "in space, no one can hear you scream." Even the visual design of the title of Gravity is meant to remind us of Alien. Lots of space between the letters suggests the isolation of outer space.
The movie stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as astronauts. They're doing their astronaut thing, when suddenly and unexpectedly disaster strikes! Everyone else is killed, and Our Two Heroes are marooned in space. So far so good. Then, suddenly and unexpectedly Clooney dies! What a shock, we're only about a half hour into the movie! We thought this was going to be the story of this gorgeous Hollywood couple, lost in space, overcoming the odds and triumphing....together. But no.
So, but, here's the thing. He doesn't actually die. Or rather, he floats away and we're not sure what happens to him. We expect him to pop back up any minute. This is Hollywood, right? And of course he does (suddenly and sort-of-unexpectedly), about an hour in. But that turns (unexpectedly) out to be just a dream.
So in the end we have a story of a terrible tragedy in space, people die one by one, the female character is the lone survivor at the end, and it's due to her smarts and determination. Sound familiar? It's the same story as Alien.
So that's the trick of the movie. It starts off as a story about multiple people, and ends up as a story about one person. One woman person. And the trick only works because of the casting. The male lead had to be a big star, so that we are expecting a love story. If it had been a minor star, someone on a lower tier of stardom than Sandra Bullock, we would have been prepared for the fact that the movie is a solo act.
But that's not what's remarkable. What's remarkable is that the story managed to surprise me, just as Alien did, all those years ago.
Here's a little eye candy. I include it partly because I'm a Very Very Shallow Movie Reviewer, but also to show one more feature of Alien that's reproduced by Gravity. This is the scene in which Our Hero, after much struggle and hardship, reaches the (seeming) safety of an escape pod, strips down to her undies, and finally triumphs over her demon(s).
