Alfonso Cuarón made the finest science fiction movie of the last decade, 2006's Children of Men, and hasn't directed a film since. Now, we get the first shots of Gravity, a movie presumeably about George Clooney and Sandra Bullock free-floating in space after an astronautical catastrophe.Critics are excited to see more of the single-take tracking shots that made Children of Men so terrifying—and Gravity reportedly boasts a 17-minute continuous shot as its opening sequence. Which is cool. But I'm more interested in Cuarón's treatment of this eminently plausible near-future sci-fi scenario. This year is an epic one for sci-fi fantasy: we've got dystopian Earths aplenty, malicious off-world spacecraft galore, and film adaptations of some beloved works. But we don't have much marquee fare that might feasibly take place say, five years from now.That, of course, was a great strength of Children of Men; the dystopian events of that film, though predicated on a scientifically unlikely plot point, nonetheless felt like they could unfold in a couple years. But instead of a fertility disease that slowly whittles away the population, we're working with astronauts in near-earth orbit. And we've already got those.We've got folks stationed on the International Space Station. We're going to be sending astronauts up there on private missions quite soon, too—whether with SpaceX or Virgin Galactic, private space tourism is going to refocus public attention on human habitation of space. And this film looks certain to play off our attendant fears of entering this new privatized space, whether the astronauts are pros or not. Whether anyone's going to leave the spacecraft or not. It's kind of like Open Water for space travel. It's any astronaut's worst nightmare.And, as recreational space travel draws closer to reality, those corporations are likely going to have to deal with assuaging those fears all over again. 'What if something goes wrong in space?' is a question we're going to be thinking about more often.So even though the trailer only teases out the set-up—and thankfully so, unlike a certain recent preview that saw fit to include the dramatic climax itself in the storm of CGI wiz-bang—we're immediately deeply empathetic, regardless of what happens next (the plot is deeply under wraps). We're rooted in the anxieties of the now.The film is out in October, and even in this banner year for sci-fi, that's why it's perhaps the one I'm anticipating most.
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