George Clooney and Sandra Bullock play two astronauts stuck in space in director Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity,” and according to two real astronauts, everyone involved in the production did an appropriate amount of research.
“Somebody did their homework,” NASA astronaut Dr. Mike Massimino says in a new featurette for the upcoming IMAX release of the Warner Bros. film. “Everything is exactly what it was like on our mission.”
Also read: A Real-Life Astronaut Reviews ‘Gravity’ – ‘I Want to Fly With Sandra Bullock’
Massimino was one of the astronauts featured in the documentary “IMAX Hubble 3D,” which Cuarón says was the “bible” for the fictional thriller, already getting Oscar buzz.
“We wanted to be as accurate as possible with those references,” Cuarón said. “I think our biggest reference was the Hubble documentary. That, for me, is my personal favorite in IMAX. IMAX was our bible.”
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Dr. Cady Coleman, a NASA astronaut and consultant on the film, worked directly with Bullock to help the actress craft her performance, which has garnered early praise from critics — and an astronaut.
“When I was about three months into my space station mission, my brother met Sandra Bullock‘s brother-in-law, and they arranged that she and I would talk because she was about to go to space,” Coleman said. “We talked about how there’s outside, wearing 300-pound spacesuit, always holding on to something. And then there’s inside the space station, where it just takes the touch of a finger — or even I could take one of my long hairs and push it against a surface, and I could move myself down the entire length of the space station. That’s how little force it takes to move up there.”
“Gravity” arrives in theaters Oct. 4.