Gravity Is A Hit With The Critics, But Will The Academy Continue To Snub Science-Fiction?

By Thomas Broome-Jones

If you haven't heard about it already, the director behind the 2006 sci-fi spectacle Children of Men Alfonso Cuarón has a new film out. Gravity has been described as "the greatest space film ever done" by visionary science-fiction director James Cameron, it holds a 97% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a 96/100 on Metacritic and is #39 in IMDb's top 250 films list at the time of this article's writing. Needless to say it has a lot of hype around it and it's a fascinating concept.

Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are astronauts who have their communications with ground control severed and must find a way to survive the cruel mistress of space with a dangerously low time limit. The film is being promoted as highly scientifically accurate and looks to really be playing around with the idea of there being no sound in space. It sounds then, like a modern-day 2001: A Space Odyssey but with a massive budget and pioneering special effects. Going by that then it sounds like it's going to be pretty epic.

Not a sound: All of this action will happen silently in the name of scientific accuracy.

The Americans have already got it but it won't be hitting UK screens until next month, as you can probably tell I'm incredibly excited for this film as I enjoyed Children of Men thoroughly and I'll definitely be seeing this as soon as it comes to our fair isles. But there's one thing I'm interested in more than anything, its Oscar potential. As we all know, this is the time of the year when all of the critically acclaimed films start to come out, we get all the Summer blockbusters in, well, the Summer and as the Winter closes in we are treated to more "artistic" works. The reason for this is simply because it's all about getting your film released close to awards season so that it's fresh on the voting panel's minds, but not to miss the eligibility window. Release your film too late and it won't qualify for any nominations.

Gravity seems to be the most acclaimed film of the year so far and may very well end up being the most acclaimed film of 2013 period. Obviously with the phenominal amount of hype around this film, coupled with its rather sizable box office takings (it's taken in nearly $200,000,000 in just 11 days, not too shabby for a non-franchise and non-sequel film), it would be almost impossible for the Academy to ignore it. But there is a discouraging thing about sci-fi films and the Academy, they've never awarded Best Picture to one. If you were to count Silence of the Lambs as a horror, then science-fiction is the only mainstream genre of film to never receive the prestigious award, could Gravity be the first?

I'm confident that the film will at least be honoured with a nomination and I genuinely do like its chances of winning, I can't recall another film that's been released so far this year with so much critical hype, obviously Iron Man 3 takes the cake for commercial hype but I don't see that getting any more than a few technical nods. If Gravity DOES win the award then what's next? Films such as Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, The Avengers and Iron Man 3 have certainly made superheroes less of a niche subject, all being among the top 10 highest-grossing films ever, could the superhero film become a mainstream genre? And in turn would we ever see it win the Holy Grail of film awards? It's a subject with a very long history that I won't delve into but as the awards season rapidly approaches you can expect a lot of Oscar talk from all sources of film journalism and I have a very strong feeling about Gravity.

Gravity is released in UK cinemas on November 8, 2013, it has a 12A certificate.



















Thomas Broome-Jones is on Twitter, you can follow him @TBroomey.