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It may be an Oscar front-runner and acclaimed as one of the best space movies ever made, but Gravity‘s depiction of astronauts’ underwear is far too glamorous, according to the world’s favourite astronaut, Commander Chris Hadfield.
The moustachioed Canadian spacefarer, who shot to fame earlier this year for his fascinating tweets and spectacular photos from the International Space Station, disparaged Sandra Bullock’s orbital undercrackers on Conan O’Brien’s US talk show last night.
“I’ve done two space walks and inside our space suit is like a Halloween costume, which is a liquid cooling garment, and we’re wearing like Depends underneath — big boy pull-up diapers — and you come out and you’ve been sweating in there for 8 hours, your hair looks like rat fur,” he explains. “We do not look like an underwear model.”
“I think they made the right call in the movie though,” Conan responds. You can see the clip here:
Apart from the unfortunate grundies, Cmdr Hadfield was full of praise for Alfonso Cuaron’s new movie. “The visuals are better than any space movie ever made,” he said. “Visually, it’s just like being out on a space walk, it’s beautiful.”
It’s not the first expert criticism Gravity has fallen victim to. Last month prominent astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who also said he “enjoyed Gravity very much”, pointed out some major scientific and logical inconsistencies. Here’s one of the less spoilery ones:
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
Cuaron has admitted as much, telling the Hollywood Reporter that he and his team consulted experts and wrote a draft explaining away inconsistencies like the one Tyson pointed out, but it was far too long. “We tried to be as accurate as we could within the framework of our fiction,” he said. “In the end, it’s fiction and it’s an emotional journey more than anything else.”
Gravity broke the US box-office record for a film opening in October, taking $55.6m in its first weekend. The film opened in the UK last week, stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, and runs a nippy 91 minutes.
My colleague Luke Westaway, who saw the film at the weekend, commented, “Bullock — who knew?!” And, “SPACE!” He is not a professional film critic.
Image credit: Warner Bros
