Neil deGrasse Tyson Brings Down Gravity on Twitter

Acclaimed astrophysicist and generally awesome human being Neil deGrasse Tyson took to Twitter last night to lambast the new outer space thriller Gravity, and it was spectacular. [Possible spoilers]

Starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, Gravity is the story of two astronauts surviving from a damaged space shuttle on a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Sure, a movie about astronauts surviving in a space disaster sounds right up an astrophysicist’s alley, but its typical Hollywood space movie trappings caused Tyson to get all Mystery Science Theater on it.

Here are a few snippets of his priceless review:

Apparently, this one was explained near the beginning of the film, but Tyson was unimpressed with the reasoning.

Nor does it necessarily care about physics, even if the movie is called “Gravity.”

Some of his comments may seem like minor gripes, but this one about a major point of the movie is pretty ridiculous. The astronauts continually try to reestablish lost contact with the ground, but they never really should have lost it.

Here at Geekosystem, we enjoy both real and pretend space very much, and we feel his pain.

So, while one word reviews are largely DVD-box-quote fodder and rarely indicative of a movie’s quality, I think Tyson sums up Gravity‘s number one box office placement adequately in a single word: mysterious.

And so did we, thanks to you.

(Neil deGrasse Tyson via BuzzFeed, image via John Roling)

Meanwhile in related links

• Watch Neil deGrasse Tyson and others talk about things that are happening in real space.
• Find Neil deGrasse Tyson and other excellent people on Twitter in #FollowFriday.
• Or, look at ridiculous things found by actual space telescopes.

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Dan Van Winkle

Dan Van Winkle (he) is an editor and manager who has been working in digital media since 2013, first at now-defunct Geekosystem (RIP), and then at The Mary Sue starting in 2014, specializing in gaming, science, and technology. Outside of his professional experience, he has been active in video game modding and development as a hobby for many years. He lives in North Carolina with Lisa Brown (his wife) and Liz Lemon (their dog), both of whom are the best, and you will regret challenging him at Smash Bros.

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