Throughout the 2010s, Hollywood became briefly obsessed with the idea of having A-list movie stars trapped in outer space, with a number of titles arriving in the span of a few years that hit such an oddly specific remit.
Tom Cruise thought he was the last man on Earth in Oblivion, Matt Damon single-handedly colonized the red planet in The Martian, Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway went existential in Interstellar, Brad Pitt experienced cosmic daddy issues in Ad Astra, while Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt traveled through the cosmos together in Passengers.
Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity was next out of the gate after Oblivion in late 2013, though, and went down as an instant modern sci-fi classic. Nothing short of astonishing on a technical and visual level, the blockbuster space thriller hauled in a mammoth $732 million at the box office, going on to win seven Academy Awards from ten nominations, including a well-deserved Best Director statue for its architect.
The plot is incredibly simple, with Sandra Bullock’s engineer struck by disaster to be left hurtling through the vast nothingness all alone, but it’s a nonetheless phenomenal achievement in filmmaking from the first frame to last.
There haven’t been many experiences quite like watching Gravity on the biggest screen possible for the first time, but that hasn’t stopped it from making a splash on smaller devices. As per FlixPatrol, it can currently be found as the ninth most popular title on HBO Max in the United States.