A Major Disappointment

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I don't get all the negative, self-righteous criticism of the movie. It's a movie about a next-generation space shuttle that can take civilians into space and to the moon rather quickly. Of course it's not believable because it's impossible to do something like that. So set your belief aside and enjoy the movie for what it is: science fiction. Of course you can't talk back and forth instantly to a spacecraft that's near the Sun, but think about how boring it would have been if the director had made it realistic and we had to wait 8 minutes for each response. The person who criticized the part about the cell phone being used to call the shuttle obviously missed the part where the computer geek patches it through the company space communications system. The special effects were better than I expected, although I got tired of seeing the sun shown as a giant ball of lava-like material. Sun loops are magnetic and have a certain form -- nothing like what was portrayed. Since the entire movie is about how the Sun behaves, I would have thought they'd pay more attention to trying to make it look like what it actually does.

He is correct about the discrepancies in delays of data transmissions, the heat and that puny Scaler drive system which I still am incapable of wrapping my head around, physics is a subject way beyond me. From my reckoning the Scaler drive system, I believe due to the fact it is fiction, thus pseudoscience even if is spelled differently than the imbecile Screen Writers spelled it is of no relevance. I digress, my most accurate approximation it is a Ion drive, or something very close. Said reviewer is absolutely correct without some kind of energy force field that ship and it's tiny little engine would have burnt up way before it got that close to the Sun. Was watching it on Netflix, like if that should not have alerted me to the fact how bad the movie would be. Damn! If I press the Home button of this Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 to reduce to go back to Netflix application to confirm their number scale rating system I will lose all details of my opinion of the viewpoints by another to the movie. If I recall Netflix uses a scale of 1-5, and apparently more than 50% of those who rated gave it a 3, the other 50% dropping it to a 2. Whoever designed the software for Netflix are morons, because their software is not compatible at least not for accessing their online support staff from the domain, because whenever I attempt the process I am informed that I need to download the most recent version of Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, or Safari, my browser being Chrome, believe my tablet is set to automatically download any recent versions. I was informed by Samsung representative 1 working the Samsung Smart device section at the local Best Buy that to Chat with a Netflix representative online you need to do so through the Application, she tried to show me how, but I forgot, do not feel like a complete idiot considering I spoke with another Samsung rep. and was clueless as well. Has no 1 noticed this movie could very well pass as a made for Sy-Fy Network movie if it were not for the length of it. Never heard of a made for Sy-Fy Network that ran longer than an hr. and 40/45 minutes, but then again I ceased watching their poorly written, directed, produced, characters poorly portrayed character movies a long time ago.

I'm staggered that some reviewers think that the plot is believable, the script is realistic or the acting is credible. None of these things are true, unless, perhaps, you are a nine year old used to reading "Peter and Jane" books. The science is shockingly poor. Almost everything is incorrect...usually massively so. There are reams and reams of examples of this but you can get the sense of it from the plot line that has the President of the United States using a regular computer to talk via Skype to his wife, who is on a spaceship rapidly approaching the sun. 27 million Fahrenheit temperature....no problem. 8 minute each way delay in the time for the signal to arrive....no problem. Skype being used, rather than a sophisticated video link...no problem. If it were just the science being appallingly bad, perhaps it might be forgivable, but, sadly, the script is preposterous. For example, the Chief Scientist running the mission is the ex- lover of the Chief Sceince Officer at the Whitehouse. She is now in a relationship with a "hero-like" astronaut who is famous for a mutiny on another space mission where he tied- up the commander of the ship without anyone on earth being aware of it. Cue infighting between the two guys over who will make the critical decisions to save the people on the spacecraft (and the Whole World, as it turns out!). Luckily for the argumentative astronaut, his lover is able to miraculously get from the Whitehouse to the command centre instantly to get him appointed. Amazingly, not only is he an astronaut, but, without any training, he has a complete grasp of the design of the spaceship and a full understanding of the mission. Worse than unbelievable....completely ridiculous.Then there is the character creation and the acting. Absolutely two dimensional and totally predictable. If it had been written as a spoof, it might have been funny. It wasn't and it isn't.No redeeming features whatsoever.

One point about science fiction movies, is to impress the viewer with science or technology that could once be real. But in this movie nothing makes sense about science. Not speaking about the bad and slow plot with sometimes terrible unreal action performances.Just to name a view paradox: -they are close to the sun, but are communicating on video phone in real time. The signal would take at least 7 minutes between the sun and earth. (later they correctly state that the impact would only be seen 7 to 8 minutes later on earth.) -As the engines don't work and they float around the moon they experience g forces! In reality they would only feel 0 gravity on board because the gravitation of the moon and the acceleration of the ship would cancel each other out. Same like a space ship in orbit. -How comes that its always daylight in USA and Afghanistan at the same time? -When he is activating the bomb manually in space (0 bar airpresion) he would explode. -the sun is 330000 times bigger than the earth so an impact would we like a tear drop into the oceans. And most probably the space ship would melt long time before it would hit anything solid. At least I don't know anything that wouldn't at 6000 kelvin. Even Ta4HfC5 already melts at 4488 K.