I'd heard a few generic comments about this move which lead me to think it would be good. Boy was I wrong. For someone with the vaguest notion of how things actually take place in space it became obvious within the first 30 seconds that this movie would be painful to endure. It was.

It is clear that the creators had no idea about the elements of orbital dynamics, rendezvous and docking, space to ground communications, EVA performance, mission specialist expertise and training, or the propagation of space debris. Each of these are central to major plot points and each of them are presently in a deeply flawed and wildly farcical manner.

For a viewer even moderately educated in technology, enduring this stupidity is a trial. More importantly for viewers who don't know how deeply flawed this story line is, they're likely to assume that the movie is a reasonable presentation of the environment. The producers have gutted basic physical laws to find excuses for drama and explosions. In the process they have made major progress in lowering our collective knowledge of the real world.

I suspect if these producers had done Titanic it would have been something like this: Titanic leaves from Miami. The Soviets determine there is a secret microdot on-board, so they have a nuclear sub tow an iceberg into it's path. The iceberg is hit and the ship starts to sink. The crew panics, so Jack takes over as captain and Rose takes over running the engines and boilers single-handed (because she learned how to do that in finishing school.) They decide to dock the ship, and so sail to the iceberg and tie up. Realizing the iceberg won't save everyone, they chip off some ice, put it in their drinks, and think of a new plan. They decide they can patch the hole with whale blubber, so they get the shrimp from the galley, stick it on the anchor, and lower it as a giant fish hook. They immediately catch a whale and use the blubber to patch the hole in the hull. Unfortunately, the whale they caught - Flubby - was the favorite of the pod. The rest of the pod start attacking the ship in anger. Jack realizes the only solution is for him to swim for help, so he jumps overboard and swims 300 miles to land. He finds help, but realizing the ship only has 15 minutes to live, he had to convince the Coast Guard to use their new, experimental 40' rescue boat - the only vessel that can cover 300 miles in 15 minutes. They arrive in the nick of time and load all 2200 people on-board the 40' boat.

Someone learning the history of the Titanic from that script would be in the same position as someone learning about space from this disaster.

The movie also attempts to pay homage to others; probably 2001 and Barbarella. It is an insult to both (and Barbarella was more realistic).

The CGI was probably good, but using decent CGI on this story is like Monet painting on a giant horse turd, The result may look pretty but it still stinks and draws flies.

It would have been so easy to create a credible movie, set in space, that celebrated human resilience. But that would have meant giving up explosions and treating the audience like they had a brain.