Chapter 780: Slanderous Remarks

As the new week began, Gravity faced the test of the workweek. Although its opening-weekend box office was outstanding, securing an excellent final run in North America required a sufficiently stable trajectory. A steady box office hold was also closely tied to word of mouth, which would benefit the film's awards season campaign.

Facts proved that the strong audience and media word of mouth accumulated early on, combined with the "diamond" reputation Duke had built over a dozen films, translated directly into commercial draw.

On Monday, the first workday after Gravity's wide release, the daily box office dropped by only 42 percent compared to Sunday, closing out the day with $14.95 million.

Tuesday was the traditional discount day for North American theater chains, which often made it the highest-grossing workday for many films. Gravity was no exception, taking in $15.87 million.

By Wednesday, however, the film's box office inevitably slipped by 20 percent, earning $12.97 million for the day.

With Thursday's $13.05 million added in, one week after Gravity expanded its release, the film had raked in $145.9 million in North America.

Starting its second weekend, the film would begin its wide release overseas.

While Gravity was going strong in theaters, the Oscar nomination voting process that began on December 31 of last year was in full swing. The ballots mailed out by the School to its members wouldn't be fully collected until early February. The voters had plenty of time to deliberate carefully, making this the best opportunity for various studios to run PR campaigns for their films.

If a voter cast a nomination ballot for a certain film or actor, and that film or actor ended up on the final nomination list, the chances of that voter making the same choice in the final round usually exceeded 90 percent.

Furthermore, once the nomination list was announced, a lot of PR work could no longer be conducted as blatantly as it was now, especially moves aimed at smearing competitors.

During every awards season, it was common for films to attack each other. The hot favorites were usually the primary targets. For instance, Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain from a few years ago lost a very promising Best Picture award amid a smear campaign by countless television outlets and industry insiders.

This was fundamentally a circle entangled in struggles for fame and fortune. This year would be no exception. Gravity, currently enjoying a hot theatrical run and quite favorable responses, inevitably drew some attacking remarks.

"Gravity: a shallow, technically driven work filled with countless flaws!"

In the latest issue of the Hollywood Reporter, this article's headline was exceptionally eye-catching. Buying ads or related column space in an influential industry outlet like the Hollywood Reporter wasn't something only Duke could do. There were quite a few in Hollywood who could afford the expense.

"Ever since Gravity premiered, many people have praised it as a masterpiece. The arguments calling the film a masterpiece generally boil down to the following: good technology, good story, good performances, strong immersive experience, thought-provoking nature, and artistic value."

"In all fairness, giving it a high score for its technology is still within the realm of reason. Although the visual effects presented by this film's special effects aren't as good as Avatar, it can still be considered a production this year where you can see the investment. But saying its 3D effects rival Avatar is beyond the comprehension of an ordinary person."

"Avatar's visual effects rendered even the tips of grass in the background with crisp, highly textured detail. When gunpowder smoke filled the air, you felt like you might be covered in dust yourself. And Gravity? Aside from a bit of 3D effect when the satellite debris hits, the rest of it is utterly flat. When I watched it, the other audience members in the same theater said there wasn't much of a 3D effect as they were leaving. I really don't know how the people claiming the 3D effects are great managed to see 3D effects and exquisite, profound visual spectacles."

"Good story, right? To be honest, dismantling this argument is effortlessly simple. What is a story? Simply having things happen isn't a story. The significance of a story lies in its description of a process. What makes a good story? It's a process full of ups and downs, full of tension, coherent and vivid, with a beginning and an end, all while being able to illustrate a certain truth or elevate to a deeper meaning."

"What kind of story does Gravity tell? A story of survival. The core of the story is survival—meaning the protagonist overcomes various difficulties and manages to stay alive. So most of the time it's just watching the female lead drift over, almost miss her grip, drift back, catch it this time... this one doesn't work, so she switches to another, drifts over again, almost misses, drifts back, and catches it this time... This is what they call a good story?"

"Moreover, since it's a film carried entirely by the female lead, there is basically no suspense regarding the character's fate. Of course, you might say, 'How do you know she won't die?' I can only tell you that normal human beings don't think that way. Extremely sudden twists can be pulled off occasionally, but what you really watch in survival films is the escape process itself. Perhaps some people would watch another half hour of flat space imagery after the female lead dies halfway through, but a rigid director like Duke Rosenberg obviously wouldn't take that risk."

"The narrative quality is as tedious as a toddler learning to walk: falling down, standing up, falling down, standing up, and finally learning to walk after a few repetitions. If that kid managed to run a few steps at the end, that level of storytelling would crush Gravity into dust. People who think this film has a good story probably wake up every day, realize they're still alive, and praise God with tears in their eyes."

"Good performances? Let's put aside the fact that a film with no story and lacking dialogue inherently restricts an actor's ability to showcase their skills. Looking at the film itself, Scarlett Johansson is acting for the sake of acting from beginning to end. Hollow expressions, affected performances; you can't see any genuine terror when disaster strikes, no sorrow or pain when she loses her colleagues, no despair when her hope is first shattered, and no loneliness when she's barking like a dog at the end."

"Scarlett Johansson's performance is absolutely disaster-level. Big, lifeless eyes, entirely devoid of personality; aside from screaming, she just gasps for breath, stubbornly wasting oxygen. Sometimes you can't even tell if she wants to live or die. Don't use the excuse that she's numb from being overly terrified. I guarantee that even Alessandra Ambrosio would have acted it better."

"As for immersive experience, due to the flattening of visual effects and the lack of emotional buildup for the character, the viewer neither feels the majestic vastness of the universe nor empathizes with the sense of weightlessness and the lonely helplessness of being in space. Coupled with a thin story and a dull plot, it makes it completely impossible to get absorbed into the film."

"As for those claiming it's thought-provoking or artistic, I'll let you off the hook, because you're already beyond saving. When have Duke Rosenberg's films ever had anything to do with those two things?"

"Although films can lead to personal elevation through subjective understanding and feelings, there are ultimately still relatively hard-and-fast creative rules and standards. A good film must withstand the test of intellect and time. A barely passable commercial flick like Gravity can't just be crammed into the pantheon of masterpieces simply by relying on pale, hollow cheering and mindless interpretations from fans."

The media could always influence the choices of many people, especially some School voters who rarely watched movies. The Hollywood Reporter's influence within the industry was also unquestionable.

On another note, in the history of the Oscars, apart from the special case of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, no non-realistic film had ever won a sweeping victory. Many people were putting a lot of effort into attacking Gravity's realism.

A former astronaut named Scott Parazynski gave an exclusive media interview. He had completed seven spacewalks, including spending seven hours dangling from the International Space Station's robotic arm, repairing a solar panel array that could have accidentally shocked the piss out of him at any moment.

During the interview, he directly pointed out the various common-sense errors in the film.

"The first thing that shocked me was that, of the three people on the spacewalk, only one was actually doing real work. Poor Scarlett Johansson was doing all the work, while the other two men were idling away: one of them was messing around with the cargo racks in the space shuttle's payload bay, and George Clooney was wearing a turbocharged jetpack. In the film, you see him using the jetpack to approach the Hubble Space Telescope. If you do that, you will crash into the solar array, bending the panels and rendering them useless. So it's all wrong, and even laughable."

"Let's also talk about the plausibility of Scarlett Johansson's character. She's supposed to be very inexperienced. She says she underwent six months of training, this is her first mission, and during ground training, she couldn't successfully land the flight simulator. With that level of training and experience, it's absolutely impossible that she'd be assigned any mission. She calls herself a mission specialist, but she's actually what we call a 'payload specialist': someone who might be sent on a space mission to perform a specific task or experiment because of a very specialized skill. What I want to say is, becoming a spacewalking expert requires at least two years of basic skill training. We would never send a payload specialist to do a spacewalk."

"There's another seriously inaccurate detail: Scarlett Johansson not wearing a liquid cooling and ventilation garment or an adult diaper is a spacewalking blunder in the film."

Finally, the former astronaut deliberately added with humor, "However, this is a non-reality-based sci-fi film, so we can't look at it with professional eyes."

The moment this exclusive interview aired on television, Duke saw the relevant content. The other party's intention was quite obvious: to strip Gravity of any content potentially based in reality, thereby making most people naturally categorize it among sci-fi films similar to Star Wars.

As everyone knew, this genre of film had never been the Oscars' cup of tea.