Beautiful vistas of the Earth. George Clooney being a reassuring astronaut. Explosions. Sandra Bullock doing her best Shia LaBeouf impression (you’ll understand when you watch it): it can only be the teaser trailer for Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity.
Bullock plays Dr Ryan Stone, a medical engineer in orbit for her first shuttle mission, working alongside veteran space jockey Matt Kowalsky (Clooney), on his last trip before retirement (because, like police officers, that never ends badly).
While they’re out on a routine spacewalk tragedy strikes and their shuttle is destroyed in a random accident. The pair finds themselves suddenly very much alone, tethered only to each other and floating off into the inky depths. There’s no radio contact with Earth, and as panic sets in, they discover the only way to get home might be to go deeper into space. 'Deeper?' we hear you think and then say out loud, 'surely not!' But soothe yourselves: that will all be explained. We hope - because the snippets of footage here are wigging us out.
With Basher Savage and, according to reports, Ed Harris also in the cast (he’s supposedly playing the voice of Mission Control, and having seen Apollo 13 we're reassured by that), Gravity sees Cuaron playing on a scale that swings from grand to intimate with what looks to be an astonishingly beautiful movie. Boasting a script from the director and his son Jonas, Gravity drifts into our cinemas on October 18.