12 Movies That Tricked You Into Thinking They Had Happy Endings
8. Gravity - Spaceflight Is Now Impossible
The Allegedly Happy Ending: Ryan Stone is, without a doubt, one of the unluckiest people to ever grace a movie screen. So-named because her father wanted a boy and losing her young daughter before the movie even begins, she spends the run-time of Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity moving from one vacuum-set disaster to the next.
After ninety minutes of weightless, oxygen-lite hell, Stone finally makes it back to Earth, rising out of the primordial ooze ready for whatever other trials the universe wants to throw at her.
The Depressing Truth: You hope Stone enjoyed her time in space because there's no chance her, nor anyone else, will go up there for at least a hundred years. The cascade of space debris that drives the plot is part of a scenario known as the Kessler syndrome, which theorises that high satellite density will lead to an unstoppable, ever growing rain of space parts. And in such an eventuality the speeding debris would make space travel and even using satellites impossible.
It goes against the individualist view of the movie, but by being so grounded in its special effects its events need to be treated like that too. Ultimately Stone's survival distracts from the irreversible damage the film has wrought.