20 Things You Somehow Missed In Gravity
14. The Movie's Length Is Influenced By Its Inciting Incident
With its credits, Gravity clocks in at a lean 91 minutes. This is expected given the minimalist nature of its story (threatening space debris notwithstanding), and its relatively brief runtime serves to highlight the story's inciting incident.
As noted by George Clooney's Matt Kowalski, 90 minutes is the exact amount of time the debris field would take to orbit the Earth.
This places him and Dr. Ryan Stone in a predicament with a clearly defined timeframe, one that adds a level of tension to the proceedings. While it is unclear if this was always part of the plan (unlikely given the debris field appears twice in the film), it is still a neat coincidence that works in the movie's favour.