9. Mission Control Is Voiced By Ed Harris
Theres always something so enticing about a film with a two-person-or-less cast. How will the actors sustain themselves for a feature run time and what tricks will a director unleash to keep the audience engaged? Well is turns out the tricks are most often cheating. Some may commit fully to their stripped down conceit, like this years All Is Lost, but most take great advantage of background video or audio to flesh out the world beyond the central duo. Look at Moon, a film that equally touched on the isolation of space, which (already cheating by having Sam Rockwell fill multiple, if identical, shoes) has a pretty large cast when you factor in all the Skype chatting that goes on. Gravity, however, shows this isn't really a bad thing (even I wouldnt be that nitpicky) with some incredibly creative casting. Fans of realistic space drama (which really should be distinguished from sci-fi) may have heard a brilliant parallel with Apollo 13; Mission Control is voiced by Ed Harris in both. Most memorable as creator Christoph in The Truman Show, Harris has been far from the mainstream recently, so it's refreshing to hear him, even in a minor role. Amongst all the high tech attempts to make Gravity feel real, this a humourously low key effort that helps put genre fans in particular at ease; not only is it a familiar voice, but it's one that has grounding in the real world.