6. Matt Kowalski Is Bizarrely Jovial
Ryan Stone ruins the mood by being useless; Matt Kowalski ruins the mood by just seeming completely out of place. I agree that in a desperate situation, you need to be calm and collected. If Bullock's character was going to be a nervous mess, then she was going to be doomed if Clooney's character didn't have his head screwed on. That's an ambiguous phrase though, considering he might just be crazy. His charming personality was used effectively in luring the audience into a false sense of security at the beginning of the film, but even after their ship had been torn to shreds by high-speed debris he didn't change in the slightest. Stone was clearly the character we were meant to identify with the most, but what point did Kowalski serve in even being a human? Was he human, in fact? Once again, I can't blame the acting. The character is completely one-dimensional, and that dimension is so off-putting it's ridiculous. Matt Kowalski appears to be a foil for Ryan Stone, and vice-versa, but they both serve to highlight characteristics in each other that are totally unwanted and much too distracting in order to take the film seriously at times.