As the Film at 11 podcast reaches its milestone fiftieth episode, I take my son Thomas on a journey up to the heavens and back down to Earth again with Alfonso Cuarón’s blockbuster smash Gravity. He liked it, but then, this is a pretty difficult movie to dislike.

From its nerve-wracking suspense to its still very impressive visual effects, Gravity is basically a 90-minute thrill ride that knows exactly how and when to give you small moments to breathe between dazzling set-pieces. Remarkably, in the midst of all that, it also finds time to squeeze in strong character work from Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. It’s smart, it’s exciting, and it’s still a hell of a spectacle that demands to be watched on the largest screen you can find.

Title:	Gravity
Year of Release:	2013
Director:	Alfonso Cuarón
Watched On:	Blu-ray 3D
Also Available On:	Blu-ray (2D) 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray (rumored) Various VOD rental and purchase platforms

The 3D Blu-ray

After its soaring success in theaters during the fall of 2013, Gravity landed on home video early the next year. Warner Home Video released the film on Blu-ray in both 2D and 3D options. I bought a SteelBook from the UK with both formats inside. Its artwork is marred by a large “3D” descriptor under the title (in a different font), which still irks me a little. Both discs are authored with DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtracks.

The following year, Warner reissued the movie with a Diamond Luxe Edition in a fancy new package type called a NEO Case, slightly different from and intended to complete with SteelBooks. NEO Cases were a short-lived trend. I have a few others, but not this one. For Gravity specifically, the benefit of the Diamond Luxe NEO Case is that the disc was re-authored with a Dolby Atmos soundtrack as well as an alternate “Silent Space” track. However, this release only included the 2D version of the movie. The same disc from the Diamond Luxe Edition (still 2D only) was later reissued in 2024 packed in a normal keepcase.

At the time of this writing in early 2026, Gravity has been rumored for a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release at some point in the future. If that comes to pass, it will presumably include the Dolby Atmos track. That has some appeal to me, but to my mind, Gravity was designed and shot with 3D in mind, and that remains its best premium format. Additionally, the movie was photographed with 2K digital cameras, most of the visual effects were rendered at that resolution, and the whole thing was finalized on a 2K Digital Intermediate. While an Ultra HD copy may well look better than the original 2D Blu-ray, and can benefit from HDR and Wide Color Gamut, this is an instance where I’d hate to give up the 3D.

Admittedly, 3D is a pain to implement in a home theater today, now that most display manufacturers have given up on the format. My projector is still compatible, but I rarely use that feature. 3D requires a brighter image than 2D. Even with the lamp in its highest power mode and all Brightness settings maxed out, I struggle to get enough light output onto my large projection screen to counteract the dimming caused by the 3D glasses. With the right finagling, I can get a watchable enough picture, but dark scenes (of which this movie has a lot) are a little too dark, highlights are dulled, and colors look slightly shifted.

Fortunately, director Alfonso Cuarón was smart enough to consider issues like these in the design of the film. The color palette is mostly a contrast between the white of the astronaut suits, shuttle, and space stations against the blackness of space. When it appears on camera, the blue from Earth comes through strongly. Other colors are used sparingly. The photography (both real and virtual) is illuminated well enough that I rarely felt I was missing important picture. Still, I wish I could make it brighter. The rumored Ultra HD edition will no doubt solve that problem, at the expense of the 3D.

Yet 3D is really critical to this movie, in my opinion. It’s used to great effect here, and greatly helps orient spacial relationships on screen in the midst of the chaos unfolding. I almost can’t imagine the movie being nearly as gripping without it. Depth effects feel naturalistic, and the 2.40:1 image rarely suffers the type of miniaturization that often plagues 3D. This is one of the few titles that make me feel 3D is worth keeping active in my home theater.

As for the soundtrack, even without Atmos, the 5.1 mix remains a demo-worthy showcase. Surround channels get a workout as voices pan smoothly from speaker to speaker around the room whenever George Clooney’s character circles around Sandra Bullock. The film’s sound design is a remarkable study in when and how to use sound, silence, and music to build suspense. Bass also regularly throbs with satisfying authority. Atmos may add to the three-dimensional sphere of sound, but it’s hard to find any fault in this track regardless.

The 3D disc has no bonus content. The packaging boasts of “Nearly 3 hours of special features” on the standard 2D Blu-ray. Annoyingly, one of them is a forced trailer for The Hobbit before the main menu. More relevant items include a 105-minute behind-the-scenes documentary, a half-hour of Shot Breakdowns explaining how the live-action faces were integrated with the CGI of everything else, a 22-minute piece narrated by Ed Harris about real efforts to clean up space trash in Earth orbit, and a 7-minute short film by Alfonso Cuarón’s son Jonás that ties in with an important scene in Gravity.

The subsequent Diamond Luxe Edition and its eventual reissue in a normal case both add an additional soundtrack option called the “Silent Space” version that removes most of the musical score and some sound effects. I haven’t listened to it myself. Most reports from the time fell on the side of calling it an interesting gimmick, but preferred the original soundtrack when watching the movie.

Related

• George Clooney
  • Batman & Robin (1997)
  • Wolfs (2024)
• Ed Harris
  • The Abyss (1989)
  • Apollo 13 (1995) – Film at 11 podcast

Note: All screenshots on this page were taken from the standard 2D Blu-ray edition of the film and are used for illustration purposes only.