Awesome responses everyone. My family gives me haughty derision every time I watch it. My reply is that at least it's not Saw or The Human Centipede.
I too loved the movie, and have seen it many times.
I always thought the promenade was one of the out-riggers that is spinning, therefore gravity. The central "spine" (core? axis?) of teh ship was just that, an axis. but eh bridge doesn't rotate, so that's missing gravity.. One was storage, one was the promenade / public spaces, and the last being the quarters & rooms..
I figured it was in the center because of the size and view out the top, but makes sense it's in one of the outriggers because of the transport passing through the center. The arms don't line up so the transport would have to go around the center. There could be a transfer station in the middle but it would be zero G.
I always figure the asteroid & pieces thereof managed to hit the main relay for J's pod, therefore it went into 'failsafe' mode and awoke him. G awoke due to medical issues that the ship / his pod was monitoring.
Imagine if it was the midwife that was awaken instead. I suspect the midwife was included in the scene to point this out. It also makes me wonder if there was a reason for awaking J. The original trailer had Pratt doing a voiceover saying "There was a reason why they woke us up." implying there was an evil presence onboard. Personally, I'm glad they didn't go this route because that plot has been beaten to death, the best being Event Horizon.
J could only eat the 'K rations' yet seemed to have full access to the restaurants & bar..
I do wonder the day he got his rely message, what the reaction was! And what instructions he was given!
I was also somewhat surprised there were no "kids" to greet the awaking crew (when they got to their destination..)
I've wondered about that too. Did the restaurants have limited supplies (4 months times 1000 to 5000 passengers)? When did they have to resort to gardens and animals to replenish the stocks? I don't imagine the passengers were too pissed about it after learning they saved the ship from destruction.
I'm not sure what the reaction would be. The trip takes 120 years and 250 years round trip with relativistic effects. They've been doing this for what, 700 years. With advancing technology, could a faster ship catch up to them?
The children were hiding behind the tree, obviously.
No one's mentioned the improbability of reaching Arcturus after 31 years at half the speed of light?
SPOILER ALERT!!!!
The technical aspects of the movie were interesting - I found the plot borderline nasty - Pratt’s character more or less kidnaps Jennifer Lawrence’s character. Yeah, I know he comes up with a solution for her survival but if he hadn’t committed a rather selfish and lousy act in the first place he wouldn’t need to “fix” things in the end. That Lawrence’s character makes the choice that she does really doesn’t let him off the hook.
But the spaceship, space travel and technical stuff was good enough to not get too worked up over the plot - most movie plots aren’t very good anyway.
Would it have been better if J died and ironically A had to live on the ship alone? Would she have awoken another passenger (if possible) or would she have flushed herself out to space?
BTW, I suspect that nothing woulda happened if J had pressed the airlock button because the ship woulda known he didn't have a suit on. If he had pressed the button and it didn't work, would that have changed his decision to awaken A?
My big question if I watch the movie is would I do what J did? If I was condemned to live the rest of my years on a ship with only a half an android bartender to talk to, would I wake someone else up and condemn them with me for company? It's hard to say because I've never been in that situation. Part of me thinks I would.
The irony of story is that if he had flushed himself or not awoken A, the ship would've been destroyed, but he didn't know that at the time of waking up A. There's a retelling of the story where the ship starts to fall apart and flashbacks are used to explain how they got there. How would this have changed the tone of the movie?