Duck Dynasty: Phil Robertson vs A&E and the right to Free Speech

First up lets get the introductions out of the way:

Read the story. The WHOLE story and don't rush through it (http://www.gq.com/entertainment/television/201401/duck-dynasty-phil-robertson) and at least a modicum of the comments. Really you will get the whole picture in a nutshell. Bottom line, a big city reporter goes into a backwoods La. fundamental christians home and asks his opinion on sin, writes a story about it and sits back to watch the fireworks. There is a bit more than that which is why I ask you actually take the time to read the entire article. The reporter seems equally fascinated and repulsed by his experience. The bit about why he voted for Romney over Obama is perhaps the most personally damaging thing Phil said in the whole article from my personal bent on life. Go read it if you are interested in what that was about...

Now I have no delusions of 'solving' this one. This issue is now so far beyond the actual facts of the case it is laughable. It is now a rallying cry on both sides of the issue to use Phil and his opinions as a  as bogey man or saint/hero depending on how you view the debate. I am just throwing my thoughts out there. Do with them what you will. 

First up... Phil's freedom of speech has not been infringed upon. No federal or state government action has been taken to restrict his freedom, IE arrest him and lock him up, based on his comments. Phil expressed his freedom of speech, GQ expressed their freedom of the press and A&E.... did what? That to me is the question. If Phil signed a contract with wording on the lines of something slippery like 'Will not embarrass A&E' or some such and A&E decides his public statements contradict his contract then all they did was (intelligently or not) enforce their contractual rights to control a product they produce (Duck Dynasty show). And they will face the consequences of that decision.

That said should they have suspended him over this? I don't think so. Is Phil a saint? No way, and in his own words no way. He is one of many in this world to royally foul up their life and to restore it at least partially on the foundation of christian faith. It makes for a great story, and the Robertson family plays fantastic on TV. Here is hoping the golden goose was not slain for all involved, Phil, A&E, DD cast and all their fans of which I am one.

So Who's side am I on? Neither really. I am munching popcorn watching a freakin greek tragedy in the news at this point. Phil has the right to believe in Christ and to lead the life he feels that requires. A&E has the right to distance themselves from his interpretation or how they think it reflects on them. The LGBT and non-Chirstian community has the right to express their disapproval. And everyone else has the right to choose to watch/ban/support the results as they see fit. In a nutshell, it is ultimate Americana at its finest as I see it. 

And that is that as far as it goes with the story of Phil Robertson and the GQ interview. The rest of this is in response to what I see as a particularly insidious thread of discussion I have seen in numerous comment threads about this issue where it often devolves into this notion that Phil being suspended from DD is a case of 'True' Americans (aka Christians) being beat down by liberal sinners. So where do I stand on that mess? in general I stand on the side of the American system. But what does that mean to me? 

It means if anyone takes up Phil's opinions and those same passages in the bible and wants to make them the 'law of the land', that is something to which I will take sides on. If someone wants to try and ban the teaching of the bible and punish those that try and follow it, that is something which I will take sides on. I believe strongly in the freedom to choose for yourself. But, I draw the line at legally forcing others to believe as you. That is not what 'Freedom' in America is about. The concept of individual freedom as defined in America is hard. Believing it means accepting Christians, Homosexuals, KKK members, Atheists, Men, Women, Hindi, Buhddists, Politicians, Lawyers, Car salesmen, Muslims, Athletes, Telemarketers, Geeks etc... all as equally American. Believing in Christ does not make you any more American than someone that does not. Preferring sex with your own gender does not make you more American than those that prefer sex with the opposite gender. I don't know about the rest of you, but personally I struggle with accepting Telemarketers...

The founding of this nation was on the belief that all are created equal and possessing of inalienable rights such as to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Nowhere in our founding documents of our government does it state what sexual orientation you are required to follow to be American. It most certainly does not specify a mandatory religious belief in order to be American, only that you are free from government persecution of your religion. 

For those that hold we were founded by Christians for Christians... I would like to hear your thoughts on why such deeply christian men chose to so carefully avoid specifically calling out God and the teachings of Christ in our founding government documents? Then for bonus points tackle Thomas Jefferson and his personally edited edition of the Bible (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible). This one is particularly thorny if you believe the King James Bible or what it is founded on or one of its derivatives to be the indisputable word of God in its entirety. 

The story of Christianity and this nation goes back well before its founding. Our founders saw religion and governments as essentially being incompatible and mixing them doomed to create strife. The history of the Crusades was much fresher for them. Governments had only recently managed to effectively separate themselves from the rule of the Pope. The issue of different stripes of Christianity being at war because of the implications of who held power was not just a matter of debate but one of imminent threat in the world. As a result they attempted to deal with (diffuse) what was seen as the inevitable friction of any religious belief and governments. The result was the so called 'separation of church and state'. This separation was held as essential by those same said deeply religious founders. They in effect said 'We will found a government that keeps its nose OUT of religion, in return for religion keeping its nose OUT of government'.  

Building our government on the concept that church and state need to be separated did not make these men any more or less Christian than they were. But it most certainly does mean this country (in the sense of its governmental structure) was emphatically NOT founded as Christian. Else we would resemble early New England theocracies (which lead to things like the Salem Witch trials) rather than what we do have. Another thing to keep in mind is that the constitution was our SECOND attempt at forming a foundation for our nation. The first were the articles of confederation. Both the first attempt of the Articles of Confederation and the eventual Constitution were both equally and conspicuously 'godless' in structure and wording. In fact the Constitution as it originally existed did not touch on religion at all. Remember that freedom of religion is a first amendment right. In other words it was the first change to the original document. And that change was not to specifically protect a particular denomination of Christianity, nor to specifically protect generically only the followers of Christ. It was an open ended protection of religion. Thus with not one, but two attempts at building the foundation for our government, the sentiment to include any overt christian doctrine into our government structure was not strong enough to succeed. 

It was not until the first amendment to the second attempt that religion was addressed at all and that amendment can basically be construed as constitutionally asserting that we all had to just agree to disagree (live and let live) when it came to religion... Think about that. 

Ok, enough ranting. I wrote the above before A&E relented on the idea of suspending Phil from DD. Was good to see the family back each other on potential pain of losing significant money. Back to happy happy happy time. 

Movie Review: Enders Game

Spoiler Alert: as usual when I talk about a movie I talk about anything and everything, and that normally means spoilers if you have not seen it yet. You have been warned.

I did not hold out much hope for this movie. Short version of this review is I was not disappointed. There have been worse adaptations of beloved scifi books (iRobot I am looking at you) but Ender does a lot to give them a run for their money. That said, what I hope to provide here is an inkling of what was lost. Granted that is hard to do with this story. The story of ender is one that speaks to a lot of different people in a lot of different ways. Thus what was lost for me may not be what was lost for others. Be that as it may, here goes....

Disclaimers:
I am not going to get to deep into the thorny subject that is Orson Scott Card. Google his name and controversy and you will be provided more results than you would likely care to read on the subject. All in all I personally tend to separate the artist from the results of their labor. Thus I in no way support the mans personal views in loving some of his books.

The Good:
I know it is a cliche to say the visual effects of present movies are astounding... but they are. Ender's Game presented two primary challenges to any movie making attempt. The visual concepts presented and the almost continual inner monologue of Ender due to his multi faceted isolation from other characters. Thankfully they largely nailed the visuals... 1 out of 2 ain't bad in some things. I won't bother to nitpick the battle school layout. The book clearly indicates multiple battle rooms as opposed to the single one depicted in the movie but it wasn't a super critical element. However, dropping that kind of detail is a pretty common theme. Another minor issue introduced by this is the logical disconnect regarding how in the world Petra and Ender would ever have been in that battle room alone if it was the only place to practice for a whole station crammed full of type A over achieving wunderkids looking to one up each other.

Harrison Ford as Graf. This was a great selection in casting. And unlike the insurmountable challenge handed Asa Butterfield and the script writers in depicting Ender, the character of Graf translates well to screen. Mostly because he is a relatively thin character steeped in authority figure cliches, But Ford brings the needed gravitas and sensitivity to the role of the hard line 'do what it takes to survive' character without being utterly detestable in the process. Something that is largely lost in the transition to screen is how Graf was deliberately sacrificing the Battle School program in order to forge Ender as the weapon that was needed. Some of the lines are there... but not the exposition needed to put them in context. Part of the clean up in the book at the end was the fact Graf was put on trial (think Nuremberg tribunal) for his part in the war.

Asa Butterfield as Ender. As deplorable as I found the overall package, I think he did a great job with what he had. It isn't his fault nobody has figured out how to credibly do in depth inner monologue in a movie. It is a fundamental reason why a lot of books fail as movie translations. Books work great for inner strife. Movies have no real good way to portray it in a sensible manner. A good case in point here is the 'mind game'. Enders interaction with the game is a central salient point to the story, and to future stories in the series but it is largely chopped in favor of the battle sequences.... but without understanding how Ender is thinking in the mind game, his decisions in the battle room and in the Formic battles have very little context. In other words... in the book you understand what and why Ender does what he does. In the Movie all you have is the observation of what he does in one (albeit key) circumstance without the inner 'why'. Trying to parse the part where Ender goes through the eye of the giant from the movie without the benefit of the book you would probably just think he was a one hell of a cold fish calculating his options. In the book the sequence of events shows him to be anything but.

The So So:

Both of Enders primary physical confrontations with Bullies are oddly manipulated and they avoid having Ender kill them as he does in the book. They also leave out two other more minor skirmishes from the book,  the breaking of Bernard's arm in the shuttle and injuring of some kids trying to gang up on him and other launchies while practicing in the battle room. I think the manipulations amount to the same absurdity as the re-release of ET where the men in black had their shotguns replaced with walkie talkies. At least in ET it was a meaningless change to be more PC, it isn't like the guns were used in the original. Here it is a pretty critical change in how Ender perceives his own actions. Of the two depicted scenes, the interaction with Stilson (opening school bully) was more true to the book but it was tamed down. In the book Ender goes after more than just kicking him in the ribs when he is down. The fight with Bonzo was another story. In the book Ender thinks Bonzo is sent home. The odd thing is deciding to have Ender know Bonzo is possibly a vegetable. I assume the problem was they couldn't really figure out a way to have them go down without the audience either knowing they are definitely dead (the book does not reveal it until a bit after the fight with Bonzo) or not believe they died. People are clued to 'movie death'. It also would affect their perception of Ender as they would assume he knows he killed them if they 'dropped dead'. Thus if you clue the audience in during the fight they will think Ender knows, if you don't they will not like the 'bait and switch' of later being told they died. Again this was a story telling mechanism that worked in the book, but not on film. In the book Ender knows he hurt them both very badly (and possibly more...) but the response of the adults is to tell Ender he just hurt them instead of the fact they are both dead. Ender finds out at the end of the book when he is able to review testimony from Graf's trial after they made him an Admiral for his defeat of the Buggers (Formics).

The focus on the kids as the answer. Battle school is the start of training for the space fleet in the Book, not the end of training. Regardless of the 'master plan' to 'simulate' the encounters with the Formics, the kids do not go to the Battle school expecting to fight. They go thinking it is the first step. At least two other levels of training are listed in the book before they would expect to be in actual command in combat. And the ages line up more with typical expectations of military action (18+), if not with the expectation of command positions. From Ender's perspective in the book he is forced forward by circumstance, not by design. I put this in So So because this was something of a weak point in Cards story. After all they knew how long it would take the ships to get there. By all reasonable logic they would have gone with the best commander well before that time rather than continuing with trying to pluck the genius from the ranks of boys at battle school and risk having them not ready by the time they knew confrontation had to start. It was a thin plot device to have a young person get there at just the right time. The feel I get from the book is that they always intended to do the real battle as a simulation. But that the range of candidates was very wide. It was just that they didn't get the results they were looking for until the very end, and it still took Graf forcing the issue to get Ender to the battle in time.

The move of Mazer Rackam from battle fleet commander in a space battle to a fighter pilot in an atmospheric battle... and still calling him the commander. Non-sense. I guess someone thought the battle would look cooler if he was in a plane. To pile on more idiocy to this when he brings up his 'HUD' image for Ender to evaluate it is absolutely ludicrous to think someone was in a fighter jet yanking and banking in the furball to end all furballs and he picked through the random Rorschach blot of sensor images to pick out the 'subtle hint of a central ship'. On the fly. Sure he was a genius and that is the hand waving unspoken answer. But it is absurd. There was no reason to change it other than that is what Hollywood does. Anyway...

The Bad:

The time limit. 2 hours was just not enough. 3 hours might have given enough room to get some of it right with still leaving out the important Valentine/Peter subplot. Really it should have been two movies minimum. The first through the end of battle school. The second dealing with Valentine/Peter, Command School and the fall out of the Command School 'graduation' battle. This would have let them deal with the mind game/Hive queen link and expanded on the battle school environment enough to actually have folks understand it. As is they were so rushed they had no way to really show the way in which Ender grew. How he was beat down by the stress they put on him. How he struggled with becoming a weapon.

Why move Ender to the Alien system? This was a breakdown of epic proportions. After the Formic (Bugger) invasion, Earth makes two major technical leaps that are not general knowledge. Especially to the kids at battle school. One is the Ansible which is mentioned only in a horrible line that makes zero sense in the context of the book or in terms of how it is used. The Ansible is a McGuffin with a thin scientific backing. The basic idea is for FTL (faster than light) communications. Or in this case instant communication across any distance via some undefined method utilizing quantum entangled pairs. Google it... and if you then think you understand it you haven't read enough. Suffice it to say the effect exists, but the thought is there is no way to actually utilize it for communication (at least for now).  If the method for utilizing it is ever actually derived it has some interesting ramifications, one case of which Card was exploring in this and other books in the Ender series.  The line in the movie is that they moved Ender to the alien world so that they would be in 'Ansible range' implying... well I am not sure what they were implying because it makes no sense if you understand the concept Card had for the Ansible.


The failure of properly using the Bean character. This was humped by the 2 hour deal. In the Book Bean isn't in Ender's launch class. He is in a class behind Ender... which is ultimately important to his story. What kills me is they screwed it both for the newbies and the fans of the book. Not doing Bean right is a problem in the story, doing it wrong is sacrilege for the Fans. It honestly might have been better if they had just left him out and spent a bit more time developing Alai. As is they spent more time on Petra than either of them... probably because that let them have a Boy Girl interaction for audience targeting reasons. At least they didn't have to fabricate that training sequence. In the book Petra is important, but she is definitely secondary. Bean comes in late and grows fast. In a way he is Ender looking at and interacting with himself... and if you are familiar with the concept of cycles of violence in domestic violence (ie parent beats\abuses child who becomes a parent who beats\abuses child etc...) the Bean|Ender dynamic is particularly poignant as you see Ender doing to Bean what is\was being done to him. Bean ends up being the only person other than Valentine (his sister) that Ender ever confides in.

I get that in the time allotted they ditched the Peter (aka Machiavelli's 'Prince' incarnate) takes over  the world (with help from Valentine) story. But that should have been a reason to go... you know we really can't do this in one go, and damn sure can't do it in two hours. The problem is by doing so they pulled the Earth from the story and lost any sense of the bigger picture. Unforgivable.

Finally... the watering down of the complex issues. Enders Game the book was powerful because it was not black and white. Many folks read it and take different things away from it. The movie shortcuts it to a common perception instead of leaving the ugly shades of grey on the table for the audience to mull through on their own. Ender is by no means happy with what he has done. But he is not so sure it was the wrong thing to do either. That inner torment is the basis of the further stories with his character. Enders Game is just the setup to some serious Sci Fi based navel gazing on some pretty complicated issues. The movie trys to hand you a fully digested answer... again, unforgivable.

Conclusions:

The Movie is a mess both for the uninitiated and for fans of the book. For the uninitiated its like watching a movie built from every third page of the book... IE there is often no linking of materials, little to no context for some of the lines.  On second thought, make that every 10th page, and every other one is a bastardized script piece trying to fix the fact they are only showing a 10th of the material. For Fans it is a constant barrage of "hey cool they nailed something" followed by several "WTF?" moments.

Suggestions?

For once I really don't think I have any ideas how they could have done this one. To tell the story from Ender's point of view properly in a movie is going to take a break through movie concept that cracks the code of inner monologue. By remaining true to the perspective of the book the movie was doomed because Ender does not get to externalize his discussions with himself. No win scenario.

However.... if you give up on trying to do the story from Ender's perspective some interesting options pop up. Harrison Ford could have carried off the role of primary lighting rod for the story. While using his perspective as the focus would alter the story presentation to the audience considerably... it would afford much better opportunity to bring the various elements of what is happening to Ender out into more traditional dialog. In the story Graf is the one who sees Ender. He understands what is driving him. He knows he is not a stone cold killer etc... But in the book he does not have to spend time justifying it because we have Enders inner monologue while Graf's dialog is often just moving things along. Take Ender's monologue out of his head and re-script it as conversations Graf has to have to get Ender through the process while others want to pull him and you might have something.

Would that idea work? I dunno. It would be a HUGE leap to pitch "Ender's Game" as a movie only to tell the story largely from Graf's point of view with non cannon characters created to provide Ender's inner voice via dialog. The delivery becomes very different, but the content could have been much more true to the story. There is some precedent for it. Amadeus was a fantastic movie that externalized the genius of Amadeus and did so primarily via the use of a third party perspective.

Gravity: It is not just the law... it is now a major motion picture! *Spoilers*

As usual if you haven't seen the flick and don't want any spoilers you have been warned. 

So, someone finally decided to do a contemporary space movie. Apparently the director has held onto this idea as the special effects technology to properly portray it matured. Apollo 13 is the last time somone really tried to tackle a realistic micro G environment and the useage there was very limited in comparison to what was done here.

What is it: Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in space, stuff goes wrong and they try to survive. No Aliens. No Traitor. No robots run amok. No evil coporation. No time travel... no to all the really tired cliche's that riddle almost all movies set in space. FINALLY

The Good:

This is a tour de force of current bad day scenarios facing folks that get shot into orbit. About the only thing they didn't bring into the picture was radiation exposure. For the most part they do not lay them on to thick.... for holywood that is. I think they could have done without the final Chineese station bit, or at least not the de-orbiting bit... more on that later. 

The effects are stunning and represent the first worthwhile use of 3d in my opinion. The depth of field adds a lot to give a better feel of space. Perhaps the highest praise I can add is this is the first movie I have seen in 3d that I think would be less of a movie in 2d. Epic vistas of earth are nothing new but here the earth is shown to great effect and the depth of field makes it something I haven't seen before... and that is damn rare in mainstream entertainment these days. Sign me up for watching this on an Oculus Rift where there would be no annoying 3d glasses crap.

Pacing is damn good. Reading some of the early reviews I expected 2 hours of Bullock screaming and hyperventillating. While there is a good dose of that I can't say it was excessive considering the situations depicted. Many complained no Astronaut would come so unglued. I can only imagine they ignored, or simply didn't catch the whole opening dialog (easy to understand with the visuals) establishing that she wasn't just green, she was primairly there because of her expertise regarding Hubble. To put this in perspective... most astronauts spend years in training before getting a mission. Bullock's character is supposedly up there after 6 months including vacation time. Mission control defers to her on matters of the Hubble. Translation, the mission was such the expert was on location with the absolute bare minimum training required to get her there as opposed to supporting the misssion from the ground (most realisitc situation). I imagine if this were a book you would have had plenty of exposition explaining why this was the case. For a movie you get a couple of lines in the middle of insane visual candy right before a major set piece action sequence. It is a more realistic situation than say Bruce Willis and his drilling buddies going through a montage... but it is in the same vein.

The So So:

For the most part I think I will use this to cover the more egregious goofs. For Holywood, especially for space flicks, this is very minor stuff in the grand scheme of things. Don't take the harping wrong... this movie was done VERY well. I point these particular issue out because I think there were better alternatives.

First up is the 'everything is right here' conjunction of the set pieces. We start off with a Hubble repair mission by a space shuttle. Real enough. But after our bad thing happens and Bullock is tumbling around and asked to call things out she points out ISS and a Chineese station as points of reference. Now Hubble is in an orbit at the outer limits of Shuttle capacity at around 400 miles up. ISS runs at around 200 miles up... so in other words if they were as close as they could possibly be it would be difficult to see ISS. Even if they were in the same orbit they would not maintain relative positions for very long. As it so happens they are not in the same orbital inclinations and any conjunctions would be extremely breif with a closest apporach of a couple hundred miles. The Chineese station would also be in a different inclination. While I suppose it is possible some strange conflux of timing could put them all within a few hundred miles or so of each other, in reality such a conjunction would be very fleeting. I believe it was theoretically possible for a shuttle to divert to station from Hubble. In fact I believe that was a requirement of the last Hubble service mission as a reaction to Columbia... but it was a prohibitive requirement to the point that it is laughable to think an EVA jetpack could be used to match orbits between the two. Great story bit... not so good on the realism. How could it have been made to work? Really couldn't have if the idea was to bridge the orbits with the EVA pack. Even if it had the delta V to make the orbital change the precision needed is on the order of shooting a bullet with a bullet at insane range. How about a shuttle that is depressurized and damaged (ie no comms) but still has a functional OMS ? They could  have used the gimped shuttle unable to survive re-entry to make it over to ISS. Once they got there they could have been unable to dock for any number of reasons... and thus would have had a reasonable situation for Clooney and Bullock to use the MMU pack to make it the 'last mile'. Of course that ruins Clooney's running gag about the EVA record but at a small cost for realism. You still get to have him sacrifice himself on the final translation etc... This also would  have allowed for dealing with more realistic orbits and have them talking about catching ISS on the next orbit and burning at the right time etc... Real stuff... same story. Think Apollo 13 when they had to manually burn to make the return from the moon. I think it would have worked but I'm biased I suppose. 

Second up is the super debris field. This provided the big bad 'thing' that could never really be prepared for. The catalyst is that the Russians blow up their own sattelite in orbit and that the debris of that explosion causes a chain reaction of other sattelites being hit and thus creating a bigger and bigger debris field.  The threat of this is realistic enough.... even the idea of a nation shooting down their own sattelite (China and the US both did it a few years back). In fact the basic idea here is real enough... just not the timescale or manner in which it is depicted occuring in.  A pretty common Holywood conciet. In reality such a debris field would not remain so concentrated. Newton's first law at work would keep the cloud expanding. Still dangerous and there is a strong theory about a critical level of space debris after which such collisions would lead to a level of debris making space flight far more dangerous. That aside, the most egregious mistake here was the idea of the comm sats being knocked out by the same event that leads to the destruction of the shuttle. Comm sats in general, and particularly those used for space communications for NASA, are in geo syncronous orbit. The escalating debris field is used as an excuse to cut communications from the ground in addition to destroying the shuttle. This is particularly absurd as geo sync orbit is some 22k miles away from earth where our story is taking place at 300 or so miles up. An event at one orbital plane would not significantly impact what is happening in the other.  All in all I think they would have done better just to have severed comm with the ground based on the destruction of the shuttle's comm system. The astronaut EVA comm system is a short range UHF system that relys on the shuttle/ISS comm links for relay to the ground. In short they are walkie talkies, not sattelite cell phones. Killing the shuttle's comm system is more realistic, and creates the same effect. As for the short fuse of the escalating situation.... don't have the first call saying it isn't an issue. Have the initial event cause the emergency evac and problem. That leaves you having to think about how you then escalate the situation into an immediate issue for ISS. But the idea that the initial event could impact both ISS and shuttle in Hubble's orbit is a lot less far fectched than the idea of taking out geo sync comm sats just minutes after the initial event in a low earth orbit. 

The low altitude of the Chineese station. It adds the final bit of drama on getting down from space but it is patently absurd and the flimsiest bit of the movie. I suppose they went there instead of going back to the debris field as a threat to keep Bullock moving to avoid repetition. Or perhaps it was just more dramatic. I won't even go into the fire extinguisher and silly soyuz separation sequence while in the middle of re-entry non-sense. Certainly makes for a good yarn though. Alternative? Avoid the Chinese station to begin with.

The spare Soyuz at ISS. This one is a bit of nitpick but as I know a bit about ISS ops (pays my bills actually) I have to point out there has never been or is there likely to ever be a situation where there would be a 'surplus' capacity of Soyuz seats in an ISS evacuation scenario. If the crew of ISS successfully evacuated there would not be a Soyuz left. A more realistic and really crazy Hollywood style solution to this would have been to make use of a SpaceX dragon capsule. Musk designed them with the idea of them being man rated. They are pressurized and designed to return and be re-useable. That is a possibility just begging for a Mgyver solution that gets a crewmemeber back safely in a semi realistic manner. Honestly the idea of using an EVA suit inside a dragon to return to earth is far more reaslitic than not one, but two man rated vehicles being left in orbit at two unmanned stations.

Lastly... nobody trained for space would float by a fire of any size without re-acting to it. Related... the soyuz hatch opened inwards to station and the fire depicted is massive. Look up the Apollo 1 disaster details. Air pressure would have skyrocketed and opening the hatch would likely have been impossible. The fire didn't have to be so showy to be dramatic. And it could still have provided ample reason for why ISS wasn't a suitable safe haven.

So... to re-cap. In an alternate reality where I was the technical consultant for this movie I would have the opening sequence unaltered except for having the initial event causing direct danger to the repair mission. In the initial debris incident the shuttle would have been largely incapacitated, dead crew etc... and no comm. But the core flight functions and OMS (orbital manouevering system) would have been intact. Clooney retrieves Bullock and Clooney gets shuttle from Hubbles Orbit to ISS orbit. Once there ISS has been abanndoned and struck by debris. It suffered some, but not as much damage as shuttle, Comunications with the ground are out, solar panels are not providing power, battery power is running out. Clooney is unable to dock the shuttle with station for any number of reasons forcing them to translate from shuttle to station by using the MMU (jetpack). Something goes wrong and Clooney is lost leaving Bullock to do her unassisted station EVA. There is no Soyuz left, damaged or otherwise. Once inside she fights off issues with the stations encounter with the debris field... puts out a fire etc... realizes there are no options at station for getting home. IE it isn't going to work as a life boat and she still does not have comm with the ground. So she still gives up and has her dog howling conversation via HAM radio and hallucination etc... But her revelation is not using the Soyuz soft landing jets to perform an orbital maneuver, but realizing the Dragon module still attached to station is designed to surive re-entry, it just does not have a life support system. Then she uses her supposed computer skills established in the opening to hacking the Dragon module to initiate a reuturn sequence with her inside it using a space suit for life support. No change to the ending other than substituting the dragon for the splash down in place of the Shenzou.

This is by no means making the movie hyper realistic, just gets it a fair amount closer to plausible. But as I said, in the grand scheme of movie magic nonsense this one is pretty tolerable as is. 

The bad: 

Nothing super awful... The Milf scene with Bullock shucking her suit in a few seconds was pretty out there but certainly made for a nice visual. Cheesecake shot vs reality... Yeah we know which way Holywood is going with that one. To be fair it was a powerful image and I did not get the sense it was there just for titillation. And if the worst I have to complain is getting to oggle Bullock in her undies I hope that helps you appreciate just how good I think this flick is.

Conclusion: 

This one will be one I own when it comes out. It is worth the price of admission.