"Gravity. They say you can't fight it. Well, I disagree. What if love was stronger than gravity?"
— Adam
Upside Down is a 2012 sci-fi/romance film dealing with life in a rather unique planetary system. There are two planets, the downtrodden Down Below and the prosperous Up Top, which have opposite gravities due to a physical phenomenon known as "dual gravity". Contact between the worlds is usually forbidden. Things change when Adam (Jim Sturgess), from the Down Below, falls in love with Eden (Kirsten Dunst), from Up Top…
This film contains examples of:
- Amnesiac Lover: Adam and Eden were in love. In the beginning, Eden suffers from head trauma, leading to amnesia. When Adam finds her at Transworld she doesn't recognize him at first.
- Artistic License – Physics: Double gravity. The film runs on it (see Rule of Three below). Makes for an awesome concept, though.
- Ascetic Aesthetic: The cubicle area of the Transworld building's Floor Zero.
- Babies Ever After: In the end, Adam and Eden are reunited and Eden tells Adam that she is pregnant with twins.
- Babies Make Everything Better: The babies conceived by Adam and Eden bring together Up Top and Down Below.
- Bilingual Bonus: The Café Dos Mundos—Two Worlds Café.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The suits at Transworld are different colors depending upon if you're from Up Top or Down Below.
- Conveniently an Orphan: Adam is an orphan, so he has nothing to lose and he can leave everything to find back his lover Eden.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: The top executive of Transworld is the big bad of the film.
- Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario: Adam tries to charm Eden, who is amnesiac. He is quite successful, until the presentation of the cream, where Eden understands that he uses a fake identity and that he is from Down Below. They become reconciled later in Dos Mundos Café, because Eden recovers old memories of Adam.
- Cool Old Guy: Two, both of whom help Adam out in their own ways.
- Albert, from Down Below, with the business he runs. He lets Adam experiment with the pink pollen and, despite his reservations, helps Adam sneak Up Top to meet with Eden.
- Bob Baruchowitz, an employee of Transworld from Up Top. He befriends Adam and assists him both with getting on his feet in the company and with meeting with Eden. He also figures out how to make the pink pollen workable, and buys the patent for it out from under Transworld's noses—in Albert & Co.'s name.
- Crapsack World: Down Below is far worse-off than Up Top. Up Top, through Transworld, even sucks all the oil out of it.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The whole movie's premise is a less than subtle metaphor for social inequality.
- Easy Amnesia: Eden gets this. In the beginning of the film she suffers from head trauma, leading to amnesia. When Adam finds her at Transworld she doesn't recognize him at first.
- Good Samaritan: Bob Baruchowitz, an employee of Transworld from Up Top. He befriends Adam and assists him both with getting on his feet in the company and with meeting with Eden.
- In a Single Bound: Inverse matter can help you pull this off.
- A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...: Adam narrates at the start saying it's set on a unique to the universe two planet system.
- Meaningful Name: Adam and Eden.
- MegaCorp: Transworld. They have a lot of clout, and Adam loses his parents (and, perhaps, his Aunt Becky) because of them.
- Mundane Utility: You've got a formula for weight-canceling stuff that doesn't burn like regular inverse matter? Turn it into a beauty cream!
- Oh, Crap!: Eden walks in on Adam's presentation of the beauty cream. He tries to turn around and avoid her seeing him, but she addresses him by Bob's name. From this, Transworld catches on that he's been using Bob's ID to get to Up Top—not to mention how Eden takes it when he says that she must be confused.
- One-Night-Stand Pregnancy: Adam and Eden have sex once on the top of a mountain. Eden gets pregnant with twins.
- Planetville: It's not mentioned if other parts of the planets have towns that aren't facing eachother.
- Plot Hole: Inverse matter seems only to obey the third law when it's (in)convenient. There's some hints that at least some types of organic matter may be immune, though. Still doesn't explain how the Transworld building or the oil pipelines don't spontaneously combust, though—or, for that matter, the food designed with the double-gravity in mind.
- Rule of Three: Three laws of the double-planet system:
- 1. Objects are affected by the gravity of the world they come from, not the other world.
- 2. An object's weight can be offset using inverse matter (matter from the other world).
- 3. Inverse matter burns after a couple hours' contact with normal matter.
- However, these rules can be ignored as the plot requires. For example, eating food from the other planet doesn't cause one to spontaneously combust a few hours later, and smooching with offworlders seems to work OK as well.
- Scenery Porn: Lots of it when both Up Top and Down Below are juxtaposed, be it an exterior shot or on the interior of the Transworld building.
- Soft Water: When Adam is falling out of the Up Top ocean into the Down Below ocean.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Adam and Eden comes from two different worlds and contact between these is usually forbidden. To make things worse, Eden is amnesiac.
- Tidally Locked Planet: The two planets are tidally locked to eachother to the point where a skyscraper bridges them with gravity flipping halfway. They seem to orbit eachother to generate a day/night cycle.
- Uptown Girl: Eden is from Up Top, where everybody is rich, and Adam is from Down Below, where everybody is poor. They fall in love.
- Zero-G Spot: Happens between Adam and Eden.
