Apollo 13 (film)

Apollo 13

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Ron Howard
Produced by Brian Grazer
Written by Novel:
Jim Lovell
Jeffrey Kluger
Screenplay:
William Broyles, Jr.
Al Reinert
Starring Tom Hanks
Kevin Bacon
Bill Paxton
Gary Sinise
Ed Harris
Music by James Horner
Cinematography Dean Cundey
Editing by Daniel P. Hanley
Mike Hill
Studio Imagine Entertainment
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date(s) June 30, 1995
Running time 140 minutes
IMAX: 116 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget US $52 million[1]
Gross revenue $355,237,933[2]

Apollo 13 is a 1995 American film that dramatizes the lunar mission of the same name in 1970. The screenplay by William Broyles, Jr. and Al Reinert is an adaptation of the book Lost Moon by astronaut Jim Lovell (the story's primary protagonist) and Jeffrey Kluger. The film, directed by Ron Howard, stars Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, Kathleen Quinlan and Ed Harris.

Released in the United States on June 30, 1995, Apollo 13 garnered critical acclaim and was nominated for many awards, most notably nine Academy Awards including Best Picture; it won for Best Film Editing and Best Sound Mixing.[3] In total, the film ended up grossing over $355 million worldwide during its theatrical releases.

Contents

Plot

Archival footage (narrated by Walter Cronkite) reflects on President John F. Kennedy's call to action to commit the American space program to landing a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s, as well as the tragedy of the fire in the Apollo 1 spacecraft that killed three U.S. astronauts, followed soon thereafter by America's return to space.

On July 20, 1969, veteran astronaut Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) watches Neil Armstrong's historic first steps on the moon in Apollo 11 from a party for other astronauts and their wives at his home in Houston. Lovell tells his wife, Marilyn (Kathleen Quinlan), of his intent to return to the Moon to walk on it himself.

A few months later, Lovell, expecting to fly Apollo 14, is giving a VIP tour of NASA's towering Vehicle Assembly Building while the massive Saturn V rocket is being assembled. As the VIP's question the need for any further Moon landings after beating the Soviet Union to the Moon, Lovell is informed by Deke Slayton (Chris Ellis) that he and his crew have been bumped up to be prime crew of Apollo 13.

After informing his family of his new assignment, Lovell and his crew, Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) and Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise) begin training for Apollo 13 instead of 14. As the launch date approaches, Marilyn's fears for her husband's fourth space mission are manifest in nightmares, resulting in her unwillingness to go to the launch.

Two days before launch, Lovell is informed that Mattingly had been exposed to German measles. Despite his efforts to overrule the flight surgeon's recommendations, Lovell bumps Mattingly off the flight. Mattingly is replaced by the backup Command Module Pilot Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon), much to the chagrin of Haise and Mattingly.

The night before launch, Marilyn surprises Jim by coming to Cape Kennedy to see him off, despite her fears. However, she receives another bad omen in the motel shower when her wedding ring comes off and falls down the drain.

On April 11, 1970, Lovell, Haise and Swigert are suited up for the launch. In Houston's Mission Control Center, Apollo 13 flight director Gene Kranz (Ed Harris) prepares Mission Control for the flight. After the crew has been secured inside the spacecraft, the mission is given the go ahead. During launch the center engine on the Saturn V's second stage cuts off prematurely. Lovell considers pulling the abort handle, but is told the rocket can correct for the cutoff, and a successful Earth parking orbit is reached. Lovell comments, "I think we've had our glitch for this mission."

After the third stage re-fires to send Apollo 13 to the Moon, Swigert maneuvers the Command/Service Module Odyssey to dock with the Lunar Module Aquarius and pull it away from the spent stage. Three days into the mission the crew make their first live television transmission from Odyssey, but the networks refuse to broadcast this live, since they believe the general public has come to regard lunar flight as routine.

After the transmission, as part of in-flight housekeeping, Swigert is asked to stir the liquid oxygen tanks, suddenly and unexpectedly leading to an explosion in the Service Module. The crew and Mission Control find that the oxygen tanks aboard Odyssey are leaking, prompting Mission Control to abort the Moon landing, and the crew must rush to shut down Odyssey and power up Aquarius to act as a lifeboat so the crew can get home. Their first order of business in Aquarius is to fire its engine so they will return to Earth after passing around the far side of the Moon. As Swigert and Haise are awed to see the lunar surface close up, a melancholy Lovell imagines his forever-lost first steps on the lunar surface. Meanwhile on Earth, John Aaron, a flight controller specializing in the electrical, environmental, and communication systems on the spacecraft, recruits Mattingly to help prepare procedures to restart Odyssey once the crew is near Earth.

Mission Control has to deal with more problems. To conserve the Lunar Module's limited power, the crew must shut down Aquarius and remain in the freezing cold. Swigert suspects that Mission Control hasn't given the crew a re-entry plan because they have made a mistake that can't be fixed and they don't want the crew to find out. In a fit of rage, Haise blames Swigert's inexperience for the accident, after which a full-blown argument ensues, but is quickly quelled by Lovell. Houston radios in with another problem: they must deal with the carbon dioxide being created by the three men in the two-man Aquarius. An engineering team in Houston assembles a crude method of removing the poisonous gas, fashioning an adapter that allows the Command Module's supply of air cleaners to be used in Aquarius.

As the spacecraft approaches Earth, the crew makes a risky manual course correction by burning the Lunar Module's descent engine in order to avoid skipping off Earth's atmosphere. Despite Haise's fever and freezing conditions inside the cabin, the crew succeeds in righting their wayward spacecraft. With Earth approaching, Mattingly and Aron struggle to find a way to power up the Command Module with what little power is left on the spacecraft. Finally, having realized they could draw power from the LM to the CSM to gain the amps necessary for power-up, procedures are finalized and Mattingly instructs Swigert on reviving Odyssey.

After witnessing the damage suffered by the Service Module, the crew strap in for their descent into Earth's atmosphere. With one final good-bye to Aquarius, the Lunar Module that saved their lives is jettisoned. Odyssey re-enters the Earth's atmosphere, and after over four minutes of radio ionization blackout—three minutes is normal for re-entry—the crew reports that they are alive and well. Celebration rushes through Mission Control and in the homes of the astronauts' families. After splashing down in the Pacific Ocean, the crew is plucked out of the water and taken to the USS Iwo Jima for a hero's welcome.

The film concludes with a monologue by Hanks (as Lovell) about the events that follow their return from space, including the investigation into what caused the explosion onboard the Service Module, and the later careers and lives of Haise, Swigert, Mattingly and Kranz. Lovell shakes hands with the captain of Iwo Jima (the real Jim Lovell in a cameo) as the sequence ends with "I look up at the Moon and wonder: 'When will we be going back, and who will that be?'"

Cast

Production

Pre-production and props

While preparing for the shooting of the film, director Ron Howard decided that every shot of the film would be original and that none of the actual footage from the original mission, or any other mission would be used.[4] The spacecraft interiors were constructed by the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center's Space Works, who also restored the actual Apollo 13 Command Module. Two individual lunar modules and two command modules were constructed for filming. While each was a replica, composed of some of the original Apollo materials, they were built so that different sections were removable, which enabled filming to take place inside the diminutive interior space of the capsules. Space Works also built modified command and lunar modules for filming inside a Boeing KC-135 Reduced gravity aircraft. Additionally, Space Works made the pressure suits worn by the actors, which are exact reproductions of those worn by the Apollo astronauts, right down to the details of being airtight. When the actors put the suits on with their helmets locked in place, oxygen was pumped into the suits to cool them down and allow them to breathe, in the exact manner of real astronauts.[5]

The real Mission Control room is located on the third floor of a building in Houston, Texas. NASA offered the use of the actual control room for filming but Howard declined, opting instead to make his own replica from scratch.[4][6] Production designer Michael Corenblith and set decorator Merideth Boswell were in charge of the construction of the Mission Control set at Universal Studios. Built to within six inches of the specifications of the real Mission Control in Houston, the set was equipped with giant rear-screen projection capabilities and a complex set of computers with individual video feeds to all the flight controller stations. In addition, the actors playing the flight controllers were able to communicate with each other on a private audio loop to better simulate reality.[5] The Mission Control room built for the movie was on a ground floor.[4] One NASA employee who was a consultant for the film said that the set was so realistic that he would leave at the end of the day and look for the elevator before remembering he was not actually in Mission Control.[6] By the time the film was made, the USS Iwo Jima had been scrapped, so her sister ship, the USS New Orleans, was used as the recovery ship instead.[4]

Cast training and filming

"For actors, being able to actually shoot in zero gravity as opposed to being in incredibly painful and uncomfortable harnesses for special effects shots was all the difference between what would have been a horrible moviemaking experience as opposed to the completely glorious one that it actually was.”
—Actor Tom Hanks[5]

To prepare for their roles in the film, Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, and Kevin Bacon all attended the U.S. Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. While there, astronauts Jim Lovell and David Scott, commander of Apollo 15, did actual training exercises with the actors inside a simulated Command Module and Lunar Module. The actors were also taught about each of the 500 buttons, toggles, and switches used to operate the spacecraft. The actors then traveled to Johnson Space Center in Houston where they flew in NASA's KC-135 Reduced gravity aircraft to simulate weightlessness in outer-space. While in the KC-135, filming took place in bursts of 25 seconds, the length of each weightless period that the plane performed. The filmmakers would eventually fly 612 parabolas which added up to a total of 3 hours and 54 minutes of weightlessness. Parts of the command module, lunar module and the tunnel piece that connected them were built by production designer Michael Corenblith, art directors David J. Bomba and Bruce Alan Miller and their crew to actually fit inside the KC-135 airplane. Filming in such an environment, while never done before for a movie, was a tremendous time saver. In the KC-135, the actors moved wherever they wanted, surrounded by floating props; the camera and cameraman were weightless so filming could take place on any axis from which a shot could be set up. In Los Angeles, all the actors, including Ed Harris and the others who comprise Mission Control, enrolled in a Flight Controller School led by Gerry Griffin, an Apollo 13 flight director, and flight controller Jerry Bostick. The actors studied actual audiotapes from the mission, reviewed hundreds of pages of NASA transcripts and attended a crash course in physics.[4][5]

Ron Howard stated that, after the first test preview of the film, one of the comment cards indicated "total disdain"; the audience member had written that it was a "typical Hollywood" ending and that the crew never would have survived.[7]

Soundtrack

Apollo 13: Music From The Motion Picture
Soundtrack
Released June 27, 1995
Length 72:09
Label MCA Records
Professional reviews

Apollo 13: Music From The Motion Picture is the soundtrack to the film. It was composed by James Horner and was released by MCA Records on June 27, 1995. Horner was nominated for Best Original Score at the 68th Academy Awards.

Release

Box-office performance

The film was a box-office success, gaining $355,237,933 worldwide,[2] which easily covered its production budget. The film's widest release was 2,347 theaters.[2] The film's opening weekend and the latter two weeks placed it at #1 with a domestic gross of $25,353,380, which made up 14.7% of the total domestic gross.[2]

Apollo 13 box office revenue
Source Gross (USD)  % Total All Time Rank (Unadjusted)
Domestic $173,837,933[2] 48.9% 126[2]
Foreign $181,400,000[2] 51.1% N/A
Worldwide $355,237,933[2] 100.0% 140[2]

Critical reception

Apollo 13 garnered critical acclaim and at Rotten Tomatoes, based on 51 reviews collected, the film has an overall approval rating of 96%, with a weighted average score of 8/10.[8] Among Rotten Tomatoes's Cream of the Crop, which consists of popular and notable critics from the top newspapers, websites, television and radio programs,[9] the film holds an overall approval rating of 88 percent.[10] By comparison, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized 0–100 rating to reviews from mainstream critics, calculated an average score of 85 from the seven reviews it collected.[11]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times praised the film in his review saying, "A powerful story, one of the year's best films, told with great clarity and remarkable technical detail, and acted without pumped-up histrionics."[12] Kenneth Turan of Los Angeles Times gave a somewhat positive review of the film saying, "Ron Howard, is certainly well-suited to the kind of sentimental, middle-of-the-road filmmaking of which Apollo 13 is the epitome. And because the material to a certain extent cries out for this kind of worshipful treatment, the picture stands as Howard's most impressive to date. As noted, genuine courage was involved, and Howard is effective at putting the tension and bravery of that mission on screen."[13] Richard Corliss from Time Magazine highly praised the film saying, "From lift-off to splashdown, Apollo 13 gives one hell of a ride."[14] Edward Guthmann of San Francisco Chronicle gave a somewhat negative review and wrote, "I just wish that Apollo 13 worked better as a movie, and that Howard's threshold for corn, mush and twinkly sentiment weren't so darn wide."[15] Peter Travers from Rolling Stone Magazine praised the film and wrote, "Howard lays off the manipulation to tell the true story of the near-fatal 1970 Apollo 13 mission in painstaking and lively detail. It's easily Howard's best film."[16] James Berardinelli from Reelviews highly praised the film saying, "While the events of this motion picture may depict NASA's finest hour, the release of Apollo 13 represents Ron Howard's."[17]

Home media

A 10th-anniversary DVD of the film was released in 2005; it included both the theatrical version and the IMAX version, along with several extras.[18] In 2006, Apollo 13 made its way into high-definition video formats with its release on HD DVD, and on Blu-ray disc on April 13, 2010.[18]

Awards and nominations

1996 Academy Awards (Oscars)[3][19]

1996 Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films (Saturn Awards)[19]

1996 Canadian Cinema Editors (Eddies)[19]

1996 American Society of Cinematographers[19]

1996 BAFTA Film Awards[19]

1996 Casting Society of America (Artios)[19]

1996 Chicago Film Critics Association Awards[19]

1996 Directors Guild of America[19]

1996 Golden Globe Awards[19]

1996 Heartland Film Festival[19]

1996 Hugo Awards[19]

1996 MTV Movie Awards[19]

1996 PGA Golden Laurel Awards[19]

1996 Screen Actors Guild Awards[19]

1996 Writers Guild of America Awards[19]

1996 Young Artist Awards[19]

1996 Space Foundation's Douglas S. Morrow Public Outreach Award[20]

2005 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes[21]

2006 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers[21]

Technical accuracy

The film is notable for its technical accuracy; principals reported that the film is reasonably faithful to the facts of the mission but adds some tension between the astronauts for dramatic effect.

The dialogue between ground control and the astronauts was taken verbatim from actual transcripts and recordings, with the notable exception of one of the taglines of the film, "Houston, we have a problem." (This quote was voted #50 on the list "AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes".) The actual words uttered by Jack Swigert were "Ok, Houston, we've had a problem here." Ground control responded by saying "This is Houston, say again please." Jim Lovell then repeated "Ah, Houston, we've had a problem."[22] The script changed the quote deliberately, as Lovell's actual words suggested something happening in the past rather than the present.[6] A dramatic event in the film occurs when Mrs. Lovell drops her wedding ring down a shower drain. According to Lovell, this actually did occur [6] (the Lovells refer to the incident in an interview on the DVD version of the film [6]).

Another tagline from the film, "Failure Is Not An Option", as stated by the Gene Kranz character, also became very popular but was not taken from the historical transcripts. As to the origin of the phrase, the following story was given, citing an email by Apollo 13 FDO Flight Controller Jerry Bostick:

"As far as the expression 'Failure is not an option', you are correct that Kranz never used that term. In preparation for the movie, the script writers, Al Reinart and Bill Broyles, came down to Clear Lake to interview me on 'What are the people in Mission Control really like?' One of their questions was 'Weren't there times when everybody, or at least a few people, just panicked?' My answer was 'No, when bad things happened, we just calmly laid out all the options, and failure was not one of them. We never panicked, and we never gave up on finding a solution.' I immediately sensed that Bill Broyles wanted to leave and assumed that he was bored with the interview. Only months later did I learn that when they got in their car to leave, he started screaming, 'That's it! That's the tag line for the whole movie, Failure is not an option. Now we just have to figure out who to have say it.' Of course, they gave it to the Kranz character, and the rest is history."[23]

Unlike the movie, the book, and many first person accounts, the official accident investigation report did not conclude that the oxygen tank exploded. Instead, the report described in detail the multiple safeties like pressure relief valves and rupture discs specifically designed so that the spacecraft pressure vessels would not explode. This ubiquitous misunderstanding is explained further in the Apollo 13 article.

Jim Lovell fantasizes about his lost moon landing

A DVD commentary track, recorded by Mr. and Mrs. Lovell and included with both the original and 10th-anniversary editions,[18] mentions several inaccuracies included in the film, all done for reasons of artistic license:

Discrepancies between the book and the movie:

Other discrepancies:

See also

References

  1. ↑ "CNN Showbiz News:Apollo 13". CNN. http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Movies/Apollo13/index.html. Retrieved 2009-04-09. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 "Apollo 13 (1995)". Box Office Mojo. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=apollo13.htm. Retrieved 2009-04-09. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Academy Awards, USA: 1996". awardsdatabase.oscars.org. http://awardsdatabase.oscars.org. Retrieved 2009-04-08. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Apollo 13: 2-Disc Anniversary Edition (Disc 1), Production Notes. [DVD]. Universal Studios. 2005-03-19. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 "Production Notes (Press Release)". IMAX. http://www.imax.com/apollo13/pressmaterials/ProductionNotes.pdf. Retrieved 2009-04-09. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 Apollo 13: 2-Disc Anniversary Edition (Disc 1), Special Features:Commentary track by Jim and Marilyn Lovell. [DVD]. Universal Studios. 2005-03-19. 
  7. ↑ Howard, Ron (December 8, 2008). "A conversation about the film "Frost/Nixon"". Charlie Rose show. http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9725. Retrieved 2008-12-08. 
  8. ↑ "Rotten Tomatoes – Apollo 13". Rotten Tomatoes. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/apollo_13/. Retrieved 2010-08-24. 
  9. ↑ "Rotten Tomatoes FAQ: What is Cream of the Crop". Rotten Tomatoes. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/pages/faq#creamofthecrop. Retrieved 2009-04-08. 
  10. ↑ "Apollo 13: Rotten Tomatoes' Cream of the Crop". Rotten Tomatoes. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/apollo_13/?critic=creamcrop. Retrieved 2009-04-08. 
  11. ↑ "Apollo 13: Reviews". Metacritic. CNET Networks. http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/apollo13imax?q=apollo%2013. Retrieved 2009-04-08. 
  12. ↑ "Apollo 13: Roger Ebert". Chicago Suntimes. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F19950630%2FREVIEWS%2F506300301%2F1023&AID1=%2F19950630%2FREVIEWS%2F506300301%2F1023&AID2=. Retrieved 2009-04-11. 
  13. ↑ "Apollo 13: Movie Review". Los Angeles Times. http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/reviews/cl-movie960406-177,0,1161072.story. Retrieved 2009-04-11. 
  14. ↑ "Apollo 13:Review". Time Magazine. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/archive/1995/950703/950703.cinema.html. Retrieved 2009-04-11. 
  15. ↑ "Apollo 13 Review:Story heroic, but it just doesn't fly.". San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1995/06/30/DD35698.DTL. Retrieved 2009-04-11. 
  16. ↑ "Apollo 13 Review:Rolling Stone". Rolling Stone Magazine. http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/5948373/review/5948374/apollo_13. Retrieved 2009-04-11. 
  17. ↑ "Review:Apollo 13". Reelviews.net. http://www.reelviews.net/movies/a/apollo13.html. Retrieved 2009-04-11. 
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 "Apollo 13 the Movie – Buy the Special Anniversary DVD Release of Apollo 13 Starring Tom Hanks and Kevin Bacon on DVD". Universal Studios. http://www.apollo13dvd.com/. Retrieved 2009-04-08. 
  19. ↑ 19.00 19.01 19.02 19.03 19.04 19.05 19.06 19.07 19.08 19.09 19.10 19.11 19.12 19.13 19.14 19.15 "Apollo 13 (1995)-Awards". IMDB. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112384/awards. Retrieved 2009-04-13. 
  20. ↑ "Symposium Awards". National Space Symposium. http://www.nationalspacesymposium.org/symposium-awards. Retrieved 2009-04-26. 
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 "AFI's 100 years...100 quotes". AFI. http://www.afi.com/docs/tvevents/pdf/quotes100.pdf. Retrieved 2009-04-13. 
  22. ↑ "Audio recording from Apollo 13 mission with Swigert then Lovell stating, "...Houston, we've had a problem..."". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vZa7g14F-Y. Retrieved April 4, 2010. 
  23. ↑ "ORIGIN OF APOLLO 13 QUOTE:"FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION."". SpaceActs.com. http://www.spaceacts.com/notanoption.htm. Retrieved April 4, 2010. 

External links

Films directed by Ron Howard
1970s
Grand Theft Auto (1977)
1980s
Night Shift (1982) • Splash (1984) • Cocoon (1985) • Gung Ho (1986) • Willow (1988) • Parenthood (1989)
1990s
Backdraft (1991) • Far and Away (1992) • The Paper (1994) • Apollo 13 (1995) • Ransom (1996) • EDtv (1999)
2000s
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) • A Beautiful Mind (2001) • The Missing (2003) • Cinderella Man (2005) • The Da Vinci Code (2006) • Frost/Nixon (2008) • Angels & Demons (2009)
2010s
The Dilemma (2011)
Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture

Apollo 13 (1995) · The Birdcage (1996) · The Full Monty (1997) · Shakespeare in Love (1998) · American Beauty (1999) · Traffic (2000) · Gosford Park (2001) · Chicago (2002) · The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) · Sideways (2004) · Crash (2005) · Little Miss Sunshine (2006) · No Country for Old Men (2007) · Slumdog Millionaire (2008) · Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Complete list ·  · (2001–present)