He's a Captain. Ron Howard wanted to make him an Admiral, but Lovell had retired a Captain and didnt want to play any higher rank than what he'd earned. And that was his own uniform.
The best thing about this movie is that everyone was like "no way they'd be that calm if all of that was happening to them" and then you listen to the original recordings of the actual missions and the real guys are way calmer :)
Most people don't realize that those astronauts were not 'ordinary' men. All were chosen because of their ability to stay calm in incredibly stressful situations and extremely smart. A lot were test pilots before NASA and had gone to school for engineering. Some of the systems on the rockets, and modules might have been designed by the astronauts flying them.
People who do those kind of highly intense and dangerous jobs almost all know that the worst thing to do in an emergency is to lose your head. Staying calm and focusing on problem solving is the best possible thing to do. Astronauts have trained and trained and trained this, and as most of them (back then) were former test pilots of experimental aircraft, they're probably all pretty experienced with having to do so. Absolutely fascinating stuff.
Ron Howard (director) filmed the zero-G scenes aboard a KC-135 airplane, which can be flown in such a way as to create about 23 seconds of weightlessness, a method NASA has always used to train its astronauts for space flight. Howard obtained NASA's permission and assistance to obtain three hours and 54 minutes of filming time in 612 zero-g maneuvers. Filming in 25-second bursts of weightlessness was "charged and frenetic" but the cast and crew only suffered from bumps and bruises, and most injuries occurred when they bumped on non-padded items. The cast and crew of Apollo 13 describe the weightlessness experience as being in a "vomit comet" and "roller coaster ride", but the motion sickness afflicted only a few members.
OK Go used the same technique to film a music video. They managed to get it in 1 take, using slight slow motion to record their verses that were just a little too long for the weightless segments and finding spots they could pause and hold on stationary during the parts where they weren't weightless. It was very hard, they nearly stitched different segments together, but managed to get one full good take on their last run.
the aircraft they do this in are affectionately called "vomit comets" as the fly parabolic arcs with about 30 seconds of 0g at a time. Adam Savage/Mythbusters flew on one if you can find the ep on yt
@@captwrecked The best way to think of how it works, it throws everything inside high into the air and flies along the same path, basically flying around you as you get fling up and then come back down, before gently catching you and doing it again.
This was a REAL event in 1970. I was 14. The whole world watched, prayed for the astronauts, Russia even offered help....meanwhile, back in Vietnam...🙄 My favorite lines in this movie is from the flight controller [Ed Harris]: "Failure is not an option." He was nominated for best actor in this role. The line "Houston we have a problem" came from this mission, and everyone repeated it for years every time something went wrong at work or the doggy pooped on the carpet...At the end the Navy officer in white greeting Tom Hanks was the REAL Jim Lovell. I am very fond of this movie because it was the last movie dad and I saw together before he passed away.
Here's a movie I haven't seen in years - Nothing in Common - starring Tom Hanks and Jackie Gleason. I believe it marked the start of Hanks' pivot from Bachelor Party Tom Hanks to Dramatic Actor Tim Hanks. I don't believe I have seen a reaction to this anywhere.
My two favorite lines in the movie were from the Lovell ladies. "They can take it up with my husband. He'll be home on Friday" and "If they could get a washing machine to fly, my Jimmy could land it."
When Ashleigh asked if she was going to cry I thought Grandma might do it. Asking the granddaughter if she's scared and telling her that great line makes me tear up every time I watch it!
@doctaflo I do wonder how much of all these films she misses because the nature of her content - the audience receiving her raw reaction - requires her to talk.
I love the scene with the Grandma. They are all tiptoeing around trying to break this difficult news to the "frail old woman" and she just like "Look, my son's a fucking stud, he'll be home Tuesday."
The fact that Ken Mattingly was grounded from Apollo 13 was a good thing. Without him on the ground and going thru the checklists and finding ways to help get the wounded space craft back to earth the mission may have turned out negative.
This film follows the history pretty well, but there are some parts that are pure fiction. No one doubted Jack's ability to fly the mission. And Ken played a part in the return, but not the essential part the movie suggests. Sure, it's a great story that the disappointed, grounded astronaut regains his mojo to get his friends home, but it just didn't happen that way.
This was pretty accurate and true to life. The captain of the recovery ship USS Iwo Jima, was indeed the real Captain James A. Lovell. Howard wanted to make him an admiral in the movie, but he declined, and insisted on representing his actual rank and wore his own uniform. This film was also based on the book "Lost Moon", which Lovell had co-authored.
I would debate the accuracy part to some extent. Most of the tension was played up by the actors for the movie Even Jon Lovell stated that their radio calls after the tank exploded sounded “like they were reading from the phone book”
Yes! An excellent movie. All about the earliest days of manned space flight, air speed records, and the "Project Mercury" program that put America's first men in space.
@@pvanukoff AI actors is a BAD thing, it takes jobs and money away from human actors, and may be used to replace actors period. THAT is one reason the actors, and the writers who support them were on strike for months for a little while back. We should say NO to AI actors in regular roles and ONLY say yes to them for green screen type that regular actors simply can't do, which is very rare thing. Support HUMAN actors!
@@brianmatthews1736 Good, bad or otherwise, it's going to happen whether people want it to or not. Strikes won't slow it down (on the contrary, it makes AI look more appealing). Boycotts can slow it a little bit, but not enough to make a difference.
Ken wasn’t diagnosed with the measles. He just didn’t have them before. (Which would make him immune like chicken pox) He was exposed to someone who did have the measles. They weren’t going to take the chance.
"I don't think I've ever been this stressed out by a movie." (Ashley) The movie reviewer in my hometown newspaper (The Oregonian) wrote, "I have seen so many people die in movies this year, so many populations on the brink of destruction, but the first time I was actually scared by a movie was watching a story, which I knew for a fact, had a happy ending." Like you, I was on the edge of my seat for the last two thirds of Apollo 13, even though I lived through the actual event and knew the story well.
I just posted the same thing... this movie gets you on the edge of your seat EVERY SINGLE TIME! Movies just don't do that to me... this one does it... always.
It's a credit to a team of filmmakers at the top of their game that they were able to build and sustain the suspense so skillfully as to make us all forget how this story ends! Not only that; they were confident enough in the suspense that they created that they dared to sneak in several tiny episodes that foreshadow the catastrophic mechanical failure, often in a semi-ironic or even darkly humorous way; some examples: Jim's car breaking down in the middle of the intersection, Marilyn's nightmare, her wedding ring going down the drain while she's showering in the Florida motel room, Ken's last-minute grounding, Jack's disastrous first day in the simulator, Fred vomiting shortly after the launch, that little joke he plays on the crew during the broadcast, etc.
As a Baby Boomer, I was totally entranced by the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs, and later the Space Shuttle, growing up. I watched Apollo 11 land on the moon live. It was an incredible thing, the world over. The thing that drove me to tears in Apollo 13 was seeing the actual TV newscasters, Jules Bergman and Walter Cronkite, because they were our link to the space program on our TVs at home. So seeing them made the movie “real” and “personal” in a powerful way. Yes, the acting was amazing and no doubt someone in these comments will tell you the guy playing the Admiral on the aircraft carrier was the real Jim Lovell. And that Flight Director Gene Kranz’s wife made him a new vest for each mission. But Ashleigh, to try and tell you how expansive the Apollo space program was, at its peak, 400,000 people were to directly support the program plus it required the involvement of over 20,000 industrial firms and universities. Apollo ran from 1961 to 1972. And now, Artemis is going back to the moon sometime before the end of this decade, possibly as early as 2026 or 2027. One last thing, as the movie portrays, the collective world really did hold its breath for the return of the Apollo 13 astronauts. It was the biggest drama on earth unfolding in real time of the space of a week. I'm so glad you enjoyed Ron Howard’s movie.
I was fortunate to see the Apollo launch of the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975. Technically not an Apollo mission but used the Apollo equipment from the cancelled post Apollo 17 missions. Our last manned mission until the start of the space shuttle program.
I like how she said she wished she could see it live. Make me feel old I remember looking up in the moon in 1969 as a kid in thinking there's men on their!
Great comment and brief summary as well. As mentioned, we are expected to go back to the moon sometime within the next 5 or 6 years. I was born in 1973 and missed the lunar landing, but did see both of the more recent space shuttle accidents, with the last one having an astronaut that went to my high school. It is a personal thing here where I live with multiple memorials our city has built. If I'm lucky, I may be able to see a landing on Mars before I die. I suspect that event may be the same type of significant event for the newer generation, just like the moon landing was for my parents and grandparents. Let's all hope that funding for those programs aren't cut before those missions. Bluntly speaking, there are plenty of other areas where the budget could be cut without interfering with the space program. With the potential there is to eventually mine celestial bodies, it could very easily pay for itself and likely provide vast amounts of resources that are beneficial to everyone, and it could realistically occur within the next 75 to 100 years. I'd love to see younger generations as excited and proud of these monumental accomplishments, just like mine, and older generations were about so many advancements in science, medicine, and the space program. It could be the spark that might just jumpstart younger people into having and believing in a national pride and identity again.
40:39 Fred has a kidney infection. I had one after having a kidney stone removed. It got so bad that the toxins the bacteria were producing were causing my blood pressure to plummet, and I was going into shock. The doctor who saw me at the outpatient clinic told me "We're sending you to the ER and admitting you to hospital." I couldn't resist referencing "Airplane!" and asked her "Hospital? What is it?" She earnestly explained basically what I explained above about infection and toxins. Then I told her "No. You're supposed to say 'It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now.'" She was too young to get the joke, but the paramedics got it.
Having spent several days with a 103+ fever and the associated hallucinations (brain creating really stupid youtube vids every time I closed my eyes) from a viral blood infection, I can definitely say that at its worst you're just freezing and sweating and wishing for some way to get some decent sleep. But you can keep a sense of humor.
The zero-G scenes were filmed onboard the Vomit Comet. The production company leased out NASAs KC-135 and built copies of the sets inside the cargo hold. Each take they had about 7-10 mins of Zero-G. They originally were almost not going to be able to do it, but the real Jim Lovell stepped in and pushed to allow Ron Howard full access to the facilities.
It was only about 30-40 seconds of weightlessness. Take a good look and you’ll notice that not one single shot of zero g scenes is longer than 30 seconds.
Sorry. I posted my comment about the weightless in space scenes without looking at ALL of these comments, but you clearly beat me to it, so good on you!
Jim is still with us, having turned 96 at the end of March. Alas, 2023 was rough for him: Marilyn passed in September, Ken died on Halloween, and his Apollo 8 commander, Frank Borman (seen on the magazine cover with Jim and Bill Anders, and being introduced by Dick Cavett right before Ken turns off the TV) died in November. Fred is also still with us (turned 90 last November) as is Charlie Duke, who got over the measles. With Ken switched to Charlie and John Young's crew (the back-ups; John was there to back up Jim and Charlie was Fred's back up, just as Swigert was Ken's), he went to the moon on Apollo 16, as mentioned. That nearly didn't come off, either, as when they were doing a publicity tour of Hawai'i in December 1972 (partially because the lava beds were similar to the moon's surface, but also just for publicity), Charlie somehow caught pneumonia. Yes, it was December, but it was also Hawai'i. So NASA had to make a decision…switch to the backups again (which would have made Fred and Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell the active team, but would have screwed over Ken, again) or swap Charlie for Roosa, or just push the mission back from March 1973 to April and wait for Charlie to get better. They went with the last option, which was a good idea, as during the delay they found a few things wrong with the ship, or else Ken might have had another calamity. And then, just before Apollo 16 took off, somebody spotted Charlie around the hotel pool and thought that he had broken quarantine. But that was actually Charlie's twin brother Bill, so it was all right. (In a soap opera, of course, Bill would be the Evil Twin, planning to knock Charlie out and take his place on the mission, but fortunately, that didn't happen. At least, as far as we know…) And so Ken flew Apollo 16 to the moon, and John Young (John is in the film, played by Ben Marley. He's in a lot of scenes, but with few lines) and Charlie Duke walked on the moon. Charlie, age 36 at the time, became the youngest person to walk on the moon, a record he still holds and will continue to hold, even if the upcoming Artemis 3 mission goes as planned. (Artemis 3 was originally scheduled for December 2025, but has been pushed back to September 2026. None of the possible astronauts for that mission will be as young.) One small correction to the film: it wasn't that Alan Shepard had an ear infection or anything that led them to move Jim, Fred and Ken up from Apollo 14 to 13. Alan, the first American in space in the Mercury program (early 1960s) had retired rather than continue with the Gemini program in the mid-1960s (when John Glenn became the first to orbit the Earth). Deke Slayton had talked Alan into coming back for the Apollo missions, but the higher-ups thought he needed more training to be familiar with the new procedures, and so Jim's team was moved up and Alan walked on the moon in Apollo 14. (He's the guy who brought a golf club and hit a ball, becoming the original logo for MTV, among other things.) Other surviving Apollo astronauts are Bill Anders (Jim's Apollo 8 mission-mate, now age 90,) Buzz Aldrin (now age 94), the commander of Apollo 15, David Scott who will turn 92 in June), and Harrison Schmitt, the geologist who was on Apollo 17, and thus became the only scientist to ever walk on the moon. (Schmitt, currently 88 years old, later served as a Senator from New Mexico.)
Alan Shepard didn't retire from NASA, he was diagnosed with Ménière's disease, an inner-ear ailment that caused episodes of extreme dizziness and nausea and was grounded by the NASA flight surgeon from space flight and stayed with NASA working with Deke Slayton in the Astronaut office assigning crews. His Ménière's was surgically corrected in 1968.
Saw this in a theater when it came out. Near the end, when Lovell radios back, "Hello, Houston, this is Odyssey. It's good to see you again," everyone in the theater, me included, jumped up for a standing ovation, and there was not a dry eye anywhere in the house. This was old-fashioned movie magic of the best kind.
Oh Ashley, measles are actually a big deal. Like not a death sentence but there would be chance your kids would die of it from fever or infection of the brain. That's why it's a big deal that it's making a comeback these days with people not wanting to vaccinate their kids.
I couldn't believe it when the doctor asked if we wanted to give our kids immunizations. I was was like, why is that even a question? Of course I want my kids to be protected from stuff like measles.
In the 60's there was an average of 450 deaths per year from measles which was down from over 5000 earlier in the century and there were a large number of kids that were made deaf or intellectually impaired by it. The other horrible thing about it is it erases your bodies "immune memory" so you can now get stuff you have had in the past again and that was NASTY!
They had a computer that filled a room. When this movie came out in the mid-90's, the reviewers were typing their reviews on laptop computers that were more powerful and had more memory than the roomful of computers that sent men to the moon. For those of us old enough to remember doing calculations on a slide rule, that fact really hit home.
I still have my sliderule. Four function calculators came out when I was a senior in HS (cost a fortune) and none of our teachers would let us use one in class.
@@gitchegumee We seem to be about the same age. My math teacher (I had Mrs. Watkins all 4 years of high school.) wouldn't even let us use the slide rule. Pencil and paper only.
@@hammathguy3995 We used the slide rule in Physics but everything else was pencil and paper. Dad was an auditor so he had his own 10 key manual adding machine and did taxes on that. We thought we were fancy.
My entire family gathered at my Grandma's house and watched this unfold live on a little 19 inch television. We had sleeping bags but no one slept longer than an hour or two at a time. The movie is incredible at recreating the stress we all were feeling while waiting for them to splash down. The moment those parachutes opened up has forever been etched in my memory, not only because of the event but it was also my very first time seeing a color television set. That scene always makes me cry.
Fun fact: At the end of the film, when they’re onboard the ship, Tom Hanks shakes hands with the ship’s commander in the white uniform. That was the real Jim Lovell!! Oh and Ashleigh, Ken Mattingly was played by Gary Sinise who also played Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump!!!
In an interview I read Ron Howard gave a lot of credit to Andy Griffith for helping him become a director. Also how to respect actors and the crew. Great post I love this movie. I remember watching it with my family, we cried and cheered when the parachutes opened. Thanks Ashley.
I saw this film multiple times in theaters. Every single time when you hear Jim's voice saying "Houston, this is Odyssey " the audience would erupt with applause and you would hear big sighs of relief. Every single time. This movie holds up so well....
I recommend watching the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon with Tom Hanks as a producer and narrator. 12 hours total with each episode an hour (with each episode covering a different mission). Lots of big stars and historically pretty accurate
I remember when the British boyband Take That broke up and there was this footage of this German teenage girl crying "How dare they break up, I'LL KILL THEM!!!" so imagine that, but times a thousand when the Beetles broke up
Every time I hear about this movie I remember something an old roommate told me. He worked at as an assistant manager at a video store when this movie came out. A lady came in and asked when it was going to be released. They told her to look at the rather large cutout she was standing next to. Then she turned to them and asked, “Do you have Apollo 1 thru 12 in stock?”, they were all speechless and couldn’t even answer her.
Ken wasn’t diagnosed with the measles. The Flight Surgeon was concerned that because he had never had them before (and a person can only contract them once) that he was susceptible since another person he worked with had come down with them. It’s basic quarantining.
Tom Hanks and Ron Howard created a TV series called "From the Earth to the Moon" which tells the story of the entire "Apollo" missions. It is well worth checking out. Another space themed movie that you may like is "October Sky" which is based on the true story of high school boys who fly rockets after seeing "Sputnik". The live in a coal mining town in the 1950s.
My uncle worked at NASA during the Apollo Missions. He helped design the lunar modules. My dad was military and we were stationed on Okinawa when this Apollo mission happened.
In 1969, I watched the moon landing in Church! Mom was VERY religious and we were in church EVERY Sunday morning and night and the night of the moon landing we were too. As we entered I got the shock of my life BECAUSE in the front of the church along the Alter Rail were 8 portable, Black and White TVs. I had NEVER seen a TV in a church before! The Pastor announced that sometime during the service they were going to land and when that happened he would stop the service and we all would watch the landing on the TVs. I watched Neal Armstrong step onto the moon in church!
How does a Pastor believe in the Bible AND space? If the sun revolves around us like the Bible says then space and everything they've told us about space is fake...not to mention the firmament
@@nrgmanifest This Is one reason I am NOT a fan of "Organized" religion. That church, where we were located had a HIGH number of College educated scientists and doctors that stuttered EVERY time you brought up the question about the Earth being created in 6 days!
@@thisspaceforrent5737 So in I Chronicles AND Psalms it says the Earth is "immovable" or "fixed" while in Joshua it says "the sun stood still and the moon stopped". So just from that the Bible tells us the Earth doesn't move but the sun and moon does(except for that 1 day in Joshua). And since we see the sun and moon daily then it MUST mean they revolve around us, not vise versa.
Jim Lovell *was* Neil Armstrong's backup for Apollo 11. The way the rotation worked was, you were backup crew, skipped two flights, then you were prime crew, hence why Jim Lovell and his crew were originally assigned to Apollo 14.
Unfortunately, the Apollo capsule accident with the fire did happen. And I still remember that time. I was in high school when Apollo 13 went up. My friends and I were playing pool when the time came to wait for them to come around the dark side of the moon, and we were all waiting for the communication blackout to end. It was live on the radio and we stopped our pool game to listen, and we were so happy when their signal was recovered. And then, of course, we were all watching TV when they returned. There were worldwide events in those days where the world seemed to pause. It was a collective event across the globe. I’m in Canada.
That’s cool to know actually. I was feeling like when Merilyn was listening to the blackout that it was unreasonable cause it would have just been at command. But it’s cool to know that she did actually hear it along w others. Just for storyline reasons
Gene Kranz was the epitome of everything a leader should be. Unquestionably in charge, but didn’t try to take charge. Let the team be a team, let each expert in each area do their job, told them what he ideally needed and listened when they told him what they could provide, and every time a new problem arose, he rolled with it and remained remarkably calm. Also, what I love about how well made this movie is, is that I knew the story, I knew the outcome, and yet the film builds unbelievable tension….the few minutes waiting for re entry are some of the most tense minutes in any film. The only other example of this I can think of, where incredible tension is built on a true story film, is another Tom Hanks film, Captain Phillips
I do a lot of small team leadership for my work, and while I've never faced anything anywhere near to this in terms of challenges, when everybody starts getting hyped up about something I always go back to 'one at a time people, one at a time'.
The numerous times I've seen Kranz on TV or in a documentary he never failed to impress me on how rock solid he was as a leader. You can see it in someone like him in an instant.
And that detail about those lucky vests that his wife custom-made for him to wear for each mission he directed is absolutely true; the unboxing of the mission vest was a tradition at Mission Control throughout Gene's tenure, and it gave his characterization for this film just the right touch.
Gene Kranz was definitely the real deal. For purposes of the film they focused on him, but there were two other flight directors. They worked in 8 hour shifts. I’m sure they all put in a lot of overtime that week.
From Wikipedia "Judith Love Cohen (August 16, 1933 - July 25, 2016) was an American aerospace engineer. She was an electrical engineer on the Minuteman missile, the science ground station for the Hubble Space Telescope, the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, and the Apollo Space Program. In particular, her work on the Abort-Guidance System is credited with helping save Apollo 13. She was the mother of computer scientist and engineer Neil Siegel and actor-musician Jack Black"
Don't forget to give some kudos to Ron Howard who directed this film. He won a Golden Globe and a Directors Guild of America Award for his efforts. BTW: I was in the crowd in Chicago that cheered these 3 amazing astronauts in a parade the city had in their honor. School was let out for the celebration. We weren't the only city to have a confetti throwing parade.
there was a documentary done about the Apollo 13 flight many years ago. One of the most telling scenes was a montage of people praying in mosques and temples and churches while the narrator mentioned people praying for the astronauts in all parts of the world. The breakdown of the situation was, arguably, impossible to recover from on the many levels of this incident.
I'm 65, love your movie reactions, btw. I was a wide-eyed 10-year-old when they landed on the moon. I will never forget. I will also never forget the true events around Apollo 13 less than a year later. The whole country was tense. We saw the splashdown on a TV at school. We didn't see the flight crew erupt in cheering like they showed in the movie, but the word is that the movie was a pretty accurate depiction of what happened.
Measels is a really serious illness. My ex-husband's cousin contracted it aged 6 and was left blind, as well as brain damaged. She spent the rest of her life in an institution. So I always feel sorry for the surgeon, brcause he did the right thing. Apollo 13 deserves every accolade though because it's amazing. I've seen it around 18 times, yet every time I'm terrified they won't get back alive.
This is one of the best movies ever made. Ron Howard asked for advice in telling the story, and was told, "Just tell it the way it happened." And he did.
P.S. I was in primary school when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, the entire school was hearded into the principal's class room, some sitting on the floor, some sitting in chairs, some sitting on desks, & others standing on desks.. we watched it live here in Australia... And at the time of Apolo 13 were practically holding our breath & praying for them
Hey Ashleigh, if you enjoyed this one you should totally check out "From The Earth To The Moon" It is the "Band of Brothers" to Apollo 13's "Saving Private Ryan." It's really great stuff, with introductions by Tom Hanks for each episode. A lot of the same people worked on both.
Being 59, I was around for all of the Apollo missions. I was only 4 when Armstrong set foot on the Moon. Oddly enough, while I know I watched Armstrong live, I have no clear memory of it. My sister was born that same week, so it's all mixed-in with memories of her birth Like many early Gen-X scifi fans, I knew _everything_ about how the missions worked. I knew more about the spacecraft than most adults. When the Apollo 13 disaster occurred, I was generally glued to the TV. As a young child, I didn't understand what the phrase, "no possibility of help," really meant. It was only as I got older that I learned just how bad it really was. The film does a good job with the key events. It takes a few liberties with time. The film's portrayal of Jack Swigert as a rookie pilot who might make a mistake was pure Hollywood. In fact, Swigert had been training with the backup crew from Day One and was still training with them when he had to replace Mattingly. Backup crews don't stop training because a launch date is coming up. They train almost until the spacecraft is off the ground. No one had any doubts about Swigert's abilities. Many sources have specifically said that the finger-pointing conversation did not and would never occur between any two pilots in that circumstance. When you dive into it, the disaster was actually much worse than what Howard was able to portray in the screen time he had. He only hit the highlights. He didn't hit on "little things." For example, the crew had to learn to re-fly the LM. It was never designed to push the CM, so the center of mass, fuel-to-weight ratio ... it was all wrong. Controls worked almost opposite from the way they'd trained to use them. The umbilical from the CM to the LM wasn't designed to be reversed the way Mattingly wanted, to get more power to re-start the CM. The pilots had to work their way into cramped spaces to manually rewire it with a soldering iron. There were a million details like that which had to be glossed-over for time. It was a non-stop crap-fest from the moment the O2 tank blew until they jettisoned the LM. All the audio from the mission is available. I suggest that you listen to the audio to compare it to the film. It's very interesting to see how they kind of Hollywooded it up. Howard changed a now-famous quote. Here's what happened: The initial explosion happened and Swigert radioed down: "Houston, I think we've had a problem, here." That explosion caused the radio antenna to shudder, and Houston got a slightly garbled transmission. They asked Swigert to repeat what he said. Then the main explosion happened, causing Lovell to jump onto the comms. It was then that he radioed down: "Houston, we've had a problem." Ron Howard changed the line to, "Houston, we have a problem," because "we've had" seems like it happened in the past and was now over. It should be mentioned that Lovell didn't ask Swigert what he'd done in the moments following the initial explosion. He stuck his head up because he thought Haise had hit a pressure reset valve -- a prank Haise enjoyed. It made a bang and gave the other two pilots a moment of stress, but was otherwise harmless. When Lovell looked at Swigert and saw the perplexed look on his face, he knew it was no reset valve -- and by extension, they were probably in a lot of trouble. That's when the main explosion happened that took out an entire side panel of the Service Module. All those nits picked, the film does an extraordinary job at executing the disaster, the people involved, and the world's reaction, in a way that's consistently moving. It's a master class in directing. Ron Howard has said that the Apollo 13 launch is the most cinematic thing he's ever shot. Marilyn Lovell has said that Hanks got Jim's mannerisms and speech patterns so perfectly that when she saw his portrayal, she just said, "That's my Jimmy." This movie is an 11/10 on so many levels.
I was 19 and because I was in the UK the moon landing occurred in the middle of the night. However as I didn’t have a TV it didn’t make a lot of difference!
I was 6. I remember it because it was the first night I was allowed to stay up past 9pm. My dad and i went out on the front porch and stared up at the moon after Neil touched down.
Feeling the tension in the room, Grandad, born 1902, exclaimed, "Look out, it's gonna get 'em!", as Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon. Everyone jumped! People might not admit it now, but most people didn't know what to expect & wouldn't have been surprised, if a Moon monster jumped out & devoured Neil Armstrong. I was 5, almost 6 years old & still remember watching Armstrong set foot on the Moon on Grandad's Zenith TV. Grandad had a great sense of humor. He was kind of like Will Rogers. I also remember being annoyed, that the Command Module & Lunar Module weren't named "Charlie Brown" & "Snoopy", liked they were for Apollo 10.
Ron Howard’s whole family was in this film. His dad Rance played the priest in the watch party scene at the end of the film , his mother Jean played the role of Jim Lovell’s mother Blanche and his brother Clint played the role of Sy Liebgott (balding coke bottle glasses guy in flight control)
3:26 "Did he name a _mountain_ after her? That's cute." He was the command module pilot of _Apollo 8._ As Swigert explained earlier, they were the first ones to reach the Moon. This put them in a position to get a better, more detailed view of its surface than anyone on Earth had ever come _close_ to, before. Thus, he spotted a mountain no one on Earth had ever seen before, and he named it after her.
And, to the best of my knowledge, the Astronomical Union refused to accept the names that the Apollo 8 crew gave the sites as official. Which was a real jerk move by the Astronomical Union, in the eyes of the astronauts and many others.
From what I heard... one of the astronauts said that aside from the "blame" and conflict in space this was a very accurate portrayal. Even knowing the story, and the outcome... it still hits me every time.
I was 6 years old when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and a complete space nut. On that night, I was sick as a dog with the flu and couldn't get out of bed, and our color TV was broken. My parents folded out the sofa bed in the living room for me and set up our little black & white TV so we could all sit on the bed and watch it together. You should definitely check out the mini-series "From the Earth to the Moon", which was produced by Tom Hanks. It covers the entire Apollo program, with one episode covering each mission and each focusing on a different aspect of the mission and/or the training. Watching it, the series feels like an extension of this movie, with the same cinematic quality and a great cast (including a few folks who were in Apollo 13).
And because the film covers what happened on the spacecraft and in Mission Control, the Apollo 13 episode of FtEttM focuses instead on news media and their relationships with NASA.
Jim Lovell is in fact the oldest living former astronaut (he recently turned 96). He is one of only 3 people to orbit the Moon twice (John W Young and Eugene Cernan being the other 2) and he is the only one of the 3 to not land on either occasion (Lovell orbited the Moon on Apollo 8 and again on 13; Young and Cernan flew together on Apollo 10 (which tested the Lunar Module above the Moon's surface as the final test before the first landing on Apollo 11), with Young landing on Apollo 16 and Cernan landing on 17).
I'll give her a pass on that one. Didn't know for sure what it was myself until I was in my mid 20s. But Hurricane, Typhoon - it's the exact same thing. Just depends on what Ocean it is in as to what you call it. Atlantic = Hurricane, Pacific = Typhoon.
I was 7 years old when the events of Apollo 13 took place. The most amazing thing about this movie is how incredibly tense it is even when you know what's going to happen in the end. A genuine masterpiece of the kind that they just don't make anymore
Fred Haise had a urinary tract infection that went all the way up to his kidneys, that’s why he was so sick during the flight. This is one of my favourite movies, great reaction I’m glad you enjoyed it!
Fred had a bladder/kidney infection...I know from experience that they can make you VERY ill. I've been to the ER with one before. And I've also tested negative for one, and two days later had one, so it could have been missed on the pre-flight medical exam. Especially, at that time, I don't know what kind of tests for it they had, or if they just went by symptoms, or how accurate those tests were....We saw in the film how the measles tests could be wrong. I watched this at school, just like his son, as the entire school did. Our teachers were so great, and answered all of our questions (I think I was 10 or so???) You could hear the entire school cheering when they touched down. I miss people being excited about the Space Program. In our house growing up, we watched every press conference, every launch, every news story about it. ALL of these people are HEROES, those in space and those on the ground. And YES, it was real.
I love this movie so much. It literally became my guidebook for how to deal with stressful situations and helps me remember how to work through a problem.
My dad’s company worked on a lot of NASA clothing, blankets, containers that went into space. He would bring home samples to us kids. I remember being so impressed with the Astronaut blankets and material that was used to keep astronauts alive per se!! And who could forget Tang!!
This is the third movie Tom Hanks and Gary Sinise were in together, Forrest Gump, Green Mile, and this one. The measles is considerably worse as an adult than a child. The balding gentleman with the glasses on in the movie is Ron Howard's brother
@@stalefurset9444 Amusingly, Andy Weir (author of The Martian) and the authors if The Expanse (Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham) all have an informal agreement that the events of The Martian are historical canon in the setting of The Expanse. The TV series acknowledged that fun little idea with a scene that takes place on Mars, outside the door into the "Mark Watney Memorial Botanical Gardens." 😀
"But on that glorious day in May 1963, Gordo Cooper went higher, farther, and faster than any other American - 22 complete orbits around the world; he was the last American ever to go into space alone. And for a brief moment, Gordo Cooper became the greatest pilot anyone had ever seen."
In 2008 I toured the Johnson Space Center on the VIP Tour. We got to go into the Apollo control room. On the wall is a plaque with a mirror from the three astronauts of Apollo 13. The plaque reads "This mirror flown on Aquarius, LM-7, to the moon April 11-17, 1970. Returned by a greatful [sic] Apollo 13 crew to ‘reflect the image’ of the people in Mission Control who got us back! James Lovell John Swigert Fred Haise".
The gentleman questioning Tom Hanks about continuing funding for the Apollo space program is director/producer Roger Corman, who gave Ron Howard his first role as a director with the movie "Grand Theft Auto". Roger helped launch the careers of many award winning directors and he's still with us at age 98.
It took dozens of people on the ground to make this happen the way it did. Mattingly's dedication to going through the simulation procedures over and over again until he had the procedure right was key to the success of getting A13 back safely. The zero gravity chamber you ask about is a modified C130 used by NASA to train for 0G. It's called the Vomit Comet. It operates by going to maximum altitude then going into freefall for a while before pulling up. Ron Howard got special permission to film scenes in there. That's why the cutaway shots are all less than 20 seconds long. Also, a bit of trivia: by coincidence my father, a military photojournalist, happened to be on the ship picking them up out of the ocean. He was on the ship doing a fluff piece about sailors' life at sea when the ship got redirected for the pickup. If you've seen still photos of the splashdown and pick up, they were taken by my father.
Gene Kranz, the Flight Director for Apollo 13 (played in this film by Ed Harris with the nice little vest), was also the Flight Director for the Apollo 1 mission (the one where the astronauts were killed in the fire just before launch). His speech to his men after that incident is legendary. "Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, "Dammit, stop!" I don't know what Thompson's committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find. We are the cause! We were not ready! We did not do our job. We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in our hearts we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did. From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: 'Tough' and 'Competent'. Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for. Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect. When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write 'Tough and Competent' on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control."
I hadn't heard Gene Kramz's speech before. Wow. The opening was taken partly from a quote by a pilot in the very early days of aviation. “Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect." I'm a pilot and my first flight instructor gave me a framed picture of a biplane crashed into a tree with that quote underneath
Jim and the other astronauts from the Mercury and Gemini program were involved in the investigations and were scathing to the various manufacturers who were involved in the crappy production of the Apollo 1 module. Several of them were invited to go around the back of the building for a "personal discussion" when they didn't like the astronauts' attitude about their shoddy work putting their lives at risk.
This is one of my favs, I'm always up for a rewatch, even though it's so tense! Even knowing it so well, and knowing exactly what's going to happen, it maintains the anxiety so perfectly. I'm glad you enjoyed!!!
When i saw this in theatres, I forgot that the real events happened 11 months before I was born. They let us out the back fire exit, instead of the main doors, and the entire theatre audience was crying. We walked out into sunshine and I was stunned and confused as to why no one outside the large audience was crying. It took several minutes to remember that we had been watching the movie re-enactment, not the actual events as they unfolded. I got a letter from Jim Lovell shortly after, and it was fascinating to hear his own words about the value of the space program. This was significant to me, as when I was in tenth grade, in school, we watched live as the Challenger imploded. Ad the space program was in a decline after that. Mister Lovell was trying to get the space program back on it's feet. He was one of the consultants for Apollo Thirteen. Apollo was the mission no one wanted to watch i the beginning but by the end, the whole world was watching and rooting for those brave men.
A typhoon is the same as a hurricane. The difference is that a hurricane is in the Atlantic ocean, and a typhoon is in the Pacific ocean. The atrophy issue only comes into play if one is in space for a long time, meaning several months or more. The Apollo program space flights lasted maybe nine or ten days at the longest, so muscle atrophy did not come into play there.
Absolutely you can go to launches. I live in the county they launch from and it's worth checking out. Pro tip, plan your trip with the launch on the first day so that if the launch is delayed you have multiple chances to experience.
Fun fact...well, for me anyway. The ship that recovered the capsule/crew was the USS Iwo Jima (LPH-2). In this movie portrayed by LPH-11 USS New Orleans, which was the ship my father served aboard during Vietnam. He was also on board when the New Orleans recovered Apllo 14.
@user-cl5tk3dt7i my dad wanted to know if you were at the 2002 reunion in SanDiego. He was there, you may have met him. He'd have been one of the few plank owners there.
Which makes me wonder about that "best sex of their lives" when they got back that Ashliegh mentions. If their muscles are all atrophied, they might have some difficulty. But if the wives do most of the work, I guess...
The history of the crew selections for the lunar missions is kind of interesting (at least to us space nerds). NASA's strategy for landing on the moon- and returning from it - required many steps that needed to be perfected. Each mission before the landing focused on one of these steps. Two crews trained simultaneously for each objective - one to serve as a backup for the prime crew. The backups would then be assigned as prime crew for the 3rd mission down the line - the Apollo 7 backups flew Apollo 10, the Apollo 8 backups flew 11, etc. There was some flexibility in what order the missions could be flown. For example, Jim McDivitt, Rusty Schweikardt, & Dave Scott mission was to kick the tires of the 1st LM in low earth orbit; their backups were Pete Conrad, Al Bean, & Dick Gordon. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, & Mike Collins trained to simulate the high-speed re-entry a spacecraft falling all the way from the moon would experience, with Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, & Bill Anders serving as their backups. (When Collins had surgery for a bone spur, he & Anders, his backup, swapped places.) The 2nd manned Apollo flight - Apollo 8 - was to have been the LM shakedown, flown by McDivitt & Co., which would have eventually put their backups - Conrad et al - in charge of Apollo 11. That would be followed by Borman's crew taking Apollo 9 into high earth orbit, putting Armstrong's in line for Apollo 12. But the LM wasn't ready when Apollo 8 was; so rather than wait, NASA flew Borman's mission 1st as Apollo 8 - which bumped Armstrong's crew up to Apollo 11, and Conrad's out to Apollo 12. So had the lunar module been ready on time, Pete Conrad might have been the 1st man on the moon. (Besides swapping the mission order, intelligence reports showed that the USSR might be planning a manned hail-mary flight around the moon about the time Apollo 8 was due to fly; so the decision was made to replace a simulated return from the moon with an actual one.) Apollo 10 was a full up dress rehearsal of the landing, flown by Tom Stafford, John Young, & Gene Cernan - they did everything but actually land. Their backups were Gordon Cooper, Ed Mitchell, & Don Eisle. But Cooper had a give-a-shit attitude about training, & Eisle had fallen into disfavor over his conduct aboard Apollo 7 (and an extramarital affair), so they were summarily replaced by Alan Shepard & Stu Roosa. Shepard had been medically grounded for several years, & NASA wanted to give him extra time to train, so rather than give him 13 per the usual rotation, they gave him 14, and reassigned Lovell to 13 instead.
Loved your reaction ❤! I rented this on dvd and brought it to my parents’ house for the Thanksgiving holiday, I didn’t know much about the story, but I thought it would be something we’d all enjoy. And yes, we did! My parents were amazed that they didn’t really remember this from when it happened, but I guess as young parents, they were involved in babies and work, and weren’t too tuned in to what was going on in the world. My parents are both gone now, but this movie (aside from being a fantastic film) reminds me of how precious those moments can be.
Yes, 3 astronauts were killed in a fire during testing on the launch platform. The capsules were originally pressurized with 100% oxygen, sparks and small fires can rapidly flash over in that environment, subsequently the capsules were filled with an oxygen/nitrogen mixture.
@@markplott4820 Actually, the door did open out (there was no room for it to swing inwards). However, it required a series of steps to open, and the Apollo 1 astronauts didn't have enough time.
Yes you can tour the Apollo 8 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. They even have a special where you can have lunch with an astronaut. They also have one of the shuttles that you can walk around and see the inside. There is allot to see.
They have a Saturn V. Laying on its side. And if there's a launch, you can watch it. Mostly you'll get to see SpaceX launches -- and if you're lucky it's one where the booster returns to the Cape so you can see it take off and land.
Yes! As a kid, I had a book about the Huntsville Space and Rocket Center - and it certainly appears to be a better experience than the US Museum of Energy in Oak Ridge. I've never made the trip - but with nearby proximity, it might be worth a trip! Also, there are Zero Gravity air flights that are available for the public. I have no idea how expensive it must be to basically rent an entire 747-type thing and have it do roller coaster type things for a few hours to create the zero G experience... but it does exist.
The actual Apollo 13 capsule is at the Kansas Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, KS. They restored the Liberty Bell 7 capsule there as well. Wonderful museum to visit.
As much as i LOVED Ed Harris playing Gene Krantz, him playing John Glenn in The Right Stuff was awesome. Plus actual cameos from Chuck Yeager. Win all around. lol.
To film the Zero-G scenes, they fly and airplane on a parabola, which is the arch an object follows when you throw it. The aircraft is effectively in freefall, and the aircraft and its occupants experience weightlessness. An orbit is just a parabola that wraps around the entire Earth, never reaching the surface.
Jim Lovell has already seen Mount Marilyn up close because he was on Apollo 8 which went out to the moon but didn't land on it as part of the prep work for Apollo 11. He's already been to the moon and orbited it
@@peterradsliff527 I was born in '72 so I never knew him. But, we'd go to Spring Mill state park to see his memorial. They had a real Gemini capsule there and you could touch it! I'd run my fingers over the scarred heat shield and think wow! This was in space!
The simulator drills include a lot of failure scenarios - unexpected thruster failure, or other things goign wrong to ensure the astronauts are prepped for anything that could happen. That's why it takes so long to train them up for a mission.
There's three ways to get zero-g in a movie. One: Go to space. Two: CGI Three: They way they did it for this film. Which is a plane that flys in a curve called a parabola. When doing it's steep dive, you can simulate zero-g and float around inside the plane. You get a little under 30 seconds each dive for filming.
It's not a simulation of zero-g. It _is_ zero-g. The zero-g that you get in these parabolic flights is due to free fall when the plane dips down, similar to what happens when you're in speeding car that "falls" down after going over a slight rise in the road. Astronauts orbiting the earth are also in free fall. They're constantly falling toward the earth and that is what creates the zero-g effect - not the the fact that they're in space. They're constantly falling but they never reach the surface of earth because their space vehicle's forward motion parallel/tangential to the earth's surface is so fast, that their downward fall matches the rate at which the round earth is curving down beneath them. That's what orbit is - you're freefalling to earth but your forward speed is such that the earth is curving down away from you at the same speed that you're falling. So you never land.
First off, i have LOVED your birthday month!!! I enjoy seeing what you want to see and getting to know you better - maybe do it once a month or so? Also, painful urine could mean a bladder infection... any infection would be SO BAD up there in space. PS i saw this in theaters as a teenager - it was only me and my mom in the room and the suspense was horrific: pitch black and complete silence. I had no idea how it turned out in real life and I couldn't handle the last 10 minutes or so - I literally put my head in my lap so I wouldn't peek! lol
For historical context, this movie, while great, was deeply unfair to Jack Swigert. His actual docking with the LM was flawless, and the oxygen tank would have blown no matter who flipped the switch. But the real Swigert died in 1980 and no one could stand up for him.
I don't think the movie is too bad on him perosnally -I agree - the whole sequence with the docking is ludicrous - even if Swigert hadn't been able to do it, one of the other two would have. And of course, he could just 'back out' and try and park it again if needed. Apollo 14 took six attempts to get it right. I don't think the movie suggests at all the O2 tank explosion was Swigert's fault. Another pet peeve of the movie is the fictional argument that's depicted. They all knew what they were doing and didn't waste time with arguments.
The movie doesn't blame Swigert for the tank explosion. At all. It only has Freddo suggesting it under stress. And the scene itself and epilogue exposition make it clear that the electrical short was the fault. Not Jack making a routine button push.
@@jsharp3165 Yeah. They were stressed and trying to figure out what went wrong. I interpreted it more as Swigert feeling guilty and trying to convince *himself* that it wasn't his fault as much as convincing everyone else. The docking sequence was more about how almost inhumanly precise you need to be.
I was at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in early 1995 for a Space Shuttle launch and saw, written in Sharpie on a Transporter/Crawler maintenance access cover, the signatures of Tom Hanks and Ron Howard. Bewildered, I asked one of the KSC employees about the signatures and he told me that they had been at KSC filming a movie about Apollo 13, used the Transporter/Crawler in a scene, and then signed it. That's how I found out about the movie.
Was this the Feb 2nd launch? I was there for my tenth birthday! When my mom found out there was a shuttle launch exactly on my birth date, that basically was the deciding factor on where our vacation was going to be.
@@IgnisKhan Yes, it was. It actually lifted off at about 1:30 am on the 3rd but the launch countdown began on the 2nd and you would have gotten there on the evening of the 2nd to get into position to see it. That was a great 10th birthday celebration! BTW, that mission had the very first female Shuttle pilot, Eileen Collins.
@@winstonsmith8441 I was about to ask if it was one of the first ISS-related launches (as my vague memory implied), but after googling it, it was a actually precursor to docking with Mir. It basically flew in formation with the Russian station and did a flyaround.
@@IgnisKhan Yep, that's it. They had a Russian Cosmonaut on board, Titov. We put a couple of astronauts on Mir later on for some extended flights but a series of on-orbit accidents, fire, collisions, system failures caused us to stop our Mir missions.
How they did weightless scenes on the "vomit comet". A reduced-gravity aircraft is a type of fixed-wing aircraft that provides brief near-weightless environments for training astronauts, conducting research, and making gravity-free movie shots. Versions of such airplanes were operated by the NASA Reduced Gravity Research Program,[1] and one is currently operated by the Human Spaceflight and Robotic Exploration Programmes of the European Space Agency. The unofficial nickname "vomit comet" became popular among those who experienced their operation.
The last line of this movie, when he asks "when will we be going back?" It was this February 22nd, 2024. Not a crewed mission, but a soft lunar landing of a scientific probe vehicle to prepare the way for a return to crewed missions to the moon, near earth orbit, and eventually, Mars. That question went unanswered for 54 years. Now we know - it happened on a Thursday.
The making of documentary about this movie is one of my favorites. They show you how they got all of those zero-g shots. There are a few planes set up that fly parabolas to simuate zero-g.
Ken Mattingly did not have the measles, he was exposed to them, as were both the primary & secondary crews of Apollo 13. Mattinly was the only person who had never had the measels which is why he was grounded. He ended up never contracting it, but exposure to any illness that one of the members of the crew had not had so close to the mission launch date meant Mattingly was not cleared to go. Don't worry about Mattingly though. He was the module pilot for Apollo 16 so he was able to go the moon after all. He was also the Commander for 2 Space Shuttle missions. This film & "The Right Stuff" are my go-to space movies. The Right Stuff covers the Mercury Program, which was the precursor to the Apollo Program, so it is like a prequel in a lot of ways to this movies. And I've seen it said multiple times, but if you are interested in seeing more about the Apollo Program, "From the Earth to the Moon" is a definite must watch.
By the time of Apollo 13, Jim was NASA's most experienced astronaut with 3 previous missions under his belt. Gemini 7 which he flew with Frank Borman, Gemini 12 with Buzz Aldrin & Apollo 8 with Borman & Bill Anders