Taglines: Houston, we have a problem.
Apollo 13 movie storyline. Astronaut Jim Lovell hosts a house party where guests watch Neil Armstrong’s televised first human steps on the Moon. Afterwards Lovell, who had orbited the Moon on Apollo 8, tells his wife Marilyn that he intends to return to the Moon to walk on its surface.
Three months later, as Lovell conducts a VIP tour of NASA’s Vertical Assembly Building, his boss Deke Slayton informs him that his crew will fly Apollo 13 instead of 14. Lovell, Ken Mattingly, and Fred Haise train for their new mission. A few days before launch, Mattingly is exposed to the measles, and the flight surgeon demands his replacement with Mattingly’s backup, Jack Swigert. Lovell resists breaking up his team, but relents when Slayton threatens to bump his crew to a later mission. As the launch date approaches, Marilyn has a nightmare about her husband’s safety, but goes to the Kennedy Space Center the night before launch to see him off.
On April 11, 1970, Flight Director Gene Kranz gives the go-ahead from Houston’s Mission Control Center for the Apollo 13 launch. As the Saturn V rocket climbs through the atmosphere, a second stage engine cuts off prematurely, but the craft reaches its Earth parking orbit. After the third stage fires to send Apollo 13 to the Moon, Swigert performs the maneuver to connect the Command/Service Module Odyssey to the Lunar Module Aquarius and pull it away from the spent rocket.
Three days into the mission, the crew makes a television transmission, which the networks decline to broadcast live. After Swigert turns on the liquid oxygen tank stirring fans as requested, one of the tanks explodes, emptying its contents into space and sending the craft tumbling. The other tank is soon found to be leaking.
Mission Control aborts the Moon landing, and Lovell and Haise must hurriedly power up Aquarius to use as a “lifeboat” for the return home, as Swigert shuts down Odyssey before its battery power runs out. In Houston, Kranz rallies his team to come up with a plan to bring the astronauts home safely, declaring “failure is not an option”. Controller John Aaron recruits Mattingly to help him invent a procedure to restart Odyssey for the landing on Earth.
As Swigert and Haise watch the Moon pass beneath them, Lovell laments his lost chance of walking on its surface, then turns their attention to the business of getting home. With Aquarius running on minimal electrical power, the crew suffers freezing conditions, and Haise contracts a urinary infection and a fever. Swigert suspects Mission Control is withholding their inability to get them home; Haise angrily blames Swigert’s inexperience for the accident; and Lovell quickly squelches the argument.
Apollo 13 is a 1995 American docudrama space adventure film directed by Ron Howard. It stars Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, and Ed Harris. The screenplay by William Broyles, Jr., and Al Reinert, that dramatizes the aborted 1970 Apollo 13 lunar mission, is an adaptation of the book Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 by astronaut Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger.
The film depicts astronauts Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise aboard Apollo 13 for America’s third Moon landing mission. En route, an on-board explosion deprives their spacecraft of most of its oxygen supply and electric power, forcing NASA’s flight controllers to abort the Moon landing, and turning the mission into a struggle to get the three men home safely.
Howard went to great lengths to create a technically accurate movie, employing NASA’s technical assistance in astronaut and flight controller training for his cast, and obtaining permission to film scenes aboard a reduced gravity aircraft for realistic depiction of the “weightlessness” experienced by the astronauts in space.
Released to cinemas in the United States on June 30, 1995,[3] Apollo 13 was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture (winning for Best Film Editing and Best Sound).[4] In total, the film grossed over $355 million worldwide during its theatrical releases. The film was very positively received by critics.
Apollo 13 (1995)
Directed by: Ron Howard
Starring: Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris, Kathleen Quinlan, Mary Kate Schellhardt, Emily Ann Lloyd, Max Elliott Slade, Tracy Reiner
Screenplay by: William Broyles, Jr., Al Reinert
Production Design by: Michael Corenblith
Cinematography by: Dean Cundey
Film Editing by: Daniel P. Hanley, Mike Hill
Costume Design by: Rita Ryack
Set Decoration by: Merideth Boswell
Art Direction by: David J. Bomba, Bruce Alan Miller
Music by: James Horner
MPAA Rating: PG for language and emotional intensity.
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Release Date: June 30, 1995
Hits: 432
