Anybody want to go to outer space with me..no? Want to vote on what I should watch next? Click here! www.patreon.com/jamesvscinema KNIVES OUT FIRST TIME REACTION will be uploaded tomorrow! Enjoy the day!
You will absolutely love Alfonso Cuarón's -- GRAVITY -- with George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. You will feel as if you are out in space. I watched it back a few years ago, then went next day to watch it again on 3D. I do not like 3D films but GRAVITY was sooooooooooooooooo worth watching that way. It is an excellent film. You will NOT be able to tell what is CGI and what's not.
Hey i think you should watch this anime called FLCL if you haven't seen it i think it would be interesting to see your input on it 6 episodes 2 and a half hours total it's really confusing but worth watching I recommend watching the dub
‘Gravity’ is a trip. ‘2001’ is cinematic. And for two other (perhaps lesser known) space movies... you could try ‘Event Horizon’ or ‘Sunshine’ 👍 I’m looking forward to when you get around to watching Sexy Beast, True Romance, and Killing Zoe 😏
ooo looking forward to your Knives Out reaction! Get to go back into space when Mass Effect legendary ed comes out hah. Have you seen the movie Contact?
According to producer Brian Grazer, when Apollo 13 lost the Best Picture Oscar, Jim Lovell (who was in the audience) turned to Grazer and said comfortingly, “I never made it to the moon either.”
The weightless scenes were done in a plane that drops into a controlled dive to match actual falling speeds. I think they got like 10-15 seconds of filming tops per fall. Really incredible achievement
@@JamesVSCinema think about the fact that they built sets inside of a freaking plane! and then did controlled dives over and over capturing scenes seconds at a time. This is why I will always respect Ron Howard and I think this movie is a timeless masterpiece and a piece of important American history.
@@Jiff321 The average life expectancy for men in the US is 76, not 61. Liam Neeson is 68 and still making action movies. Tom Cruise is 58 and still doing his own stunts. Paxton died from a complication during surgery, he didn't die from old age.
"The Martian" is an AMAZING space movie! Book was written by Andy Weir, Drew Goddard adapted the screenplay. Such a great movie starring Matt Damon and directed by Ridley Scott.
Matt Damon's saying "In your face Neil Armstrong." Kinda tainted that movie for me. Neil landed and walked on the real moon. Not acting in some air conditioned, food catered, green screen, Hollywood studio. The writers and Damon could've had a little more respect to the man.
@@rdramos13 Matt Damon didn't say that. The astronaut character he portrayed, Mark Watney, said it. HE wasn't in some air conditioned, food catered, green screen, Hollywood studio. HE was in a NASA HUB designed to support 6 people for 90 days, stranded and attempting to survive in it for 3 years growing food where nothing grows and figuring out how to establish communications with NASA and move all the equipment keeping him alive thousands of miles away to rendezvous with the next Mars mission for extraction. Sure, it's all fiction, but he absolutely earned the right to say "In your face, Neil Armstrong." Technically, growing a crop of potatoes meant he had "colonized" Mars.
I remember when this happened. As with the film, people lost interest after the first couple of missions and when this was suddenly on the news, pretty much the whole world were following it and holding their breath.
Watch the Tom Hanks mini-series on HBO "From the Earth to the Moon". It's the story of the the US space program. The episode 1968 is interesting because 1968 had a lot in common with 2020 - except it ended with the crew of Apollo 8 (including John Lovell) being the first humans to orbit the moon.
@@haroldhardrada7449 Really glad I'm not the only one who saw and loved that show! There's also a really good movie from the 80s about the early days of the U.S space program called "The right stuff", also with Ed Harris.
@@chriskelly3481 When I bought the DVD of "The Right Stuff", the boxed set of "From the Earth to the Moon" was included. Great movie, great series. Fun trivia fact: Scott Glenn played Al Shepard in TRS, Ted Levine played him in FTETTM. They also appeared together in "Silence of the Lambs": Glenn played agent Starling's boss, Levine played the psychopathic killer, Jamie Gumm.
Yes, the movie actually had to add emotion to the performances because the recorded actual voices are almost robotic. All of the Apollo 13 astronauts were ex-fighter pilots, who all had engineering degrees and were then chosen by NASA and trained to do their jobs in situations that would cause most people to melt from stress.
The funny thing is that the "Bounce off the walls for fifteen minute, then be right back where we started" line is a direct quote, but it's quoting what one of the real astronauts said (I think it was Jim Lovell) in a documentary interview when he explained why they DIDN'T have any emotional outbursts.
I was in elementary school when the Apollo missions were launched. The teachers pulled TVs into the classroom so we could watch the launchings and landings and anything else that occured and was significant, such as a mission screw up. As I was already fascinated by "Space Travel" because my Mother was an avid science fiction reader, I was also enthralled by the concept that space exploration was actually occuring during my lifetime. I still to this day think that the Apollo 13 mission is the most important mission we have engaged in because those brave men almost died out there but the actions of the NASA engineers saved them and brought them back, thanks to the copious notes they were all required to keep they figured out what went wrong and how to fix it. Bringing them back produced a belief in me that we deserved the open and exciting future that "We" were able to envision and create. The space program was just one of many exciting events during that chaotic period in our culture that induced in me an expectation of achievement and I later became (with a willfull extension of wonder) an artist, like you, James. Civilisation is complex, but the road that lays before us is not. Forward the intrepid!
"...Failure is not an option!" "With all due respect - I think this is going to be our finest hour." I've seen this movie a dozen times, & these lines (as well as the flying washing machine) and the sight of the 3 'chutes reefing out never fail to move me to tears.
I didn't see it here but there is a criticism of this film that they were using the slide rule to add numbers. They don't work that way. Slide rules are essentially physical Log tables where you're adding/subtracting exponents that are encoded into the distances between the numbers on the rule. When you multiply/divide two numbers that are expressed as powers of the same base you just add/subtract the exponents. The sailing navigators did this with large books of Logarithm tables. They would look up the two numbers in the book to get the exponents, add/subtract the exponents, and then do a reverse lookup to get the resulting number. This was more accurate and faster than performing multiplication and division by hand. I bought a cheap slide rule in high school for the hell of it and learned to do basic things with it. It wasn't much later that I bought a TI-30 (in 1978, I think). The TI-30 still works but I don't think I still have that original slide rule. I bought a good Pickett slide rule (in optical yellow) from a retired engineer neighbor probably about 20 years ago for ten bucks, and I have another good Keuffel & Esser slide rule (white one) that I inherited from my father in law in 1992. As an engineer (software, so not a "real" certified engineer...) these things just hold a bit of nostalgia even though they were obsolete before I got my first one. The most basic scales are simply an physical encoding of the log tables. There are more complicated scales but I never learned how to use them.
They didn't have the big computers we have today. Apollo 13's on-board computer had all the power of a pocket calculator. All the really big computations had to be done by hand, and with slide rules (what they used to figure out complex math before they invented those pocket calculators). Amazing they even managed to make it at all.
its worse than that. The ruptured o-ring in the booster actually maintained integrity, despite leaking smoke. But it was a sudden g-shock during ascent, far stronger than ever recorded during any previous flight, that finally jostled it loose and caused the flames to escape and melt through the external tank.
@@k1productions87 The investigation showed that it was known the ring material would deteriorate in the cold. And Nasa was advised not to launch because of the weather. They ignored the warnings.
@@mikeisdead7137 It is more complicated than that. What people don't think about is pressure from Washington. This particular mission, with its Teacher in Space program, was a last ditch effort to revitalize interest in spaceflight. In that, NASA's future budget... if not its entire existence, rode on the outcome. They had scrubbed several launch attempts of STS-51-L already, and this was the very last launch window they had before they would have to completely scrap one of the primary mission objectives specifically attached to Teacher in Space. Do you want to be the one to march into Congress and tell the know-nothings that control your budget "its just too cold"? You know they'll fire back with "but its even colder in space" and refuse to listen to anything else you have to say engineering-wise because they don't know jack about the subject. All they see is votes. Cancelling the flight was not an option. Now, if Congress hadn't penny pinched the Shuttle development budget, necessitating the removal of all crew safety/recovery launch abort options, and liquid boosters rather than solids (which would have been cryogenic, and therefore not succeptable to the cold), then there would never have been the problem. In hindsight you can say "if they didn't launch, the crew would still be alive", but you don't operate with hindsight when you are sitting in that control room and behind those desks. The overriding thought was more likely "if we don't launch today... possibly hundreds of people will have to get laid off"
there is a movie about the Challenger disaster that focuses on the investigation, following the famous physicist Richard Feynman who was invited to the investigation committee.
@@k1productions87 It was their damn job to march to congress and be honest about it. You don't put the lives of your astronauts knowingly in danger! No money and no job situation is worth that. Sure, it's a huge amount of pressure - but that is part of the task. If you ignore stuff like that, you are in the wrong position.
I was born in the early 90s, and this movie made me want to be an astronaut. I can recite every line, and it got me into physics enough that I got into college as an aerospace engineer, then i realized I wasn't engineer material. But my point being, is efforts like the Apollo program and what SpaceX is doing now will motivate people, hopefully people that have the legit skills to take space exploration to the next level, unlike me haha
The costumes were basically perfect. Same for the cockpit props, etc. I believe almost all of the air-to-ground communication was almost verbatim from the actual transcripts. And the same goes for crew dialogue, although some creative liberties were taken. Especially the part where they were arguing, the real astros verified that that never happened.
One of the best examples of storytelling in a movie. You know exactly what's going to happen at the end, you know everyone will survive, and yet you are on the edge of your seat the whole time. The end when you finally hear Tom Hanks over the radio makes me cry every time.
Not counting multiple viewings, you knew how it would turn out only if you knew how the real A13 turned out, before you saw the movie for the first time. I've been bingeing videos of people watching this for the first time, and a lot of them had either no idea that there really WAS an Apollo 13, or only knew about the mission in name only.
How accurate was this movie? NASA actually contacted Ron Howard to find out how he got those close shots of the launch. They thought the footage was real! They've subsequently said this film should be part of education about space flight, because Howard's work was so meticulous. (Of course, he left out the calculators, but that's a part of NASA history that has only recently been exposed, mainly by "Hidden Figures".)
I'd point out that there are definitely some caveats there -- most particularly, the movie played up the whole Swigert/Mattingly thing for drama. For example, when docking the LEM someone in mission control says "if [Swigert] can't dock this thing we don't have a mission", but Lovell has said something like "first of all, we didn't doubt him, and even if he couldn't there were two other guys onboard who could." And on the flip side, Mattingly as he's portrayed helping from the ground is a composite character of god knows how many people. Nice resolution to the on-screen characters, but way dramatized for the screen. The manual burn that is shown is also way overplayed (and mission control gets kind of the short end of the stick in the movie, they would have been fully aware of the use-the-Earth-as-a-reference option). Hell, I think I've seen that Lovell even *practiced* that maneuver on Apollo 8, though I'm having trouble fact checking that! There are also a ton of small nitpicks one can make. I'm not trying to knock the movie -- it's one of my absolute favorites -- and it's *remarkable* how much it gets right and that's a large part of why it's *so* good; but at the same time, it *is* still a drama, not a documentary, and it's important to not extrapolate *too* far from that.
Re: Calculators - By the time of Apollo 11, et al, they were less prominent in their traditional role since NASA had, as "Hidden Figures" showed, moved into computers. Often with former "calculators" operating and programming them. And, sadly, still often hidden away. A lot of early computer programmers were women drawn from the calculator ranks because they understood how to convert math processes to algorithms, initially for themselves, and then for computers. Their heyday was in the late 1940s to early 60s programs, both at NASA and especially at places like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (The book "Rise of the Rocket Girls" is a really good read about the JPL team.) Several of the women who started out as human calculators stayed on the job until their 80s or older, keeping pace with the changing technology. That's impressive!
@@JamesVSCinema To be clear, when they says "calculators" they mean a team of people who did the calculations by hand, not computers. The team had women and minorities on it, and they worked out most of the math needed for the flight paths.
The little old lady in the nursing home waiting to see her astronaut son on TV is actually Ron Howard's mother. Howard is known for his family's cameos in his movies... His brother is also one of the NASA technicians.
Clint also has a similar role in "From the Earth to the Moon", in the "Spider" episode. And Jim Lovell has a cameo in "Apollo 13" as the recovery ship's captain.
I saw this movie in theaters when i was a kid and I remember that at the end, when they come out of radio silence and you hear tom hanks' voice, the whole packed theater started clapping and cheering. I had never seen that happen before and I have never seen it happen since. This movie is incredible!
There's a plane that's used for training astronauts and film shoots, one term for it is the 'vomit comet'. They simulate 0 gravity by going up high then going into a free fall type of thing.
This film is such a beautiful testament to the brilliant ingenuity of all those involved not only in bringing these guys home but in the space program in general.
There's a documentary that came out a couple years ago called Apollo 11. Turns out they filmed all of the prep in 70mm. It's AMAZING. As intense as any dramatized version of it, maybe more so. I think it's on Hulu.
As an engineer, I called this an engineer's movie. It is a life and death crisis that is being dealt with and you have to have people thinking and working as hard as they can to solve one problem after another. As James pointed out, the way this movie is filmed immerses you into that crises where you can feel the fear and the pressure everyone was under. In terms of how space travel is presented, it has never been done better than Stanly Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey. When real astronauts were asked what space travel was like, they responded that is was just like 2001. It is a visual spectacle like no other, done in 1969 before any cgi.
I was 14 years old and a total space geek when this happened. I was backyard camping with some friends when the mom of one of my friends came out to our tent and told us something had gone wrong with Apollo 13. I was glued to the TV for the next 4 days and greatly relieved when the guys came home. Jim Lovell had been my hero since the Gemini mission days and I was a wreck during this time. As to the movie, the costumes and props are incredibly accurate. Some of the scenes are exaggerated, of course, but still based on reality. Trivia: Jim Lovell wanted Kevin Costner to play him in the movie because of the resemblance but Costner was on another project. Tom Hanks got the role instead and did a fantastic job. Hanks studied Lovell's habits and posture, doing a very good Jim Lovell in the movie. Lovell gets a cameo at the end as a Naval officer shaking the hand of Hanks on the aircraft carrier.
You mention how calm they are after the explosion, and how amazing that is. Whats even more amazing is they had to dial up the stress in their voices for the movie. If you listen to the actual recordings, they're even more calm. It's crazy to hear it when you try to put yourself in their position. You're in outer space and part of your tiny spaceship blows up, and the panel of "you're going to die" warnings are lit up like a Christmas tree, and you're sitting here having a calm conversation lol
Also, the film October Sky is with a watch. It has a super young Jake Gyllenhaal playing a real life guy that went on to be a NASA engineer that I believe helped out on some of the Apollo missions. The film is a good character study drama that's an interesting view.
From Earth to the Moon - the HBO miniseries is another great one to watch. It was the first time that Tom Hanks and HBO did their magic after a hit movie. Much like Band of Brothers. The episode dealing with Apollo 13 is a great way of telling the same story you are seeing here.
I cant speak to Apollo 13, but i can speak about the Challenger incident. I was 9 y/o and in grade school in San Diego... us kids in 6th grade watched it live. When it exploded, our teacher quickly turned off the TV and sat down on her desk and turned her chair away from us and cried into her hands. Few minutes later the principal and counselor came to our class because our teacher was a wreck and took the rest of the week off, we had a substitute and counselor talk to us about how we felt about it.
John Aaron, who had the call sign EECOM (Electrical and Environmental Communication Systems), was widely considered the greatest flight controller in the Apollo era, perhaps the greatest flight controller in the history of US manned space flight. Aaron lived on a ranch in rural Oklahoma with his parents and went to engineering school at Southwestern Oklahoma State University intending to return afterward to work there for good. It was at that time that NASA was putting out requests for engineers to apply for positions in the space program. He applied and was accepted. On top of his actions understanding the power situation on board Apollo 13, he correctly diagnosed and repaired an issue where Apollo 12 lost all on board power 36 seconds adter launch and was left running on batteries only to power its command systems. He recognized the data he was receiving back from the spacecraft from a year earlier and recalled an obscure switch that had nothing to do with his EECOM functions that could fix it. The room was ready for John to call an abort. Instead, John called out, “Try SCE to Aux.” Seconday condition electronics to auxillary. They flipped the switch and got all their power and data back and were able to troubleshoot their problems and proceed to the moon. The rocket had been struck by lightning causing the outage. He was at home when the shit hit the fan on Apollo 13. He was phoned there and had the person calling him run to different stations and read different information off of screens. Finally, he was able to inform them that yes, they had a problem and no, it definitely wasn’t instrumentation. At the end of the work in the simulator perfecting the command module’s re-entry, the procedure was over 500 steps long.
That long shot of Gary Sinise, slowly zooming out, when he's reacting to the news that he won't be on the mission is just amazing. No words, just his reaction.
You mentioned the music several times. The score was composed by the late, great James Horner who was nominated for two Oscars for Best Score the same year: Apollo 13 and Braveheart and he somehow didn't win for either of them. But he finally dd get his Oscar two years alter for the score for Titanic.
After Apollo 13, Tom Hanks went on to produce the HBO MiniSeries "FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON" in my opinion the best series on the history of the Space Race and Apollo program.
I was just a kid when this happened and remember hearing it day by day as it was going down... I also remember seeing how the world came together to show their support for our astronauts...even those countries who were not our allies.
That’s nice to hear. If you think about it, the moon missions are an achievement for humankind. If an alien was observing us, it wouldn’t be, oh look at those Americans! It would probably be, “How cute, these creatures figured how to get to their moon.”
@Trevor Rogert It says a lot if that's your take away from the film. And just because you believe bringing back segregation will make America great again doesn't mean the rest of us do.
Composer here. It’s encouraging to see a young filmmaker like you notice the importance of a good score. I wish you much success and encourage you to incorporate that discerning ear of yours when you produce your own projects someday.
When you have such a great premise for a movie and main cast including Tom Hanks,Gary Sinise,Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton,Ed Harris and direction by Ron Howard you get an amazing movie.
I watched this in theatres when I was 16 - the fact that I knew all those buttons had a specific function made a life-long space nut out of me. By now I know enough about the Apollo program that I understand every acronym in the movie and am even able to spot one or two of the (few) mistakes they made. The weighless scenes were filmed in free fall on the Vomit Comet. If you want more Apollo stuff, watch "From the Earth to the Moon" - it's a series in the same vein as Apollo 13, produced and partially directed by Tom Hanks.
I was born 1982, so I was 13yrs. old when movie came out, and honestly, I was unable to process this movie in the light, and weight that those things were to people of the WORLD as a whole, and I watched it maybe once after, and I cannot give any perpective on that movie!! In those days and up all over to 2010, there were hundreds of sy-fy, movies, so this movie, as I was getting older and new ones were getting out, I put that movie all the way on the "back burner", and alot of doomsday movies, similar to that movie, only this movie was about just one mission, while all of BLOCK BUSTERS, were more like ARMAGEDDON type of movies, the end of days and contact with other species...... Never the less, it was big times for mankind, even if I wasnt aware of the magnitude at that time, we were on the moon long before I was born!! Fun FACT I was born on the same DATE as JFK was Assassinated, only, year was 1982. and not 1963! Date was and still is, on the same day, we both have anniversaries, my birth and his Death! PEACE OUT!!
An underrated gem from a couple years back, similar vein to this one: First Man. Showed the sacrifices made during Apollo missions and the moon landing itself, highly recommended.
Oddly enough (I'm a HUGE space nerd from way back), I was disappointed by First Man. I absolutely loved the depiction of the technology, the relative primitiveness of the Gemini hardware - but I thought Ryan's portrayal of Armstrong was way too muted. He was certainly a reserved, private man, but not catatonic.
You need to react to the miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon". It's the best way for people who didn't live through the era of the Apollo space program to appreciate the immensity of the achievement.
That's the kind of movie that when it came on TV as a kid no matter what was going on you stopped doing and finished watching the rest of the movie. It's absolutely timeless and excellent in filmmaking.
My eighth grade class was split up in two groups and were given the square peg in a round hole problem to solve as a science experiment. The other team won, but it was an awesome assignment. It helped us understand how much pressure them were under during the Apollo 13 mission. Awesome!
I was born in 63 and the space program meant everything to me. I followed every piece of news, no matter how trivial. My mom told me that the angriest she ever saw me was when the networks cancelled much of the live coverage because rocket flight had become routine. I followed these events live as much as I could. The accomplishments of the Apollo crew and mission control were phenomenal. I think the movie makers did a great job. Just a few flights later, it had become routine again and the program was cancelled before completion. That memory no longer brings tears but the safe return of the Apollo 13 still does each time I see the movie, see old footage, read an account or just remember when.
I consider this as one of the best action movies ever. It’s especially impressive in that there’s no fighting or explosions (except one, of course), just excellent acting, direction and score.
I remember seeing this with my family at Ford City, in Chicago. I was on the edge of my seat the second the trumpet started playing. It took me a long time, but I finally bought myself an Omega Speedmaster Professional for my 30th bday. I saw it on the astronauts wrists’ in this movie and fell in love with watches. Omega just released the 50 yr anniversary model for Apollo 13. Beautiful.
If you like space movies you really need to see Ridley Scott's production of "The Martian" with a stellar (no pun intended) performance by Matt Damon and a terrific supporting cast including Jessica Chastain, Michael Pena, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Sean Bean...and, spolier, Sean Bean doesn't die here! A dramatic, funny, human and truly touching movie...
When I first saw that movie, I was waiting for a car accident or something ridiculous to come out of nowhere and kill him. Because no way does Sean Bean actually survive in the movie he's filming
If you ever want to hear the actual voice communications between Houston and Apollo 13, it's on you tube and I believe they have things timestamped according to the different circumstances. It's amazing how cool and calm both Astronauts and Houston communicated. Next level.
According to to one of the astronauts, the only thing they changed was the most famous line: he actually said, "We have a problem Houston." However, he said the way the movie put it was much cooler.
No, the astronaut actually said "Houston, we've HAD a problem." The movie phrases it instead as "Houston, we HAVE a problem." They changed the line because saying "we've HAD a problem" suggests that the problem went away.
The ring in the shower also happened for real, and after knowing that it's a very special thing scene for me. It really makes you wonder the odds of pulling that off, because they really were dead men floating. You really cannot make this up.
To answer James's question about costume design!! These are very accurate depiction of the exact suits that the astronauts wore!! I was 12 years old in the Summer of 69 when Apollo 11 landed on the moon!! A little older for Apollo 13 but I remember very clearly how much this was in the news and how much we were all afraid that it would be another catastrophe in the Apollo program!!! Definitely one of the best true story space movies ever, an excellent example of Ron Howard's directing ability and storytelling ability!!
The mom was played by director Ron Howard's mom. The priest was his dad. His brother Clint was one of the mission control guys, and Jim Lovell played the captain of the recovery aircraft carrier. He's shaking Tom Hanks' hand in the final bit when he's saying what he was going to go on to do.
I was in school when this happened. My parents kept me home for the Apollo 11 mission so that I could watch the historic moment when man first walked on the moon, but by the A-13 mission, the news considered the space program a subject of only passing interest. As they said in the movie, they made a trip to the moon sound about as exciting as a trip to Cleveland. It wasn't until the explosion that it all became universally important again. The news runs on drama; business-as-usual just isn't dramatic enough for full coverage.
I was working at Blockbuster when this was released on video, and one day an older woman came in to return the tape. She related an observation her young grandson had made: "No wonder they had so much trouble, Forrest Gump was driving!"
The engineers who came up with a way to make the whole air filter thing work, using only random stuff they had available in the craft (and in such a short time), were pure geniuses! Also, I can really recommend listening to the IRL audio of the whole thing - it’s simply amazing how calm those astronauts remained.
If you look closely at the end of the film when Tom Hanks shakes the hand of the captain of the ship that is the real life Jim Lovell who played a small cameo in the film. My favourite film of all time.
I was 14 when I saw this movie, and my mom was 14 when Apollo 13 happened. I asked her if she had any doubt that NASA would be able to bring the astronauts back safely, and she said at the time she just assumed NASA was so good they could pull it off. Meanwhile like James, I was dying of the suspense just watching the movie!
the best part about comparing this to the real events is the INSANE calmness and professionalism of the crew. ALL the outbursts, yelling, arguing, shouting, ALL was made up for the movie. Rod Howard felt, rightly so, that no one would believe it if they were realistic. you should listen to the actual audio, it will bore you to tears, like a sunday drive with explosions
I am a child of the Space Age. Born in 1954, My father was an aeronautical engineer at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton Va. I was three when Sputnik was launched. All of the Mercury planning and astronaut training took place there at Langley. Dad became an unabashed space buff and it rubbed off on me completely. I was in 1st grade when Gagarin and then a few weeks later Alan Shepard became America's first men launched into space. Dad took the day off and kept me home from school to watch Shepard's launch on TV. He thought it important that I see this history take place rather than learn about it second hand. I closely followed all the Mercury and Gemini missions while in grade school. I was in high school when the Apollo missions flew. I had just finished 9th grade and turned 15 when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. and the last moon landing, Apollo 17, happened the year I graduated. Those were heady times for us school kids back then. How sad that the politicians lost interest in lunar missions so quickly after that first landing. President Nixon cancelled Apollos 18, 19, and 20 missions even though the launch vehicles and spacecraft were all bought, paid for, and delivered. Funding the actual flights would have been a small incremental expense over that of the hardware we already had. What a tragic loss to science, international prestige, and the men who had tirelessly trained to man those flights.
Thanks so much for reviewing this unforgettable film, James! Amazing and too much to say in one post but yes, I agree with you 100 percent that the music soundtrack is SO impactful and induces such emotion and grandeur. Incredible score! 👍
Random fact. There is more computing power in your average smart phone than in the computers used to get these ships to and from the moon...both on the ground and on board.
I was about 10 when this happened, the 60's space race was a global achievement to see which country was going to be the first to land on the moon. Since there were only 3 TV channels in the US at the time, you couldn't escape anything this news worthy, even if you wanted to. When this movie came out, I was impressed with how captivating it was. They did such a great job that I found myself clutching the arms of my chair at the end, even though I knew that the guys were going to make it back alive. Kuddos to all involved for such terrific film making. James, I am begging you to check out the movie others have suggested here called The Martian, from the book by Andy Weir. Another bit of great filmmaking that again reinforces that aspect of their training about keeping a level head and using science to "work the problem." Even the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson gave it a thumbs up for its technical accuracy, AND its got a good bit of humor too. As a space enthusiast, you will love it!
The crew never actually argued. Just for drama effect. They were incredibly cool through the whole thing. The captain at the end who shook his Tom Hanks' hand was the real Jim Lovell.
There’s a documentary from 2019 called Apollo 11 about the first men on the moon. It’s amazing, they recovered hundreds of hours of film and restored it. It looks incredible and my jaw was dropped the entire time
If you get the chance, read the book "Lost Moon" which tells this story in more detail. There were many other dangers and challenges they had to face before they could get back. Incredible achievement.
in 1970 I was 5 years old and I have a bit of a memory of this event. The nightly news was a must watch in my home as we had several family members fighting in Vietnam. I can remember my father saying it was not going to end well. I thought about those men in space and what would happen. Their fate was better than two of our family members in Vietnam.
this happened before my time. And when the movie came out it was my first time hearing about it. I was a little over 4 years old when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded during lift off. I always kept hearing about that from my mom for years after
Years after Apollo 13, a reporter in LA wanted to interview James Lovell "in an innovative way." He suggested they go up in an aircraft together, and agreed to meet at Nellis AFB in Nevada. Lovell checks out a 2-man fighter jet (yeah, he could do that at any Air Force or Navy installation), and they went up for the interview. By the time they returned, it was after dusk and the runway lights had been deactivated. No worries, Lovell could land it in the dark with his eyes closed.
Im wasn't born yet for Apollo 13 but I remember the Challenger explosion. My whole school was watching because they had a teacher aboard. Better believe they sent us back to class pretty quick. First in a long list of disasters Ive seen played out on TV unfortunately.
I enjoy your reactions. From both the filmmaker and fan of movies reaction. You show the example of the Terry Pratchett quote "It is still magic even if you know how it is done"
You're the best when it comes about movie reactions... GREETS FROM EUROPE my friend, this movie is part of my childhood, RESPECT. You're not only intelligent observer when reacting, but you have HEART.
I just came across this video, so I don't know if you'll see my remarks. But here goes. I grew up with the space program from the initial Mercury flights in the 1960's and onward. My parents would wake us up at 4 am here in Oregon to watch the blast offs live. They were always nailbiters, because you weren't completely sure they would get off the ground safely and were bathed in relief when they did. The Apollo 1 tragedy took place on the ground, so we only heard about it, were not witness to it. We saw the first steps on the moon for the Apollo 11 astronauts and were engrossed with the Apollo 13 situation. I was a junior in high school at the time, and I can tell you that the whole world was focused on it and praying they'd get back safely. The relief was huge when they did. A true "successful failure." In the mid 1990's I was working with a woman from the former USSR who said she and her husband had rented the movie. She was shocked that she enjoyed it so much. Something so boring, she said. And that showed me the difference between the two programs. The US space program was open and showed what was going on at the time. The Soviet space program only showed sucesses after they happened. The American public was very involved in everything about the program, and NASA was good at explaining how things were done and who was doing them. Definitely NOT borning.
Anybody want to go to outer space with me..no?
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KNIVES OUT FIRST TIME REACTION will be uploaded tomorrow! Enjoy the day!
You will absolutely love Alfonso Cuarón's -- GRAVITY -- with George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. You will feel as if you are out in space. I watched it back a few years ago, then went next day to watch it again on 3D. I do not like 3D films but GRAVITY was sooooooooooooooooo worth watching that way. It is an excellent film. You will NOT be able to tell what is CGI and what's not.
Hey i think you should watch this anime called FLCL if you haven't seen it i think it would be interesting to see your input on it 6 episodes 2 and a half hours total it's really confusing but worth watching I recommend watching the dub
‘Gravity’ is a trip. ‘2001’ is cinematic. And for two other (perhaps lesser known) space movies... you could try ‘Event Horizon’ or ‘Sunshine’ 👍
I’m looking forward to when you get around to watching Sexy Beast, True Romance, and Killing Zoe 😏
ooo looking forward to your Knives Out reaction! Get to go back into space when Mass Effect legendary ed comes out hah. Have you seen the movie Contact?
Sorry, not an answer to your question but ..... young people aren't taught about major historical events in high school anymore?
According to producer Brian Grazer, when Apollo 13 lost the Best Picture Oscar, Jim Lovell (who was in the audience) turned to Grazer and said comfortingly, “I never made it to the moon either.”
The weightless scenes were done in a plane that drops into a controlled dive to match actual falling speeds. I think they got like 10-15 seconds of filming tops per fall. Really incredible achievement
The “Vomit Comet”
If I remember correctly they used one of the actual planes used by NASA for their weightless training.
Wow, that’s incredible!
And now almost 30 years later, they’re planning on sending Tom Cruise to actually go to space to film a movie!
@@JamesVSCinema think about the fact that they built sets inside of a freaking plane! and then did controlled dives over and over capturing scenes seconds at a time. This is why I will always respect Ron Howard and I think this movie is a timeless masterpiece and a piece of important American history.
RIP Bill Paxton
One of the greats gone too soon.
Damn, he died? I didn't know that. That's sad.
@@brandonb.5304 Yeah back in 2017, feels like it just happened last year.
Game over, man. :(
I mean he was 61.
@@Jiff321 The average life expectancy for men in the US is 76, not 61. Liam Neeson is 68 and still making action movies. Tom Cruise is 58 and still doing his own stunts. Paxton died from a complication during surgery, he didn't die from old age.
"The Martian" is an AMAZING space movie! Book was written by Andy Weir, Drew Goddard adapted the screenplay. Such a great movie starring Matt Damon and directed by Ridley Scott.
Matt Damon's saying "In your face Neil Armstrong." Kinda tainted that movie for me. Neil landed and walked on the real moon. Not acting in some air conditioned, food catered, green screen, Hollywood studio. The writers and Damon could've had a little more respect to the man.
@@rdramos13 I mean...it is a movie. 100% fiction.
@@rdramos13 Really not a big deal at all
I've asked him about this one, he said he's seen it.
@@rdramos13 Matt Damon didn't say that. The astronaut character he portrayed, Mark Watney, said it. HE wasn't in some air conditioned, food catered, green screen, Hollywood studio. HE was in a NASA HUB designed to support 6 people for 90 days, stranded and attempting to survive in it for 3 years growing food where nothing grows and figuring out how to establish communications with NASA and move all the equipment keeping him alive thousands of miles away to rendezvous with the next Mars mission for extraction. Sure, it's all fiction, but he absolutely earned the right to say "In your face, Neil Armstrong." Technically, growing a crop of potatoes meant he had "colonized" Mars.
Ed Harris as Gene Kranz is out of this world. He's fantastic.
Ed Harris LOOKS like 1970 Gene Kranz.
Ed Harris is fantastic in everything he's in.
He’s one of my favorite actors, an underrated one, and he deserved his Oscar nomination
I read Gene Kranz' book about Apollo 13, and frankly Harris nails it in terms of personality
Ed Harris is just great in everything. It's a shame he hasn't won an Oscar yet.
The Right Stuff is another classic space movie you will not be disappointed in.
Ed Harris in that one as well
Would love to see that!
The HBO mini-series "From the Earth to the Moon" would be great to follow it.
Herman Von Petri From the Earth to the Moon would be a great reaction series! I just wonder if it would get many views.
@@susanmaggiora4800 That's a fair point. But it is only 12 episodes so I guess wouldn't be a huge commitment.
I'd also recommend Moon with Sam Rockwell & directed by Duncan Jones (David Bowie's son), very good.
I remember when this happened. As with the film, people lost interest after the first couple of missions and when this was suddenly on the news, pretty much the whole world were following it and holding their breath.
Sheesh! Must’ve felt like the entire world just froze.
Watch the Tom Hanks mini-series on HBO "From the Earth to the Moon". It's the story of the the US space program. The episode 1968 is interesting because 1968 had a lot in common with 2020 - except it ended with the crew of Apollo 8 (including John Lovell) being the first humans to orbit the moon.
@@haroldhardrada7449 The Apollo 1 episode and the LEM design team episode are my two favorites of the series.
@@haroldhardrada7449 Really glad I'm not the only one who saw and loved that show!
There's also a really good movie from the 80s about the early days of the U.S space program called "The right stuff", also with Ed Harris.
@@chriskelly3481 When I bought the DVD of "The Right Stuff", the boxed set of "From the Earth to the Moon" was included. Great movie, great series. Fun trivia fact: Scott Glenn played Al Shepard in TRS, Ted Levine played him in FTETTM. They also appeared together in "Silence of the Lambs": Glenn played agent Starling's boss, Levine played the psychopathic killer, Jamie Gumm.
I remember that they had no angry outbursts on Apollo 13 and just stayed calm. Maybe I'm wrong but that is some levelheadedness I can only dream of...
Was going to mention this!
Yes, the movie actually had to add emotion to the performances because the recorded actual voices are almost robotic. All of the Apollo 13 astronauts were ex-fighter pilots, who all had engineering degrees and were then chosen by NASA and trained to do their jobs in situations that would cause most people to melt from stress.
@@BanyanTree1 Tip o' the hat to those stone cold bastards!
The funny thing is that the "Bounce off the walls for fifteen minute, then be right back where we started" line is a direct quote, but it's quoting what one of the real astronauts said (I think it was Jim Lovell) in a documentary interview when he explained why they DIDN'T have any emotional outbursts.
@@waterbeauty85 It was Jim, yes.
Fun Fact: Jim Lovell did the Commencement speech at my college graduation just a few weeks before this film came out.
Whoa. That's awesome!
I was in elementary school when the Apollo missions were launched. The teachers pulled TVs into the classroom so we could watch the launchings and landings and anything else that occured and was significant, such as a mission screw up. As I was already fascinated by "Space Travel" because my Mother was an avid science fiction reader, I was also enthralled by the concept that space exploration was actually occuring during my lifetime. I still to this day think that the Apollo 13 mission is the most important mission we have engaged in because those brave men almost died out there but the actions of the NASA engineers saved them and brought them back, thanks to the copious notes they were all required to keep they figured out what went wrong and how to fix it. Bringing them back produced a belief in me that we deserved the open and exciting future that "We" were able to envision and create. The space program was just one of many exciting events during that chaotic period in our culture that induced in me an expectation of achievement and I later became (with a willfull extension of wonder) an artist, like you, James. Civilisation is complex, but the road that lays before us is not. Forward the intrepid!
“If they could get a washing machine to fly, my Jimmy could land it” gets me every time.
Most of the time she is not completely aware and then she says that line with steel in her voice.
"...Failure is not an option!"
"With all due respect - I think this is going to be our finest hour."
I've seen this movie a dozen times, & these lines (as well as the flying washing machine) and the sight of the 3 'chutes reefing out never fail to move me to tears.
"Gentlemen, it's been a privilege flying with you."
"Why is math so scary?" Was my go-to panic in high school and college.
😭😭😭
There is no hell deep enough for the first man to spill aphabetti spaghetti on his math homework and argue with his teacher that it was right.
I didn't see it here but there is a criticism of this film that they were using the slide rule to add numbers. They don't work that way. Slide rules are essentially physical Log tables where you're adding/subtracting exponents that are encoded into the distances between the numbers on the rule.
When you multiply/divide two numbers that are expressed as powers of the same base you just add/subtract the exponents. The sailing navigators did this with large books of Logarithm tables. They would look up the two numbers in the book to get the exponents, add/subtract the exponents, and then do a reverse lookup to get the resulting number. This was more accurate and faster than performing multiplication and division by hand.
I bought a cheap slide rule in high school for the hell of it and learned to do basic things with it. It wasn't much later that I bought a TI-30 (in 1978, I think). The TI-30 still works but I don't think I still have that original slide rule. I bought a good Pickett slide rule (in optical yellow) from a retired engineer neighbor probably about 20 years ago for ten bucks, and I have another good Keuffel & Esser slide rule (white one) that I inherited from my father in law in 1992. As an engineer (software, so not a "real" certified engineer...) these things just hold a bit of nostalgia even though they were obsolete before I got my first one.
The most basic scales are simply an physical encoding of the log tables. There are more complicated scales but I never learned how to use them.
There is people for everything. I truly loved the math classes, and was terrified by literature and art. Go figure.
They didn't have the big computers we have today. Apollo 13's on-board computer had all the power of a pocket calculator. All the really big computations had to be done by hand, and with slide rules (what they used to figure out complex math before they invented those pocket calculators). Amazing they even managed to make it at all.
"Wow, a minor defect..." It was one gasket that couldn't handle cold weather that killed the Challenger crew.
its worse than that. The ruptured o-ring in the booster actually maintained integrity, despite leaking smoke. But it was a sudden g-shock during ascent, far stronger than ever recorded during any previous flight, that finally jostled it loose and caused the flames to escape and melt through the external tank.
@@k1productions87 The investigation showed that it was known the ring material would deteriorate in the cold. And Nasa was advised not to launch because of the weather. They ignored the warnings.
@@mikeisdead7137 It is more complicated than that. What people don't think about is pressure from Washington. This particular mission, with its Teacher in Space program, was a last ditch effort to revitalize interest in spaceflight. In that, NASA's future budget... if not its entire existence, rode on the outcome.
They had scrubbed several launch attempts of STS-51-L already, and this was the very last launch window they had before they would have to completely scrap one of the primary mission objectives specifically attached to Teacher in Space. Do you want to be the one to march into Congress and tell the know-nothings that control your budget "its just too cold"? You know they'll fire back with "but its even colder in space" and refuse to listen to anything else you have to say engineering-wise because they don't know jack about the subject. All they see is votes.
Cancelling the flight was not an option. Now, if Congress hadn't penny pinched the Shuttle development budget, necessitating the removal of all crew safety/recovery launch abort options, and liquid boosters rather than solids (which would have been cryogenic, and therefore not succeptable to the cold), then there would never have been the problem.
In hindsight you can say "if they didn't launch, the crew would still be alive", but you don't operate with hindsight when you are sitting in that control room and behind those desks. The overriding thought was more likely "if we don't launch today... possibly hundreds of people will have to get laid off"
there is a movie about the Challenger disaster that focuses on the investigation, following the famous physicist Richard Feynman who was invited to the investigation committee.
@@k1productions87 It was their damn job to march to congress and be honest about it. You don't put the lives of your astronauts knowingly in danger! No money and no job situation is worth that. Sure, it's a huge amount of pressure - but that is part of the task. If you ignore stuff like that, you are in the wrong position.
I was born in the early 90s, and this movie made me want to be an astronaut. I can recite every line, and it got me into physics enough that I got into college as an aerospace engineer, then i realized I wasn't engineer material. But my point being, is efforts like the Apollo program and what SpaceX is doing now will motivate people, hopefully people that have the legit skills to take space exploration to the next level, unlike me haha
Keep the dream alive brother.
The costumes were basically perfect. Same for the cockpit props, etc. I believe almost all of the air-to-ground communication was almost verbatim from the actual transcripts. And the same goes for crew dialogue, although some creative liberties were taken. Especially the part where they were arguing, the real astros verified that that never happened.
One of the best examples of storytelling in a movie. You know exactly what's going to happen at the end, you know everyone will survive, and yet you are on the edge of your seat the whole time. The end when you finally hear Tom Hanks over the radio makes me cry every time.
Not counting multiple viewings, you knew how it would turn out only if you knew how the real A13 turned out, before you saw the movie for the first time. I've been bingeing videos of people watching this for the first time, and a lot of them had either no idea that there really WAS an Apollo 13, or only knew about the mission in name only.
How accurate was this movie? NASA actually contacted Ron Howard to find out how he got those close shots of the launch. They thought the footage was real! They've subsequently said this film should be part of education about space flight, because Howard's work was so meticulous. (Of course, he left out the calculators, but that's a part of NASA history that has only recently been exposed, mainly by "Hidden Figures".)
That’s awesome wow!
I'd point out that there are definitely some caveats there -- most particularly, the movie played up the whole Swigert/Mattingly thing for drama. For example, when docking the LEM someone in mission control says "if [Swigert] can't dock this thing we don't have a mission", but Lovell has said something like "first of all, we didn't doubt him, and even if he couldn't there were two other guys onboard who could." And on the flip side, Mattingly as he's portrayed helping from the ground is a composite character of god knows how many people. Nice resolution to the on-screen characters, but way dramatized for the screen. The manual burn that is shown is also way overplayed (and mission control gets kind of the short end of the stick in the movie, they would have been fully aware of the use-the-Earth-as-a-reference option). Hell, I think I've seen that Lovell even *practiced* that maneuver on Apollo 8, though I'm having trouble fact checking that! There are also a ton of small nitpicks one can make.
I'm not trying to knock the movie -- it's one of my absolute favorites -- and it's *remarkable* how much it gets right and that's a large part of why it's *so* good; but at the same time, it *is* still a drama, not a documentary, and it's important to not extrapolate *too* far from that.
I would love if James put Hidden Figures up on one of the next few polls. Absolutely love that movie.
Re: Calculators - By the time of Apollo 11, et al, they were less prominent in their traditional role since NASA had, as "Hidden Figures" showed, moved into computers. Often with former "calculators" operating and programming them. And, sadly, still often hidden away. A lot of early computer programmers were women drawn from the calculator ranks because they understood how to convert math processes to algorithms, initially for themselves, and then for computers. Their heyday was in the late 1940s to early 60s programs, both at NASA and especially at places like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (The book "Rise of the Rocket Girls" is a really good read about the JPL team.)
Several of the women who started out as human calculators stayed on the job until their 80s or older, keeping pace with the changing technology. That's impressive!
@@JamesVSCinema To be clear, when they says "calculators" they mean a team of people who did the calculations by hand, not computers. The team had women and minorities on it, and they worked out most of the math needed for the flight paths.
The little old lady in the nursing home waiting to see her astronaut son on TV is actually Ron Howard's mother. Howard is known for his family's cameos in his movies... His brother is also one of the NASA technicians.
Clint also has a similar role in "From the Earth to the Moon", in the "Spider" episode. And Jim Lovell has a cameo in "Apollo 13" as the recovery ship's captain.
I saw this movie in theaters when i was a kid and I remember that at the end, when they come out of radio silence and you hear tom hanks' voice, the whole packed theater started clapping and cheering. I had never seen that happen before and I have never seen it happen since. This movie is incredible!
And the capsule splashing down.
There's a plane that's used for training astronauts and film shoots, one term for it is the 'vomit comet'. They simulate 0 gravity by going up high then going into a free fall type of thing.
Normal people can go if you have a few grand. They had skateboarders do it a few years ago. The plane goes in a kind of a double parabola.
Parabolic flight
This film is such a beautiful testament to the brilliant ingenuity of all those involved not only in bringing these guys home but in the space program in general.
There's a documentary that came out a couple years ago called Apollo 11. Turns out they filmed all of the prep in 70mm. It's AMAZING. As intense as any dramatized version of it, maybe more so. I think it's on Hulu.
Saw that in an IMAX presentation. It's incredible.
@@richieclean Me too. Absolutely stunning!
First Man (2018)
For All Mankind (1989)
Good space movies.
I'd also recommend Moon (2009) with Sam Rockwell & directed by Duncan Jones (David Bowie's son).
Very good ones, "The Right Stuff" is a little more in line with this movie in my opinion. Ed Harris is in it too.
As an engineer, I called this an engineer's movie. It is a life and death crisis that is being dealt with and you have to have people thinking and working as hard as they can to solve one problem after another. As James pointed out, the way this movie is filmed immerses you into that crises where you can feel the fear and the pressure everyone was under. In terms of how space travel is presented, it has never been done better than Stanly Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey. When real astronauts were asked what space travel was like, they responded that is was just like 2001. It is a visual spectacle like no other, done in 1969 before any cgi.
I was 14 years old and a total space geek when this happened. I was backyard camping with some friends when the mom of one of my friends came out to our tent and told us something had gone wrong with Apollo 13. I was glued to the TV for the next 4 days and greatly relieved when the guys came home. Jim Lovell had been my hero since the Gemini mission days and I was a wreck during this time.
As to the movie, the costumes and props are incredibly accurate. Some of the scenes are exaggerated, of course, but still based on reality. Trivia: Jim Lovell wanted Kevin Costner to play him in the movie because of the resemblance but Costner was on another project. Tom Hanks got the role instead and did a fantastic job. Hanks studied Lovell's habits and posture, doing a very good Jim Lovell in the movie. Lovell gets a cameo at the end as a Naval officer shaking the hand of Hanks on the aircraft carrier.
You mention how calm they are after the explosion, and how amazing that is. Whats even more amazing is they had to dial up the stress in their voices for the movie. If you listen to the actual recordings, they're even more calm. It's crazy to hear it when you try to put yourself in their position. You're in outer space and part of your tiny spaceship blows up, and the panel of "you're going to die" warnings are lit up like a Christmas tree, and you're sitting here having a calm conversation lol
My parents said everyone was watching the news and praying. This captivated America and beyond.
The studio cut Ron Howard a blank check and said 'win all the Oscars'.
2001: A Space Odyssey , a Sci-Fi must.
October sky is another great movie that has to do with the inspiration of space travel
Keep the tissues handy though!
Also, the film October Sky is with a watch. It has a super young Jake Gyllenhaal playing a real life guy that went on to be a NASA engineer that I believe helped out on some of the Apollo missions. The film is a good character study drama that's an interesting view.
Homer Hickham worked on the Space Shuttle program. He had another job before going to NASA.
From Earth to the Moon - the HBO miniseries is another great one to watch. It was the first time that Tom Hanks and HBO did their magic after a hit movie. Much like Band of Brothers.
The episode dealing with Apollo 13 is a great way of telling the same story you are seeing here.
Jim Lovells mother in the movie, the one who says her son can land a flying washing machine. She is Ron Howards Mom.
His father Rance plays the reverend.
I cant speak to Apollo 13, but i can speak about the Challenger incident. I was 9 y/o and in grade school in San Diego... us kids in 6th grade watched it live. When it exploded, our teacher quickly turned off the TV and sat down on her desk and turned her chair away from us and cried into her hands. Few minutes later the principal and counselor came to our class because our teacher was a wreck and took the rest of the week off, we had a substitute and counselor talk to us about how we felt about it.
John Aaron, who had the call sign EECOM (Electrical and Environmental Communication Systems), was widely considered the greatest flight controller in the Apollo era, perhaps the greatest flight controller in the history of US manned space flight.
Aaron lived on a ranch in rural Oklahoma with his parents and went to engineering school at Southwestern Oklahoma State University intending to return afterward to work there for good. It was at that time that NASA was putting out requests for engineers to apply for positions in the space program. He applied and was accepted.
On top of his actions understanding the power situation on board Apollo 13, he correctly diagnosed and repaired an issue where Apollo 12 lost all on board power 36 seconds adter launch and was left running on batteries only to power its command systems. He recognized the data he was receiving back from the spacecraft from a year earlier and recalled an obscure switch that had nothing to do with his EECOM functions that could fix it. The room was ready for John to call an abort. Instead, John called out, “Try SCE to Aux.” Seconday condition electronics to auxillary. They flipped the switch and got all their power and data back and were able to troubleshoot their problems and proceed to the moon. The rocket had been struck by lightning causing the outage.
He was at home when the shit hit the fan on Apollo 13. He was phoned there and had the person calling him run to different stations and read different information off of screens. Finally, he was able to inform them that yes, they had a problem and no, it definitely wasn’t instrumentation. At the end of the work in the simulator perfecting the command module’s re-entry, the procedure was over 500 steps long.
The soundtrack in this movie is phenomenal
This is a rare example of a film where the special effects enhance the realism of the story, make it totally believable.
That long shot of Gary Sinise, slowly zooming out, when he's reacting to the news that he won't be on the mission is just amazing. No words, just his reaction.
You mentioned the music several times. The score was composed by the late, great James Horner who was nominated for two Oscars for Best Score the same year: Apollo 13 and Braveheart and he somehow didn't win for either of them. But he finally dd get his Oscar two years alter for the score for Titanic.
Right on. And James Horner scored several other space-themed movies, including Star Trek II & III, Aliens and Ron Howard's Cocoon.
The music: James Horner, baby!
I love the musical buildup when they do the power up procedures...and when it works...the music is calm.
After Apollo 13, Tom Hanks went on to produce the HBO MiniSeries "FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON" in my opinion the best series on the history of the Space Race and Apollo program.
Every scene is so intense because every scene is an absolute life or death situation lmao
I was just a kid when this happened and remember hearing it day by day as it was going down... I also remember seeing how the world came together to show their support for our astronauts...even those countries who were not our allies.
That’s nice to hear. If you think about it, the moon missions are an achievement for humankind. If an alien was observing us, it wouldn’t be, oh look at those Americans! It would probably be, “How cute, these creatures figured how to get to their moon.”
Since you like space movies, I feel Hidden Figures is well worth watching. It doesn't take place IN space, but it's still fantastic.
@Trevor Rogert It says a lot if that's your take away from the film. And just because you believe bringing back segregation will make America great again doesn't mean the rest of us do.
As others have stated...the zero G scenes look so good because its real zero G 😎
Composer here. It’s encouraging to see a young filmmaker like you notice the importance of a good score. I wish you much success and encourage you to incorporate that discerning ear of yours when you produce your own projects someday.
When you have such a great premise for a movie and main cast including Tom Hanks,Gary Sinise,Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton,Ed Harris and direction by Ron Howard you get an amazing movie.
I watched this in theatres when I was 16 - the fact that I knew all those buttons had a specific function made a life-long space nut out of me. By now I know enough about the Apollo program that I understand every acronym in the movie and am even able to spot one or two of the (few) mistakes they made.
The weighless scenes were filmed in free fall on the Vomit Comet.
If you want more Apollo stuff, watch "From the Earth to the Moon" - it's a series in the same vein as Apollo 13, produced and partially directed by Tom Hanks.
A fictional movie called "Marooned" came out in 1969.
It came scary close to predicting Apollo 13's near tragedy in 1970.
I was born 1982, so I was 13yrs. old when movie came out, and honestly, I was unable to process this movie in the light, and weight that those things were to people of the WORLD as a whole, and I watched it maybe once after, and I cannot give any perpective on that movie!! In those days and up all over to 2010, there were hundreds of sy-fy, movies, so this movie, as I was getting older and new ones were getting out, I put that movie all the way on the "back burner", and alot of doomsday movies, similar to that movie, only this movie was about just one mission, while all of BLOCK BUSTERS, were more like ARMAGEDDON type of movies, the end of days and contact with other species...... Never the less, it was big times for mankind, even if I wasnt aware of the magnitude at that time, we were on the moon long before I was born!! Fun FACT I was born on the same DATE as JFK was Assassinated, only, year was 1982. and not 1963! Date was and still is, on the same day, we both have anniversaries, my birth and his Death! PEACE OUT!!
An underrated gem from a couple years back, similar vein to this one: First Man.
Showed the sacrifices made during Apollo missions and the moon landing itself, highly recommended.
First Man is sooo underrated. Fantastic score as well. Definitely on my top 20 favorites.
Yes so good, Claire Foy is so good in that
First Man is my favorite Chazelle film just under La La Land. Ryan Gosling’s performance is so subtle yet so impactful.
Oddly enough (I'm a HUGE space nerd from way back), I was disappointed by First Man. I absolutely loved the depiction of the technology, the relative primitiveness of the Gemini hardware - but I thought Ryan's portrayal of Armstrong was way too muted. He was certainly a reserved, private man, but not catatonic.
@@lesnyk255 Ryan wasnt catatonic at all in the film though, theres multiple scenes of him having fun with friends and laughing with his kids.
You need to react to the miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon". It's the best way for people who didn't live through the era of the Apollo space program to appreciate the immensity of the achievement.
Have we seen the film "The Right Stuff?" about the beginings of the US space program ? It won four oscars.
That's the kind of movie that when it came on TV as a kid no matter what was going on you stopped doing and finished watching the rest of the movie. It's absolutely timeless and excellent in filmmaking.
My eighth grade class was split up in two groups and were given the square peg in a round hole problem to solve as a science experiment. The other team won, but it was an awesome assignment. It helped us understand how much pressure them were under during the Apollo 13 mission. Awesome!
I was born in 63 and the space program meant everything to me. I followed every piece of news, no matter how trivial. My mom told me that the angriest she ever saw me was when the networks cancelled much of the live coverage because rocket flight had become routine. I followed these events live as much as I could. The accomplishments of the Apollo crew and mission control were phenomenal. I think the movie makers did a great job. Just a few flights later, it had become routine again and the program was cancelled before completion. That memory no longer brings tears but the safe return of the Apollo 13 still does each time I see the movie, see old footage, read an account or just remember when.
I consider this as one of the best action movies ever. It’s especially impressive in that there’s no fighting or explosions (except one, of course), just excellent acting, direction and score.
The C02 scrubber they improvised to save the astronaut's lives is on display at the Houston Space Center.
I remember seeing this with my family at Ford City, in Chicago. I was on the edge of my seat the second the trumpet started playing. It took me a long time, but I finally bought myself an Omega Speedmaster Professional for my 30th bday. I saw it on the astronauts wrists’ in this movie and fell in love with watches. Omega just released the 50 yr anniversary model for Apollo 13. Beautiful.
If you like space movies you really need to see Ridley Scott's production of "The Martian" with a stellar (no pun intended) performance by Matt Damon and a terrific supporting cast including Jessica Chastain, Michael Pena, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Sean Bean...and, spolier, Sean Bean doesn't die here! A dramatic, funny, human and truly touching movie...
When I first saw that movie, I was waiting for a car accident or something ridiculous to come out of nowhere and kill him. Because no way does Sean Bean actually survive in the movie he's filming
If you ever want to hear the actual voice communications between Houston and Apollo 13, it's on you tube and I believe they have things timestamped according to the different circumstances. It's amazing how cool and calm both Astronauts and Houston communicated. Next level.
The China Syndrome is another suspenseful movie. The control room scene is my favorite part of any movie ever.
“We need to find out where that waters coming from and FAST!” Definitely in my top 10! Jack Lemmon should have gotten an Oscar for that scene alone!
An absolute yes!!
If you ever get the chance James,
"2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968)
is definitely worth checking out.
🚀🌌🌕
While no Kubrick masterpiece, the sequel "2010: The Year we Make Contact" (1984) is also a solid watchable film.
@@jasonp.1195 2010 is pretty okay, but yeah as you said, not remotely in the same ballpark as 2001.
No matter how many times I see this movie, the reentry ending is so tense every time!
Its amazing, the music is just perfect aswell
Yeah they spared no expense on costumes and set pieces, this stuff was damn near 100% accurate
I love watching a fellow space enthusiast watch this film. You feel the stakes and the sense of wonder. Love this reaction 🖤
According to to one of the astronauts, the only thing they changed was the most famous line: he actually said, "We have a problem Houston." However, he said the way the movie put it was much cooler.
Hahaha this is badass
No, the astronaut actually said "Houston, we've HAD a problem." The movie phrases it instead as "Houston, we HAVE a problem." They changed the line because saying "we've HAD a problem" suggests that the problem went away.
The ring in the shower also happened for real, and after knowing that it's a very special thing scene for me. It really makes you wonder the odds of pulling that off, because they really were dead men floating. You really cannot make this up.
The older naval officer Tom Hanks shakes hands with at the end is the real life Jim Lovell.
To answer James's question about costume design!! These are very accurate depiction of the exact suits that the astronauts wore!! I was 12 years old in the Summer of 69 when Apollo 11 landed on the moon!! A little older for Apollo 13 but I remember very clearly how much this was in the news and how much we were all afraid that it would be another catastrophe in the Apollo program!!! Definitely one of the best true story space movies ever, an excellent example of Ron Howard's directing ability and storytelling ability!!
The line from his mom is the best
Hell yeah, shoutout to the mommas
The mom was played by director Ron Howard's mom. The priest was his dad. His brother Clint was one of the mission control guys, and Jim Lovell played the captain of the recovery aircraft carrier. He's shaking Tom Hanks' hand in the final bit when he's saying what he was going to go on to do.
I was in school when this happened. My parents kept me home for the Apollo 11 mission so that I could watch the historic moment when man first walked on the moon, but by the A-13 mission, the news considered the space program a subject of only passing interest. As they said in the movie, they made a trip to the moon sound about as exciting as a trip to Cleveland. It wasn't until the explosion that it all became universally important again. The news runs on drama; business-as-usual just isn't dramatic enough for full coverage.
History buffs channel put out a great video on the authenticity of this film. Really puts things in perspective.
I was working at Blockbuster when this was released on video, and one day an older woman came in to return the tape. She related an observation her young grandson had made: "No wonder they had so much trouble, Forrest Gump was driving!"
The engineers who came up with a way to make the whole air filter thing work, using only random stuff they had available in the craft (and in such a short time), were pure geniuses!
Also, I can really recommend listening to the IRL audio of the whole thing - it’s simply amazing how calm those astronauts remained.
If you look closely at the end of the film when Tom Hanks shakes the hand of the captain of the ship that is the real life Jim Lovell who played a small cameo in the film. My favourite film of all time.
I actually saw this movie when it first came out at a drive in theater. Only time I've ever been to one.
I was 14 when I saw this movie, and my mom was 14 when Apollo 13 happened. I asked her if she had any doubt that NASA would be able to bring the astronauts back safely, and she said at the time she just assumed NASA was so good they could pull it off. Meanwhile like James, I was dying of the suspense just watching the movie!
It is crazy when you pause for a moment and just think about the fact that we put men on the moon.
the best part about comparing this to the real events is the INSANE calmness and professionalism of the crew. ALL the outbursts, yelling, arguing, shouting, ALL was made up for the movie. Rod Howard felt, rightly so, that no one would believe it if they were realistic. you should listen to the actual audio, it will bore you to tears, like a sunday drive with explosions
I am a child of the Space Age. Born in 1954, My father was an aeronautical engineer at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton Va. I was three when Sputnik was launched. All of the Mercury planning and astronaut training took place there at Langley. Dad became an unabashed space buff and it rubbed off on me completely.
I was in 1st grade when Gagarin and then a few weeks later Alan Shepard became America's first men launched into space. Dad took the day off and kept me home from school to watch Shepard's launch on TV. He thought it important that I see this history take place rather than learn about it second hand. I closely followed all the Mercury and Gemini missions while in grade school. I was in high school when the Apollo missions flew. I had just finished 9th grade and turned 15 when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. and the last moon landing, Apollo 17, happened the year I graduated. Those were heady times for us school kids back then.
How sad that the politicians lost interest in lunar missions so quickly after that first landing. President Nixon cancelled Apollos 18, 19, and 20 missions even though the launch vehicles and spacecraft were all bought, paid for, and delivered. Funding the actual flights would have been a small incremental expense over that of the hardware we already had. What a tragic loss to science, international prestige, and the men who had tirelessly trained to man those flights.
"I'm not going to lie to you." Let the drinking game begin. Best. Leo.
This here is one of my favorite movies of all time. It doesn't get more authentic than filming in the Vomet Comet short of going to space. Incredible.
Thanks so much for reviewing this unforgettable film, James! Amazing and too much to say in one post but yes, I agree with you 100 percent that the music soundtrack is SO impactful and induces such emotion and grandeur. Incredible score! 👍
Random fact. There is more computing power in your average smart phone than in the computers used to get these ships to and from the moon...both on the ground and on board.
This movie is so accurate on every detail from personalities, technology, events and timelines that it may as well be thought of as a documentary
I was about 10 when this happened, the 60's space race was a global achievement to see which country was going to be the first to land on the moon. Since there were only 3 TV channels in the US at the time, you couldn't escape anything this news worthy, even if you wanted to.
When this movie came out, I was impressed with how captivating it was. They did such a great job that I found myself clutching the arms of my chair at the end, even though I knew that the guys were going to make it back alive. Kuddos to all involved for such terrific film making.
James, I am begging you to check out the movie others have suggested here called The Martian, from the book by Andy Weir. Another bit of great filmmaking that again reinforces that aspect of their training about keeping a level head and using science to "work the problem." Even the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson gave it a thumbs up for its technical accuracy, AND its got a good bit of humor too. As a space enthusiast, you will love it!
The crew never actually argued. Just for drama effect. They were incredibly cool through the whole thing. The captain at the end who shook his Tom Hanks' hand was the real Jim Lovell.
I remember this watching it unfold on TV back in 1970
There’s a documentary from 2019 called Apollo 11 about the first men on the moon. It’s amazing, they recovered hundreds of hours of film and restored it. It looks incredible and my jaw was dropped the entire time
If you get the chance, read the book "Lost Moon" which tells this story in more detail. There were many other dangers and challenges they had to face before they could get back. Incredible achievement.
in 1970 I was 5 years old and I have a bit of a memory of this event. The nightly news was a must watch in my home as we had several family members fighting in Vietnam. I can remember my father saying it was not going to end well. I thought about those men in space and what would happen. Their fate was better than two of our family members in Vietnam.
From man flying for the first time in 1903 to landing on the moon in 1969, only 66 years had passed! Amazing!!!!
this happened before my time. And when the movie came out it was my first time hearing about it. I was a little over 4 years old when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded during lift off. I always kept hearing about that from my mom for years after
Years after Apollo 13, a reporter in LA wanted to interview James Lovell "in an innovative way." He suggested they go up in an aircraft together, and agreed to meet at Nellis AFB in Nevada. Lovell checks out a 2-man fighter jet (yeah, he could do that at any Air Force or Navy installation), and they went up for the interview. By the time they returned, it was after dusk and the runway lights had been deactivated. No worries, Lovell could land it in the dark with his eyes closed.
Im wasn't born yet for Apollo 13 but I remember the Challenger explosion. My whole school was watching because they had a teacher aboard. Better believe they sent us back to class pretty quick. First in a long list of disasters Ive seen played out on TV unfortunately.
I enjoy your reactions. From both the filmmaker and fan of movies reaction. You show the example of the Terry Pratchett quote "It is still magic even if you know how it is done"
“If they got that washing machine to fly, my Jimmy could land it.” Is one of the best lines.
One of my all-time favorites. Such a testament to human ingenuity and bravery.
You're the best when it comes about movie reactions... GREETS FROM EUROPE my friend, this movie is part of my childhood, RESPECT. You're not only intelligent observer when reacting, but you have HEART.
Tom Hanks “Twelve Gs, we’re burning up.”
James “Geez... uhhh that is not good.”
I just came across this video, so I don't know if you'll see my remarks. But here goes. I grew up with the space program from the initial Mercury flights in the 1960's and onward. My parents would wake us up at 4 am here in Oregon to watch the blast offs live. They were always nailbiters, because you weren't completely sure they would get off the ground safely and were bathed in relief when they did. The Apollo 1 tragedy took place on the ground, so we only heard about it, were not witness to it. We saw the first steps on the moon for the Apollo 11 astronauts and were engrossed with the Apollo 13 situation. I was a junior in high school at the time, and I can tell you that the whole world was focused on it and praying they'd get back safely. The relief was huge when they did. A true "successful failure." In the mid 1990's I was working with a woman from the former USSR who said she and her husband had rented the movie. She was shocked that she enjoyed it so much. Something so boring, she said. And that showed me the difference between the two programs. The US space program was open and showed what was going on at the time. The Soviet space program only showed sucesses after they happened. The American public was very involved in everything about the program, and NASA was good at explaining how things were done and who was doing them. Definitely NOT borning.