APOLLO 13:SURVIVAL (2024)
Scroll down to Watch Full MovieTom Hanks as Commander Jim Lovell
Kevin Bacon as backup Command Module Pilot Jack Swigert
Bill Paxton as Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise
Gary Sinise as prime Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly, who was grounded shortly before the mission
Mark Wheeler as Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong
Larry Williams as Apollo 11 Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin
David Andrews as Apollo 12 Commander Pete Conrad
Ben Marley as Apollo 13 backup Commander John Young
Brett Cullen as capsule communicator (CAPCOM) 1 "Andy" (a composite astronaut, based on Jack Lousma and William Pogue)
Ned Vaughn as CAPCOM 2 (a composite astronaut)
Ed Harris as White Team Flight Director Gene Kranz. Harris described the film as "cramming for a final exam." Harris described Gene Kranz as "corny and like a dinosaur", but respected by the crew.
Chris Ellis as Director of Flight Crew Operations Deke Slayton
Joe Spano as NASA Director, a composite character loosely based on Manned Spacecraft Center director Christopher C. Kraft, Jr.
Marc McClure as Black Team Flight Director Glynn Lunney
Clint Howard as White Team Electrical, Environmental and Consumables Manager (EECOM) Sy Liebergot
Ray McKinnon as White Team Flight Dynamics Officer (FIDO) Jerry Bostick
Todd Louiso as White Team Flight Activities Officer (FAO)
Gabriel Jarret as White Team Guidance, Navigation, and Controls Systems Engineer (GNC)
Andy Milder as White Team Guidance Officer (GUIDO)
Jim Meskimen as White Team Telemetry, Electrical, EVA Mobility Unit Officer (TELMU)
Loren Dean as EECOM John Aaron
Christian Clemenson as Flight Surgeon Dr. Charles Berry
Carl Gabriel Yorke as SIM (Simulator) 1
Xander Berkeley as Henry Hurt, a fictional NASA Office of Public Affairs staff member
Kenneth White [d] as Grumman Representative
Kathleen Quinlan as Marilyn Gerlach Lovell, Jim's wife
Jean Speegle Howard (Ron Howard's mother) as Blanche Lovell, Jim's mother
Mary Kate Schellhardt as Barbara Lovell, Jim's older daughter
Max Elliott Slade as James "Jay" Lovell, Jim's older son
Emily Ann Lloyd as Susan Lovell, Jim's younger daughter
Miko Hughes as Jeffrey Lovell, Jim's younger son
Rance Howard (Ron Howard's father) as the Lovell family minister
Tracy Reiner as Mary Haise, Fred's wife
Michele Little as Jane Conrad
Apollo 13 is a 1995 American docudrama
film directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks, Kevin
Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris and Kathleen
Quinlan. The screenplay by William Broyles Jr. and Al Reinert dramatizes
the aborted 1970 Apollo 13 lunar mission and is an adaptation of the
1994 book Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, by
astronaut Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger.
The film tells the story of astronauts Lovell, Jack
Swigert, and Fred Haise aboard Apollo 13 for America's fifth crewed
mission to the Moon, which was intended to be the third to land. En route, an
on-board explosion deprives their spacecraft of much of its oxygen supply and
electrical power, which forces NASA's flight controllers to abandon
the Moon landing and improvise scientific and mechanical solutions to
get the three astronauts to Earth safely.
Howard went to great lengths to create a technically
accurate movie, employing NASA's 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, Apollo
13 received critical acclaim and was nominated for nine Academy
Awards, including Best Picture (winning for Best Film Editing and Best
Sound). The film also won the Screen Actors Guild Award for
Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, as well as two British
Academy Film Awards. In total, the film grossed over $355 million
worldwide during its theatrical releases. Since then, it is considered to be
among the best films of all time.
In 2023, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."
Plot
On July 20, 1969, astronaut Jim Lovell hosts a
party where guests watch Neil Armstrong's televised first steps on the
Moon from Apollo 11. Lovell, who orbited the Moon on Apollo 8, tells
his wife Marilyn that he will return to the Moon to walk on its surface.
Three months later, as Lovell is conducting a VIP tour of
NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building, his boss Deke Slayton informs
him that his crew will fly Apollo 13 instead of 14, swapping flights
with Alan Shepard's crew. Lovell, Ken Mattingly, and Fred Haise train
for their mission. Days before launch in April 1970, Mattingly is exposed
to German 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 dying in
space, and tells Lovell she will not go to Kennedy Space Center to
see him off for an unprecedented fourth launch. She later changes her mind and
surprises him.
On launch day, Flight Director Gene Kranz in
Houston's Mission Control Center gives the go for 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 again to send Apollo 13 to the Moon, Swigert
performs the maneuver to turn the Command Module Odyssey around
to dock with the Lunar Module Aquarius and pull
it away from the spent rocket.
Three days into the mission, by order of Mission Control,
Swigert turns on the liquid oxygen stirring fans. An electrical short
causes a tank to explode, emptying its contents into space and sending the
craft tumbling. The other tank is soon found to be leaking. Consumables
manager Sy Liebergot convinces Kranz that shutting off two of Odyssey's
three fuel cells offers the best chance to stop the leak, but this
does not work. With only one fuel cell, mission rules dictate the Moon landing
be aborted. Lovell and Haise power up Aquarius to use as a
"lifeboat", while Swigert shuts down Odyssey to save
its battery power for the return to Earth. Kranz charges his team with bringing
the astronauts home, declaring "failure is not an option".
Consumables manager John Aaron recruits Mattingly to help him
improvise a procedure to restart Odyssey for the landing on
Earth.
As the crew watches the Moon pass beneath them, Lovell
laments his lost dream of walking on its surface, then turns his crew's
attention to the business of getting home. With Aquarius running
on minimal electrical power and rationed water supply, the crew suffers from
freezing conditions, and Haise develops a urinary tract infection. Swigert
suspects Mission Control is concealing the fact they are doomed; Haise angrily
blames Swigert's inexperience for the accident; but Lovell quashes the
argument. As Aquarius's carbon dioxide filters run out,
concentration of the gas approaches a dangerous level. Ground control
improvises a "Rube Goldberg" device to make the Command
Module's incompatible filter cartridges work in the Lunar Module.
With Aquarius's navigation systems shut down, the crew makes a
vital course correction manually by steering the Lunar Module and controlling
its engine.
Mattingly and Aaron struggle to find a way to power up the
Command Module systems without drawing too much power, and finally read the
procedure to Swigert, who restarts Odyssey by drawing the
extra power from Aquarius. When the crew jettisons the Service
Module, they are surprised by the extent of the damage, raising the possibility
that the ablative heat shield was compromised. As they release Aquarius and
re-enter the Earth's atmosphere, no one is sure that Odyssey's heat
shield is intact.
The tense period of radio silence due to ionization
blackout is longer than normal, but the astronauts report all is well, and
the world watches Odyssey splash down and celebrates
their return. As helicopters bring the crew aboard the USS Iwo
Jima for a hero's welcome, Lovell's voice-over describes the cause of
the explosion, and the subsequent careers of Haise, Swigert, Mattingly, and
Kranz. He wonders if and when mankind will return to the Moon.
