Release Year: 1995 Rating: PG Duration: 140 minutes Other Title: Apollo 13: The IMAX Experience Director: Ron Howard Producer: Brian Grazer Distributor: Universal Pictures
Ron Howard has re-created the drama of the aborted 1970 Apollo 13 moon mission, the failure that showed NASA at its best, with nail-biting detail and spectacular visual integrity. True story of the moon-bound mission that developed severe trouble and the men that rescued it with skill and dedication.
cast
Bill Paxton as Fred Haise Ed Harris as Gene Kranz Gary Sinise as Ken Mattingly Kevin Bacon as Jack Swigert Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell
quote
Television Reporter: Is there a specific instance in an airplane emergency when you can recall fear?
Jim Lovell: Uh well, I'll tell ya, I remember this one time - I'm in a Banshee at night in combat conditions, so there's no running lights on the carrier. It was the Shrangri-La, and we were in the Sea of Japan and my radar had jammed, and my homing signal was gone... because somebody in Japan was actually using the same frequency. And so it was - it was leading me away from where I was supposed to be. And I'm lookin' down at a big, black ocean, so I flip on my map light, and then suddenly: zap. Everything shorts out right there in my cockpit. All my instruments are gone. My lights are gone. And I can't even tell now what my altitude is. I know I'm running out of fuel, so I'm thinking about ditching in the ocean. And I, I look down there, and then in the darkness there's this uh, there's this green trail. It's like a long carpet that's just laid out right beneath me. And it was the algae, right? It was that phosphorescent stuff that gets churned up in the wake of a big ship. And it was - it was - it was leading me home. You know? If my cockpit lights hadn't shorted out, there's no way I'd ever been able to see that. So uh, you, uh, never know... what... what events are to transpire to get you home.
The story of APOLLO 13 isn't fiction ... it is a dramatic recreation of the actual situation that happened during the Apollo 13 mission to the moon. During the flight to the moon, one of the oxygen tanks on the command module exploded, causing massive system failures. It was on luck and ingenuity alone that the crew of the Apollo 13 mission made it back to Earth alive.
