ON July 20, 1969, spacecraft Apollo 11 lands on the Moon and Neil Armstrong steps out onto the surface. On Earth, astronaut Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) and his wife Marilyn Lovell (Kathleen Quinlan) are hosting a party to celebrate and watch the event. Having been part of the Apollo 8 mission that orbited the Moon, Lovell is anxious to be among those that get the honor of following in Armstrong’s footprints. Lovell is scheduled to be the pilot of the Apollo 14 mission the next year. When Alan Shepard gets an ear infection his crew is taken off the Apollo 13 mission and is replaced by Lovell and his crew. Because their plans have been accelerated, training intensifies.
There are six astronauts in training for the mission, the primary crew and the backup crew. Primary crew consists of Commander Lovell, lunar module pilot Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) and command module pilot Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise). The backup crew consists of Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon), John W. Young (Ben Marley) and Charles M. Duke. A couple of days before the launch they find out that Duke has contracted measles, and that Mattingly has been exposed to the virus. NASA decides to replace Mattingly with Swigert.
On April 11, 1970, Mission Control’s Flight Director, Gene Kranz (Ed Harris) gives the go-launch order. During takeoff the center engine cuts out. Tensions are high until the craft is maneuvered into the proper trajectory and is officially headed for the Moon.
All’s well until three days into the mission when an electrical short causes one of the fuel cells to explode. The explosion disabled the ship’s electrical and life-support systems. Damage to the craft required the crew to seek shelter in the lunar module. The decision was made to abort the mission and the scheduled moon landing. The problem now is how to return the three astronauts to the Earth, and how to do it before they either freeze to death or run out of oxygen.
“Apollo 13” was released in 1995 and was directed by Ron Howard. It is an American scientific docudrama adventure film. The movie is an adaptation of the 1994 book “Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13”, by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger as well as technical assistance by NASA.
Filmmaker Roger Corman has a cameo as a VIP taking a tour of the facility. Several astronauts and their family members were in the film as part of archival material or as extras in the film. Ron Howard’s mother played Jim Lovell’s mother. Other family members were used as background extras.
The movie isn’t just showing a problem in space. It describes a series of problems that build on each other and build tension along the way. And boy does it build tension. With each step forward, the crew encountered setbacks and roadblocks. Each solution to a problem brought about more issues to overcome. The crew on Earth had to come up with solutions on the fly. Each solution revealed another problem. At one point I began to doubt that NASA would ever be able to save them. It gets quite intense.
Only twelve people ever actually walked on the moon, all of them U.S. Americans.
In 2023, the movie was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”.