FANTASIA OBSCURA: The Eerie Depiction of the Apollo 13 Mission… A Year Before It Happened
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, no matter how right you are, you just can’t win…
Marooned (1969)
(Dist.: Columbia Pictures; Dir.: John Sturges)
A few months following President Kennedy’s challenge to put a man on the moon succeeded, a change was forming in terms of how space flight caught the imagination. It was no longer really enough to do a film about visits to the lunar surface now that we had television images of Neil Armstrong walking across the moon; certainly films like Project Moonbase and First Men in the Moon couldn’t come before an audience and expect to be taken seriously now.
In fact, it was the success of Apollo 11 that made Martin Caidin’s 1964 novel Marooned a property of interest to Columbia Pictures and director John Sturges, whose work on The Magnificent Seven and Ice Station Zebra gave him the clout to put together a picture that was remarkably predictive for a film done during the early days of the space race.
Caidin’s original plot, about a Mercury mission where the astronaut was stuck in orbit, was updated to present a crew for an Apollo vehicle system that had been at an orbital station to test the long term effects of weightlessness. The crew is called back early when the results suggest that the men can’t endure being up there much longer, at which point their reentry system fails, leaving the three astronauts (played by Richard Crenna, James Franciscus, and Gene Hackman) stuck in orbit with a limited air supply, in danger of dying on the mission.
This is not something Director of NASA Charles Keith (Gregory Peck) is happy with, though he’s steeled himself to the prospect of losing men on missions, as it’s part of the inherent risk involved in exploration (keeping in mind the Apollo 1 disaster of 1967). A phone call from the President, however, convinces him to take extraordinary measures to save their lives, including accepting help from a Soviet Soyuz capsule that comes close by and readying a launch and reentry vehicle prepped quickly for deployment of a lifting body to fly the crew back home, despite an incoming hurricane.
One of the fascinating aspects of the film is how well it gets right what NASA was going to see in the next 10 years. The opening of the film is set aboard a space station that is eerily close to what we did get when Skylab was put into orbit four years later; even the interior of the station as depicted in the film is remarkably close to what the crews that served aboard her found.
There’s also discussion of the problems inherent in getting an Apollo and Soyuz capsule to dock; this becomes a central focus in the planning leading up to the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project of 1975, allowing for the two crews to interact in orbit. As well, by introducing a lifting body needing to deploy quickly, including during bad weather, we get much of the flavor for the experience of the entire Space Shuttle program in one launch.
And of course, the big one: Marooned would be a virtual simulation for the public at large of the Apollo 13 mission, including lack of power to the command module and the real risk of losing the crew in orbit. Supposedly, one of the people to have seen the film in theaters was astronaut Jim Lovell, whose crew was swapped into the ill-fated Odyssey and Aquarius due to a management decision soon after he watched the movie.
If ever a film got fact-checked to death, it was Marooned, and for the most part it passed with flying colors.
Where it failed was in the tone it presented its scenario. Peck’s aloofness and forced change of heart reflects a tone of detachment in the face of crisis, which gets harder to endure as we watch the astronauts lose their minds and go nuts. It made for depressing viewing and was hard to stomach back in its time.
In comparison, the fact that when the actual disaster took place, Mission Control had a flight director (a position not depicted in the film) like Gene Kranz who faced the disaster with a compassion and level-headed intensity that refused to allow for things to get maudlin. Comparing reactions by the people in charge in the film with what NASA actually did when they were confronted with stranded astronauts, where the real-life participants were not only more successful but eminently more dynamic, explains why the movie’s reputation has seen some diminution as time goes by.
When next we see Apollo astronauts in danger on film, Ron Howard’s work doesn’t try to predict as boldly as Sturges’ had, but with the benefit of history to consult, he gets a much more approachable film. A cold look at the future just doesn’t have the same draw as a warm memory from history.
NEXT TIME: Remember when Hammer Films made a caveman picture? No, not the Raquel Welch one, the one after that…
