The Untold Truth Of Apollo 13 The Movie

Released in 1995, Apollo 13 was a huge hit, both critically and financially. It was nominated for nine Oscars and won two of them. It made over $350,000,000 worldwide, establishing itself as a big hit in the U.S. and internationally. It's about the true story of the three-man crew that was supposed to be the third group of men who walked on the moon in 1970. Instead, an oxygen tank exploded while orbiting the moon, and NASA's Mission Control and the astronauts themselves scrambled to find a way to get them back to Earth safely. 

The crew had to deal with limited oxygen, freezing temperatures, carbon dioxide poisoning, sickness, and food and water rationing. This was on top of multiple course corrections that had to be made. Captain Jim Lovell and fellow crewmembers Fred Haise and Jack Swigert kept their focus on survival and problem-solving while flight director Gene Kranz and his crew worked tirelessly to formulate solution after solution.

Lovell was memorably played by Tom Hanks, Haise by Bill Paxton, and Swigert by Kevin Bacon. For Hanks, this was a dream project, as he was a devotee of the space program and knew all of the missions. Director Ron Howard was devoted to a high level of detailed authenticity and injected a minimum of extra Hollywood drama, in part because the story of how the crew made it back to Earth was so extraordinary. Let's take a look at some details behind the film and the mission.

According to the Apollo 13 DVD commentary, Ron Howard made the decision not to use any of the original footage of the flight, opting instead to reconstruct everything. That not only included the lunar and command modules that were the focus of the bulk of the film, but it also included him making an exact replica of the Mission Control rooms. He ensured that the same wallpaper, ceiling tiles, computer terminals, and even pens were as close to the originals as possible. Film adviser Jerry Bostick, who worked in those Mission Control rooms as a flight controller years before, said that he once looked for the elevator that used to take him to his real office. 

Even some of the events at home depicted in the film that may have seemed like artistic license actually happened. Lovell confirmed that his wife Marilyn did indeed lose her wedding ring down a shower drain the morning of the launch. She also had a nightmare that Jim was sucked out into space three days before the launch, though Lovell noted that they had just seen the film Marooned, which is about a doomed space mission. 

Howard solved the problem of how to film weightlessness by getting permission to film in the KC-135 airplane that creates 23 seconds of weightlessness. He and the actors had to go through physical and written exams before they were allowed to use it. 

One of the tensest scenes in the movie comes when the crew realizes that while they're getting plenty of oxygen in their cabin, they don't have a way of filtering out carbon dioxide. If they didn't find a way to filter it out, they would have been in danger of asphyxiation. In a moment that may have felt to audiences like contrived Hollywood dramatization but was actually 100% true, the crew realized that the lithium hydroxide canisters that would have easily scrubbed the air in the command module were square and wouldn't fit in the round holes of the lunar module they had to take refuge in. Yes, their task became fitting a square peg into a round hole.

The ground crew went to work to find a solution. With no high-tech answer available, they went the do-it-yourself route, using materials they knew the astronauts would have on hand. Falling back on spacesuit hoses and plastic bags, they constructed a funnel to redirect the air through the filters. The bags kept collapsing, however, so they used the cardboard covers of the flight logs to support them, and then employed the solution to many of life's problems: duct tape. They wrapped their crude apparatus in tape in order to seal it, because leaks could be fatal. Within an hour, carbon dioxide levels dropped to acceptable levels and weren't a threat for the rest of the mission. Mission evaluator Jerry Woodfill noted that he made sure duct tape was stowed away on every mission. You never know!

For three of the actors in Apollo 13, it wasn't the first time they had been in space... on the big screen. Bill Paxton starred as Fred Haise, but he played the space Marine known as Hudson in the 1986 sci-fi/horror classic Aliens — a character full of bluster and macho posturing, who needs Sigourney Weaver's Ripley to straighten him out as he panics and memorably yells "Game over, man!" He meets his end at the hands of the aliens, but not before taking a lot of them down with him.

Gary Sinise played astronaut Ken Mattingly, who was prevented from going on the mission because he had come into contact with someone who had contracted German measles. While he helped with the crisis on the ground, his character regretted not being able to go into space. In 2000's Mission to Mars, Sinise played Jim McConnell, an astronaut whose team went to Mars on a rescue mission. The team eventually learned that the Martians were responsible for seeding life on Earth, and he was invited to visit their new home in the stars.

Ed Harris played Flight Director Gene Kranz, who was in charge of the mission on the ground in Houston. In 1983, the hard-boiled Harris played John Glenn in The Right Stuff, based on the true story of the Mercury Seven astronauts. These were the first men from the United States to be launched into space, and Glenn wound up being the first to successfully orbit Earth. 

Jim Lovell had a small role in Apollo 13. He played the captain of the Iwo Jima, the recovery ship that pulled their capsule out of the Pacific Ocean. His wife, Marilyn, was in the crowd of people watching the launch. For Lovell, the film was a way of coming full circle. He wanted to tell this story from the very beginning, telling his crewmates that they ought to write a book about it while they visited Fred Haise recovering in sick bay on the Iwo Jima. It just took much longer than expected.

The movie also gave him bragging rights within the very small fraternity of astronauts. He had been teased for years by Neil Armstrong and Pete Conrad, men who had walked on the moon, that he had come close but not quite made it. The fact that his story was being made into a movie pleased him immensely, and he was annoyed when he heard that Conrad had auditioned for a part. He made sure that Hanks knew what it was like to fly, bringing him on his airplane. Lovell flew it up and down to simulate weightlessness, then turned off the lights to show him what it was like to lose all of his instruments. 

Despite it all, Lovell said "I'd give every bit of this up right this minute for one more chance to get to the moon. I'm not kidding. I could be ready to go tomorrow." 

Even a film as faithful to the original source material as Apollo 13 still had a few artistic flourishes. The most notable additions were the onscreen conflicts between Fred Haise and Jack Swigert and the dramatic reactions of Gene Kranz at Mission Control. The reality is that there were no arguments, because everyone was laser-focused on the mission. It would seem to be a natural response to panic in a life-or-death situation like this, but the kind of people who became test pilots and astronauts trained knowing that death was always an option. If they died, they did it doing what they loved. 

The only completely fabricated scene was one in which the astronauts get together at a party to watch the Apollo 11 launch. Another exaggeration was the scene with Haise projectile vomiting; he said it was only a bit of spit-up. This was done to emphasize that he actually did get sick with a bladder infection on the flight. 

The biggest bit of artistic license taken was the emphasis on improvisation and quick thinking. While this was true to an extent, and the quick execution of solutions like the jury-rigged filter system was impressive, the reality is that NASA had a long list of contingency plans for all kinds of problems. The solutions they arrived at for course corrections, moving to the lunar module from the command module, and many other aspects of the film were all part of the protocol.