Having said before that art is there to make you feel something, let’s enjoy some tension in storytelling with Apollo 13 for Sci-Friday #169. ICYMI before, Apollo 13 was one of THE biggest 90s space movies and for good reason. Director Ron Howard recreated the story of a ‘successful failure,’ and bringing the movie together in a masterful use of tension where literally nothing happens. Take a look:
All the way down, Apollo 13 creates narrative tension and then holds us there for an hour so we can feel the same frustration and stress the NASA engineers must have felt as they contemplated losing three astronauts to the deep black of space. Those crucial conflicts are allowed to ebb and flow as we see the emergency, but then realize the astronauts are still okay … for the moment, and then we realize the bigger issues like – ‘will they survive one disaster just to fall victim to another?’
Fun fact: the image at the top of this post is Clint Howard, Ron Howard’s brother. Another fun fact is, the capsule at the end of the movie is real. Producers wanted to use CGI to render the splashdown, but Legato adamantly insisted this would not look realistic. Real parachutes were used with a prop capsule tossed out of a helicopter.
What else is happening? Head down on finishing the Mike.Sierra.Echo draft. As of today I’m at 80.6% which means in a few weeks I’ll have a draft out for comments with my Beta Readers. Would you like to be a Beta Reader? Hit me up on Mastodon, I’ll let you know what’s involved.
I hope you enjoyed this deep dive on Apollo 13! Please feel welcomed to dive down the rabbit hole of every other Sci-Friday I’ve published in the past couple years. Have a great weekend! 🙂
