How Accurate Is Ron Howard’s ‘Apollo 13’? (2024)

There's a scene in director Ron Howard's Apollo 13 where a NASA director, discussing the unlikelihood of the men aboard surviving, explains to Flight Director Gene Kranz (Ed Harris), "This could be the worst disaster NASA has ever experienced." Kranz quips back, "With all due respect, sir, I believe this is going to be our finest hour." Time has proven Kranz right, with NASA's initial assessment of the mission as a failure now looked back on as a "successful failure," one of history's great stories about human ingenuity, improvisation, and quick decisions. Howard's film depicts the days leading up to the launch, which was not without its problems, to the splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, and the harrowing days in between that captivated a nation. But how accurately are those days depicted?

Apollo 13

PG

History

Adventure

Drama

NASA must devise a strategy to return Apollo 13 to Earth safely after the spacecraft undergoes massive internal damage putting the lives of the three astronauts on board in jeopardy.

Release Date

June 30, 1995

Director

Ron Howard

Cast

Tom Hanks , Bill Paxton , Kevin Bacon , Gary Sinise , Ed Harris , Kathleen Quinlan , Mary Kate Schellhardt , Emily Ann Lloyd

Runtime

140 Minutes

The Troubling Signs of Apollo 13 Before Liftoff

Apollo 13 shows several troubling events that happened before liftoff, and for the most part, they're true. Ken Mattingly (played by Gary Sinise), who was on the flight crew, was exposed to German measles and was taken off the mission as a precaution as he wasn't immune (Fred Haise, in a 2015 interview, disclosed that "Ken is 79 years old now and still never had the measles"). Marilyn Lovell, Jim Lovell's wife, who was already bothered by the mission's number 13, did drop her wedding ring in the shower drain the day before the launch. She kept the news to herself, saying, “I just was terrified because, to me, it was like an omen that something really was going to happen.” However, unlike Kathleen Quinlan's take on Lovell, she was able to retrieve the ring.

The liftoff took place on April 11, 1970, at the superstition-courting 13:13 military time, but not without a hitch. The center engine, one of five on the Saturn V rocket, shut down, which was accounted for by burning the remaining four engines 34 seconds longer than planned. This did happen during the actual launch, and the film does cover it accurately, with one exception. The film shows a blinking light on the panel that indicates the failure of the engine, which wouldn't have been on at all in real life. Dave Scott, commander of Apollo 15 and technical adviser for the film, said, "In Apollo 13, the movie, the light was purposely made to blink to get the viewers' attention. The movie-makers knew the actual operation, but chose to take this license for dramatic effect," On the lighter side, the crew did play a tune after successfully having launched, only it was the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey, not the Norman Greenbaum classic "Spirit in the Sky" as played in the movie. All of this, before the day all hell broke loose on - you guessed it - April 13th.

The 'Apollo 13' Movie Makes Chaos out of Order

"Houston, we have a problem." Those five chilling words don't even begin to describe the peril facing Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), Fred Haise (Bill Paxton), and Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon), the astronauts aboard Apollo 13. They also don't describe what was actually said. As per the previously cited E! News, Swigert spoke first, saying, "Okay, Houston... I believe we've had a problem here." When Houston asks them to repeat, Lovell says, "Ah, Houston, we've had a problem. We've had a Main B Bus Undervolt." The change is slight, but impactful, with NASA explaining that the writers opted to use the former, despite knowing the discrepancy, as the urgency in "have" is more evident.

From that point on, it's controlled chaos as NASA scrambles to figure out what needs to be done to get their men home, but like the quote above, the truth makes a far less compelling story. As Mattingly points out, "Movies and everything makes it look like we invented a lot of stuff. Well, thanks to the kind of simulation training program we had, maybe the things weren’t exactly the same or in exactly the same order, but everything we ended up doing had been done somewhere." That included a simulation that called for the crew having to move to the lunar module.

Flight Director Gene Kranz did call the flight controllers to action back on Earth, but not with Ed Harris' popular "Failure is not an option" declaration. That phrase is a summation of what Kranz actually said: “I have never lost an American in space, sure as hell aren’t going to lose one now. This crew is coming home. You got to believe it. Your team must believe it. And we must make it happen.” One of the things they had to make happen in the movie was making an adapter for the CO2 scrubbers from the command module to work in the lunar module lifeboat, using objects they knew were on the spacecraft, which one engineer in the film states "isn't a contingency we've even remotely looked at." But they did look at it, and simulated a scenario virtually the same when preparing for the mission, so the sequence where the rocket scientists at NASA work for hours on a solution was wrapped up in under two drama-free hours in reality.

The “Successful Failure” Ends With the Apollo 13 Crew Home

In the movie, an engineer by the name of John Aaron and Mattingly work the simulator at NASA to figure out how to use the ship's remaining battery to power up the module for a ride home, with Mattingly repeating the simulation over and over again tirelessly. That version is far more interesting than watching a group of people, each working on a different piece of the puzzle at their desks, as what happened in real life. The simulator, as per the previously cited WUSA 9 article, was only used to practice the procedure that had been worked out, to communicate the steps to Swigert more effectively. Lovell was anxious to get the procedures, as seen in the movie, and also asked NASA to check the math he did on a card to confirm their accuracy by calling the numbers out. The numbers, by the way, are the same, and the card Lowell actually wrote the numbers on sold at a 2011 auction for a staggering $388,375.

Apollo13's dramatic ending, with Apollo's re-entry and a longer blackout than was expected is accurate, only in a reversal, it is actually less dramatic than what happened in reality. The film clocks the blackout at four minutes, but in reality, it was six and a half minutes long, due to its shallow entry angle. After the blackout in the film, Lovell is heard saying, "Houston, this is Odyssey, it's good to see you again," with the words sparking a joyful celebration at Mission Control. A far better quote than the simple, "Okay, Joe," uttered by Swigert, directed to CAPCOM Joe Kerwin.

Ron Howard’s Changes Make ‘Apollo 13’ Riveting

Overall, Apollo 13 finds the right balance between historical accuracy and entertainment, with Howard deftly making changes to the story from seemingly insignificant to whole-scale revisionism. Marilyn being unable to retrieve her lost ring is just one of those smaller changes, but in the context of the film, it subtly foreshadows the “all-hell is breaking loose” element of the event itself, the first thing to go wrong in what becomes a parade of such moments. Changes to phrases, like “have a problem” versus “we’ve had a problem,” or “Failure is not an option,” which as discussed above is a summation of what was actually said by Kranz, add an urgency to the narrative, one that didn’t necessarily take place thanks to the advance planning of NASA for the possibility of such emergencies.

The moments in the film that most prominently differ from actual events, like Mattingly’s time on the simulator, serve much the same purpose. Depicting the reality of those moments would be the cinematic equivalent of watching paint dry, mundane routines and mathematics that had been practiced time and again by those at NASA in case of such an emergency. By adding that sense of chaos and uncertainty, Howard changes the narrative from the reality of a well-oiled machine, one dealing with an unprecedented event, to a dramatic reinvention that adds emotional urgency into the equation. It doesn’t change the outcome, it just adds a human element that the average viewer can relate to.

The First Film About Apollo 13 Isn’t Accurate… or Even Good

Now one can argue about the accuracy of Apollo 13 as much as they want, but there’s one undeniable fact: It is far more accurate than 1974’s television movie Houston, We’ve Got a Problem, the first movie with any relation to Apollo 13. The film, a “tribute to the men of Mission Control,” revolves around retro officer Steve Bell (Robert Culp), a fictional character instrumental in bringing the astronauts home, and is best described by Jim Lovell himself, who abhorred the film and the way it detailed the events (per the previously cited South Bend Tribune):

“The setting of the story is indeed based on the Apollo 13 flight. Actual voice tapes, real names, insignia, and facilities are used. However, the plot is fictitious and in poor taste. The story of the flight controllers’ efforts to bring Apollo 13 home include the old soap opera cliches of marital difficulty, drug overdose, a child custody fight, death in the family, and a heart attack. If one is to believe this story it was obviously more traumatic to be in Mission Control than to be on board the crippled spacecraft.”

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Was Lovell overreacting? Oh, no. No, he is not. One review says, “There is no way to fully describe how completely dreadful the 1974 made-for-television movie Houston, We’ve Got a Problem turned out be.” Culp’s Bell, besides suffering a heart-related episode by a swimming pool while wearing a Speedo, at one point says, “Babe, I’m gonna bring these guys home… I am! Because I’m the best retrofire officer that ever came down the damn street.” And he’s the one that saves the day, of course, not Gene Kranz and his crew. NASA astronaut Tom Stafford makes a cameo, or at least the top of his head does. Actress Sandra Dee is an angry, jealous, and oft-drunk controller’s wife, who loses it when her husband goes to go to work to save the lives of Lovell, Haise, and Swigert, without her permission.

NASA itself shoulders some of the blame for the debacle. From the previously cited NSS article, NASA Public Affairs’ John P. Donnelly, who gave filmmakers the freedom to film at Johnson Space Center, claims that Universal wanted to make a proper documentary, but opted to go with a “human interest version with fictionalized elements.” The movie’s executive producer, Herman Saunders, backs that up, saying, “So what we did was take the basic facts and add fictional drama on top. How would you keep people in suspense, otherwise, when they all know the outcome of the story already?”

‘Apollo 13’ Addresses Jim Lovell’s Issues With ‘Houston, We’ve Got a Problem’

In the same diatribe about Houston, We’ve Got a Problem, Jim Lovell would continue by saying, “The Apollo 13 story in itself is an exciting adventure tale without the embellishments found in an afternoon serial program. The safe return of Apollo 13 was one of NASA’s finest hours. The people who made that feat possible deserve a more accurate recounting of that story.” It may have taken 21 years, but Ron Howard did just that, adding suspense to the Apollo 13 saga without sacrificing the heart of the story or the integrity of the real people, both in space and on Earth, involved in it. He may, however, have done too good of a job at bringing the story of Apollo 13 to the screen. An amusing anecdote from Howard himself, per the previously cited E! News, talks about one critic who, "decried the film's "typical Hollywood" ending, because in reality those astronauts would've never survived." In his defense, the true story does have a Hollywood feel to it, and thank God it did have "the typical Hollywood ending" for all involved.

Apollo 13 is available to rent on Amazon in the U.S.

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