Published 2025-09-22
tag(s): #film-tv #reviews
A couple months ago I found out (can't remember how) about the re-release of Apollo 13 for its
30th anniversary, in IMAX.
I got tickets right as they went on sale.
The movie is as good as I remembered it, the intro is just long enough that you are invested in the characters and know about them. And will eventually worry about their fate. Counterpoint, Maria felt the intro was a bit long.
The launch and all the space scenes in IMAX looked great and sounded awesome. All the effects
hold up, or at least I was so into the movie that I didn't notice anything too dated.
I could tell it was filmed in crafty ways in a couple scenes, using the very cramped and
claustrophobic lunar module to "show less". They probably got away with a lot of things by
doing that. And it worked great.
I also forgot (or didn't notice earlier, who knows) that there are a ton of close ups to people's faces. Like, AN AWFUL LOT. So it helps that the cast is as stacked as it is, as they all do their acting thing and you can read emotions on their expressions.
In one of the earlier scenes, they are talking about Saturn V rockets. Then came the iconic Mission Control.
Juan and I toured Houston Space Center in 2023, when I had to renew my passport. Yes, if you
are argentinian and live in Colorado, your designated consulate office is all the way down in
Houston...
So I made a first trip to submit the paperwork, and then arranged to pick up the passport a
few weeks later, on a Friday. And the kiddo and I spent the weekend there.
In a lot of those scenes Juan and I shared the emotion of seeing in a the big screen the same places and objects we had seen during our visit. Sooper cool. 😎
I made a point to talk with Juan about how little power the computers had back then, since
that's a field closer to my heart.
I also did my best to convey how many other things they didn't have access to, other than just
computers. Yet they still made these amazing things happen.
I mean, these guys sent people to the moon with extremely limited hardware, and nowadays your
web browser struggles to render a page unless you have fiber connection and 500 GB of RAM.
I hate us developers. So wasteful.
The movie closes with narration from Jim Lowell (Tom Hanks) about the fate of the characters, and also a line about when are we going back to the moon. One of them was supposed to go back to space in a latter Apollo mission, but funding was cut.
There are a few key scenes in the movie about funding and lost of interest from the general
public about the space race. Both topics being depressingly current...
And also, what the hell are we doing as a species. There's a lot of investment in stuff for
the potential to make money off it (LLMs is the latest example, but there are tons) and no
desire to push the envelope in space exploration in the same way.
Yes, I know there are a bunch of private investors, and space agencies around the world are
still working on it (even NASA). But if we pushed for space exploration[1]
in the same way, with the same hunger, as for money making...we would be so much
further...