The genre of movies based on the real missions of NASA is actually a fairly succinct conversation when almost no other titles achieved the same acclaim as Apollo 13. The three-decade-old Oscar winner led by Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon, and Ed Harris beautifully recounts a story tangential to the most famous mission into space in history. Upon release, Apollo 13 was extolled for its design, effects, and scientific accuracy — but it also engages in a human narrative with philosophical themes.
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In terms of the adapted narrative, Apollo 13 is an all-around solid movie. It is well-paced, introduces compelling tension among the main characters in their personal and professional lives, and neatly segues into the action. Everyone is well cast; even if this didn’t turn out to be another Oscar nod for Tom Hanks, he has the perfect dependable presence to play Jim Lovell, the commander of the lunar expedition gone wrong. Kathleen Quinlan got an Oscar nomination for playing Marilyn Lovell, but Ed Harris is the true standout as the intense, inspirational, yet very down-to-earth flight director Gene Kranz.

The amount of research that went into this is palpable, even if the average viewer probably doesn’t understand 90% of what these people are saying.

I’d be inclined to fault it for excessive “something is going to go wrong” foreshadowing, if most of it weren’t actually true — including Marilyn losing her wedding ring down the shower drain the night before the launch, per The Washington Post. But what Apollo 13 is really remembered for is being one of the most accurate and, therefore, best movies about space exploration we have. And the amount of research that went into this is palpable, even if we — as average viewers — don’t fully understand the space jargon.

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Apollo 13 shows all the unsavory and tedious details of a NASA mission, from waste disposal to dying many times in a simulation to dozens of people forcing themselves to remain calm. The movie takes things like Lovell asking for his math to be checked — and several people knowing to immediately sit down and do the same calculations to make sure they are all getting the same results — and executes them with the same thrill of any action movie. Few space movies I have seen are as appreciative of the real work that happens at NASA.
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Apollo 13 is also highly praised for its visuals, which exhibit stellar special effects, especially for 1995, which capture the breathtaking grandeur alongside the terror of being in space. The movie is pretty busy in terms of the technicalities of space travel but still shows off the visual beauty that we associate with our favorite sci-fi movies, even if the sets and shots are all strictly realistic in this case. Yet Apollo 13 isn’t just getting by on its technical presentation when it has a respectable and complex story to tell.

NASA is facing impending budget cuts when the fanfare of the race to the moon is over, and seemingly no one cares until several astronauts’ lives are in danger.

Opening the movie with the Lovells’ watch party of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing underscores the whole point of the hard work that will still go into the mission that happens right after. Different motives pull at the characters, such as many of the astronauts demonstrating that they personally want to walk on the moon, regardless of what is best for everyone else. NASA is facing impending budget cuts when the fanfare of the race to the moon is over, and seemingly no one cares until several astronauts’ lives are in danger.

Apollo 13 doesn’t go overboard on the dramatic “Will they live?” elements and is a technical marvel that is still stunning to watch, even if it doesn’t quite directly answer the question about why the country should continue funding missions to the moon. I, at least, thought Lovell’s comparison to Columbus as an argument was pretty empty. Some might find this open-endedness frustrating, but Apollo 13 largely works because it is straightforward in its appreciation of NASA, showing a different perspective at a critical time in the organization’s history.