Reel Rundown: ‘Apollo 13: Survival,’ although dramatized, a mostly accurate and authentic retelling of astronaut incident

On April 14, 1970, NASA’s Apollo 13 crew was nearly to the moon when the “problem” occurred. And if you were alive then, or if you’ve seen Ron Howard’s powerful 1995 film “Apollo 13,” you know what problem I’m referring to.

It was in Howard’s movie that Tom Hanks (playing mission commander Jim Lovell) uttered the words, “Houston, we have a problem,” a line that has passed into history as a catchphrase for something bad happening.

As a side note, in historical terms the wording of this quote is somewhat ironic because as the Netflix documentary “Apollo 13: Survival” points out, the correct line was, “OK, Houston, we’ve had a problem.” And it was first announced by Lovell’s fellow astronaut Jack Swigert.

Hollywood has never met a line that it couldn’t milk for more drama.

The Netflix documentary, directed by Peter Middleton, takes a different tack from your obligatory Hollywood dramatization. Although the film does use archival footage taken during previous missions to augment the tale it tells, and even in a few instances invents images, it is for the most part an accurate account of the whole incident.

Lovell, Swigert and Fred Haise – the mission’s astronaut trio – were on their second day in space, some 200,000 miles from Earth, when what were later determined to be exposed wires in an oxygen tank caused an explosion that crippled the spacecraft. Aside from dimming the crew’s chances of returning to Earth, it threatened their very survival.

Yet just like the kinds of heroes that movies are typically built around, both the crew and the NASA engineers working at Houston Control coolly and, for the most part calmly, confronted and solved one problem after the next. Against all odds, the crew – crammed into the smaller lunar module – braved freezing temperatures and lack of food and water while managing to loop around the moon, make their way back home and splash down successfully.

Just as in Howard’s movie – and a later episode in the 1998 HBO miniseries “From the Earth to the Moon” – Middleton follows everything that happened. Only instead of pairing the archival footage with the standard talking-head interviews, he instead opts for using interviews as mere voiceovers.

Not only does that decision give the film a better flow, its pairing with the footage – not just of Lovell and his crew but of the staff at Houston (including lead flight director Gene Kranz) and members of Lovell’s family (especially wife Marilyn) – gives “Apollo 13: Survival” a feeling of authenticity that mere dramatizations often lack.

To Middleton’s credit, he even succeeds in capturing the inherent suspense surrounding the mission. Though the story is, or at least should be, a familiar one to anyone with internet access, the question is always hanging in the cinematic air: Will they make it? 

Along with his other accomplishments, Middleton gives new meaning to the term success. Yes, Apollo 13 didn’t make it to the moon. But what those teams in space and on the ground accomplished was every bit as much, if not even more, impressive.