Post by kevinfelixlee on Apr 15, 2011 4:03:14 GMT -5
Today is the 50th anniversary of the first time man went into space. It was on April 12, 1961 that Yuri Gagarin first orbited the Earth in Vostok 1 at a time when the US was still working on planning its suborbital flights. The Soviets, less concerned with such finicky details as safety (while NASA tends to be all anal about such things), won the first leg of the space race quite handily, then, but didn't have the stamina to go the distance - possibly because they'd killed off half their best cosmonauts, which tends to put a dampener runescape gold on anyone's enthusiasm. But with space exploration still on a hiatus at the moment, let's talk space movies as a substitute in celebration of this momentous anniversary.
The big daddy is probably Apollo 13. It's got the money to spend on getting the effects right, it has an underrated score and it manages to walk that fine line between making the astronauts and their groundstaff credible human beings but also pointing out that they're gosh-darn heroes. This is one of those films I like more every time I see it: it may be burnished to a brighter sheen than reality allows around the edges, it may be a little heavy on the Americana (then, it does star Tom Hanks, a man who's essentially a walking version rs gold of Mom's apple pie*), it may not be strictly accurate in every particular. But it's about smart people being smart, which I always like onscreen, and in fact it goes further: it's about smart people being smart under pressure, when lives depend on it, and then also being useful and not getting caught up in abstractions. It's like The West Wing in space. This film's about luck at its worst and humanity at its best, and that's something we should demand more of onscreen.
For me, the second contender for Best Real Space Travel Film Ever is The Dish. Sure, none of the characters ever leave Earth. But this is still a film about the magic and miracle of space flight, of sitting on top of a giant rocket and hoping it explodes in the right direction or, more directly, of playing cricket on a giant radio receiver dish that's due to pick up the TV signal for the moon landing. Sam Neill's discussion of their role in the moon landing and his wife's death is utterly heartbreaking, and while the tone throughout runescape money is more comic farce than Ron Howard's reverential approach, the final act does perhaps the best job of any film of reminding us why space travel is important. The more we start thinking about the big out-there, the more chance we have of seeing that the petty down-here isn't so all-important. Well, one hopes.
The other obvious real-space movie is The Right Stuff (no, we don't count Capricorn One as reality). It's only a fraction as detailed as Tom Wolfe's fascinating source book, but what's here is still great drama: sex, speed, rivalries, gallons of testosterone and lots of experimental machines with the potential to go horribly wrong. I sort of wish this one had been a TV series: read the book, and imagine it in the hands of HBO.
Probably the bigger question than any of this is why the bloomin' heck aren't there more real space movies. A few - The Astronaut's Wife, say - have used it as a gimmick or a background; the likes of Armageddon and Deep Impact have featured space travel as a plot device, but there have been relatively few films about other space stories. Read Cracked's account of the Russian space program runescape items and tell me most of those wouldn't make amazing / horrifying films. Or read realistic space fiction - Red Mars, say - and explain why on Earth no one is investigating that. A few good space movies / TV shows / whatever could get a new space programme started, and that would only be an awesome thing as far as I'm concerned. Surely there's a reason to go to Mars that isn't "We need to get there before the Russians".
Admittedly I'm a space geek and I genuinely don't understand anyone who isn't, but it feels like human beings are becoming too concerned with gazing in our own navels and forgetting that there's a big ol' universe out there. Space exploration
runescape accounts costs a bit, fair enough, but it's a hell of a lot more useful than the much bigger amounts we spend on defence and it has the potential to, eventually, be the future of the human race. As The Rock would say, get after it.
*I mean that as a compliment. If he's an apple pie he's a freshly warmed apple pie with just the right amount of cinnamon, not too sweet apples in the filling, a nice crunchy crust and a big dollop of fresh whipped cream on top. Er. Before this gets too weird, in summary: he's a good'un.