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In Cocoon, Gung Ho, Parenthood, Backdraft and The Paper, Howard splashed his vision on a huge canvas and peopled it with a sprawling cast. His problem was that in pushing a zillion buttons on the plot console, he often pushed too hard. Perhaps fearful of losing his audience, Howard would let his films get shrill or dewy. In Apollo 13, though, he has only a few dips into bathos (a too-cute child's face here, a dotty grandma there). Mostly, he makes viewers partners, trusting them to keep track of all the techno-talk, to take on faith what they don't immediately grasp.
Led by Ed Harris as flight director Gene Kranz and Gary Sinise as Ken Mattingly, who was scrubbed from the mission two days before launch, the grunts of Mission Control are efficient and almost faceless, a Greek chorus busily computing solutions. The astronauts' wives, notably Marilyn Lovell (lustrous Kathleen Quinlan), cope sensibly with despair. Lovell's partners in jeopardy (Bill Paxton as Haise, Kevin Bacon as Swigert) keep things cool, especially when they nearly freeze in their icy cabin. And Hanks provides the anchor. His Lovell--as strong, faithful and emotionally straightforward as Forrest Gump--carries the story like a precious oxygen backpack. His resourcefulness gives Lovell strength; his gift for conveying worry gives the film its humanity and a purchase on ordinary-Joe heroism.
In '60s newspapers and magazines, the Apollo astronauts were portrayed as heroes in the old mold: God-fearin', jut-jawed, steely-eyed missilemen, gazing into the skies they would soon conquer. These brainy jocks with their laconic C.B. chatter and their diplomas from M.I.T., Princeton, Caltech and Harvard were icons of stability in a most fractious decade. Americans looked across the Pacific and saw defeat. They looked at their campuses and saw revolt; at their inner cities and saw flames. For inspiration there was nowhere to look but up.
But what was there to see inside the techie Trekkies of Apollo? They seemed defiantly bland: all sinew, not much soul. They were the country-club Republican answer to '60s radicals. Instead of growing beards and dropping out, they kept their haircuts short and their rebellion in check. The most privileged among them played golf on the moon.
Which helps explain why, by Apollo 13--just the third moonwalk flight, nine months after the Eagle had landed--Americans were already sated with their star-cruising stars. Jim Lovell's little TV show on the third night of the mission, intended for the whole country's viewing pleasure, was not carried by the networks; it was a rerun of a rerun. Fly me to the moon? Yawn--no thanks. A vicarious lunar trip was now no more exciting than a seaside vacation with the kids.
All right, then. Imagine a minivan towing a small boat to the beach. The minivan is Odyssey, Apollo 13's command module (named after the Stanley Kubrick film about a man lost and transformed in space); the boat is Aquarius, the lunar module (after the song from Hair, Broadway's hymn to hippie insurrection). Now imagine that, on a nowhere stretch of road, your van just about blows up. How do you get home?