The Martian or Apollo 13

[Cheif Operations Director]

Which is your favourite 

[Bill Phil]

Apollo 13 is a real event. The Martian is fictional. I think that's enough of a distinction.

[tater]

I voted for The Martian precisely because it was fictional, so the problems I have with it (there are quite a few) don't matter that much in the grand scheme of things. I hold historical movies to a more demanding  level of quality. I like Apollo 13, but the countdown liquides me off to no end every single time I see it. There was no excuse for it whatsoever. The way the movie treats Swigert (it suggests that there was some internal debate among the crew about the accident fault, while showing no fault of his) is similarly awful, as was the suggestion that he might not be as good as Ken Mattingly. Swigert was actually involved with writing the CM malfunction procedures.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Apollo 13, since I assume we're comparing movies, and The Martian as a book is so much better than as a movie.

[munlander1]

In Apollo 13, it portrays the “no”” sign on the lm jettison switch completely wrong.

So, my vote is for The Martian

edit: “”

Edited August 6, 2018 by munlander1

[Superfluous J]

Yes.

[Cheif Operations Director]

I love the two movies equally 

[kerbiloid]

21 hours ago, tater said:

I like Apollo 13, but the countdown liquides me off to no end every single time I see it. There was no excuse for it whatsoever.

They just used mods.

 

[Jeb1969]

I really liked Apollo 13 probably because it felt more like a period drama, although that did not mean it had inaccuracies, the most apparent in the Simulator control room when explaining the amp limit  there was a Mr. Coffee machine which was not available in the year 1970 when this film is supposedly set. As for the rest of the film it is quite extraordinary my only complaint is that the launch effects especially with the ignition seemed to be overdone and makes the igniting first stage on the launch pad look like a cataclysmic explosion, rather than an ignition. but to quote Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell;  "One hell of a show."  

[The Minmus Derp]

TIED. I suppose they are both awesome, for different reasons.

[adsii1970]

The Martian was good because it looked towards the future space exploration of Mars, but in a realistic portrayal. No over the top technology, no unexplained things that were out of place. Apollo 13 was good because it focused on what did happen. Can't compare the two.

 

[Cheif Operations Director]

On 8/6/2018 at 9:30 AM, kerbiloid said:

They just used mods.

 

What's wrong with the countdown?

[RealKerbal3x]

The Martian. While Apollo 13 is based on a true story and needs to be accurate to that story, The Martian is fictional and doesn’t need to have any historical accuracy.

Besides, the story is great and it’s based on a book (the best movies are based on books).

[Antstar]

Since you didnt specify book or movie, I will assume book. The Martian was awesome. Though I didn't mind this either:

[Gargamel]

12 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

The Martian is fictional and doesn’t need to have any historical accuracy.

Oh, I beg to differ there.  In Apollo 13, the events were well documented, during and after the fact.   The filmmakers basically just had to make a well written movie that stayed true to the events.  It basically wrote itself IMO.    In the Martian, the author had to do so much research on existing techs, and then extrapolate the advances that might be made by then.  The amount of historical/scientific research he had to sort through to come up with a very plausible storyline and science was completely based on real stuff.  HE had to get everything right (and he came close).  To me, the martian is just a projection of history into the future.    We can bump any other discussion of the specifics over to the sc-fi thread if you'd like. 

But as movies, they are about equal to me.    But if you add "From the Earth to the Moon" into the mix with Apollo 13, which I freely do, since it was done in the same light and by a bunch of the same film makers,  A13+FTETTM is far superior to The Martian.    A13 can easily replace the Apollo 13 episode in FTETTM, as that episode was forced to take a different narrative line. 

[Lisias]

On 8/22/2018 at 12:14 AM, Jeb1969 said:

[about Apollo 13, the movie] As for the rest of the film it is quite extraordinary my only complaint is that the launch effects especially with the ignition seemed to be overdone and makes the igniting first stage on the launch pad look like a cataclysmic explosion, rather than an ignition. but to quote Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell;  "One hell of a show."  

My guess is that they hadn't the resources (or the technology) to make the thing really cataclysmic as the real launch was.  So they covered the mess with fire to hide whatever they had done.

I found this re-renderized films from the Saturn V launches and, boy, it was cataclysmic.  (I can just imagine what Sea Dragon would be!)

 

 

[IncongruousGoat]

Apollo 13. The Martian was a fine film, but the book was honestly better - a large part of the appeal there was (for me, at least) in the technical details, and the movie had to cut a lot of that, as well as a couple of the things that went majorly wrong. Apollo 13, on the other hand, was working from a well-documented event, and other than embellishing some of the crew drama (which I can excuse, films need to sell tickets to a non-nerd audience), it did a solid job of portraying the events of the mission. Just the fact that it portrays real events makes me get much more of a kick out of it than The Martian.

Then again, Apollo 13 is one of my favorite films of all time, so I'm a little biased in its favor.

[0111narwhalz]

5 hours ago, Gargamel said:

"From the Earth to the Moon"

I was confused for a bit because I thought you were talking about the Jules Verne novel.

[tater]

I just told a friend at dinner tonight who had not seen it, to watch Apollo 13.

One other thing it doesn't get right is the actual accident, though.

In reality, it was a sort of slow-motion disaster (after the bang, that is)---at least as the crew and Mission Control saw it happen. It took them 15 minutes to figure out definitively that the problem was not just instrumentation. I understand the need to move things along in a movie, but dragging the uncertainty out a while might have been even more dramatic, IMO.

[Geonovast]

10 hours ago, tater said:

I understand the need to move things along in a movie, but dragging the uncertainty out a while might have been even more dramatic, IMO.

I think there's an exception for real life events... dragging that out for 15 minutes would work in a fictional movie... but we already know what happened.  Maybe not specifics, but anyone who's watching Apollo 13 (At the time of its release) would know it wasn't instrumentation, and dragging it out would just be boring, not dramatic.

[tater]

53 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

I think there's an exception for real life events... dragging that out for 15 minutes would work in a fictional movie... but we already know what happened.  Maybe not specifics, but anyone who's watching Apollo 13 (At the time of its release) would know it wasn't instrumentation, and dragging it out would just be boring, not dramatic.

Excellent point... though I bet a substantial % of the people who went knew exactly nothing at all about Apollo 13.

Seriously, ask a few random people about the Apollo program. See iof any mention Apollo 13, then if they did, find out if they already knew, or only know now because of the movie.

This is why I'm extremely picky about historical accuracy for movies, many people will know only the pop culture version. Here in the US, it's amazing how many people think that Paul Revere's ride was as described in Longfellow's poem (which is utter nonsense).

[kerbiloid]

Apollo 13 vs Martian is like Haggard vs Tolkien.

[The Minmus Derp]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Apollo 13 vs Martian is like Haggard vs Tolkien.

So, the martian is better, in your opinion?

[Gargamel]

51 minutes ago, The Minmus Derp said:

So, the martian is better, in your opinion?

Only if you think Tolkien is better than Haggard.

19 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

I was confused for a bit because I thought you were talking about the Jules Verne novel.

That's where they got the name from.   One of the episodes does deal with the novel and the silent movie. 

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, The Minmus Derp said:

So, the martian is better, in your opinion?

"An adventure tied to real world" vs "an adventure in an invented world".

One is more realistic but more limited, you could be there.
Another one less limited, but you couldn't be there.

Edited September 5, 2018 by kerbiloid