Movies - Marooned

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	Movies - Marooned

Marooned is a 1969 movie directed by John Sturges and starring Gregory Peck, Richard Crenna, David Janssen, and Gene Hackman.

The film was released only four months after the Apollo 11 moon landing and is clearly tied to the topical public fascination with the event. The film does its best to depict the actual Apollo space program in a realistic fashion. It won an Oscar for Visual Effects.

The movie was based on a 1964 novel by Martin Caidin. Caidin was a pilot who ran an aerospace consultancy firm and wrote a number of fiction and non-fiction books. The work he was most famous for was the novel Cyborg (1972), which became the basis of the television series The Six Million Dollar Man (1973–1978).

Plot

Three American astronauts are returning from several months at a space station, testing out new technologies, when the retro rockets on their command module "Ironman One" fail and they are stranded in orbit.

Mission Control debates whether a rescue flight can reach them before their oxygen runs out. Program director Charles Keith (Peck) is opposed to the risk of using a developmental craft, a lifting body craft that would land like a plane. Keith is contradicted by Ted Dougherty (Janssen), who asserts something ought to be done. The President prevails on Dougherty's side. Keith is also so devoted to the Ironman project that he has neglected to attend to details such as renewing his driver's license.

A hurricane headed for the launch area delays a rescue, but the eye passes over the Cape. With Dougherty aboard, the craft is launched through the eye, about the time that one astronaut rips his suit while trying to conduct engine repairs.

Meanwhile, a Soviet spacecraft approaches and its cosmonaut tries to make contact, possibly offering to deliver oxygen since the Soviet craft would be too small to carry additional passengers. The astronauts are now suffering oxygen deprivation, and can't reason out the cosmonaut's gestures or obey Keith's orders.

Finally, Dougherty arrives, and he and the cosmonaut transfer the two Ironman astronauts into the lifting body craft. The film ends on the somewhat utopian wish fulfillment of the Space Race being resolved on a note of East-West cooperation.

The film's legacy

Marooned debuted only months after the moon landing of Apollo 11. However, it also debuted six months before the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission. After seeing the same drama from the movie played-out in real life, the public and NASA began to question the safety of the US Space Program. Some say that the result of this contributed to the end of the NASA Apollo Project, the development of the space shuttle, and also the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project between the US and the Soviet Union.

In the 1980s, Marooned was redistributed under the name Space Travelers by Film Ventures International, an ultra-low-budget production company that prepared quickie television and video releases of films that were in the public domain or could be purchased inexpensively. As Space Travelers, Marooned was mocked on a 1992 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, becoming the only Oscar-winning film ever to receive the MST3K treatment.

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