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Quotes

Marilyn Lovell: Naturally, it's 13. Why 13?

Jim Lovell: It comes after 12, hon.

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Mistakes

Near the end of the movie, there is a shot of the "Iwo Jima" with the two recovery helicopters taking off. For a moment, you can see the number 11 on the inboard side of the ship's island, which identifies it as the USS New Orleans (LPH-11), a sister of the Iwo Jima. Admittedly, it was the best the producers could do, since by the time the movie was made, the Iwo Jima (LPH-2) had been decommissioned. See more...

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The Captain of the Iwo-Jima that Tom Hanks is talking to at the end of the movie is the real Jim Lovell. See more...

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Apollo 13 (1995) - 60 corrections

Directed by Ron Howard, starring Bill Paxton, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise, Kevin Bacon, Tom Hanks (add more)

Genres: Adventure, Drama, History

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

Mistakes
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The consoles used in the movie were the actual consoles that were in the second and third floor MOCR (Mission Operations Control Room). The goose neck reading lamps did not exist, however. The shots of the hallways outside the MOCR in Building 30 were not authentic. Also, during the first two days of the disaster, the hallways on the second floor were lined with student chairs where programmers were working on the various scenarios for return and reentry. Ron Howard's dedication to accuracy is amazing because the information on the displays in Mission Control was authentic in format, the switch legends on the consoles were labels as they would have been and even the lights on the Keysets (the communication consoles with the telephone dial) were accurate in their color coding and in the flashing light indicating that a "talk loop" was active (monitor-only circuits were illuminated but not flashing). [His attention to detail is admirable, but at the end of the day this film is a drama, not a historical documentary. This entry is not referring to factually impossible things, merely factually inaccurate things (with the exception of the goose-necked reading lamps). Many, many things happened differently in the film compared to what happened in real life. None of those things constitute a movie mistake.]
Edit Corrected by Phixius
In the television interview, when the expert is describing the tolerance requirements for re-entry angle, he asks the reader to imagine that the earth is a basketball and the moon is a softball. A basketball's diameter is 2.86 times larger than a softball, but the earth's diameter is actually about 3.67 times the diameter of the moon. The expert goes on to say that the two balls are 14 feet apart, which is about 16.8 times the diameter of a basketball. In reality, the distance from the earth to the moon is about 30.14 times the diameter of the earth. This means that the 14 feet should really have been about 25 feet (about 30.14 times the diameter of a basketball). Finally, the expert says that the re-entry angle has to be accurate to within 2.5 degrees, which he says is like aiming for a target the thickness of a sheet of paper. In reality, 2.5 degrees at 30 feet is actually about 13.14 inches thick (even at 14 feet, 2.5 degrees is about 7.34 inches), which is MUCH thicker than a sheet of paper - it's as thick as hundreds of sheets of paper. [You have to remember that he is describing this to average people, sitting at home. He's trying to get his point across be speaking in generalities that most people will understand. He does not need to be scientifically accurate. He only needs to make people understand how serious the situation is.]
Edit Corrected by wizard_of_gore
During Lovell's moon walking sequence, his helmet shows a large blue and white Navy anchor. NASA EVA helmets were white with no insignia. [Since this is a dream, it doesn't have to conform to logic or reality.]
Edit Corrected by JC Fernandez
During Jim Lovell's daydream of being on the moon, when Jim steps onto the Lunar Module landing pad, it wobbles quite freely. This shouldn't move as the Lunar Module would be solidly on the Moon's surface and the weight from the rest of the module would be pushing it into the surface. [As you said, it was a daydream. It was how he imagined it.]
Edit Corrected by papajim
At the bottom, right hand corner of the screen there is an opening on the set, where one of the crew members can be seen and it is cold, as you can also see his breath. [Where? When? This is far too vague - at least specify a scene so this posting can be verified.]
Edit Time
When Jim's wife has a nightmare about the mission going horribly wrong, she wakes up suddenly and there is a closeup of a brown eye looking around frantically. The actress has blue eyes in the rest of the film. [Watching the scene closely I paused the movie when her eye looks to the right of the screen if you pause it there you will see that her eye is blue. The reason it looks brown is because of the light from the window reflecting in her eye.]
Edit
Steven Spielberg wanted to make this movie. But the initial idea was to shoot it in outer space - extremely expensive and very risky, so he declined. Wonder how it would have turned out. [This seems farfetched. Source?]
Edit Corrected by JC Fernandez
When Swigert is being brought up to speed in the simulator (the re-entry simulation with the false indicator light), the Capcom announces loss of signal, but a few seconds later (right after the corridor light), the astronauts are talking to Houston again. (Note: this is far too soon for them to have come out of the blackout, since, according to the end of the movie, the blackout usually lasts around three minutes.) [Time compression. We could have watched them simulate the entire three minutes of blackout, but it wouldn't be particularly interesting and the film has better uses for those minutes at other points in the film. So they jump time a bit to keep the flow of the film. Absolutely standard practice.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
When Marilyn has the nightmare about Jim's mission meeting disaster, the Capcom says, "We show S4B shutdown," and then a few seconds later says, "when you get in the LEM." This makes no sense, because S4B (Saturn 4B Booster) shutdown happens before the LEM is even docked (and days before anybody would actually get in the LEM). Granted, it's a dream, but Marilyn Lovell was actually fairly knowledgeable about the way lunar missions worked, and you'd think that if she could dream everything else correctly (the layout of the capsule, for instance), she (or the filmmakers) would get that detail correct. [It's a dream. These are not required to make factual sense, even if the dreamer in question is well acquainted with the subject matter. I'm pretty knowledgeable about cats, and am therefore reasonably sure that they can't fly, yet have, on occasion, had a dream that involved cats doing precisely that. Factually incorrect, but that's dreams for you.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
When Jim Lovell is talking to his son about landing on the moon, he says his moon landing will be "Better than Neil Armstrong; way better than Pete Conrad." In fact, while Armstrong did make a less-than-stellar landing (hampered by low fuel and a problem with his targeting computer), Pete Conrad's Apollo 12 landing was nearly perfect. [So what? There's always a healthy level of rivalry among such people. If Lovell reckons that he can land better than his predecessors did, then it's not a mistake to say so; people are entitled to have opinions. Bear in mind that Lovell would consider Armstrong's landing, hampered by fuel and computer problems, to be a more impressive feat than Conrad's relatively mundane experience, so it's quite reasonable that he would rank them in that order.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
During the launch countdown, the voice-over says "7.6.ignition sequence starts.3.2.1." The sequence is supposed to be in real time, but "6" and 3" are only about a second apart. [The difference in the '6' and '3' is two seconds. Try saying "ignition sequence starts" in one second. It takes closer to two seconds to say it. 'About a second apart' suggests that its more than a second. Such a small discrepancy is negligible.]
Edit Corrected by XIII
Mission Control in Houston calls up "B.P.C. clear", meaning that the 'Boost Protective Cover' has been safely jettisoned during ascent. However, the call comes on screen before it is shown being jettisoned. [This could mean mission command is giving the go-ahead by saying BPC clear, as in it is now safe to jettison the BPC.]
Edit Corrected by The-Immortal
When the astronauts are preparing to dock with the Lunar Module, one of the people in Mission Control says, "If Swigert can't dock this thing, we don't have a mission." In fact, all three crew members were trained to peform the LEM docking, and had Swigert run into any trouble, Lovell or Haise could easily have done the procedure instead. This is confirmed in the DVD commentary. [Presumably Swigert is the best trained since this is his primary task, it's a reasonable, if not necessarily correct, remark to assume that if he can't do it then nobody can.]
Edit Corrected by tw_stuart
The scene showing the astronauts thrust towards the forward panels, and then violently back into their 'couches' is meant to show the massive thrust from the ascent and second stage engines. In fact, this sequence is inaccurate: The earlier Mercury and Gemini rockets did indeed create this massive 10 to 15-G load momentarily upon the astronauts, but the Saturn V did no such thing. The Saturn V never exceeded more than 2 Gs during any portion of lift off or ascent, and was in fact referred to as the "old man's rocket" by astronauts in reference to its relatively mild G-loads during flight. [This actually happened with the Apollo 13 mission. It wasn't supposed to, hence Swigert's sarcastic comment about "some little jolt", but a slight mistiming in the engine firing caused it.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
The Apollo 13 mission has a lot to do with the number 13. It's called Apollo 13, it took off at 13:13 Houston time from Pad 39 (which is 3 x 13), and the launch date was 11 April 1970 (4+1+1+7+0 = 13). [This is trivia about the mission itself, not the film. Nowhere in the film is this fact alluded to.]
Edit
In the scene where Marilyn Lovell is in her backyard and she looks up at the jet flying over her house (presumably her husband), there is a contrail behind it. The jet is at too low of an altitude to produce a contrail. [Although this looks like a "contrail" behind the jet, it is actually condensation from wing-tip pressure. At lower altitudes, it is known as "ectoplasm." Ectoplasm is more commonly seen during high energy manouvers like those of a fighter jet, as the wings of a fighter jet cause a drop in air pressure in the vicinity of the wing. This causes a drop in temperature, which can cause water to condense out of the air, just like we see in the movie. (No special effects were used for this shot, it was a real jet, and the vapor trail you see is how it happened in real life.)]
Edit Corrected by Jazetopher
Many times in the movie, the Capcom refers to the CM and LM by their individual call signs, "Odyssey" and "Aquarius." In real life, those call signs would only be used when the LM had separated from the CM for a lunar landing. While the two ships were docked, as they were in this case for the entire mission, the single call sign "Apollo 13" would be used instead. [While this is true for a "routine" mission, Apollo 13 was not a mission anymore once it became "an emergency" situation. Remember that Lovell and his team had to use the Lunar Module as a "lifeboat" to survive the trip home. They don't refer to the Odyssey and the Aquarius separately until after the explosion. On a normal mission, the lunar module would not be attached to the SM or the CSM for the return trip. Using the call signs as opposed to similar sounding terms LM, SM, and CSM was also done to avoid confusion for the astronauts, as everything they had to do to get home was an unorthodox method that had never been attempted before, and the cold and lack of sleep was making it harder for them to concentrate.]
Edit Corrected by Jazetopher
When Deke tells Lovell that Mattingly will have to be removed from the flight, he says that if Lovell is unwilling to go with Swigert, the entire crew will be bumped to a later mission. Even if this really had been Lovell's decision to make (which it almost certainly wasn't in real life), there is no way that all three astronauts could have been bumped to a later mission. Even if the entire backup crew could have been brought up to speed in a week, they could not have flown Apollo 13, given that Charlie Duke (Fred Haise's backup as LEM pilot) had the measles. [It's never stated that the "backup crew" will be going if Lovell's team gets bumped to a later mission! Lovell's team was bumped up from Apollo 14 to Apollo 13 by NASA when one of the "original" Apollo 13 team members became ill. It would stand to reason that whatever team was now behind him for Apollo 14, which we know is still on the missions list, as Lovell was just a part of it a week earlier, would be bumped up by NASA to take the place of Lovell's team in the same manner that Lovell's team was bumped from Apollo 14 to Apollo 13.]
Edit Corrected by Jazetopher
In the shot where Jim is with Marilyn, outside of their house right after the Apollo 11 landing, he blocks out the moon with his thumb. In the final shot, where he puts his finger in front of his face to hide out the moon again, you can see the shadow below his chest. It should be on his eye. [This is one of the most frequently quoted "non-mistakes" of Apollo 13. It is valid only if the moon was the ONLY light source in the scene, and it is not. There are three or four strong porch light to screen right. Moonlight is pretty feeble and the lights cast the far stronger shadow.]
Edit
At the meeting in which Jim Lovell is informed that Ken Mattingly has been exposed to measles, and must be replaced by Command Module backup pilot Jack Swigert, Lovell complains about the last minute switch and says, "When's the last time he was in a simulator?" But Lovell eventually agrees, Swigert is put into service for Apollo 13, and he proceeds to intensify his training schedule. In one later scene he's shown in a simulator, being rather rusty and out of practice. But in an earlier scene, before the measles scene, the whole Apollo 13 backup crew, including Jack, were shown arriving at the simulator for practice. In reality, as a member of the backup crew, Swigert was in constant training and would not have even been considered were he unable to pilot the spacecraft. [I do not see where the mistake is in all this. Of course he would have not been considered if he wasn't up for it but the evidence you've provided is more opinion rather than fact. Lovell was extremely upset by Mattingly being replaced and what he said was more in the heat of the moment rather than being a true and accurate statement. Secondly the practice run Swigert went through wasn't evidence he was rusty, it was evident he didn't know how to handle that particular scenario. The technical staff afterwards discuss that even Mattingly didn't get that scenario the first time. Even so it was one mistake and we are only shown a few minutes of them training and not the hours upon hours they would have been training.]
Edit Corrected by Lummie

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