Jim who? Reading the title of this post, you are probably a few, and surely more, to ask yourself the question. If you are told “Houston, we have a problem”, is it good, you have it? It is therefore the story of astronaut James “Jim” Lovell, less famous than the mission in which he participated, less popular than the actor who embodied him and less known than the words he pronounced … Finally, that he would have pronounced because in reality, it was “Houston, we had a problem” that he launched, a slightly transformed sentence for the needs of the scenario and the narrative tension of the film.
The rest belongs to the history of the space conquest, the Cold War and the career of Tom Hanks, who reacted to the death of the American hero, at the age of 97: “There are people who dare, who dream and who lead others to places where they would not go alone. Jim Lovell was part of it ”. Lovell has indeed dared and dreamed. In 1968, the “Jim walk” led him further than any other human, 400,000 kilometers from the earth, aboard Apollo 8. And in 1970, he returned from a hell named nowhere, commander of Apollo 13, a perdition vessel after an explosion and an oxygen leak, a shipwrecked crew for three and a half days. Houston, we had a problem … Houston, we have a problem …
Jim Lovell, it is also the story of the man who has brushed the moon twice without ever setting foot there. In school books, there is only for Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin. But it doesn’t matter to the bottom. By his courage and his calm, by this “successful failure” as he qualified him with a smile, by making the impossible possible, Lovell inspired generations of kids. And reminded to the greats of this world that this crazy race, this star war towards infinity and beyond, is also a human adventure, a matter of life and death, a story of flesh and blood.
