Odd depiction of asteroids
Turning corners in space? And twisting around while they travel? Very odd behavior for an asteroid.
... and the rocks it pummels.
- James Berardinelli
Noticed that too. The film was full of such mistakes. At one point near the end, the surviving rocket's altitude is 12,000 feet, speed 2,000 mph [almost mach 3], diving down at a steep angle, but the rocket still appears to be in outer space. In 3 seconds he should be dead on impact. [2000 mph divided by 60 minutes equals 33 miles per minute, or approx. 1/2 mile per sec. and he's only 2 1/2 miles high!] Our hero is told to pull the nose up sharply, and dutifully does so. Fortunately for our heroic couple's future sex life, the rocket ignores the laws of aerodynamics and physics, and goes into a nice stall instead of augering into the ground.
shareIn this movie's universe the heroes are the handsome guys, the men who fail the tests are the plain-looking ones, and the women scientists look like supermodels. So if all that is true, then meteors can swoop and swerve, and rockets can perform physics-defying maneuvers.
shareIn this movie's universe the heroes are the handsome guys, the men who fail the tests are the plain-looking ones...Well, I gotta disagree, because I thought the most handsome candidate was the nervous guy who was doodling on the magazine advertisement! He was smoking a cigarette when he got off the bus.
To a new world of gods and monsters! share
Yeah, I noticed him, too. He's the exception that weakens my hypothesis, so, like a modern scientist, I ignored him.
shareHere's another one...
From a guy on Earth when the altitude is 63 miles...
"They must be leaving the earth's gravitional field"
Did a lot of people back then think that gravity ended somewhere up there?
...Wow! Now he's on his way down and just did a sharp U-turn and then going up again. And right after that they're telling him to pull up. And Oh yeah, he's registering "zero gravity" now.
This has to be the silliest rocket flight depiction I've seen since a serial I saw on Saturday morning TV back in the 50's sometime.
... and the rocks it pummels.
- James Berardinelli share
Ivan Tors prided himself on relying on scientifically accurate information in his sci-fi movies and TV shows. However strictly "scientific" he usually may have been, in RTTS he fails miserably. The very premise of the plot -- that cosmic ray bombardments gradually turn matter, such as spaceships and the Moon, into dust -- is pointedly preposterous. Cosmic rays do no such thing, a fact that was well-known even in 1954.
Given that massive bit of misinformation, and the movie's modest budget, why should anyone be surprised at the phony depiction of asteroids, along with the film's many other mistakes and inanities? You don't watch something like this for informational purposes. In fact, the plastic rockets look so much like prizes in a cereal box, the bobbing and weaving asteroids are so rythmically nonsensical, and the pilots' behavior so absurd, the film is very entertaining at its climax. Stupid and illogical, but fun.
While it has been decades since I've seen this picture, I remember enjoying it very much.
I think it was only meant as a cautionary tale about the exploration of the new frontier. The script may have tossed around a few new scientific terms and ideas, however it was more, I think, about the unknown prospects of space travel.
A bit like those charts that mariners would use that bore the legend "Here There Be Monsters" or the popular belief that venturing out too far one's vessel would fall of the edge of the world! Space travel back then was full of hair-raising notions, much like tales told by city-slickers about the Wild West.
Warn of the many potential dangers of outer space and that is fair enough as it is a hostile place and much care must be taken. The parts we find silly now notwithstanding, it is not a bad message.
"Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors."
I don't really agree that this film was meant as a cautionary tale. On the contrary, the film was basically a paean to man's ceaseless desire (and need) to explore and learn.
Of course to make the film both exciting and "realistic" it also underlined the many potential dangers in space and space travel (including the false assertion about cosmic rays), but if you think about it the bulk of the movie concerns the selection and training of the astronauts, not the climactic trip into space itself.
But far from being cautionary, its tone is one of the challenges awaiting mankind as we (inevitably, in the film's view) move out into space. The dangers posed (real or imaginary) are shown mainly in a dramatic context, but whatever perils are presented they're mainly there to move the plot along and not as a warning to audiences about the dangers lurking in outer space. In fact, the film basically says the dangers will be overcome anyway because of the need to explore space.
Back to the meteors (I don't think they're supposed to be asteroids), the scenes in space (both with the meteors and the rockets) were obviously shot on a very small set and single, modest background, and done on the cheap...hence the bobbing and weaving meteors, "turning corners" in space in a very elegant, un-meteor-like way, plus the baking-soda-powered plastic spaceships clunking along and shaking on their wires every time their rockets are fired.
I've never been one to shy away from an argument, but since I have not seen this title in decades (therefore am left only with some miserable memories of this epic filtered through a nine year old's mind), I must yield to your response without question. Nevertheless, I think we may be saying the same thing, HOB, but you've said it with authority.
It has always been necessary to good story-telling to demonstrate the length, height and width of the foe or obstacle so our squared-jawed heroes can stand a little taller once they overcome it.
And back in the time when this picture was made, so little was known about the edge of and outer space. Every horrible notion concieved about the dangers of space exploration would be utilized by Hollywood and sound "scientific" because some long-haired professor may have thought out loud about some unformed idea and later quoted in some rag or journal.
OK. One more movie I have to dig up and watch again. I must have seen it a zillion times growing up, much to the distress of my siblings.
"Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors."
Heavens, I'm not seeking an argument, and it does seem that we're debating a difference in emphasis or approach, not interpretation.
To call this a cautionary tale is, in my view, to emphasize the dangers and dwell on that aspect -- almost to shy away from the project at hand and the desire to explore space. My take is that while the dangers are discussed (sometimes inaccurately, but hey, it was 1954), the emphasis of the film is on man's striving to overcome them so as to both complete this immediate mission and move out into space. The problems aren't secondary, but neither are they dominant in the narrative, in the sense of pushing the human and technical elements aside or making them secondary.
I don't blame your siblings for their distress at being subjected to RTTS when growing up. I was an only child, but my parents had similar misgivings about my predilection for 50s sci-fi! Luckily, today, my wife likes the theme song.
That is truly an amazing scene you conjured in my mind -- a loving and faithful wife digging in to watch some old pot-boiler with her husband. Poets should stay up nights and labor to paint such dreams with mere words.
"Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors."
Yeah, she really likes this stuff. (Is that poetic enough? It's certainly labored.)
In this, as in several other things, ours was a match made in heaven...which brings to mind what William Lundigan says to Martha Hyer at the end of the movie, gazing at the hunk of diamond-encrusted rock he's snagged. Don't remember the line precisely, but it was something like: "See, baby? I told you I'd bring you back a star." Of course, she though he'd been speaking of Richard Carlson.