DKosty123
This movie is based on the novel written by Martin Caidin who also wrote Cyborg, the basis of the 6 Million Dollar Man. It did receive an Oscar for special effects and the John Sturges film does have great special effects. At 2 hour and 15 minutes it does drag a bit.When you rate the cast, this was an A-List with Gregory Peck, David Janssen, Richard Crenna, James Franciscus, & Gene Hackman heading up the list. Even the limited role of weeping/tense wives is headed up by Lee Grant, Mariette Hartley,and Nancy Kovack. Grant now over 90, won an Oscar but not for this one.So with a cast like this and a decent sci-fi novel to base it on, why isn't this 2001? For some reason, it just does not come off too well as it did not capture the audience the way 2001 did a year prior. It is not that shabby a movie.The plot is a 5 month mission to the US space station ends and when the crew of 3 unhooks from the station their retro rocket burn to come back does not fire. David Janssen becomes the first to pilot a space shuttle, 12 years before the first US Shuttle actually launched in 1981.What seems flawed in this is instead of a lot of dead space, more attention should have been paid to the preparing of a rescue launch in 40 hours. A hurricane comes in to screw up the launch of the rescue as well. Still there is a nice gesture of détente here with the USSR getting a rescue vehicle there just before the US Shuttle flying without computers according to the script.While the film creates urgency, it fail to pull in the audience though the visual work is splendid. The film really makes the astronauts wives one dimensional which is a lost opportunity of such talented women.One thing that breaks out of the mold is one of the three dies just before any rescue folks show up. The lack of any home feeling and fleshing out of some of the men as well is why it does not pull anything in. Even a guest cameo by Hal the Computer could have helped. While it could have been better, at least the ending of the film is quick with just barely enough information to know who was rescued and the inside of Janssen's Space Shuttle is only an image of the pilots area. Think the budget must have been a little short there.
MissClassicTV
The best thing about Marooned is Lee Grant. She's really wonderful in a tiny role as the wife of the commander.The worst thing about Marooned is that it's dated. Here's a sample line of dialogue that made me cringe: "Celia and I have been in this business 10 years. We learned that the best thing is for us girls to keep our feelings to ourselves and let the men get on with their jobs. Right, Celia?"This is a dramatic story about three astronauts stranded in orbit. Richard Crenna, the spacecraft commander, and James Franciscus, the science systems astronaut, are very good. I especially liked Franciscus. Unfortunately, Gregory Peck is kind of stiff and stoic as the man in charge. Gene Hackman is the Apollo guidance pilot and as he gradually goes crazy, I'm not sure if I didn't like his acting or I didn't like his character. Anyway, I did not enjoy watching him.The makers of this movie went to great lengths to be very accurate in their depiction of mission control, the Apollo capsule, costuming and such. Great production values all around. The storm looks really authentic too. It won an Oscar for best visual effects in 1970.David Janssen plays an Air Force colonel who wants to launch a rescue mission against all odds. He's the heroic senior astronaut on the ground who wants to fly the X-RV into space to save them. It's never before been flown into space so there are some inherent dangers. When it's finally launched, it's actually a pretty thrilling sight. It's a very quiet movie and the pacing is kind of slow. It's not bad, but overall, the movie had too much technology and perhaps too much realism - it needed a bit more storytelling and drama.
TxMike
I am old enough to remember the 1960s space program. It was a race to get to the moon by the end of the decade, a goal President Kennedy announced right here in Houston, at Rice University. I was still in high school but I remember it.I also remember how fascinated most of us ordinary citizens were with the early space program, not just the results but behind the scenes, how everything worked. This movie took advantage of that, not only telling the story of the stranded astronauts but showing us in fairly deliberate detail the conversations between mission control on the ground and the astronauts in space. For that reason it moves very slowly in places, and takes well over 2 hours running time. But had I seen this in 1969 the pace would have been just right.Gregory Peck gets top billing as Charles Keith, the head of the USA space program, the guy who makes the hard decisions, the man who talks directly with the President. When the 3 astronauts can't come back to Earth after 5 months docked with a space lab, he has the final say whether they will be abandoned or a very risky, untested rescue mission will be rushed into service. In the end he is guided by the President who tells him by phone they needed to save those guys.The 3 stranded astronauts are played by Richard Crenna as Jim Pruett, James Franciscus as Clayton Stone, and Gene Hackman as Buzz Lloyd. They are helpless. The idiot light on the dash board says the retro rockets have fired, but they haven't. They don't have a clue how to fix it, nor does Houston, and they only have a few days' oxygen left. David Janssen is Ted Dougherty one the mission control team, an astronaut himself, and he volunteers to pilot the untested reentry vehicle on the untested rocket to try to perform a rescue, all with a hurricane bearing down on Cape Kennedy. Fortunately the eye will pass over creating a window of calm air.Overall it is a very nicely done movie, it even spends quite an amount of time on the wives and their worry about their husbands. It gives a pretty good, though fictional, indication of what the inner workings of the space program was like back then.I saw it via the TV network 'Movies!'.
utgard14
Marooned is the story of three astronauts (Richard Crenna, Gene Hackman, James Franciscus) who are stranded in space after a mechanical problem prevents their return. It's then up to NASA, in particular Gregory Peck and David Janssen, to get a rescue mission up within 42 hours before their air runs out. Marooned is not without problems but it's a good movie. Its faults are mainly that the pace is slow and the special effects in the space walk sequences are not the best. Other than that, I don't get the griping. Despite the pace I never felt bored. Most of the performances are good. Gregory Peck is a little too rigid but everybody else is fine.A butchered version of the movie (called Space Travelers) was featured on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. As I have seen far too often on IMDb, movies that were featured on that show have been deliberately rated low by some of the show's more unpleasant fans. So please take that into account when viewing the rating given here. I'm actually surprised it's as high as it is. It's too good of a movie to have been on that show but this isn't the first time I've seen a good movie with a terrible IMDb rating simply because it was featured on MST3K.
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