What's with the intros?
I watched episode one last night for the very first time, and I found the Tom Hanks intro very jarring and out of place. Plus, he just talked a lot of fluffy nonsense anyway.
shareI like the way he starts off with something random but always finishes with the phrase "...from the Earth to the Moon".
One thing's certain - Inspector Clay's dead. Murdered. And somebody's responsible!
I liked his intro for "That's All There Is" when he said, "It is certainly not necessary to be Neil Armstrong to have experienced the great adventure found in a voyage from the Earth to the Moon." No offense to Neil Armstrong, but the 11 other astronauts who walked on the Moon don't get enough recognition.
"I am a collage of unaccounted for brush strokes, and I am all random!"
This miniseries was Tom Hanks's "baby". There's NO WAY he wasn't going to take part in it. LOL
I just watched Apollo 13 (for the zillionth time) on AMC last week. It was one of theose showings where they include little facts across the bottom of the screen. One of them was a quote by Jim Lovell. "Tom Hanks is a closet astronaut."
Whenever Jim Lovell, as portrayed by Tim Daly whom I adore, is onscreen, I think "That's not what he looked like. That guy doesn't look anything like Tom Hanks!" I don't think of he real Lovell, I think of Hanks. ha
Of course, the real Jim Lovell looks like Kevin Costner.
shareI don't think they were trying as hard for physical resemblance in the movie as they were for the mini-series. For instance, Gary Sinise looks NOTHING like Ken Mattingly. Also David Andrews who played Pete Conrad in the movie, looks even like like him (too tall, too much hair, and missing Conrad's famous "gap tooth").
Ironically, Andrews went on to play Frank Borman in the mini-series, and he's a GREAT match for Borman. They also got a great Mattingly actor named Zelko Ivanek. Too bad we don't see him much.
And the real Jim Lovell calling Hanks a "closet astronaut" can be seen on the DVD.
There are some actors in the series who don't look like the real astronauts; Mark Harmon doesn't look much like Wally Schirra and Cary Elwes doesn't look like Michael Collins; like David Andrews as Pete Conrad, Elwes has too much hair. Also Mark Rolston (who played Gus Grissom) is taller than Nick Searcy (Deke Slayton) and in real life Grissom was about five foot six and Slayton was about five ten. Do I have too much time on my hands or what?
__________________________
"I am a collage of unaccounted for brush strokes, and I am all random!"
Yeah, I have too much time on my hands too. LOL I had trouble getting used to Nick Searcy as Deke Slayton after having seen Chris Ellis portray the astronaut in Apollo 13. Nick Searcy's portrayal grew on me. But it took a while.
When I saw a picture of the real Deke Slayton I thought he resembled Chris Ellis a bit. Of course so few people remember what these guys looked like, I supppose they could get away with a wide range of actors playing them.
In regard to The Right Stuff, the actors who were Gus Grissom (Fred Ward) and John Glenn (Ed Harris) resembled the astronauts they played. But they were the "Hollywood handsome" versions of those guys. I thought it was interesting though that the real Rusty Schweikart was way handsomer than the actor who played him.
Enough actors have played some astronauts, you could do an academic paper on the varying portrayals. Consider Gus Grissom, who's in:
The Right Stuff (Fred Ward)
Apollo 13 (Steve Bernie)
FtEttM (Mark Rolston)
That Thing You Do (Bryan Cranston)