X-15

This is one of those flicks you find by accident. You see a few familiar names in the cast, notice the early date, then rent it on a whim. And if you're like me, you say to yourself, "Good choice." A space film without all the invasion drama. This dealt with actual exploration. And unlike a lot of sci-fi, seemed to take it seriously.

Mary Tyler Moore in an early role, and she looked good. The talent was blossoming.

Bronson played his usual strong, weary type. He never had a prayer as a sex symbol, but he was underrated as an actor.

This is in need of reviving.

I remember reading an interview with Mary Tyler Moore when she was just making the transition from a supporting role in a sitcom (Laura Petrie in The Dick van Dyke Show) to a starring role (Mary Richards in the Mary Tyler Moore Show). "X-15" was one of her earliest film roles. She made no bones about how awful she thought the film was. And by far, the most interesting thing about the film is the out-the-windshield cockpit footage, which is real. The rest of the film was, according to Moore, shot in three days and was of course mere fill, and it shows. It was barely up to the standard of the most forgettable soap operas of the 1960s.

The X-15 rocket plane program was famous and a really big deal in its time. The X-15's rocket engine burned through its fuel supply in just two minutes, so it couldn't waste time taking off; it was drop-launched at altitude from under the wing of a B-52, and like the space shuttle orbiter, it glided back to the ground. I wonder: Did the studio somehow luck into possession of a lot of Air Force B-reel footage shot from the cockpit camera of the X-15 for research purposes and decide to try for a quick buck, or did they deliberately commission this?

So, this is a Richard Donner movie (his first one), starring Charles Bronson in a lead role and it has James Stewart(!) narrating but yet no one has ever heard off this movie? It sounds all weird but there actually is a very logical explanation for it; the movie just isn't very good or memorable.

It's hard to even really call this a movie in the first place. It's stuck somewhere between being a documentary and a slow moving drama. The entire story is being told in such a way that it almost feels like a documentary you are watching, complete with a lot of technical details and background information about the airplanes and missions. No big surprise, since the movie got actually made with the help of the space program and the air force. In a way you could even call this movie a piece of propaganda.

But the movie also still tries to tell a story. Not hard enough though. Everything remains terribly underdeveloped, this goes for the story as well as for all of its characters. The movie also never becomes a very interesting one to watch because of that very same reason. There is not a clear enough main plot line that it is following and because of that also all of the developments in it fall short and everything feels without consequences. It doesn't matter at all for the viewer when a test fails, or a plane blows up. You just don't ever feel involved enough with any of it, to care about anything.

It all also makes this movie a bit of a boring one and definitely also overlong, since it starts to repeat itself pretty early on already and sometimes scenes just go on for far too long, without serving really a purpose for the movie in the first place.

It really doesn't matter at all that Charles Bronson, amongst others is in this movie. None of the characters get to do anything good or interesting and the acting and whole directing approach of this movie reminded me of a '50's science-fiction flick, that too desperately wanted to be taken serious as a movie. It feels the need to throw in all kinds of technical aspects and nonsensical questions, that are completely irrelevant in todays perspective. It's all very forced and wooden and lacks depth of any sort.

But please, allow me to also still say something positive about this movie. Because it got made with the help of the air force, the aerial moments are great looking ones. Normally movies like this would had uses some standard archive footage of planes flying but this movie is very consistent with its look and often shows some great, insightful, moments in the air, also often from the perspective of the pilot.

At first I also was very excited when hearing James Stewart narrating this thing. However strangely enough the narration suddenly stops half way through the movie and Stewart can't be heard again, until the very end of the movie.

Do yourself a favor and watch "The Right Stuff" instead. It for some part handles some of the same subjects, about the earliest days of the space program and test flying but it does this a far more interesting and exciting way, than this movie ever does.

5/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

As a teenager I don't see myself falling into the average 6 voting. Even though the 60s is not my decade, I still love this movie. It should be appreciated for the simply its existence. Besides the Right Stuff, we don't really see much of them depict the space race so specifically. Starring MTM and Bronson is better than random actors anyways. At least we see how fine MTM use to be.

Inviting popular movie stars showed how important this project is. The power of how much people cares during that decade is amazing compare to the significance of it today. Usually, how much public cares indicates how well the technological advancement is going to turn out.Unfortunately that enthusastism is long gone... You won't see another movie over space exploration anymore.

Baby Boomers like me often wonder why manned space exploration seems so far behind the expectations of the 1960's. Instead of seeing humans walk on Mars, we're left with an all-but-useless space station serviced by 40-year-old Russian capsules and dangerously obsolescent American shuttles.

X-15 offers a glimpse of how things might have turned out. It's hard to believe there actually was an alternative to such dead-ends programs as Project Apollo, Skylab, and the Space Shuttle. The legendary rocketeer Werner Von Braun thought that America should enter space in stages: i.e., build a reusable orbiter, construct a large, permanent space station, and then use that platform to construct inexpensive, reusable vehicles for further exploration. Unfortunately, President John Kennedy's Race to the Moon made such a logical course of action impossible. X-15 shows, in part, how the U.S. Air Force wanted to fulfill Von Braun's vision.

The film is, for the most part, historically and technologically accurate. Few remember how exciting the X-15 rocket plane was as it left Earth's atmosphere years before the "tin cans" of Project Mercury. Despite negative claims from NASA (which coveted the millions of space research dollars going to the Air Force) a follow-up of the X-15, the X-20 Dyna Soar, might have orbited the Earth by the mid-1960's. Interestingly, the film includes cameo appearances of actual network TV correspondents who were convinced the X-15 would help America establish a permanent presence in space. A combination of factors: the urgency of Kennedy's race to the moon; the economic demands of the Viet Nam War; and reasonable fears of militarizing space killed off the Air Force's more-logical approach to earth orbit.

The film's dramatic climax, which depicts an X-15 actually orbiting the Earth, is a clear case of cinematic license. (The real X-15 was capable of sub-orbital flights only.) Nevertheless, a larger, two-man version, the X-15B, was designed by North American Rockwell, and there are many that still believe it could have achieved low earth orbit.

It's clear that director Richard Donner was given unprecedented access to the Air Force's facilities at Edwards Air Force Base/Dryden Research Center. The battle for funding with NASA was a make-or-break challenge, and the USAF clearly recognized the value of the mass media, and of providing a heroic and practical image of its X-15 program to American filmgoers. Although the film X-15 might be criticized on a number of artistic levels, it nevertheless stands as a valuable bit of early-1960's nostalgia that offers a rare glimpse into a forgotten chapter of space exploration.