Challenger

I revisited this for the first time in 14 years after watching more recent docudramas of the space program like "Apollo 13" and "From The Earth To The Moon" to see how well it held up. I have no problem with the acting, or the manner in which the Challenger's crew is depicted. What I do think hurts this film though is the decision to not depict the explosion and the aftermath and just end it with the launch. I realize this was done because in 1990, the events were still too fresh in public memory to want to see the images of disaster again, but this decision ultimately hurts the film's ability to be a long-term definitive telling of the story. What was needed instead was a flashback framing device of the Rogers Commission investigation, with Roger Beaujolay and Lawrence Molloy being subjected to the painful admissions of what went wrong, and how they were impacted by the tragedy. And thumbs down for the cheesy ending of the Challenger astronauts reciting the poem one line at a time instead of providing something more moving like President Reagan's remarks to the nation that afternoon.

For all it's virtues, the story of the "Challenger" disaster ultimately deserves a better treatment than this version gave it because it was simply made too soon after the tragedy for there to be appropriate perspective.

I very much enjoyed the film.... perhaps it was filmed too soon after the tragedy, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a good movie. My question is why the DVD version of the movie was cut by 20 minutes -- only 140 minutes of the 160-minute movie?

I was waiting for a bus in southern India when I noticed the headlines in a Tamil newspaper banner announcing the Challenger disaster. Being interested in Space, I was saddened. In the following days, the Soviet Union callously spread a disinformation story in some Indian newspapers charging that the Challenger was secretly carrying explosives as part of a clandestine plot to militarize Space. Therefore, I watched "Challenger" with interest when it was first shown on television in 1990. I liked it then. I am not sure I'll think so now. Here are the impressions this film made on me at that time.

I identified with Julie Fulton as Dr.Judy Resnick, because of the character's feminism, an ideology in which I believed - at that time. I was a little annoyed by Christa McAuliffe because as a Social Studies teacher she proclaims (in the movie) that there are too many scientists in the Space Program and not enough ordinary people. The film only hints at the role of Roger Boisjoly, an engineer who urged NASA to cancel the Challenger flight because of faulty O-ring seals. Like all engineers, he was overruled (you guessed it; I am an engineer). The film follows the lives of the doomed astronauts during their final days - I was rather moved by that. Strangely, the film never shows the famous Challenger disaster footage. Maybe, it was too well-known.

(Reviewed by Sundar Narayan)

I was a young man in the first year in my new career after college when the challenger exploded. It was heartbreaking. There was a teacher being shown standing next to a TV set showing the even to her grade school class. After the shuttle exploded she burst into tears and was unconsciously hitting the old style tv set. Thirty two years later I came across Challenger on some obscure channel while channel surfing during a Sunday football game-break.

Challenger is not a great film. But it is a good one. The acting is solid. The story about whether to launch or not, the astronauts and their families were portrayed well. In retrospect you wonder how anyone would have considered launching with all that ice. And . It brought back the memories and feelings of those sad days. I'm very glad they didn't show the explosion. Challenger was about the people. As the crew was about to lift off, each astronaut was shown in the shuttle, voicing over lines from John Magee's poem "High Flight". The final verse of that poem is: "Up, up the long, delirious burning blue I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace Where never lark, or ever eagle flew - And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod The high un-trespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand, and touched the face of God."

Just a note to say that I happened on Challenger, the TV movie from c. 1990 tonight on cable and came here to IMDB to see what I could find - because I thought it was kind of interesting. Found I was even more interested in the few comments I found here (no reviews).

It was also interesting to me that the "rating" votes from those 60 something people who made a choice were all over the map, but the two (statistically significant?), most often chosen numbers, were 6 and 7. That's about right. (I'm giving it a six.)

But, to get to the main point <s>, all but one of the comments written in for the movie were trashing and what I would call trashy: all of them seemed to be hugely swayed by the subject of the show. Too "meaningful", too "important for our nation"??? The fact, I'm pretty sure, is that Challenger is a somewhat better than average docudrama. And Karen Allen is a distinguished actor. And almost all of the rest of the cast were at least OK. I thought the tone set was quite good, trying pretty successfully for "this is the way it was". No melodrama, no Hollywood "effects", just straight ahead "documentary" acting and other movie skills. Not overwritten.

It's hard for me to figure where the low average of the comments came from. Something I guess about the subject being too Big and Serious (in the pseudo sense, non gravitas) for anyone, particularly the automatically suspect TV movie crowd, to make a respectable film about. I guess. ??? Interesting.