film anniversaries

Ars reflects on Apollo 13 turning 30

Apollo13, culture, Entertainment, film anniversaries, films, NASA, Science, space history, Staff source, Universal Pictures / 9u50fv / June 29, 2025

Ron Howard’s 1995 love letter to NASA’s Apollo program takes a few historical liberties but it still inspires awe.

Credit: Universal Pictures

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the 1995 Oscar-winning film, Apollo 13, director Ron Howard’s masterful love letter to NASA’s Apollo program in general and the eponymous space mission in particular. So we’re taking the opportunity to revisit this riveting homage to American science, ingenuity, and daring.

(Spoilers below.)

Apollo 13 is a fictional retelling of the aborted 1970 lunar mission that became a “successful failure” for NASA because all three astronauts made it back to Earth alive against some pretty steep odds. The film opens with astronaut Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) hosting a watch party in July 1969 for Neil Armstrong’s historic first walk on the Moon. He is slated to command the Apollo 14 mission, and is ecstatic when he and his crew—Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise) and Fred Haise (Bill Paxton)—are bumped to Apollo 13 instead. His wife, Marilyn (Kathleen Quinlan) is more superstitious and hence less thrilled: “It had to be 13.” To which her pragmatic husband replies, “It comes after 12.”

A few days before launch, Mattingly is grounded because he was exposed to the measles and replaced with backup Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon), who is the only one happy about the situation. But Lovell and Haise rebound from the disappointment and the launch goes off without a hitch. The public, alas, just isn’t interested in what they think has become routine. But the mission is about to become anything but that.

During a maintenance task to stir the oxygen tanks, an electrical short causes one of the tanks to explode, with the other rapidly venting its oxygen into space. The crew has less than an hour to evacuate the command module Odyssey into the lunar module Aquarius, using it as a lifeboat. There is no longer any chance of landing on the Moon; the new mission is to keep the astronauts alive long enough to figure out how to bring them safely home. That means overcoming interpersonal tensions, freezing conditions, dwindling rations, and unhealthy CO2 levels, among other challenges, as well as taking on a pulse-pounding manual course correction with no navigational computer. (Spoiler alert: they make it!)

The Apollo 13 crew: Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon), and Fred Haise (Bill Paxton). Universal Pictures

The film is loosely based on Lovell’s 1994 memoir, Lost Moon. While Lovell initially hoped Kevin Costner would portray him, Howard ultimately cast Hanks in the role, in part because the latter already had extensive knowledge of the Apollo program and space history. Hanks, Paxton, and Bacon all went to US Space Camp to prepare for their roles, participating in astronaut training exercises and flying on the infamous “Vomit Comet” (the KC-135) to experience simulated weightlessness. Howard ultimately shot most of the weightless scenes aboard the KC-135 since recreating those conditions on a soundstage and with CGI would have been prohibitively expensive.

In fact, Howard didn’t rely on archival mission footage at all, insisting on shooting his own footage. That meant constructing realistic spacecraft interiors—incorporating some original Apollo materials—and reproducing exactly the pressure suits worn by astronauts. (The actors, once locked in, breathed air pumped into the suits just like the original Apollo astronauts.) The Mission Control set at Universal Studios was so realistic that one NASA consultant kept looking for the elevator when he left each day, only to remember he was on a movie set.

The launch sequence was filmed using miniature models augmented with digital image stitching. Ditto for the splashdown, in which actual parachutes and a prop capsule were tossed out of a helicopter to shoot the scene. Only the exhaust from the attitude control thrusters was generated with CGI. A failed attempt at using CGI for the in-space urine dump was scrapped in favor of just spraying droplets from an Evian bottle.

It all paid off in the end. Apollo 13 premiered on June 30, 1995, to critical acclaim and racked up over $355 million globally at the box office. It was nominated for nine Oscars and won two—Best Film Editing and Best Sound—although it lost Best Picture to another Hanks film, Forrest Gump. (We can’t quite believe it either.) And the film has stood the test of time, capturing the essence of America’s early space program for posterity. A few Ars staffers shared their thoughts on Apollo 13‘s enduring legacy.

Failure should be an option

White Team Flight Director Gene Krantz (Ed Harris) insists, “We are not losing those men!” Universal Pictures

The tagline for Apollo 13 is “Failure is not an option.” But this is a bit of Hollywood magic. It turns out that NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz never said the line during the actual Apollo 13 mission to the Moon, or the subsequent efforts to save the crew.

Instead the line was conceived after the script writers, Al Reinert and Bill Broyles, interviewed Kranz at his home Texas, south of Johnson Space Center. They were so taken by the notion it became synonymous with the film and with Kranz himself, one of NASA most storied flight directors. He has lived with the line in the decades since, and embraced it by using it as the title of his autobiography. Ever since then the public has associated the idea that NASA would never accept failure with the space agency.

Of course it is great that the public believes so strongly in NASA. But this also turned out to be a millstone around the agency’s neck. This is not really the fault of Kranz. However, as the public became unaccepting of failure, so did Congress, and NASA’s large programs became intolerant of failure. This is one of the reasons why the timeline and cost of NASA’s rockets and spacecraft and interplanetary missions have ballooned. There are so many people looking for things that could possibly go wrong, the people actually trying to build hardware and fly missions are swamped by requirements.

This is why companies like SpaceX, with an iterative design methodology that accepts some level of failure in order to go more quickly, have thrived. They have moved faster, and at significantly less cost, than the government. I asked Kranz about this a few years ago, the idea that NASA (and its Congressional paymasters) should probably be a little more tolerant of failure.

“Space involves risk, and I think that’s the one thing about Elon Musk and all the various space entrepreneurs: they’re willing to risk their future in order to accomplish the objective that they have decided on,” he told me. “I think we as a nation have to learn that, as an important part of this, to step forward and accept risk.”

—Eric Berger

The perfect gateway drug

“Gentlemen, that’s not good enough.” Universal Pictures

Technically I am a child of the ’60s (early Gen-X), but I was far too young to grasp the significance of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, or just how impressive NASA’s achievement really was. The adults made us sit around the TV in our PJs and seemed very excited about the grainy picture. That’s it. That’s all I remember. My conscious knowledge of space exploration was more influenced by Star Wars and the 1986 Challenger explosion. So going to see Apollo 13 in 1995 as a young science writer was a revelation. I walked out of the theater practically vibrating with excitement, turned to my friends and exclaimed, “Oh my god, we went to the Moon in a souped-up Buick!”

Apollo 13 makes space exploration visceral, makes the audience feel like they are right there in the capsule with the crew battling the odds to get back home. It perfectly conveys the huge risks and stalwart courage of everyone involved in the face of unimaginable pressure. Nerds are the heroes and physics and math are critical: I love the scene where Lovell has to calculate gimbal conversions by hand and asks mission control to check his work. A line of men with slide rules feverishly make their own calculations and one-by-one give the thumbs up.

Then there’s the pragmatic ingenuity of the engineers who had to come up with a way to fit square air filters into a round hole using nothing but items already onboard the spacecraft. There’s a reason I rewatch Apollo 13 every couple of years when I’m in the mood for a “let’s work the problem, people” pick-me-up. (Shoutout to Lovell’s mother, Blanche—played by Howard’s mother, the late Jean Speegle Howard—and her classic line: “If they could get a washing machine to fly, my Jimmy could land it.”)

Naturally, Howard had to sacrifice some historical accuracy in the name of artistic license, sparking the inevitable disgruntled griping among hardcore space nerds. For instance, the mission’s original commander, Alan Shepard, wasn’t grounded because of an ear infection but by Meniere’s disease (an inner ear issue that can cause dizziness). Mission control didn’t order the shutdown of the fuel cells; they were already dead. Swigert and Haise didn’t really argue about who was to blame for the accident. And the film ignores the critical role of Flight Director Glynn Lunney and his Black Team (among others), choosing to focus on Kranz’s White Team to keep the story streamlined.

Look, I get it: nobody wants to see a topic they’re passionate about misrepresented in a movie. But there’s no question that thanks to Howard’s narrative instincts, the film continues to resonate with the general public in ways that a by-the-book docudrama obsessing over the tiniest technical details never could.

In the grand scheme of things, that matters far more than whether Lovell really said, “Houston, we have a problem” in those exact words. If you want the public to support space exploration and—crucially—for Congress to fund it, you need to spark their imaginations and invite them to share in the dream. Apollo 13 is the perfect gateway drug for future space fans, who might find themselves also vibrating with excitement afterward, so inspired by the film that they decide they want to learn more—say, by watching the 12-part Emmy-winning docuseries From the Earth to the Moon that Howard and Hanks co-produced (which is historically accurate). And who knows? They might even decide they want to be space explorers themselves one day.

—Jennifer Ouellette

A common touchstone

Lift-off! Universal Pictures

My relationship with Apollo 13 is somewhat different from most folks: I volunteer as a docent at Space Center Houston, the visitor’s center for Houston’s Johnson Space Center. Specifically, I’m an interpretive guide for the center’s Saturn V exhibit—the only one of the three remaining Saturn V exhibits in the world composed of tip-to-tip of flight stages.

I reference Apollo 13 constantly during guide shifts because it’s a common touchstone that I can count on most folks visiting SCH to have seen, and it visually explicates so many of the more technical aspects of the Apollo program. If I’m explaining that the near-avalanche of white stuff one sees falling off of a Saturn V at launch is actually ice (the rocket’s cryogenic fuels are fantastically cold, and the launch pad at Florida is usually warm and humid, so ice forms on the rocket’s outer skin over the liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen tanks as it sits on the pad), I reference the launch scene in the movie. If I’m explaining the transposition and docking maneuver by which the Apollo command module docked with and extracted the lunar module from its little garage, I reference the T&D scene in the movie.

Questions about breathing and carbon dioxide? Movie scene. The well-known tension between the astronaut corps and the flight surgeons? Movie scene. And the list goes on. It’s the most amazing reference material I could possibly have.

The film has its detractors, of course, and most geeks wanting to take issue with it will fire shots at the film’s historical accuracy. (Apollo EECOM Sy Liebergot, played in the film by director Ron Howard’s brother Clint, griped once to me that the movie had the audacity to depict the Apollo spacecraft’s trans-lunar injection burn as occurring with the Moon visible in the windows instead of on the far side of the planet—an apparently unforgivable astronavigational sin.) The movie amps up the drama in all respects, adds dialog no astronaut or controller would say, mashes people together into composite characters, compresses or expands the timelines of many of the events in the mission, shows many of those same events happening out of order, and puts people (like Gary Sinise’s Ken Mattingly) in places and roles they were never in.

All these things are true—but they’re also necessary additions in order to get one’s hands around a messy historical event (an event, like all events, that was basically just a whole bunch of stuff all happening at the same time) and fit it into a three-act structure that preserves the important things and that non-technical non-astronaut audiences can follow and understand. And the film succeeds brilliantly, telling a tale that both honors the historicity and technical details of the mission, and that also continues to function as a powerful interpretive tool that teaches people even 35 years after release.

Is every button pressed in the right way? No. Does it bug the crap out of me every time Kevin Bacon answers Tom Hanks’ “How’s the alignment?” question by nonsensically saying “GDC align” and pressing the GDC align button, which is neither what Lovell was asking nor the proper procedure to get the answer Lovell was looking for? Yes. But’s also pure competence porn—an amazing love letter to the space program and the 400,000 men and women who put humans on the Moon.

And like Lovell says: “It’s not a miracle. We just decided to go.”

—Lee Hutchinson

Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.

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Monty Python and the Holy Grail turns 50

culture, Entertainment, Features, film, film anniversaries, Monty Python, Monty Python and the Holy Grail / Kelly Newman / April 29, 2025

Ars staffers reflect upon the things they love most about this masterpiece of absurdist comedy.

Credit: EMI Films/Python (Monty) Pictures

Monty Python and the Holy Grail is widely considered to be among the best comedy films of all time, and it’s certainly one of the most quotable. This absurdist masterpiece sending up Arthurian legend turns 50 (!) this year.

It was partly Python member Terry Jones’ passion for the Middle Ages and Arthurian legend that inspired Holy Grail and its approach to comedy. (Jones even went on to direct a 2004 documentary, Medieval Lives.) The troupe members wrote several drafts beginning in 1973, and Jones and Terry Gilliam were co-directors—the first full-length feature for each, so filming was one long learning process. Reviews were mixed when Holy Grail was first released—much like they were for Young Frankenstein (1974), another comedic masterpiece—but audiences begged to differ. It was the top-grossing British film screened in the US in 1975. And its reputation has only grown over the ensuing decades.

The film’s broad cultural influence extends beyond the entertainment industry. Holy Grail has been the subject of multiple scholarly papers examining such topics as its effectiveness at teaching Arthurian literature or geometric thought and logic, the comedic techniques employed, and why the depiction of a killer rabbit is so fitting (killer rabbits frequently appear drawn in the margins of Gothic manuscripts). My personal favorite was a 2018 tongue-in-cheek paper on whether the Black Knight could have survived long enough to make good on his threat to bite King Arthur’s legs off (tl;dr: no).

So it’s not at all surprising that Monty Python and the Holy Grail proved to be equally influential and beloved by Ars staffers, several of whom offer their reminiscences below.

They were nerd-gassing before it was cool

The Monty Python troupe famously made Holy Grail on a shoestring budget—so much so that they couldn’t afford to have the knights ride actual horses. (There are only a couple of scenes featuring a horse, and apparently it’s the same horse.) Rather than throwing up their hands in resignation, that very real constraint fueled the Pythons’ creativity. The actors decided the knights would simply pretend to ride horses while their porters followed behind, banging halves of coconut shells together to mimic the sound of horses’ hooves—a time-honored Foley effect dating back to the early days of radio.

Being masters of absurdist humor, naturally, they had to call attention to it. Arthur and his trusty servant, Patsy (Gilliam), approach the castle of their first potential recruit. When Arthur informs the guards that they have “ridden the length and breadth of the land,” one of the guards isn’t having it. “What, ridden on a horse? You’re using coconuts! You’ve got two empty halves of coconut, and you’re bangin’ ’em together!”

That raises the obvious question: Where did they get the coconuts? What follows is one of the greatest examples of nerd-gassing yet to appear on film. Arthur claims he and Patsy found them, but the guard is incredulous since the coconut is tropical and England is a temperate zone. Arthur counters by invoking the example of migrating swallows. Coconuts do not migrate, but Arthur suggests they could be carried by swallows gripping a coconut by the husk.

The guard still isn’t having it. It’s a question of getting the weight ratios right, you see, to maintain air-speed velocity. Another guard gets involved, suggesting it might be possible with an African swallow, but that species is non-migratory. And so on. The two are still debating the issue as an exasperated Arthur rides off to find another recruit.

The best part? There’s a callback to that scene late in the film when the knights must answer three questions to cross the Bridge of Death or else be chucked into the Gorge of Eternal Peril. When it’s Arthur’s turn, the third question is “What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?” Arthur asks whether this is an African or a European swallow. This stumps the Bridgekeeper, who gets flung into the gorge. Sir Belvedere asks how Arthur came to know so much about swallows. Arthur replies, “Well, you have to know these things when you’re a king, you know.”

The plucky Black Knight (“It’s just a flesh wound!”) will always hold a special place in my heart, but that debate over air-speed velocities of laden versus unladen swallows encapsulates what makes Holy Grail a timeless masterpiece.

—Jennifer Ouellette

A bunny out for blood

“Oh, it’s just a harmless little bunny, isn’t it?”

Despite their appearances, rabbits aren’t always the most innocent-looking animals. Recent reports of rabbit strikes on airplanes are the latest examples of the mayhem these creatures of chaos can inflict on unsuspecting targets.

I learned that lesson a long time ago, though, thanks partly to my way-too-early viewings of the animated Watership Down and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. There I was, about 8 years old and absent of paternal accompaniment, watching previously cuddly creatures bloodying each other and severing the heads of King Arthur’s retinue. While Watership Down’s animal-on-animal violence might have been a bit scarring at that age, I enjoyed the slapstick humor of the Rabbit of Caerbannog scene (many of the jokes my colleagues highlight went over my head upon my initial viewing).

Despite being warned of the creature’s viciousness by Tim the Enchanter, the Knights of the Round Table dismiss the Merlin stand-in’s fear and charge the bloodthirsty creature. But the knights quickly realize they’re no match for the “bad-tempered rodent,” which zips around in the air, goes straight for the throat, and causes the surviving knights to run away in fear. If Arthur and his knights possessed any self-awareness, they might have learned a lesson about making assumptions about appearances.

But hopefully that’s a takeaway for viewers of 1970s British pop culture involving rabbits. Even cute bunnies, as sweet as they may seem initially, can be engines of destruction: “Death awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth.”

—Jacob May

Can’t stop the music

The most memorable songs from Monty Python and the Holy Grail were penned by Neil Innes, who frequently collaborated with the troupe and appears in the film. His “Brave Sir Robin” amusingly parodied minstrel tales of valor by imagining all the torturous ways that one knight might die. Then there’s his “Knights of the Round Table,” the first musical number performed by the cast—if you don’t count the monk chants punctuated with slaps on the head with wooden planks. That song hilariously rouses not just wild dancing from knights but also claps from prisoners who otherwise dangle from cuffed wrists.

But while these songs have stuck in my head for decades, Monty Python’s Terry Jones once gave me a reason to focus on the canned music instead, and it weirdly changed the way I’ve watched the movie ever since.

Back in 2001, Jones told Billboard that an early screening for investors almost tanked the film. He claimed that after the first five minutes, the movie got no laughs whatsoever. For Jones, whose directorial debut could have died in that moment, the silence was unthinkable. “It can’t be that unfunny,” he told Billboard. “There must be something wrong.”

Jones soon decided that the soundtrack was the problem, immediately cutting the “wonderfully rich, atmospheric” songs penned by Innes that seemed to be “overpowering the funny bits” in favor of canned music.

Reading this prompted an immediate rewatch because I needed to know what the first bit was that failed to get a laugh from that fateful audience. It turned out to be the scene where King Arthur encounters peasants in a field who deny knowing that there even was a king. As usual, I was incapable of holding back a burst of laughter when one peasant woman grieves, “Well, I didn’t vote for you” while packing random clumps of mud into the field. It made me wonder if any song might have robbed me of that laugh, and that made me pay closer attention to how Jones flipped the script and somehow meticulously used the canned music to extract more laughs.

The canned music was licensed from a British sound library that helped the 1920s movie business evolve past silent films. They’re some of the earliest songs to summon emotion from viewers whose eyes were glued to a screen. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which features a naive King Arthur enduring his perilous journey on a wood stick horse, the canned music provides the most predictable soundtrack you could imagine that might score a child’s game of make-believe. It also plays the straight man by earnestly pulsing to convey deep trouble as knights approach the bridge of death or heavenly trumpeting the anticipated appearance of the Holy Grail.

It’s easy to watch the movie without noticing the canned music, as the colorful performances are Jones’ intended focus. Not relying on punchlines, the group couldn’t afford any nuance to be lost. But there is at least one moment where Jones obviously relies on the music to overwhelm the acting to compel a belly laugh. Just before “the most foul, cruel, bad-tempered rodent” appears, a quick surge of dramatic music that cuts out just as suddenly makes it all the more absurd when the threat emerges and appears to be an “ordinary rabbit.”

It’s during this scene, too, that King Arthur delivers a line that sums up how predictably odd but deceptively artful the movie’s use of canned music really is. When he meets Tim the Enchanter—who tries to warn the knights about the rabbit’s “pointy teeth” by evoking loud thunder rolls and waggling his fingers in front of his mouth—Arthur turns to the knights and says, “What an eccentric performance.”

—Ashley Belanger

Thank the “keg rock conclave”

I tried to make music a big part of my teenage identity because I didn’t have much else. I was a suburban kid with a B-minus/C-plus average, no real hobbies, sports, or extra-curriculars, plus a deeply held belief that Nine Inch Nails, the Beastie Boys, and Aphex Twin would never get their due as geniuses. Classic Rock, the stuff jocks listened to at parties and practice? That my dad sang along to after having a few? No thanks.

There were cultural heroes, there were musty, overwrought villains, and I knew the score. Or so I thought.

I don’t remember exactly where I found the little fact that scarred my oppositional ego forever. It might have been Spin magazine, a weekend MTV/VH1 feature, or that Rolling Stone book about the ’70s (I bought it for the punks, I swear). But at some point, I learned that a who’s-who of my era’s played-out bands—Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, even Jethro (freaking) Tull—personally funded one of my favorite subversive movies. Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, key members of the keg-rock conclave, attended the premiere.

It was such a small thing, but it raised such big, naive, adolescent questions. Somebody had to pay for Holy Grail—it didn’t just arrive as something passed between nerds? People who make things I might not enjoy could financially support things I do enjoy? There was a time when today’s overcelebrated dinosaurs were cool and hip in the subculture? I had common ground with David Gilmour?

Ever since, when a reference to Holy Grail is made, especially to how cheap it looks, I think about how I once learned that my beloved nerds (or theater kids) wouldn’t even have those coconut horses were it not for some decent-hearted jocks.

—Kevin Purdy

A masterpiece of absurdism

“I blow my nose at you, English pig-dog!” EMI Films/Python (Monty) Pictures

I was young enough that I’d never previously stayed awake until midnight on New Year’s Eve. My parents were off to a party, my younger brother was in bed, and my older sister had a neglectful attitude toward babysitting me. So I was parked in front of the TV when the local PBS station aired a double feature of The Yellow Submarine and The Holy Grail.

At the time, I probably would have said my mind was blown. In retrospect, I’d prefer to think that my mind was expanded.

For years, those films mostly existed as a source of one-line evocations of sketch comedy nirvana that I’d swap with my friends. (I’m not sure I’ve ever lacked a group of peers where a properly paced “With… a herring!” had meaning.) But over time, I’ve come to appreciate other ways that the films have stuck with me. I can’t say whether they set me on an aesthetic trajectory that has continued for decades or if they were just the first things to tickle some underlying tendencies that were lurking in my not-yet-fully-wired brain.

In either case, my brain has developed into a huge fan of absurdism, whether in sketch comedy, longer narratives like Arrested Development or the lyrics of Courtney Barnett. Or, let’s face it, any stream of consciousness lyrics I’ve been able to hunt down. But Monty Python remains a master of the form, and The Holy Grail’s conclusion in a knight bust remains one of its purest expressions.

A bit less obviously, both films are probably my first exposures to anti-plotting, where linearity and a sense of time were really besides the point. With some rare exceptions—the eating of Sir Robin’s minstrels, Ringo putting a hole in his pocket—the order of the scenes were completely irrelevant. Few of the incidents had much consequence for future scenes. Since I was unused to staying up past midnight at that age, I’d imagine the order of events was fuzzy already by the next day. By the time I was swapping one-line excerpts with friends, it was long gone. And it just didn’t matter.

In retrospect, I think that helped ready my brain for things like Catch-22 and its convoluted, looping, non-Euclidean plotting. The novel felt like a revelation when I first read it, but I’ve since realized it fits a bit more comfortably within a spectrum of works that play tricks with time and find clever connections among seemingly random events.

I’m not sure what possessed someone to place these two films together as appropriate New Year’s Eve programming. But I’d like to think it was more intentional than I had any reason to suspect at the time. And I feel like I owe them a debt.

—John Timmer

A delightful send-up of autocracy

King Arthur attempting to throttle a peasant in the field — “See the violence inherent in the system!” Credit: Python (Monty) Pictures

What an impossible task to pick just a single thing I love about this film! But if I had to choose one scene, it would be when a lost King Arthur comes across an old woman—but oops, it’s actually a man named Dennis—and ends up in a discussion about medieval politics. Arthur explains that he is king because the Lady of the Lake conferred the sword Excalibur on him, signifying that he should rule as king of the Britons by divine right.

To this, Dennis replies, “Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.”

Even though it was filmed half a century ago, the scene offers a delightful send-up of autocracy. And not to be too much of a downer here, but all of us living in the United States probably need to be reminded that living in an autocracy would suck for a lot of reasons. So let’s not do that.

—Eric Berger

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Our top 10 Jackie Chan movies

culture, fight choreography, film, film anniversaries, Jackie Chan, martial arts, stuntmen / Shannon Garcia / April 7, 2025

Happy birthday to a living legend

Chan’s distinctive style combines slapstick, acrobatics, martial arts, and astonishing stunts he performs himself.

There is no action star quite like Jackie Chan, who made his name in the Hong Kong movie industry starting in the late 1970s and developed his own signature style: combining slapstick physical comedy with acrobatics and martial arts, and designing astonishing stunts—all of which he performed himself along with his own handpicked stunt team. His stunt sequences and fight choreography have influenced everything from The Matrix and Kill Bill to the John Wick franchise and Kung Fu Panda (in which he voiced Master Monkey).

Born on April 7, 1954, Chan studied acrobatics, martial arts, and acting as a child at the Peking Opera School’s China Drama Academy and became one of the Seven Little Fortunes. Those skills served him well in his early days as a Hong Kong stuntman, which eventually landed him a gig as an extra and stunt double on Bruce Lee’s 1972 film, Fist of Fury. He also appeared in a minor role in Lee’s Enter the Dragon (1973).

Initially, Hong Kong producers, impressed by Chan’s skills, wanted to mold him into the next Bruce Lee, but that just wasn’t Chan’s style. Chan found his milieu when director Yuen Woo-ping cast him in 1978’s kung fu comedy Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow and gave Chan creative freedom over the stunt work. It was Drunken Master, released that same year, that established Chan as a rising talent, and he went on to appear in more than 150 movies, becoming one of Hong Kong’s biggest stars.

Chan struggled initially to break into Hollywood, racking up commercial misses with 1980’s The Big Brawl and 1985’s The Protector. He had a minor role in 1981’s hit comedy, The Cannonball Run, and while it didn’t do much to raise his US profile, he did adopt that film’s clever inclusion of bloopers and outtakes during closing credits. It’s now one of the trademark features of Jackie Chan films, beloved by fans.

By the mid 1990s, Chan had amassed a substantial cult following in the US, thanks to the growing availability of his earlier films in the home video market, and finally achieved mainstream Hollywood success with Rumble in the Bronx (1995) and Rush Hour (1998). In his later years, Chan has moved away from kung fu comedies toward more dramatic roles, including the 2010 remake of The Karate Kid.

Look, nobody watches classic Jackie Chan movies for the plot, complex characterizations, or the dubbing (which is often hilariously bad). We’re here to gasp in admiration at the spectacular fight choreography and jaw-dropping stunts, peppered with a generous helping of slapstick humor. His gift for turning ordinary objects into makeshift weapons is part of his unique style, which I like to call Found Object Foo. Who could forget the hilarious chopsticks duel and “emotional kung-fu” (eg, fighting while crying or laughing to unmask an opponent’s weaknesses) in 1979’s The Fearless Hyena? Chan even inspired the entire parkour movement.

Chan has broken multiple fingers, toes, and ribs over the course of his long career, not to mention both cheekbones, hips, sternum, neck, and ankle. He has a permanent hole in his skull from one near-fatal injury. And he did it all for our entertainment. The least we can do is honor him on his 71st birthday. You’ll find our top 10 Jackie Chan films listed below in chronological order, spanning 30 years.

Drunken Master (1978)

bare chested young Jackie Chan in crouched position with hands held in front, while an older man stands beside him urging him on — Jackie Chan as Wong Fei-hung in *Drunken Master*. Credit: Seasonal Film Corp

In Drunken Master, Chan portrays a fictional version of legendary Chinese martial artist/folk hero Wong Fei-Hung, who undergoes strict, punishing training under the tutelage of another legend, Beggar So (Yuen Liu-Tin), aka the Drunken Master because he practices a martial art called “Drunken Boxing.” Fei-Hung chafes at the training initially, but after a humiliating defeat in a fight against the villain, Yim Tit-sam (Hwang Jang-lee, a specialist in Taekwondo), he devotes himself to learning the martial art.

Naturally we’re going to get a final showdown between Fei-Hung and his nemesis, Tit-Sam, aka “Thunderfoot” or “Thunderleg,” because of his devastating “Devil’s Kick.” Fei-Hung is able to match his rival’s kicks, but falters again when he comes up against Tit-Sam’s infamous “Devil’s Shadowless Hand.” That’s because Fei-Hung refused to learn a crucial element of the Hung Ga fighting system because he thought it was too “girly.” He ends up inventing his unique version of the technique (“Drunken Miss Ho”) to win the day. These are all fictitious moves that are nonetheless enormously fun to watch—even though Chan nearly lost an eye after taking a blow to the brow ridge in one scene.

Project A (1983)

Jackie Chan hanging off a clock tower — The famous clock tower stunt. Credit: Golden Harvest

This film marks the official debut of the Jackie Chan Stunt Team and co-stars Chan’s longtime martial arts buddies, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao, both major stars in their own right. They were known as the “Three Dragons” in the 1980s. Chan plays Sergeant Dragon Ma, a police officer battling both pirates and gangsters in Hong Kong, and corruption within his own law enforcement ranks. Hung plays a street informant named Fei (or Fats), who tips off Dragon to an illegal gun deal, while Biao plays an inspector and the nephew of the police captain, Hong Tin-Tsu. The three team up to take down the pirates and gangsters and restore integrity to the force.

There’s a lot of delightful slapstick stunt work in Project A, reminiscent of the work of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, but apparently Chan never saw either man’s films before developing his signature style. (In 1987’s Project A Part 2, Chan does pay direct homage to Keaton’s most famous stunt from Steamboat Bill, Jr.) The highlight is Chan hanging off a clock tower (a la Lloyd) 60 feet above the ground and falling backward through a canopy. Ever the perfectionist, Chan insisted on an additional two takes of the dangerous stunt until he was satisfied he’d gotten it exactly right.

Wheels on Meals (1984)

Chan vs Benny “The Jet” Urquidez: one of the best martial arts fight scenes of all time.

Hung and Biao joined Chan again for 1984’s Wheels on Meals, with Chan and Biao playing Chinese cousins running a food truck in Barcelona. They get snared into helping their private investigator friend Moby (Hung) track down kidnappers intent on capturing a young woman named Sylvia (Lola Forner), who turns out to be the illegitimate daughter of a Spanish count.

There’s an exciting raid of the villains’ castle that involves scaling the castle walls, but the undisputed highlight of the film is the showdown between Chan and professional kickboxing champion Benny “the Jet” Urquidez, widely regarded as one of the best martial arts fight sequences on film. Both Chan and Urquidez exchange kicks and blows with dazzling speed. At one point, Urquidez lets loose a kick so fast that the resulting wake blows out a row of candles. (You can see it in the clip above; it’s not a trick.) And throughout, one gets Chan’s trademark physical comedy, even taking a moment to rest on a chair to catch his breath before the next round of blows.

Police Story (1985)

Jackie Chan in green khaki jumpsuit hanging off a bus using the crooked handle of a metal umbrella — Chan hung off a moving bus using the crook in an umbrella handle. Credit: Golden Harvest

Police Story introduced Chan as Hong Kong Police detective Ka-Kui “Kevin” Chan and launched one of the actor’s most popular trilogies. Kevin joins an undercover mission to arrest a well-known crime lord and through a complicated series of events, ends up being framed for murdering a fellow police officer. Now a fugitive, he must track down and capture the crime lord to clear his name—defeating a horde of evil henchmen and saving his girlfriend, May (Maggie Cheung), in the process.

The film is noteworthy for its many elaborately orchestrated stunt scenes. For instance, during a car chase, Chan finds himself hanging off a double-decker bus with nothing but the hooked end of a metal umbrella. (An earlier wooden umbrella prop kept slipping off the bus.) The climactic battle takes place in a shopping mall, and the stunt team broke so many glass panels that the film was dubbed “Glass Story” by the crew. The finale features Chan sliding down a pole covered in strings of electric lights that exploded as he descended. Chan suffered second-degree burns on his hands as well as a dislocated pelvis and back injury when he landed.

Armour of God (1986)

Jackie chan opening coat to reveal array of explosives strapped to his chest — Chan nearly died doing a stunt for *Armour of God*. Credit: Golden Harvest

Of all the death-defying stunts Chan performed over hundreds of films, the one that came the closest to killing him—while shooting Armour of God—was relatively mundane. Chan was simply jumping off a ledge onto a tree, but the branch broke, and he crashed to the ground, hitting his head on a rock. His skull was cracked, with a bit of bone penetrating part of his brain, an injury that took eight hours of surgery to repair, followed by a long recovery that delayed production of the film. Chan has a permanent hole in his skull and suffered partial hearing loss in his right ear.

Chan stuck with tradition and showed the footage of the accident in the ending credits of this Indiana-Jones style adventure film. His daring base jump off a cliff—after setting off a series of explosives in a cave to take out a monastic cult—onto the top of a hot air balloon that closes the film was done in two stages. Since Chan had no BASE jumping experience, he jumped onto the balloon by skydiving off a plane. The crew rigged him up with a wire to get a shot of him “jumping” off the cliff.

Police Story 3: Supercop (1992)

Chan and Michelle Yeoh take out the bad guys atop a moving train.

If the second installment of this trilogy was largely dismissed as mediocre “filler” in Chan’s expansive oeuvre, the third film, Supercop, ranks as one of his best. Kevin Chan returns for another undercover assignment to take down a drug cartel led by kingpin Khun Chaibat (Kenneth Tsang), and finds himself paired with Chinese Interpol officer Jessica Yang, played by a young Michelle Yeoh (credited as Michelle Kwan). This does not please Kevin’s longtime girlfriend, May (Maggie Cheung), who ends up blowing his cover and getting taken hostage by Chaibat and his wife (Josephine Koo) because of her jealousy.

May might be a bit irritating, but Yeoh’s Yang is pure dynamite, matching Chan’s prowess in a series of fight scenes and gamely performing her own stunts—including riding a motorbike onto a moving train (see clip above), where she and Chan battle the bad guys while dodging helicopter blades. (Yeoh had a narrow escape of her own during an earlier stunt when she fell into oncoming traffic, suffering only minor injuries.) Special shoutout to Bill Tung, reprising his role as Kevin’s superintendent, “Uncle” Bill Wong, who at one point appears in drag as Kevin’s aging grandmother in a remote village to keep Kevin’s cover story secure.

Drunken Master II (1994)

Chan fights fire with fire in Drunken Master II.

Released in the US as The Legend of Drunken Master, this one will always top my list as Jackie Chan’s best film, against some very stiff competition. It works on every level. This is technically not a sequel to the 1978 film, but it does feature Chan playing the same character, Wong Fei-hung. The film opens with Fei-hung getting into a fight all across (and under) a train with a military officer who has mistaken Fei-hung’s box of ginseng for his own box containing the Imperial Seal. The British consul wants to smuggle the seal out of China, with the help of a group of local thugs. Fei-hung finds himself embroiled in efforts to retrieve the seal and keep it in China where it belongs.

Fei-hung is a fan of Drunken Boxing, and his father disapproves of this and other screwups, kicking his son out of the house. We are treated to an amusing scene in which an intoxicated Fei-hung drowns his sorrows and sings an improvised song, “I Hate Daddy”—right before being attacked by the thugs and soundly defeated, since he’s too tipsy even for Drunken Boxing. (The trick is to be just inebriated enough.)

But Fei-hung gets his revenge and saves the day in a literal fiery showdown against the consul’s chief enforcer, John (taekwondo master Ken Lo). This is Chan’s physical comedy at its best: Drunken Boxing requires one to execute precise martial arts moves while remaining loose and being slightly off-balance. The stunts are equally impressive. At one point in the finale, Chan falls backward into a bed of hot coals (see clip above), scrambling to safety, before chugging industrial alcohol and blowing flames at his attackers wielding red-hot pokers.

Rush Hour (1998)

black man and asian man on the street in front of yellow car with hands up, pistols dangling from one finger to signal surrender — Chris Tucker co-starred with Chan in *Rush Hour*. Credit: New Line Cinema

Chan finally made his big North American mainstream breakthrough with 1995’s Rumble in the Bronx, which grossed $76 million worldwide, but if we’re choosing among the actor’s US films, I’d pick 1998’s Rush Hour over Rumble for inclusion on this list. Hong Kong Detective Lee (Chan) comes to Los Angeles to help negotiate the return of a Chinese consul’s kidnapped daughter, Soo-Yung (Julia Hsu), to whom he once taught martial arts. He’s paired with LAPD Det. James Carter (Chris Tucker), who is supposed to keep Lee occupied and out of the way while the “real” cops handle the investigation. Wacky hijinks ensue as the two gradually learn to work together and ultimately save the day.

Sure, the decades of injury and advancing age by this point have clearly taken their toll; Chan moves more slowly and performs fewer stunts, but his fighting skills remain world-class. While Rush Hour grossed an impressive $244 million worldwide and spawned two (subpar) sequels, it was not a critical favorite; nor was it among Chan’s favorites, who criticized the dearth of action and his English, admitting he often had no idea what Tucker was saying. The two nonetheless have good onscreen chemistry, with a solid supporting cast, and it all adds up to an entertaining film.

Shanghai Noon (2000)

asian man with long hair in a cowboy hat with hands on hips, a stance mirrored by blonde man standing next to him on the right, in a 19th century suit — Chan teamed up with Owen Wilson for *Shanghai Noon*. Credit: Buena Vista Pictures

Chan found an even better match when he co-starred with Owen Wilson in Shanghai Noon, best described as a “buddy Western” action/adventure. Chan plays Chon Wang (as in John Wayne), a Chinese Imperial guard who comes to the American West to rescue the kidnapped Chinese princess Pei-Pei (Lucy Liu). He ends up bonding with a bumbling, rakishly charming outlaw named Roy O’Bannon (Wilson), who agrees to help find the princess with the ulterior motive of stealing some of the gold being offered as ransom. Since they are also accidental fugitives, they must elude a posse led by the sadistic Marshall Nathan Van Cleef (Xander Berkeley).

Both Chan and Wilson’s comedic talents are on brilliant display here, with plenty of creative fight choreography and set stunt pieces to keep hardcore fans happy. The script is clever, the supporting cast is excellent, and the pacing never lags. If you’re keen to make it a double feature, the 2003 sequel, Shanghai Knights, brings Chon Wang and Roy to jolly old England to recover a stolen Imperial Seal and foil a plot against the British throne. Granted, it’s not as good as its predecessor, but the Chan/Wilson chemistry still makes it work.

The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)

man in white shirt and green khaki paints kicking up from his back on the ground at another man in disheveled dress in a fighting stance — Chan and Jet Li found it easy to work together in *The Forbidden Kingdom*. Credit: Lionsgate

The Forbidden Kingdom is a fantasy film in the wuxia genre that features not just Chan, but his fellow martial arts film legend, Jet Li, for their first on-screen pairing. A young man in Boston, Jason (Michael Angarano), who loves wuxia movies, finds a mysterious golden staff in a local Chinatown pawn shop that transports him to a village in ancient China. He is attacked by soldiers keen to get the staff but is saved by an inebriated traveling scholar named Lu Yan (Chan), a reference to one of the Eight Immortals mentioned in the Drunken Master films.

The magical staff turns out to be the key to releasing the mythical Monkey King, imprisoned by his rival the Jade Warlord. Jason’s presence could fulfill an ancient prophecy of a Seeker who will use the staff to free the Monkey King. Li plays the Silent Monk, who teams up with Jason, Lu Yan, and a young woman known as the Golden Sparrow (Liu Yifei) to fulfill the prophecy. The Forbidden Kingdom is a visual feast, featuring stunning fight choreography and production design in the wuxia tradition, as well as an impressive, highly stylized fight scene between Li (tai chi) and Chan (Drunken Boxing).

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The Stepford Wives turns 50

Columbia Pictures, Entertainment, film, film anniversaries, Uncategorized / Mike M. / February 24, 2025

It’s hard to believe it’s been 50 years since the release of The Stepford Wives, a film based on the 1972 novel of the same name by Ira Levin. It might not be to everyone’s taste, but its lasting cultural influence is undeniable. A psychological horror/thriller with a hint of sci-fi, the film spawned multiple made-for-TV sequels and a campy 2004 remake, as well as inspiring one of the main characters in the hit series Desperate Housewives. The term “Stepford wife” became part of our shared cultural lexicon, and Jordan Peele even cited the film as one of the key influences for his 2017 masterpiece Get Out.

(Spoilers below for the novel and both film adaptations.)

Levin’s novels were a hot commodity in Hollywood at the time, especially after the success of his most famous novel, Rosemary’s Baby (1967), adapted into a 1968 horror film starring Mia Farrow. (The novels A Kiss Before Dying, The Boys from Brazil, Sliver, and Levin’s play Deathtrap were also adapted to film.) The plot of the The Stepford Wives film follows the novel’s plot fairly closely.

Katharine Ross stars as Joanna Eberhart, a young wife and mother and aspiring photographer who moves with her family to the seemingly idyllic fictional Connecticut suburb of Stepford at her husband Walter’s (Peter Masterson) insistence. She bonds with sassy fellow newcomer Bobbie (Paula Prentiss) over scotch and Ring Dings (and their respective messy kitchens), mutually marveling at the vacuous behavior of the other neighborhood’ wives.

There are soon hints that all is not right in Stepford. Carol (Nanette Newman) has a bit too much to drink at a garden party and begins to glitch. Together with dissatisfied trophy wife Charmaine (Tina Louise), Joanna and Bobbie hold a women’s “consciousness raising” meeting (aka a bitching session), only to have it devolve into the other wives raving about the time-saving merits of Easy On spray starch. Meanwhile, Walter has joined the exclusive Stepford Men’s Association and becomes increasingly secretive and distant.

When Charmaine suddenly transforms into yet another vapid housewife after a weekend getaway with her husband, Joanna and Bobbie become suspicious and decide to investigate. They discover that there used to be a women’s group in Stepford—headed by Carol, no less—but all the transformed wives suddenly lost interest. Is it something in the water causing the transformation? That turns out to be a dead end, but one clue is that the creepy head of the Men’s Association, Dale “Diz” Coba (Patrick O’Neal), used to work for Disney building animatronics. (When Diz first tells Joanna about his background, she says she doesn’t believe it: “You don’t look like someone who enjoys making people happy.” Her instincts are correct.)

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The perfect New Year’s Eve comedy turns 30

Coen brothers, culture, Entertainment, film, film anniversaries, Sam Raimi, The Hudsucker Proxy, Warner Bros. / Beth Washington / December 31, 2024

There aren’t that many movies specifically set on New Year’s Eve, but one of the best is The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), Joel and Ethan Coen’s visually striking, affectionate homage to classic Hollywood screwball comedies. The film turned 30 this year, so it’s the perfect opportunity for a rewatch.

(WARNING: Spoilers below.)

The Coen brothers started writing the script for The Hudsucker Proxy when Joel was working as an assistant editor on Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981). Raimi ended up co-writing the script, as well as making a cameo appearance as a brainstorming marketing executive. The Coen brothers took their inspiration from the films of Preston Sturgess and Frank Capra, among others, but the intent was never to satirize or parody those films. “It’s the case where, having seen those movies, we say ‘They’re really fun—let’s do one!’; as opposed to “They’re really fun—let’s comment upon them,'” Ethan Coen has said.

They finished the script in 1985, but at the time they were small indie film directors. It wasn’t until the critical and commercial success of 1991’s Barton Fink that the Coen brothers had the juice in Hollywood to finally make The Hudsucker Proxy. Warner Bros. greenlit the project and producer Joel Silver gave the brothers complete creative control, particularly over the final cut.

Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) is an ambitious, idealistic recent graduate of a business college in Muncie, Indiana, who takes a job as a mailroom clerk at Hudsucker Industries in New York, intent on working his way to the top. That ascent happens much sooner than expected. On the same December day in 1958, the company’s founder and president, Waring Hudsucker (Charles Durning), leaps to his death from the boardroom on the 44th floor (not counting the mezzanine).

A meteoric rise

Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) gets a job at Hudsucker Industries Warner Bros.

To keep the company’s stock from going public as the bylaws dictate, board member Sidney Mussburger (Paul Newman) proposes they elect a patsy as the next president—someone so incompetent it will spook investors and temporarily depress the stock so the board can buy up controlling shares on the cheap. Enter Norville, who takes the opportunity of delivering a Blue Letter to Mussburger to pitch a new product, represented by a simple circle drawn on a piece of paper: “You know… for kids!” Thinking he’s found his imbecilic patsy, Mussburger names Norville the new president.

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