The "successful failure" that was Apollo 13Shortly after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed and successfully walked on the Moon for the first time in history, another lunar mission had nearly ended in disaster without the valor and strong leadership needed to return three men to Earth. Jim Lovell (played by Tom Hanks), Jack Swiggert (played by Kevin Bacon) and Fred Haise (played by Bill Paxton) set off on the Apollo 13 mission on April 11, 1970, in an attempt to collect samples from the planet's surface. Moon and observe it. Swiggert took the place of the more experienced Ken Mattingly (played by Gary Sinese) as Mattingly was the only one who was not immune to measles after one of the other astronauts contracted it. The flight surgeon on the trip ordered him to stay on the ground to keep himself and the crew healthy during the flight. After safely exiting Earth's atmosphere and getting back on course, a routine agitation of the oxygen tank, often required during space missions, caused a coil inside the tank to detach and erupt, creating new, unexpected problems. The explosion forced open most of the oxygen tanks as they escaped into space, increased carbon dioxide levels inside the command module the men were traveling in, and severely diminished their energy capacity. NASA immediately assembled the best and brightest men on staff to assess the situation, and flight director Gene Kranz (played by Ed Harris) canceled the Moon landing, changing the mission's final task to a safe return home. Through repeated calculations, experimentation by Ken Mattingly who knew the module systems well, and a little luck, the men managed to launch themselves around the Moon, using its gravity to return home on course. Featuring… middle of paper… contrasting the stereotypical “hero” stories where a reactive call to action is committed even if they had previously failed to display leadership skills. I also found that the parties involved shared similar leadership traits and each character in the film can be easily traced and tied to multiple theories or abilities. This shows that the success of the group was almost predetermined before the incident occurred due to the experience, knowledge and skills offered by these men. I eventually learned that recreations of real events often correlate with real leadership traits, which pushes me to revisit other films based on real events and look at them more deeply; provoking further insights and expanding my mind on how these events parallel leadership and quantifying the importance that the traits and theories presented above can hold in all aspects of life.