Netflix Stowaway crewed Mars mission drama

[FutureSpaceTourist]

On a mission headed to Mars, an unintended stowaway accidentally causes severe damage to the spaceship’s life support systems. Facing dwindling resources and a potentially fatal outcome, the crew is forced to make an impossible decision. Directed by Joe Penna and starring Anna Kendrick, Daniel Dae Kim, Shamier Anderson and Toni Collette. Coming to Netflix April 22nd.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

It’s a 1 hour, 56 minute film:

https://www.netflix.com/title/81321986

[ccdengr]

"The Cold Equations"?

[Tomness]

"The Cold Equations"?

Yep, got be Airlocked lol

[illectro]

I was a tech consultant during the development, I’m not sure how near the final version will be to the one I gave feedback on, but, I did a lot of math on the orbits, and consumables to make sure that the story would be plausible.
I generated some of the first visualizations of the spacecraft operations using Kerbal space program, and in the trailer I can see quite a few touches in the final designs that look to be directly from my interpretations.

[illectro]

I just posted a video explaining how the writers ended up designing the spacecraft:

[catdlr]

SPOILER ALERT!!

STOWAWAY Ending Explained!

Think Story
Posted:  April 22, 2021

In this video we explain the ending to Netflix's sci-fi feature "Stowaway" starring Anna Kendrick, Toni Collette, Daniel Dae Kim, and Shamier Anderson.

[Blackstar]

https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-stowaway-soundtrack-sets-a-deceptively-gorgeous-moo-1846726059

[laszlo]

Just finished watching it. They were doing mostly OK until the end. Describing how they messed it up would be a continuous stream of spoilers, so I won't. Suffice it to say, cinematically they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Without spoilers, the biggest howlers were:

The mission-critical piece of damaged equipment was something about the size of a briefcase that was easily removed for examination, so where were the spares?

For most of the movie, weeks mission elapsed time, based on the size of the Earth in the windows they were still within the Moon's orbit. Then, in the duration of a single EVA, Earth was gone and Mars was showing a visible disc.

On the other hand, no screaming or fainting women, no rubber mask aliens and no bogus physics, except for one (slight visual that actually did cinematically enhance the movie so I'm willing to give it a pass). The production values and special effects were quite good, as was most of the writing. The characters were well portrayed. The device of not showing or hearing anyone on the ground after they boarded the cycler was interesting and reinforced the fact that they were on their own. The movie almost hit a homerun.

The other thing that stood out was that it was very definitely in the NASA universe rather than the SpaceX one. It looked like an ISS with artificial gravity.

[ccdengr]

Great production values for such a melancholy and basically pointless end product.

1) why didn't they just stop the spin for a while?  Would have made things a lot easier.

2) timing of the CME was ridiculously plot-convenient.

Between this and MIDNIGHT SKY I may have to quit watching SF on Netflix.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

[tater]

It was OK, but I agree with the other comments regarding places it could have been substantially improved. The cycler spacecraft was well done (nice, Scott).

The failing part seems to have been in the vehicle that delivered crew to the cycler... why? That's like delivering crew to a cycler with Orion, and 100% of the trip's life support is tied to Orion? (assuming I'm remembering right and she saw the problem when he fell on top of her upon opening the compartment (never mind how that got closed behind him)).

And yeah, the size of it relative to the LiOH canisters was odd since any of those used more mass than just taking a spare.

The cycler is shown to despin every trip for docking a new crew, so no reason not to during the flight.

The plot would require more work to close, but I think it could be done.

[Blackstar]

I think the biggest problem was that I didn't really care a lot for any of the characters. They just fell flat, and I like Anne Hathaway.

I didn't feel for any of them the way I did for Mark Watney in "The Martian."

[illectro]

It was a fun project to work on, but I'm the first to admit that shaping everything to fit the story they wanted to tell led to a lot of questions just below the surface without great answers.

I had spreadsheets modeling atmosphere consumption and recycling to try and find a balance where the situation was balanced so that at least one person would have to be eliminated. Breaking the right bits and coming up with jury rigged replacements,  But in the final version they filmed a lot of stuff got moved around to fit the movie into its budget.
At one point there was a massive water leak with a flood and damage to systems, and there was discussion of an oxygen rich fire, but both would be costly and so we get some pretty tame sparks and blue smoke escaping.

We had some discussions about how to explain why Michael was stuck in there, behind a panel unnoticed before a launch, and you know I couldn't come up with any sane answer other than to point out that if they were chasing a cycler they might be more concerned with a launch window than an engineer who hadn't badged out. In my mind Hyperion's a private corporation running a space program and occasionally cutting corners, like when they cut back on extra support hardware to add a 3rd crew member.

The other question I never had a good answer for was why they'd not stop the spin and retract the cabling. I had an idea that they might built a jury rigged life support system, but that it needed gravity to operate properly but, that never made it into the final version either.

Still, It was a fun way to approach problems, trying to make them fail in a way that enabled the story.

[ccdengr]

Thanks for the insight.  I really wanted to like it, and all the technical attention to detail really was showing and making it work in the first half.  And I thought the actors did a great job with what they were given.  But I honestly had a hard time even watching the last third because it was pretty obvious where it was going.

I found the big burn where they match velocities with the cycler to be a little odd -- what was your thinking on how that was done?  Seemed like lots of g's and shaking.

[illectro]

The whole launch sequence is intentionally short, and the vibration is excessive because it's supposed to be disorienting for the new crew, it's supposed to be launched into a parking orbit and then make the burn to the escape orbit, but all that is ignored in name of getting the crew to the spacecraft. Realistically they'd have a few launch windows in the days running up to departure, because if they don't make the departure burn close to when the cycler hits perigee it's hard to catch up. So, their particular flight is probably the last opportunity, which might go some way to explaining why they might choose to overlook an engineer who hasn't signed out.

The launch site is in Brazil BTW. Not that I ever specified this. In one of the displays the inclination is less than one degree, and the abort mode is supposed to put them in the Atlantic. I pointed this out to Joe after seeing the movie, and he had a laugh because this was mostly accidental but he's from Brazil so it seems intentional.

I was initially skeptical about using a cycler, because I didn't think you could reasonably keep someone unconscious and yet still have them recover in the time it would take to rendezvous and dock with something flying past on a hyperbolic trajectory, however I found some studies that showed sub 24 hour profiles.

[libra]

I think the biggest problem was that I didn't really care a lot for any of the characters. They just fell flat, and I like Anne Hathaway.

I didn't feel for any of them the way I did for Mark Watney in "The Martian."

You must have appreciated Interstellar then - although her character was quite irritating at times...

[Frogstar_Robot]

I think the biggest problem was that I didn't really care a lot for any of the characters. They just fell flat, and I like Anne Hathaway.

Do you mean Anna Kendrick?

[Blackstar]

I think the biggest problem was that I didn't really care a lot for any of the characters. They just fell flat, and I like Anne Hathaway.

Do you mean Anna Kendrick?

Yeah, I wrote that while tired.

[Johnnyhinbos]

I think the biggest problem was that I didn't really care a lot for any of the characters. They just fell flat, and I like Anne Hathaway.

I didn't feel for any of them the way I did for Mark Watney in "The Martian."

I like Anne Hathaway too - though I'm not sure how germane that is to this movie... :-)


I gotta tell you - I was quite disappointed in this film. And I really liked the cast (though I'm glad they left Hathaway out of it!) It started off poorly when they left their visors open during launch. I mean, that said a lot right there. They cherry picked a few technical elements to hinge the story line on and simply ignored the rest. To me that tells me that the writer, producer, and director have no faith in the intellect of the viewer, so they don't bother to put in the effort.


I can 100% say I could write a much better version of the same plot line, while keeping science and technology real, and taking the action and suspense up several layers - and do it without adding any more production cost to the film. This is the type of half-a$$ed writing that caused me to become a novelist in the first place...