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The sci-fi movie, which was written and directed by Joseph Kosinski ("TRON: Legacy"), was filmed in part at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisiana. Without giving away any spoilers, as the cast list shows, NASA exists (or existed) in the film's version of reality, with several actors playing NASA flight controllers. Last year, I was contacted by the filmmakers to see if I'd be available to come to the set and train Cruise to do something he will be seen doing in the film. In the end, they found someone else who is more directly connected with the activity, but it was neat to be approached just the same. The film's Russian premiere was on Monday (April 1), where Cruise and cosmonaut Alexei Leonov were photographed together.  Photo credit: Reuters/Burnyashev | ||||||||
| p51 | Interesting, I had no idea they were including NASA in the fictional reality of the film. Often, producers will make up a space agency so they don't have to worry about NASA reactions. | |||||||
| Robert Pearlman | NASA's permission is needed to use the agency's name, insignia or other specific reference in films. Sometimes the request is made hand in hand with the desire to film on NASA property, as was done in "Oblivion." | |||||||
| GoesTo11 | Interesting! I'm actually pretty excited about what I've seen of "Oblivion." Like a lot of people, I'm ambivalent at best about Tom Cruise, but he's perfectly fine leading an action-driven flick in a role that doesn't require a lot of emoting. Also, he's been a licensed pilot since '94 and owns and flies a P-51 Mustang. So there's that. | |||||||
| Atlantis | There's a NASA Meatball on the "escape pod" at 1:35. | |||||||
| bwhite1976 | Unless it gives away too much of the movie, I am curious as to what activity Tom Cruise needed specialized training for? | |||||||
| Robert Pearlman | That would be a spoiler.  | |||||||
| cspg | quote:Mark Wahlberg would beat him to that!  Some similar artistic similarities with Tron Legacy (the only worthy aspect of the movie along with "13"). | |||||||
| spaceman | Went to see the film on Sunday evening, stunning effects and great plot twists. Real escapism, enjoyed it a lot. Andrea Riseborough... nice. How did Beech know the exact line that Jack read in the poem or that he even read the book? Go see the film and check it out. A wandering nose wound too... did you help out with that Robert? Or was it the weightless sequence? Or perhaps some space memorabilia found its way onto the set? They wore patches but not enough detail. | |||||||
| p51 | Okay, the movie is out on DVD and I finally saw it yesterday. Robert, I still have no clue what you trained Cruise to do. I noticed in the credits they had an astronaut listed as a 'shuttle consultant'. So could you tell us now what you did for Cruise in the film? | |||||||
| Robert Pearlman | quote:To be clear, I didn't train Cruise; as noted in my original post, "they found someone else who is more directly connected with the activity." And as you saw in the credits, that person was astronaut Rick Searfoss, who showed Cruise how to "fly" the shuttle-like spacecraft seen in the movie. The set director for the film was familiar with collectSPACE and knew of my time spent inside the real orbiters, and as such recommended me as someone familiar with the layout of the flight deck. | |||||||
| p51 | Sorry, I hadn't gone back and read your post on the specifics. | |||||||
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