Producers: Jessica Hargrave, Brandon Carroll, Matthew Goldberg, Justin Falvey, Darryl Frank and Ryan White Director: Ryan White Screenplay: Helen Kearns and Ryan White Cast: Angela Bassett Distributor: Amazon Studios/Prime Video
Grade: B-
Fans of “Wall-E” who’ve been disappointed that Pixar never provided them with a sequel to the 2008 animated smash can perhaps content themselves with his documentary about the two robot vehicles that NASA launched in 2003 to explore the surface of the Red Planet for signs of the water that might once have supported life. In Ryan White’s telling, over the course of the operation of the Mars Exploration Rovers, or MERs, the mechanical devices fascinated the world, becoming to many—especially those who had built and directed their work—like semi-autonomous anthropomorphic buddies, even children.
And the span of the MERs’ survey proved far longer than expected. In 2003 the NASA mission crew thought the solar batteries of Spirit and Opportunity, as they were called, might power them for up to ninety Martian days. But as it turned out, Spirit continued to function until 2010, and Opportunity, or Oppy as it was affectionately nicknamed, even longer, until 2018.
“Good Night Oppy” covers the mission from its early planning through Oppy’s shutdown. It includes lots of footage from the NASA archives, taking us back to the days when the Rovers were merely a dream among scientists and engineers who hoped that their project would win approval and financial backing through the construction of the robots, their successful launch and landing on Mars, and their investigation of the planet’s surface, seen through the camera installed on the wheeled vehicles. Interspersed with these clips are excerpts from interviews with many of the staff at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory involved in the project, whose enthusiasm was undimmed as the mission unfolded and remains so even after it’s over.
But there’s more. The film goes beyond these conventional elements to offer views of Spirit and Opportunity going about their business on Mars, being cleaned off and rejuvenated by dust storms, carefully warning the folks back on earth when they were about to encounter dangerous obstacles and extricating themselves when they get stuck in the sand. This footage is not archival, of course; there were no cameras on Mars besides those on the robots themselves, which were operating independently at long distances from each other. Rather these are computer-generated images made by the team at Industrial Light & Magic with their customary skill. They give White’s film the feel, at times, of a Hollywood studio blockbuster rather than a simple documentary.
The anthropomorphizing of Spirit and Opportunity also fits that mold. It doesn’t take the NASA folks who made them long to talk about them in human terms, and outside observers fell into line, just as viewers had with Wall-E. Engineers talk about them as their children, and when their computers start dropping memory, it’s compared with Alzheimer’s; similarly, mobility problems draw references to arthritis. The extent of the tendency is considerable.
If one’s willing to swallow such emotional treatment of these machines, along with the CGI embellishments, you’ll find “Good Night Oppy” a solid piece, with slick editing by Helen Kearns and Rejh Cabrera, along with good cinematography from David Paul Jacobson. The score by Blake Neely, supplemented by the blaring rock standards used by mission control as wake-up music every morning, adds to the excitement, and Angela Bassett narrates with smooth authority.
The result is a documentary that may not be Mars-shaking, but represents a nice tribute to one of NASA’s notable achievements and its long-lived, lovable rovers.