Good Night Oppy
A documentary about a Mars Exploration Rover dubbed Oppy proves to be an emotional thing.
One does not associate such big names as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas with documentaries but the companies that they formed, Amblin Entertainment, and Industrial Light & Magic, are both involved in this film about the NASA operation created to learn more about Mars by sending up exploration rovers. To mention the participation of these companies in Good Night Oppy does, however, help to explain the character of this piece. It's a work which adopts an approach designed to give it popular appeal and to make it attractive to younger viewers who might consider most standard documentaries to be rather dull and uninviting.
As it happens, the subject matter contains within it one aspect that has the potential to attract a wide audience. The work that was done exploring the surface of Mars set out to discover whether or not there was evidence that the planet had possessed water that could have supported life there and it involved the creation of two robots. It could be said that they have now become the central characters of this film. One of them was named Spirit and the other – the star of the movie – was Opportunity or, as the chosen title has it, Oppy. Think back to the appeal of Pixar’s robot in the 2007 film WALL-E and you can see why these space rovers when put on screen might be a real draw. Furthermore, Ryan White's film may tell the true story factually but it illustrates it with visuals which duplicate the surface of Mars courtesy of Industrial Light & Magic, a company noted for the excellence of its visual effects.
Back in 2020 Ryan White demonstrated in the documentary Assassins his gift for telling a complex and wide-ranging story with admirable efficiency and clarity. Those same gifts are apparent here, not least in the film’s opening section which details the planning and preparation for this exploration of Mars as carried out in the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. Later on, as the film records the way in which the anticipated ninety days extended into research lasting years (Opportunity surprised everybody by continuing to function until 2019), it is the triumphs and the setbacks on Mars which drive a narrative not lacking in suspense. But, if the robots become central (there’s an epilogue featuring the 2020 launch of a new one, Perseverance), this well edited film draws throughout on the recollections of those involved. They include mission managers, engineers, scientists and rover drivers and a few are adroitly allowed a brief back tale about what led them into this field of work in the first place.
If the efficiency of Good Night Oppy cannot be doubted, its popular tone could well be an element by which some will be put off. Consequently, it is important to stress the extent to which these features are literally part of the reality. You can accuse White’s film of anthropomorphising Oppy and Spirit but the comments from the various participants make it very clear that they bought into that themselves. Some even saw these two robots as akin to children and viewed each as having individual characteristics. At one point, there is even an unblushing reference to "a real living robot". Similarly, the handling of the robots by the ground team would involve the use of wake-up songs to ready them to receive instructions. At one problematic moment they chose to use ‘S.O.S.’ by ABBA in this way!
It would have been possible for White to choose to play down these aspects, but instead he goes with them and sometimes even builds them up. It's a decision that not all will welcome but which many will embrace and, if the scenes dealing with the end of Oppy’s career are undoubtedly sentimental, so was the reaction in real life. Faced with choosing a final wake-up song as a memorial, they opted for ‘I'll Be Seeing You’ as being expressive of their love for Oppy - but at least they chose a recording by Billie Holiday. I suspect that the majority of viewers will buy into this and may even come close to shedding a tear for Oppy themselves. But what is beyond doubt is that Good Night Oppy puts across its tale of discovery in an admirably clear way and does so in a manner that renders it readily accessible to those like myself with very limited scientific and technical knowledge.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring Steve Squyres, Kobe Boykins, Doug Ellison, Rob Manning, Jennifer Trosper, Mark Adler, Wayne Lee, Polly Estabrook, Vandi Vermer, Abigail Fraeman, Moogega Cooper, Bekah Sosland-Siegfriedt, Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu, and the voice of Angela Bassett as narrator.
Dir Ryan White, Pro Jessica Hargrave, Darryl Frank, Justin Falvey, Brandon Carroll, Matt Goldberg and Ryan White, Screenplay Ryan White and Helen Kearns, Ph David Paul Jacobson, Ed Rejh Cabrera and Helen Kearns, Music Blake Neely.
Amazon Studios/Amblin Entertainment/Film45/Industrial Light & Magic/Tripod Media- Dogwoof Releasing/Amazon Studios.
105 mins. USA 2022. US and UK Rel: 4 November 2022. Cert. PG.
