Challenger (1990 TV Movie) User Reviews

A look at the lives of those who died in the Space Shuttle, Challenger, disaster and why it occurred.

[barry-woods · 7/10 · 23 December 2012]

As others have mentioned, this movie would have more meaning had it depicted events after the Challenger explosion, as well as before. In respect to the families of those who were killed in the accident, I believe the producers chose not to depict the explosion itself.

The film is very engrossing and holds one's attention from beginning to end. The primary point is that bureaucracy and politics are often at odds with the value of human life.

The film is surprisingly well acted for a made-for-TV movie. Performances are believable and help us to understand and appreciate the lives and persona of those aboard the Challenger, and the sacrifice they made.

Families of those lost in the Challenger disaster I am sure appreciate the fact that this film did not exploit the sensationalism of the event, but instead concentrated on honoring the lives of those aboard and trying to understand the bureaucracy responsible for this tragedy.

I highly recommend you watch this film, as you will gain insight into the lives of the people who bravely accepted the risks of human exploration.

Group Think Training

[jpbofohio · 7/10 · 10 December 2019]

I remember seeing this movie 29 years ago when it was on TV. Then it was just a story of a terrible tragedy. Now in 2019 I am seeing a bit of this movie in a training class about "group think" and how to avoid similar situations as the Challenger accident. I do see many reviews from 15-17 years ago that were not kind to the movie. Just know that while you may have not liked the way history was presented, the movie is working well in training new viewers how to avoid a similar situation.

Better than billed

[seajoe-1 · 6/10 · 25 September 2002]

Just a note to say that I happened on Challenger, the TV movie from c. 1990 tonight on cable and came here to IMDB to see what I could find - because I thought it was kind of interesting. Found I was even more interested in the few comments I found here (no reviews).

It was also interesting to me that the "rating" votes from those 60 something people who made a choice were all over the map, but the two (statistically significant?), most often chosen numbers, were 6 and 7. That's about right. (I'm giving it a six.)

But, to get to the main point <s>, all but one of the comments written in for the movie were trashing and what I would call trashy: all of them seemed to be hugely swayed by the subject of the show. Too "meaningful", too "important for our nation"??? The fact, I'm pretty sure, is that Challenger is a somewhat better than average docudrama. And Karen Allen is a distinguished actor. And almost all of the rest of the cast were at least OK. I thought the tone set was quite good, trying pretty successfully for "this is the way it was". No melodrama, no Hollywood "effects", just straight ahead "documentary" acting and other movie skills. Not overwritten.

It's hard for me to figure where the low average of the comments came from. Something I guess about the subject being too Big and Serious (in the pseudo sense, non gravitas) for anyone, particularly the automatically suspect TV movie crowd, to make a respectable film about. I guess. ??? Interesting.

Made Too Soon

[Eric-62-2 · 20 November 2004]

I revisited this for the first time in 14 years after watching more recent docudramas of the space program like "Apollo 13" and "From The Earth To The Moon" to see how well it held up. I have no problem with the acting, or the manner in which the Challenger's crew is depicted. What I do think hurts this film though is the decision to not depict the explosion and the aftermath and just end it with the launch. I realize this was done because in 1990, the events were still too fresh in public memory to want to see the images of disaster again, but this decision ultimately hurts the film's ability to be a long-term definitive telling of the story. What was needed instead was a flashback framing device of the Rogers Commission investigation, with Roger Beaujolay and Lawrence Molloy being subjected to the painful admissions of what went wrong, and how they were impacted by the tragedy. And thumbs down for the cheesy ending of the Challenger astronauts reciting the poem one line at a time instead of providing something more moving like President Reagan's remarks to the nation that afternoon.

For all it's virtues, the story of the "Challenger" disaster ultimately deserves a better treatment than this version gave it because it was simply made too soon after the tragedy for there to be appropriate perspective.

A Solemn Memory

[Xyler852 · 7/10 · 13 November 2022]

I was a young man in the first year in my new career after college when the challenger exploded. It was heartbreaking. There was a teacher being shown standing next to a TV set showing the even to her grade school class. After the shuttle exploded she burst into tears and was unconsciously hitting the old style tv set. Thirty two years later I came across Challenger on some obscure channel while channel surfing during a Sunday football game-break.

Challenger is not a great film. But it is a good one. The acting is solid. The story about whether to launch or not, the astronauts and their families were portrayed well. In retrospect you wonder how anyone would have considered launching with all that ice. And . It brought back the memories and feelings of those sad days. I'm very glad they didn't show the explosion. Challenger was about the people. As the crew was about to lift off, each astronaut was shown in the shuttle, voicing over lines from John Magee's poem "High Flight". The final verse of that poem is: "Up, up the long, delirious burning blue I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace Where never lark, or ever eagle flew - And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod The high un-trespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand, and touched the face of God."

great teaching tool

[james-sipple · 7/10 · 16 June 2007]

This movie serves as a great teaching tool to show how difficult it is to express idea's and ask the right questions in a high stress environment. It also shows how culture can effect a persons ability to communicate and for compliance even when they have strong thoughts and feeling on a subject. You here the unfolding of a tragic set of events driven by hidden goals and values and a lack of a clear understanding of the views others are expressing and why. Truly an in site into how good intentions can go wrong when institutional culture and pressures meet individual concerns. Ideas can fail to be communicated clearly and effectively.

Deeply disappointing on every possible level

[Starsnstripes1974 · 1/10 · 23 March 2006]

This was the first attempted dramatization of the 1986 tragedy and came out as an ABC TV-movie 4 years after, airing February 25, 1990. The movie was filmed in Houston in the late summer of 1989. Sadly, this production disappoints on virtually every imaginable level: It is horribly written, badly acted, cheaply directed and abysmally edited. It is loaded with flaws and gaffes from start to finish, such as the apparent desire to just throw in any archival footage of any space shuttle that looks "pretty". In two scenes at least, the scene is launch day and they are using roll-out footage of the vehicle moving towards the pad, because it ilks pretty! In the very last shot where they are supposedly aiming to show Challenger's final fateful liftoff they've cut together footage from a bright, afternoon launch with an early morning takeoff that is so mis-matched it is irritating. The sets are horrible too. They try to pass off the Mission Control room in Houston as the Florida launch control firing room. They pay no attention to detail. They have photographs and mission emblems decorating the NASA offices that were from flights AFTER the disaster.

The dialogue is horribly cheesy and makes the astronauts sound dumb. In one early scene, Christa the teacher can't do a simple 3rd grade multiplication problem in her head, and Onizuka welcomes her on first meeting as " our journalist in space," to which Smith corrects him "TEACHER in space, fool!" Come on! These are some of the brightest people in the country, are we supposed to buy that they're this lame? The press asks stupid questions, not knowing who Judy Resnik is, among other things. Also ridiculous is how every scene with Onizuka makes him out to be a dipstick, such as coming home from the bar at 2 a.m. and arguing with his wife, or her teasing him as a "pineapple picker from Hawaii" in front of the other families. Who dreamed up the need to fake this " family drama" crap? I could itemize every stupid line or every gaffe in this production, but the point is it is very badly and cheaply done. The acting is second-rate at best, the lines are stupid and bland, and the production seems randomly thrown together with whatever archive film or video of space shuttles they could find.

Someday, hopefully, there will be an actual movie about Challenger, hopefully an epic done by Ron Howard or the like, similar to Apollo 13 or The Right Stuff, something that will excel and honor the story and the astronauts and not cheapen everything. I'm looking forward to THAT movie and hope it's not too far off in the future, now that the 20th anniversary of this tragedy just passed this winter.

Could Have Been Better, Could Have Been Worse

[timdalton007 · 6/10 · 10 November 2020]

On a bright but cold Florida morning in late January 1986, millions of TV viewers and thousands of spectators watched what they thought would be the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Many of whom had tuned in due to the hype around New Hampshire teacher Christa McAuliffe being a part of the crew. It was to end in tragedy less than ninety seconds after launch, leaving behind a shocked nation. It was perhaps inevitable that filmmakers would see dramatic potential in the Challenger story, and 1990 saw the ABC network aired the first such effort.

In many ways, Challenger falls into the late eighties/early nineties TV movie category. Based on a real-life event, it wants to humanize those people who featured so prominently in headlines while also trying to tell a contained story dramatically. The difference here, perhaps, is that as well as telling the story of seven astronauts (or, if we're honest, Christa McAuliffe mainly), you also have the technical side of the Space Shuttle program to deal with involving engineers and NASA management. Challenger the TV movie would aim to present both, using one to give context to the other. So did it work?

Yes and no.

There are things the movie does well. Karen Allen's casting as Christa McAuliffe was an inspired choice, and having seen archive footage of the real McAuliffe, thanks to Netflix's documentary series, she captures her nicely. Without a doubt, of the seven Challenger crew members, she's the one who comes across the best with George Englund's script though the casting for all seven was good with Barry Bostwick in particular as Commander Dick Scobee. The cast is pretty solid all told, including Peter Boyle as Morton Thiokol engineer Roger Boisjoly and Lane Smith as NASA's Larry Mulloy, men who ended up on opposite ends of the decision to launch that day. There's a strong sense of location thanks to filming around Houston and surprisingly well-suited use of NASA archive footage to portray everything from T-38s in flight to the preparations for the Shuttle's launch. For something made on a TV movie budget, it doesn't look half-bad.

That's only the better side of the movie, though. Because Challenger, as a product of the made for TV docudrama genre, runs foul of many problems with it. Namely, it's melodramatic as it can be. For a story with as much dramatic potential as the Challenger one has, neither George Englund's script nor Glenn Jordan's direction seems to find much drama to present. Even the late-night decision to launch (made in what was a fraught teleconference) gets shown in the blandest of terms dramatically. The effort Englund and Jordan make to humanize the astronauts often comes across less like real-life and as corny to the point of laughable. And that's whether it's Scoby and wife dancing in their living room to the song Wind Beneath My Wings to Janelle Onizuka yelling at her astronaut husband for coming home late. The latter, in particular, doesn't seem realistic for Onizuka, and while allowing for a degree of dramatic license, could even come across as borderline insulting. All of those issues are a reminder of the truth in the old saying about finding universality in storytelling. That, while you can help anyone identify with anyone, universality also leads to cafeteria food. And Challenger, for all of its humanizing and dramatic intentions, ends up closer to cafeteria food than real-life.

In the end, perhaps that summarizes Challenger's biggest problem. It wants to be respectful to the memories of those seven astronauts while also laying out the course of went wrong to cause their lives to be lost. Yet, perhaps because of its making being in relatively close proximity to the events, it comes off somewhere between bland and disingenuous. All of which might explain the corny final scene with each member of the crew, in voiceover, reading out a line from a poem before the music swells, and the Shuttle heads into the clear blue sky.

Challenger then isn't a terrible movie, but neither is a great one. The events of that day are still crying out for a fine piece of dramatic filmmaking. What's clear, after seeing this, is that this wasn't to be it.

A great chance of high potential sadly missed

[paul_draper2001 · 4/10 · 1 September 2002]

There have been some great or plausible movies or made for television films focusing on disasters or news events in history, such as 'Alive' and 'Hillsborough'. Sadly, 'Challenger' isn't one of them.

It perhaps could've been improved with not leaving the launch until the end of the film, and instead perhaps leaving it until about two thirds of the way through, leaving room for the investigation into the Disaster. It hardly breaks new ground either, apart from maybe that the teachers knew before the White House conference who was chosen to go into space.

Although i have not minded her in other films, i don't think Karen Allen was anywhere near the ideal choice to play Christa McAuliffe, she was at times irritating and wooden occasionally too, it also seemed to rely on her looks more than her acting ability, and also over-done the scene where she makes her speech at the White House about taking ten souls on board with her.

The disaster happened in 1986, the film was made 1990, a bit too early in my opinion. Had it been made at present times, less emotional feeling would be used during the making of it, I'm not saying that it's wrong, just that you can tell it was obvious it was made in a time when the world was still not fully over the shock of the disaster.

May all seven astronauts rest peacefully. May this film have reached its potential and not been a disappointment.

Cruel, bad taste

[Jim-500 · 1/10 · 26 August 2002]

We all knew it was inevitable--somebody would want to make a TV movie out of such a heart-wrenching tragedy.

And they did, despite the fact that it was only a few years afterward. And despite the fact that the astronauts' families begged the producers not to go through with it.

The writer said he was curious to see how these seven people ended up together on that fateful day. How dare he even begin to think he knew what went on in these people's lives?

I watched a bit of it. It was so bad I wanted to puke.

I hope the producers and the network are happy about the families' wounds they re-opened when this thing aired.

Good Movie

[mwilson1-3 · 9/10 · 24 July 2005]

While this movie is clearly lacking in some respect, it also clearly outlines the events leading to the disaster. While I respect the wishes of the families with regard to this movie, they are clearly misplaced as this movie led me to seek a more though answer to the questions it raised. I find it hard to see how this movie pays anything but respect to those who lost their lives in this accident. The worst criticism that I can level at this movie is that the story and characters are somewhat melodramatic - but so was all that was made of this tragedy. It remains the most comprehensive account of this incident that is generally accessible. If one really wants a comprehensive account of the causes of the accident then they should read the Presidential Commission Report on the accident - otherwise watch the movie.

why did they have to make it a TV movie?

[ShieldsK-1 · 5/10 · 26 February 2007]

Granted,this movie could have been much worse. But, having it as a TV movie rather than a Ron Howard production, or even a little miniseries like "From Earth to the Moon" was a big mistake. They just couldn't get as detailed as they should've. I believe that Christa McAuliffe's mother Grace Corrigan referred to this movie as 'a bit of fluff'. Guess the writers didn't really do much research into this thing. While Karen Allen usually does a great job in whatever movie she's in, she just wasn't convincing as Christa. Plus, she didn't even look like her - she looked more like Barbara Morgan (Christa's back-up teacher) with curly hair, or maybe some distant cousin of Sally Ride. And I couldn't help but think someone in the casting department had a sick sense of humor - Barry Bostwick was cast to play Dick Scobee. Remember how lovely Barry looked in those fishnet pantyhose in 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show'? Bad casting choice...

Liked it

[sundar-2 · 4 August 2001]

I was waiting for a bus in southern India when I noticed the headlines in a Tamil newspaper banner announcing the Challenger disaster. Being interested in Space, I was saddened. In the following days, the Soviet Union callously spread a disinformation story in some Indian newspapers charging that the Challenger was secretly carrying explosives as part of a clandestine plot to militarize Space. Therefore, I watched "Challenger" with interest when it was first shown on television in 1990. I liked it then. I am not sure I'll think so now. Here are the impressions this film made on me at that time.

I identified with Julie Fulton as Dr.Judy Resnick, because of the character's feminism, an ideology in which I believed - at that time. I was a little annoyed by Christa McAuliffe because as a Social Studies teacher she proclaims (in the movie) that there are too many scientists in the Space Program and not enough ordinary people. The film only hints at the role of Roger Boisjoly, an engineer who urged NASA to cancel the Challenger flight because of faulty O-ring seals. Like all engineers, he was overruled (you guessed it; I am an engineer). The film follows the lives of the doomed astronauts during their final days - I was rather moved by that. Strangely, the film never shows the famous Challenger disaster footage. Maybe, it was too well-known.

(Reviewed by Sundar Narayan)

A poor film

[Rodrigo_Amaro · 5/10 · 9 September 2013]

This is a very poor film about one of the greatest disasters of the 20th Century. It just drags on and on to ramble on the months before the mission, focusing on Christa McCauliffe (played by Karen Allen) - teacher and first civilian to be selected for a NASA program, and focusing on the NASA crew trying to maintain everything under the schedule instead of securing a safe flight for Challenger's seven crew members. Sorry to spoil it, but the movie concludes without CNN's classical footage of the explosion (probably left out of this film because it would be somewhat distasteful to an incident still fresh in people's minds), and without any disclaimers telling about the investigation made about the accident and the impact such tragedy caused all over the world. A 2013 TV movie was made about the investigation with Feynman as the main character. Hope it'll be better than this.

What I've seen is a movie that doesn't handle well with its technical information, and whenever we're in the board control we're either bored or annoyed with the amount of times the "O-Ring" component is mentioned by someone. A problem in this piece along with another factors were the main cause for the ship's collapse. Without a prologue informing us what really happened we can assume it was that that really happened. But "Challenger" has its good moments, provided by Joe Morton, Angela Bassett, Lane Smith, Richard Jenkins and the great Peter Boyle as the NASA member who tries to do his job in the best possible way, warning everybody about the spaceship's problems but to no avail cause he's pressured to look the other way. The other actors didn't involve me all that much, poor acting, no connection with each other, quite amateurish. And we can blame the script which provided a poor selection of moments often focused on the negative aspects of launching or uninteresting scenes involving the crew families.

It gets more stars than it deserves due to the production effort in using the Cape Canaveral facilities, access was given to the movie's production and in that aspect it looks authentic and interesting. 5/10

P.S. (28 January 2016 - 30 years later): the 2013 movie mentioned was "The Challenger", starring William Hurt and it's a masterpiece.

Why was DVD version shortened?

[trekkie1954 · 8/10 · 5 April 2021]

I very much enjoyed the film.... perhaps it was filmed too soon after the tragedy, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a good movie. My question is why the DVD version of the movie was cut by 20 minutes -- only 140 minutes of the 160-minute movie?

Lest we forget

[safenoe · 8/10 · 25 April 2024]

Karen Allen, famous for her role in Raiders of the Lost Ark, plays Christa McAuliffe in Challenger, based on the tragic Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986, and Barry Bostwick, who later played the Mayor of New York City in Spin City, plays Commander Francis R. Scobee. Keone Young plays Lt. Colonel Ellison Onizuka, and it's very tragic seeing what could have been if the launch had been delayed, but we see the pressures on the administrators to get things done. I remember the final scene of this movie, where the crew hold hands as they soar the heights, reaching for the stars with bravery.