I watched Apollo 13 when it came on TV primarily because I watched the real life drama of that ill-fated mission as it unfolded when I was a kid and knew the details of that experience intimately. I wanted to know how Ron Howard would portray the desperate events trying to save the crew from an almost certain death in space. Because Howard followed and depicted each hurdle so well in the film, it really worked for me as a recreation of those events I watched as a kid. The actual story was a perfect screenplay, and Howard held true to it to make the movie well worth watching.