Spirit and Opportunity were only supposed to last 90 days on the red planet.
Instead, they survived for 15 years.
The new movie tells their story.
The new documentary ‘Good Night Oppy’ tells the story of the Mars Rover that was only supposed to last for 90 days but survived for 15 years.Amazon Prime Video
He also landedBlack PantherstarAngela Bassettas the narrator for the project.
Ahead ofGood Night Oppy’s streaming debut, EW spoke with White about his invigorating space movie.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What has been your relationship with space?
Were you one of the kids that wanted to be an astronaut?
RYAN WHITE:It’s all of the above.
I also loved film in general and obviously went down that aisle instead of the planetary exploration aisle.
And it was Industrial Light and Magic who did the visual effects.
Were you following news reports of the Mars rovers as this all was happening at the time?
You were just saying that you always had your eye out for a compelling space story.
Was it this trove of footage that NASA had collected?
Or was it also getting to know the NASA scientists and engineers who had worked with it?
Yeah, I think I assumed that scientists and engineers would be very difficult documentary characters.
And that’s when I knew we had something special.
I love that stuff, but not as a filmmaker telling the story.
Obviously, you have Angela Bassett involved as the narrator.
What did she bring to the film?
So this is the first documentary I’ve written a screenplay for.
It was because we had to do so many visual effects, and that was going to take years.
They were writing about that every day.
And from the very beginning, I had Angela Bassett’s voice in my head for two years.
She’s playing the voice of NASA.
Well, I hope families go see it together.
I hope a lot of young people watch this film.
I hope that young people see themselves represented in the human beings that are in our film.
They’re from all over the world, all different backgrounds.
Most aren’t from big cities and [didn’t have] privileged upbringings.
They have a very similar education and skill set to the same people that were building these robots.
So it’s through the film just inspiring kids.
And especially, it sounds cheesy, but this is a story about humans working together in a way.
The intent of the mission is to make life better on Earth.
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