Eight years later, I’m still gonna call it. I say they had the wrong Tom narrating IMAX Space Station. Forget Mr. Action Film‘s flat narration and bring in Mr. Space Geek instead.

Besides Tom Cruise’s monotone, the other real distraction when looking at the opening scene was me thinking, “My gosh, that space station looks so small!” Compare the July 2001 image at left, taken during IMAX filming on STS-104, with what it looks like today.

More seriously, IMAX is designed to overwhelm the senses. It’s amazing that it took so long for one of its films to take place entirely in space, which is what Space Station did for the first time. With everything looking so beautiful it’s hard to sit back and critique.

Visuals is what the film does best. The stunning views of Earth alone will make you want to pull out the biggest TV screen you have available to watch the thing. Add in eerie scenes of astronauts hovering nearby, or Atlantis slowly emerging from shadow, and it’s enough to give you strange dreams for the next couple of weeks.

And there’s a moving story to go along with these videos, rest assured. Watching the birth of the space station as Unity mated with Zarya is a historical gem. As the astronauts speak, you don’t get a sense of conquering space. Instead, you’re usually left with fragility and humanity: Susan Helms talking about missing the ocean, Bill Shepherd concerned about how his absence will affect his wife, Beth. CanCon note: Chris Hadfield is prominently in the building, and takes part in a “rescue mission” too.

That’s when the story really comes into its own, when the astronauts are allowed to speak for themselves — even when you hear the same stuff you usually hear, such as Apollo 11 being an inspiration. Their wide-eyed optimism and joy and joking around (see the scene where they brag about providing women to the crew) as they assemble the station provide a nice counterpoint to the amazing views outside or the thunderous launches cracking cameras.

Yet that’s the trouble. IMAX being IMAX there’s a lot of eye candy, and the requisite pausing to admire one amazing view or another with people expostulating. Thankfully they do provide a fair amount of footage showing the astronauts exercising, preparing for spacewalks, training in the neutral buoyancy laboratory. But we were almost all the way through the film when Helms finally talks about a crystal experiment. She and her crew briefly describe a few other things they’re working on, and then we’re back to talking about seeing the world without borders.

Perhaps if the film was done today, it would talk more about spinoffs and less about spinning in space. That said, it’s a wonderful introduction to how astronauts train and prepare for the work they do — and the neat view they get outside the window every day.

And to close with a true story: I first watched Space Station on Feb. 2, 2003 at Gatineau’s Canadian Museum of Civilization — the day after the STS-107/Columbia tragedy. It wasn’t planned because of the tragedy; it’s just what my family wanted to do to celebrate for a birthday. Let’s just say it was a bittersweet and emotional viewing, and watching it again I’m still left with the same mixed feelings of loss and optimism in memory of that day. But this time around, optimism is the ruling emotion.

Review