… but there is a clear reason to do the scene other than to promote sexism. They’re trying to build some tension in that scene, while everyone waits for the results. And by having two different sets of results, the audience knows of a possibility that a mistake was made. (Since they wind up off course, this is an important function of the scene). And the captain’s speech should make us feel some tension that everyone’s fate rests in his hands even when he has to make snap decisions in the nick of time.
Fair enough; but we know his calculations were wrong, which adds an element of in-movie irony to his patronizing reaction, regardless of how accurate hers happened to be.
Y’know, I can understand someone misreading the thread title that way. But how could you possibly keep that misunderstanding after reading the OP? Do some people actually not read anything at all in the thread and respond purely to the title? What kind of discussion does that lead to?
He’s not drafted in, he’s part of the crew from the beginning. And he will not. Shut. Up about Texas for he entire goddamned movie, until his skull is mercifully crushed by a rock.
His best moment? He and Lloyd Bridges are both looking out a window at Earth, on which you can clearly see the outline of India: “Can ya see Texas down there?”
Apparently, you can get through both flight school and astronaut training without ever having to have seen at a map of the Earth.
In the real world, yes, I agree, hers could have been just as wrong.
In the movie world, she was The expert on the fuels being used, and Dr. Conceited wasn’t. Also, B movies of the Fifties tend to be set in a black/white, right/wrong, simplified world–and so if he was Wrong, she was Right. (I suspect, based on no evidence whatsoever, that her being right was emphasized in early versions of the script and then was muted as the script was revised.)
