History Film / Stowaway2021

* VomitDiscretionShot: As they settle into the artificial gravity of the space station, Michael vomits into a barf bag, but he is far enough in the background and out of focus that the viewer only hear him retching.

* NoOSHACompliance: ''Someone'' back on the launch pad didn't do a headcount before launch, and ''someone else'' sealed a panel blocking Michael in.

* HopeSpot: The film ziz-zags between finding solutions to the oxygen shortage and losing it, the situation going between having enough oxygen for all four of the crew and only two of them.

* MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness: On the hard end. The creators have clearly ShownTheirWork on spaceflight technology.

* VomitDiscretionShot: As they settle into the artificial gravity of the space station, Michael vomits into a barf bag, but he is far enough in the background and out of focus that the viewer only hear him retching.

** The ship uses a spent booster as a counterweight for the [[CentrifugalGravity spinning station]] - a ''first stage'' booster, which in reality would've fallen back to Earth after launch.[[note]]An upper stage booster would be much smaller than the one shown in the film, probably not heavy enough to be an effective counterweight.[[/note]]

** [[spoiler: When Michael is about to kill himself with an overdose of insulin in order to save the main crew, Zoe tells him a story about how despite not being a life guard, she risked her life and almost drowned saving another man who was drowning in rapid waters, but was saved at the last minute. This foreshadows how Zoe decides to sacrifice herself to save Micheal and the rest of her crew at the cost of her life.]]

* ThrownOutTheAirlock: [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] by Zoe, when she asks whether they could just ask Michael to walk out the airlock.[[note]]They don't do that.[[/note]]

* FaceDeathWithDignity: [[spoiler:Zoe, as detailed under the entry of HeroicSacrifice]].

* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:They have lost one of the two of the canisters with oxygen from the spent booster. The other one is left at the booster leaking. Meanwhile, a solar storm is raging outside, making leaving the ship's radiation-protected core suicidal. If they wait for the storm to be gone, there will be no more oxygen left in the booster, and two of the crew would have to die. If they retrieve the canister, only one of them needs to die. Zoe agrees to get the canister and die of radiation poisoning so the others could live.]]

** Using a spent booster for CentrifugalGravity is a neat idea, right? It also provides a convenient way to have some difficult-to-access oxygen supply.

** The [[spoiler:dropped oxygen canister]] is shown moving relatively straight "down" from the ship's frame of reference, but moving quite rapidly against the starfield, staying "in sync" with the spinning ship is. In reality, relative to the stars it would simply continue in the direction it was traveling when it left the spinning tether system, and would not move perpendicularly against the background. From the still-spinning ship's frame of reference, it would look like it was ''curving'' away from the characters, as they continue spinning while the object does not.

* DangerDeadpan: As astronauts, one would expect this from the crew. However, by the end, even the commander loses her nerve.

* BlackDudeDiesFirst: [[spoiler: Subverted. A large part of the film is how to prevent Michael, the stowaway, from dying and ultimately results in Zoe sacrificing herself to save him and the rest of her crew.]]

** They are using a spent booster as a counterweight for the [[CentrifugalGravity spinning station]]. A ''first stage booster''. In reality, first stage boosters don't have nearly enough velocity to get into orbit and fall back to Earth. They could have used an upper stage booster, which would be much smaller than the one shown in the film, but open its own can of worms by probably not being heavy enough to be an effective counterweight.

* ArtisticLicenseEngineering: Related to the physics questions above. The idea that there would be only ONE carbon scrubber system. The Apollo program had ''two systems'' (one for the command module and one for the lander, as famously pointed out in ''Film/Apollo13''), with backup parts for each and those were for only a few days' use. No spare oxygen for a full year until they get to Mars? '''Multiple''' levels of redundancy and alternate methods should have been built in for such a long trip. No engineer worth their degree would sign off on putting any humans on a ship where the life support system had no backup in case of a mishap mid-flight, never mind a stowaway. But hey. It was inspired by ''Literature/TheColdEquations''.

* ThrownOutTheAirlock: [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] by Zoe, when she asks whether they could just ask Michael to walk out the airlock.[[note]]They don't do that.[[/note]]

* BlackDudeDiesFirst: [[spoiler: A strong subversion. A large part of the film is how to prevent Michael, the stowaway, from dying and ultimately results in Zoe sacrificing herself to save him and the rest of her crew.]]

* RuleOfDrama: [[spoiler: there is no reason to hurry to get the oxygen canisters back to the Hyperion, no reason for ''anyone'' to sacrifice themselves for the tanks, as happens in the movie. Solar storms are dangerous to people, not oxygen tanks. They had "hours" until the storm abated but they had upwards 15 days until their supplies ran out. The only reason all that happened was for drama.]]

* NeverTrustATitle: Generally, a stowaway is a person who intentionally hides to get free passage on a craft. This is not the case in this film, and the idea isn't even really entertained much in the film.

The crew of three people, Commander Marina Barnett (Collette), physician Zoe Levenson (Kendrick), and botanist David Kim (Kim), embark on a journey to Mars. Soon after liftoff, they find an injured ground personnel, Michael Adams (Anderson), behind one of the service panels. It turns out that he was accidentally locked in there during liftoff. What is worse, the incident damages the carbon-dioxide scrubbing system (CDRU), meaning that they do not have enough oxygen for the whole trip (that would take about a year). After consulting with mission control, it looks like there is no safe way to keep everyone alive.

* Foreshadowing:

* ThrownOutTheAirlock: [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] by Zoe, when she asks whether they yould just ask Michael to walk out the airlock.[[note]]They don't do that.[[/note]]

** There is a comment that if they had enough spare oxygen, they could just vent out excess carbon-dioxide. In reality, that's not that simple. In reality, you need carbon-dioxide filters even if you have a lot of excess oxygen around.
** When Zoe loses her grip on the tether line and uses her hands and feet to try to slow herself down, friction should have punctured her spacesuit. Instead, she only suffers a slightly harden-than-optimal landing [[spoiler:and losing the oxygen canister]].
** They are using a spent booster as a counterweight for the [[CentrifugalGravity spinning station]]. A ''first stage booster''. In reality, first stage boosters have far not enough velocity to get into orbit and fall back to Earth. They could have used an upper stage booster, which would be much smaller than the one shown in the film. And probably not heavy enough to be an effective counterweight.

* ArtisticLicenseEngineering: related to the physics questions above. The idea that there would be only ONE carbon scrubber system. The Apollo program had ''two systems'' (one for the command module and one for the lander, as famously pointed out in ''Film/Apollo13''), with backup parts for each and those were for only a few days' use. No spare oxygen for a full year until they get to Mars? '''Multiple''' levels of redundancy nd alternate methods should have been built in for such a long trip. No engineer worth their degree would sign off on putting any humans on a ship where the life support system had no backup in case of a mishap mid-flight, never mind a stowaway.

* HopeSpot: The film ziz-zags between finding solutions to the oxygen shortage and losing it, the situation going between having enough oxygen for all four of the crew and only two of them.