Customer Reviews

IMAX:Magnificent Desolation - Walking on the Moon

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I saw Tom Hanks's, "Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D" at the IMAX theater at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia twice. It was stunning from beginning to end. Outer Space has always been my first love and when the film showed 3D shots of the lunar surface and what a future lunar base would look like, I got emotional to the point that tears were in my eyes. It is a must have for everyone's home movie collection and especially if you are a space buff like me. It will be in my collection, count on it!!!!

If you saw the superb 2007 documentary, In the Shadow of the Moon, I am not certain what the point would be in viewing this forty-minute 2005 IMAX film - at least if you are old enough to remember the television coverage of the Apollo missions. The former film includes spectacular archival footage of those missions and insightful on-camera interviews with ten of the surviving astronauts. This one is aimed more directly as a motivational film for a youthful audience as it seeks to reignite the pioneering spirit that sparked the first space flights. NASA aficionado Tom Hanks wrote and produced (along with director Mark Cowen) this enthralling if somewhat cursory look at what it took to get to the moon and what it will take to continue the legacy. The film not only recreates some of the actual Apollo lunar missions but also posits what could have happened had disaster struck. The result adds a suspenseful element obviously designed to engage younger viewers.

Hanks applies his storytelling skills to full dramatic effect during these fictitious interludes. They are intertwined with a whirlwind of facts presented in a breezy manner, an especially effective tactic in chronicling mankind's fascination with the moon since this film is meant to inspire as well as to educate. To reinforce the approach, there is a series of quick interviews with youngsters that bookend the featurette showing how the space race has completely preceded them and how it could be resuscitated for the next generation of lunar exploration which targets us back on the moon by 2016. A number of famous actors provide the voices of the astronauts - Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman, Paul Newman - but few are recognizable. The 3-D visual effects are lost on the 2007 DVD, though I think not as much as the elongated dimensions provided by an IMAX theater. Even more than the technical elements, what really brings the film together is Hanks' obvious enthusiasm for the subject. The DVD includes additional video footage and photographs from the Apollo 11 mission plus a trivia game.

I had high expectations for this film, but they weren't really met. The special effects are good, but it is interspersed by a mainly NASA recruiting film for kids. It has dumbed down the moon landings to a 8 year olds level. Ok it may be great for kids and I guess that is the intended audience, but I am sick of the modern way of dumbing everything down so it is boring. There is nothing to inspire me, no romance for returning to the moon, no excitement or adventure, even though they did try on this. The series "From the Earth to the Moon" got it right, why did Tom Hanks let us down with this one which could have been the best ever? The IMAX films "The Dream is Alive" and "Hail Columbia" got it right why did this one miss the boat I wonder?
Go see it at an IMAX theatre, but don't bother with the DVD if you are a real space fan. Also the extra material is of such low res graphics it could have been shot with a cell phone camera. It froze up my DVD player and I had to reboot it.

Bought this for my husband, he had heard about it years ago in IMAX but never got to go see it. We were both pretty excited to see it but that changed after 10 min into the movie.. Most of it isn't any new footage, a lot of children were interviewed throughout the ENTIRE movie, asking them questions about what it means to them to be an astronaut, or what they think it's like on the moon, etc.. It wasn't at all what we expected. Not worth the money, buy something else..

For anyone who grew up during the space race, or for anyone who wants to know what it was like to walk on the moon, and the challenges that faced the 12 men who have walked on the moon,
**** THIS IS A MUST SEE ****. The 3D effects are not gimmiky but add to the experience.

I know that the 3D effect can not be replicated in our homes, but I look forward to this movie being replicated for home viewing. It has a an important message, filled with historical facts, informative without being boring.

A wonderful edition to any home collection, a great teaser for any class room work in astronomy, or just plain learning.

Disappointing. I had hoped for actual photos and images from the Apollo missions, but found mostly computer generated images. The best real stuff, and the majority of it, is in the end credits. The bonus material is anemic. If you are looking for something to get pre-teens excited about going back to the moon, show them this. If you are someone that grew up in the early days of space travel, as I did, don't waste you time or money.

This is a total fraud and a colossal gyp. The product descirption says it provides the experience of walking on the moon along side of astronauts. And so it does -- for about three minutes total. The rest of the time is taken up with things like asking some dumb, dumb-looking kids if they know who Niel Armstrong is. And the whole movie is only 36 minutes long. The walking scenes are simulated (the simulation is a good one), so it would have been easy to expand them to 30 minutes.
I have had much the same disappointment with some other IMAX products. Don't buy this disc -- teach movie makers, at IMAX and elsewhere, not to be so full of themselves, and instead to give the viewers what they would really like to see, which in this case is what IMAX promised.

I grew up in the 70s and 80s with stars in my eyes. It was an exciting time to be a kid, with new scientific discoveries and space milestones set every week. There was always something on the news about space exploration. I just knew that one day I would go to space.

Then the energy crisis hit us, and our double-every-decade economic expansion slowed. Our biggest space competitor dropped out of the race and America lost its enthusiasm for space exploration.

This movie rekindled a fire that I thought had long since been extinguished. With Tom Hanks sometimes-funny, sometimes-emotional, but always-riveting narration, I was transported to the surface of the moon in a 3D experience that was as close to being there as I can imagine. The documentary style film covered all of the Apollo missions with actual historic footage blended with 3D enhancements, which were ultra realistic. It's hard to describe.

I enjoyed it so thoroughly, that I had to make a special trip to the Lockheed Martin IMAX theater at the National Air and Space Museum (the museum is worth the trip by itself) to take my science-enthusiast, six-year-old daughter to see it. She loved it, and I loved it even more the second time because I got to experience it vicariously through her.

Truly Magnificent!

I'm inclined to like anything that has to do with the space program, but I was very disappointed by this film. Technically it's well done, but it's basically just vapid propaganda that generates no sense of wonder or excitement, despite an attempt to pump up some synthetic suspense with a "what if something had gone wrong?" sequence. Maybe an eight-year-old would find this bit of fluff inspiring, but for anybody else, I recommend the truly superb "In the Shadow of the Moon," or the equally good "Apollo 13," or the "From the Earth to the Moon" HBO series.

This production makes it obvious how the lunar landings of 35-40 years ago have been largely forgotten. Schoolchildren asked about them know very little.

Six pairs of Americans trod the lunar surface. The challenges of moving about the moon's surface include a lack of perspective. Owing to the lack of perspective-giving familiar objects (e. g., trees); it is difficult to judge sizes and distances. (Also, the lack of atmosphere and the haze it imposes on distant objects makes distant objects on the lunar surface seem much closer than they really are).

Perhaps the most valuable feature of this documentary is the recording of the voices of different astronauts (not only Neil Armstrong and his famous "Small Step for Man" statement) as they walked on the moon. There is also a little satire of those who deny the fact of the lunar landings.

One unique feature of this documentary is the procedure for dealing with an emergency on the surface of the moon--which fortunately never happened. The astronauts' rover crashes, and both it and its communication system are disabled. The astronauts switch to a backup radio system, connect the oxygen hoses to each other, and hike back to the lunar module with only a few minutes' oxygen to spare.