Customer Reviews

Moonshot

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This wasn't what I expected.

There is a documentary with the same name, based on the book by astronauts Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton. The cover art is almost identical, too. The documentary is available here in VHS.

This disc is a dramatization of the Apollo 11 mission done for the History Channel. It mixes in a good bit of actual hi-def footage from NASA. The result looks great. It's mostly entertaining, and fairly informative. You should take some of the events shown with a grain of salt, due to filmmakers' continual tendency to try to crank up the drama -- in particular, you might want to look at a map of the moon, and at footage of the actual descent and landing of Apollo 11 -- but this film seems to stay a lot closer to reality than Hollywood's "Apollo 13" did.

The product description says both "widescreen" and "1.33:1". The program is actually widescreen, 1.85:1.

From dictionary.com, Apollo is defined as the ancient Greek and Roman god of light, healing, music, poetry, prophecy, and manly beauty. There's a running debate on this page about whether Moonshot's producers over-dramatized the history portrayed in the movie. I have some advice to offer to those who are not "doc" purists: this film is a "must see". If you've not already seen every other documentary and read every book on the Apollo program, and thus have your expectations already set, you'll find this an impressive, awe-inspiring story. The director captured the breathtaking trajectory of the U.S.'s space program in the 1960's. The film editing created a terrific interplay between actual footage and live action that I found disjointed in only one or two sequences. Most of us watch movies for the acting, naturally. Without careful casting and authentic roles, I see that the movie might have easily fallen flat. It doesn't, however: the casting is "spot on" and the actors' performances are simply outstanding. So much so that halfway through the movie, I found myself riveted to the dialogue. I agree with the reviewer who said he's very impressed by Daniel Lapaine as Neil Armstrong. Cerebral, soft spoken, and thoughtful, but always ready to take the logical course, and driven to succeed. To digress, I was trained as an engineer, and I suppose that may just make me a bit more understanding of the man. I was a boy, just four years old, on July 20, 1969, the day the Eagle landed on the moon. I certainly don't have a memory of this historic landing. However, I do remember watching the later Apollo missions on black and white TV, which my mother (a stay-at-home mom) had running all morning and afternoon while my brothers were at school. So, while watching Moonshot, I did appreciate the scenes in which the world watched the week's events and was visibly energized by what it witnessed. The crescendo-reaching performance for me, however, were the scenes when Armstrong and Aldrin first faced the lunar landscape, hearts pumping, in what must have been a mix of fear and mercurial anticipation, clearly realizing that they were the first humans ever to "lay eyes" on its beauty. A final thought: To this day I fear the music mostly goes unheralded, but I found it a deeply inspiring soundtrack that complemented the action well. In time it will become recognized by future viewers who share my deep appreciation for outstanding movie music.

'MoonShot' is about the Apollo 11 mission...from training, astronaut selection, to the landing itself. The acting was very well done for being a tv movie. For scenes with the Apollo spacecraft the filmmakers mixed real NASA footage with CGI - really making the film seem real. The script was well written.

A fellow reviewer gave this movie a one-star review for historical inaccuracies...sure, there are inaccuracies, but what movie doesn't have them? It was unfair to give this movie one-star for this reason alone. Despite the few inaccuracies this movie was a treat to watch.

I rate this movie four stars because it is not 'Apollo 13' calibre, however it is entertaining to watch and, as with any NASA based movie, it fills you with a sense of pride that America accomplished the impossible.

FYI: I bought a digital copy from itunes for $1.99 and it was WELL worth it...if you decide to buy this, I recommend you save $15 and buy it from itunes. If you are willing to spend $17 (as of April 2010 on Amazon) on 'MoonShot', I recommend buying From the Earth to the Moon - The Signature Edition - shell out a few more dollars and get a five-star 12 hour movie.

4/5

Also recommended:
Apollo 13 (Widescreen Collector's Edition)
In the Shadow of the Moon

Moonshot is an interesting look at the human side of one of The United States' biggest scientific (and political) accomplishments. The now legendary astronauts are portrayed as humans with quirks and flaws and also with the courage and determination to undertake a challenge that was just as likely to kill them as it was to change history. I enjoyed it far more than I would have enjoyed a more typical documentary featuring the same information and would recommend it to anyone interested in learning about the people behind the infamous video clips.

With a already 5 star documentry in VHS, why would anyone attempt to duplicate a lousey remake like this one. Naming it or otherwise using the same name as MOONSHOT is a discredit to the original. Poor judgement or lack of, maybe exercising correct reasoning isn't rocket science but Why would anyone produce such a Dud. Luckily for most people, They'll have a VHS original and will be holding their breath until someone comes to their senses and transfers this to DVD.

Considering all the talk on these boards about how innaccurate this movie is, I thought I'd just address that. It's true that this movie takes some dramatic licensse --

Not only did Buzz Aldrin not coax Mike Collins through his recovery, but I can't imagine Buzz ever doing anything that human.

No one outside the White House knew about the speech Nixon would have given had the mission failed. That did not become public until the 1990s, so Janet Armstrong wouldn't not have known about it, and probably neither did Neil.

Buzz Aldrin has never doubted that the "UFO" seen during the flight was one of the adapter panels from the S-IV-B.

The film portrays the Eagle coming down in an impossibly jagged, rocky, mountainous terrain as Armstrong says "That looks like a good area." In fact, Armstrong brought the Eagle down on a smooth, flat plain -- in fact, the flattest area of any of the Apollo moon landings.

In the movie, the "lunar contact" light illuminates when the Eagle lands, when in fact the light was illuminated when the five-foot contact probes under the footpads touched the lunar surface.

I sawa comment here about Neil being portrayed as "on the verge of hysterics" when he finds that the circuit breaker for the engine arm is broken -- certainly Armstrong was always calm under pressure. For myself, though, I would not describe his portrayal in the movie as "on the verge of hysterics." But different people see a movie different ways. People always complain that The Right Stuff made it look like Gus Grissom blew the hatch; I never saw that. I always felt that film gave Gus a fair hearing, but just made it clear why people at the time doubted him.

But I do strongly feel that Moonshot gets more right than wrong, and treats Armstrong et al. with great respect. Buzz's questioning of who would be first on the lunar surface could have been made much more melodramatic than it really was; they might have built some huge adversarial relationship out of it. Instead, they protrayed it pretty much the way it's been described by Buzz and the people who knew him.

The question of how the personalities involved ar eportrayed is pretty subjective, but I'm very impressed by Daniel Lapaine as Neil Armstrong. He resembles Neil and I feel perfectly captures his mannerisms and vocal inflections. It's hard to tell when the actor is really speaking and when he's lip-synching over the real Neil's voice. He does a good job capturing how enigmatic Neil is without turning him into a robot (as was done in From the Earth to the Moon).

I was a little less impressed with James Marsters as Buzz, but I still think he did a good job. He captured Buzz's cantankerous and unpredictable personality, though played with with considerably more life than the real article. This is very noticeable during the scenes when Buzz's real voice is used.

At first I wasn't too impressed with Andrew Lincoln as Mike Collins; I always thought of Collins as a charming, thoughtful, soft-spoken and kind gentleman. But the more I learn about Collins, particularly from reading his autobiography, the more I think the movie got it right; Mike is a little cranky.

The scenes on the Moon are exhilarating. They have a dreamlike quality. I think they capture what it must have felt like to be there. The simulated lunar surface might be the best I've ever seen, even though the simulation of lunar gravity is inconsistent and inaccurate.

Obviously there are going to be those who like this movie and those who won't. If you're an expert on the space program, there'll be a lot to love and a lot to nitpick. If you're casually interested in the first Moon landing, I don't think you'll be worried too much about whether the space suits are properly inflated on the Moon or whether Alan Shepard has the right accent. I think this film will satisfy. If it inspires you to learn more about the real historical facts, so much the better.

As has been pointed out this is not a documentary, this is a movie based in fact. As a person with a degree in history, I do appreciate documentaries, but also having a degree in English I tend apppreciate dramatic license. I believe the use of dramatic license helped make what could have been a very bland recounting of events a tense drama. Yes we all know how it turns out, and no one would have seen the President's second speech, and Buzz Aldrin wasn't the nicest guy; but none of those minor points takes away from the story. What these changes did was draw you in and make you care more than the cold reality could have.

I noted earlier reviews that stated that is was not a Hollywood blockbuster and set expectations around that. If you are interested in the early space program as I am you will not want to waste your money on this film. It is not worth even the $5.50 I spent on it. It is a low-budget rendition of what can be found elsewhere. Even the scenes of the astronauts' houses are very clearly not filmed in the US and the other scenes are full of very evident short-cuts. Curious about where the film was done, I discovered it was in Lithuania! How in the world do you set out to do a film about the US space program only to end up filming it in the former Soviet Union? Florida and Houston could not have been that much more expensive. Why did the History Channel even go to the trouble?

First the good...there wasn't anything good.

Why. The History Channel should never air something with so many untruths. Period.

From the "wrong timeline" absurdity of Mike Collins smoking while at NASA. He quit before he was selected, per HIS OWN BOOK "Carrying The Fire".

To stomach turning false friendships...Buzz Aldrin DID NOT coax a neck-sick Mike Collins out to jog, per BOTH OF THEIR BOOKS.


I could go on, but I won't...If you are buying this because the History Channels logo is on it, you might want to question your History Channel DVD purchase of the past...I am thinking of returning "The Nixon Tapes - How Do We Know For Sure That It Wasn't Rich Little."