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The recreation of Apollo 15 landing on and exploring the Plains of Hadley Rille is worth the cost of this DVD alone. The rest of the DVD, which is most of its 40 minutes playing time, unfortunately is not as good, nor up to the producer's other excellent films on the history of Space Race. Tom Hank's 12 hour HBO mini-series, "From the Earth to the Moon", released in 1998, is still his finest production to date. It is an outstanding docudrama and rendition of the entire Apollo era from the Mercury to Gemini through all of the Apollo missions. I've seen every episode several times over during the last few years and thoroughly enjoyed (and learned) many interesting and fascinating aspects of the Apollo program.
Magnificent Desolation has some very fine moments too, and something else never before shown to movie goers. There is a "what if" scenario of an emergency while two astronauts are on an extended EVA exploring the lunar surface. Their Lunar Rover Vehicle (LRV) breaks down at quite some distance from the LM, plus, one astronaut's portable life support system (PLSS) malfunctions at the same time. Both astronauts our put in a potentially life threatening situation, and must walk back scuba divers' "buddy style" sharing the oxygen reserves of from just one PLSS. Their communications system malfunctions as well, so they must use hand signals to perform this procedure. I only wish this scene was longer, as it could have been more dramatized.
Fortunately, nothing like that ever happened on an actual lunar mission or extended EVA, but it certainly was one of the risks. Nevertheless, it was interesting to observe how the astronauts training, backup equipment and emergency procedures would have saved them in such a dreadful situation.
This movie really conveys a not so subtle message to younger generations to pick up where the Apollo astronauts left off in December of 1972 and continue with manned exploration of our solar system. Sadly, of the 12 men that walked on the Moon, 3 have already passed on.
The movie ends on a high note. It reveals what it might be like to return to the Moon in the future and construct a lunar base of operations, an manned outpost on the Dark Side of the Moon. This futuristic mission is commanded by a woman with dreams of going to the Moon as a young school girl, whom corresponds to one of real school kids interviewed at the start of the movie in 2005.
This DVD is not without a few obvious flaws in the actual details of Apollo missions. A couple of the historical lunar landing sites are mixed between missions up on the bonus features Mission Control menu. Still, the DVD makes for very interesting and excellent educational material. For that matter, Magnificent Desolation should be given serious consideration for use in elementary school science classrooms.
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Magnificent Desolation: Walking On The Moon 3D
Imax Corporation
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Carlos
Atención: requiere un lector multi-región
Reviewed in Spain 🇪🇸 on December 1, 2013
