NASA’s launched the rocket Artemis II today, the first manned mission to the moon in over 50 years. The 10-day mission will see three American astronauts and one Canadian travel around the moon and back, although they will not land on the moon itself.
The Artemis II aims to travel 250,000 miles into outer space in an attempt to break the record of 248,655 miles made by Apollo 13 in 1970. Artemis II’s mission hopes to pave the way for further space exploration and manned missions to Mars.
All this moon chatter got us thinking about how Hollywood has chronicled humankind’s relationship with our closest celestial neighbor.
We’ve settled on these 12 projects – 11 movies and one miniseries – you might want to add to your queue if you’re still over the moon about Artemis II, starting with:
First Man
Before he went into space to save the world in Project Hail Mary, Ryan Gosling portrayed astronaut Neil Armonstrong in director Damien Chazelle’s 2018 film, First Man.
In IGN’s First Man review, critic Rafael Motamayor hailed the film as “a stunning cinematic achievement that celebrates one of humanity’s biggest triumphs (and mourns the tragedies that happened leading up to it), yet it never loses sight of its personal and small-scale story about a man going to work.”
“When we finally get to the moon landing the screen expands, changing from 35mm to 70mm IMAX. It is a breathtaking shot, aided by the format, that really puts the viewer in the shoes of Neil Armstrong as he makes his iconic first steps. The sound is completely cut off, and most of the screen goes pitch black to immerse the audience and make them feel like they are in the void of space. First Man acknowledges how magnificent an achievement the moon landing was, yet it never loses sight of the inner struggle and journey of the first man who stepped on its surface.”
Two From Tom Hanks: Apollo 13 and From the Earth to the Moon
Tom Hanks’ other well known passion beyond World War II is the Space Race of the 1950s and ‘60s where the United States sought to reach the Moon before the Soviets. In 1998, Hanks exec produced the HBO twelve-part docudrama miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, which chronicled NASA’s Apollo program of the ‘60s and early ‘70s.
Hanks directed the first episode – covering NASA’s creation and the early Mercury and Gemini programs – and hosted the first 11 episodes. In the show’s twelfth and final episode, Hanks portrays the assistant to Georges Méliès, the director of the 1902 sci-fi film A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la Lune).
Hanks has revisited the troubled Apollo 13 mission twice in his career, first in 1995’s Apollo 13 and then again in From the Earth to the Moon. Director Ron Howard’s dramatization recreates the suspenseful 1970 lunar mission in which astronauts Jim Lovell (Hanks), Fred Haise (Bill Paxton), and Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) became trapped in space after their craft’s oxygen tanks exploded, crippling their power and air supply. Howard’s film painstakingly recreates how the astronauts and the NASA ground crew (supervised by Ed Harris) worked feverishly to return Apollo 13 safely to Earth.
While most filmgoers knew the story’s outcome beforehand, the fun and suspense of Apollo 13 is in watching how brilliant men use their wits and all available resources to get the job done. Top-notch performances by the entire cast, a taut screenplay, and assured direction make Apollo 13 a great piece of entertainment and a stirring tribute to the American “can-do” spirit. From the Earth to the Moon’s depiction of the Apollo 13 mission is grounded in the homefront where two reporters jockey to cover the crisis.
2001: A Space Odyssey
The moon plays an integral role in director Stanley Kubrick’s meditative 1968 classic, which ranks as IGN’s No. 1 on our list of the Top 100 sci-fi movies of all time. In the film, Dr. Heywood Floyd is tasked with investigating a mysterious object that’s been discovered on the moon, having been buried there 4 million years before.
This object – a tall, smooth black monolith – was first seen in the film’s prehistoric opening sequence, where a group of hominins encounter it. The monolith appears at various points in human technological evolution, from the moment a hominin learns to use a bone as a weapon (cue cinema’s greatest jump cut of all time) to humankind’s exploration of the moon and later Jupiter. What exactly the alien monolith means remains the subject of many cinephile essays.
Kubrick’s realistic depiction of the moon and space exploration in 2001 beget the long-standing conspiracy theory that Kubrick helped the US government fake the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969.
The Dish
This charming Aussie dramedy from 2000 uses the 1969 moon landing as the backdrop for a story about culture clash and human ingenuity. The Parkes Radio Telescope in New South Wales is the only satellite dish on Earth capable of broadcasting the moon landing. NASA officials are on hand when the dish loses power and the Aussie engineers (Sam Neill among them) have to wing it to get things working again in time for the whole world to watch the first man step foot on the moon.
“Beautifully realized and well paced, the film successfully captures the zeitgeist of a generation without drowning us in the same trite details we¿ve heard a million times before in documentaries and other films,” Smriti Mundhra wrote in IGN’s The Dish review.
“There are points in the movie where the nostalgia and good cheer become diabetically sweet, and the array of stock footage of 1969 news coverage infused into the film does go a bit overboard, but it’s a miniscule price to pay for such an otherwise brilliant film.”
Moon
Duncan Jones made his feature film directing debut with this cerebral sci-fi film from 2009 featuring a tour-de-force performance from Sam Rockwell. Set a few decades in the future, Moon follows Sam Bell, the lone employee working at a lunar mining facility that provides the natural resource which has solved much of Earth’s energy problems. Sam’s sole companion is “Gerty,” the station’s computer (voiced by Kevin Spacey).
Sam is nearing the end of his three-year contract with the corporation that owns the lunar mining operation, and he can’t wait to return home to his wife Tess and baby girl Eve. As the days dwindle down towards his return to Earth, Sam begins seeing things, such as a woman sitting in one of the station’s bays and glitches in recordings that flash images of conversations that have already happened or that he can’t recall ever having. Sam’s mental state rapidly deteriorates, culminating in an accident that leaves him badly injured. Is he going mad, or is Sam not as alone on the moon as he has believed?
Moon is a valentine to the smart genre films of the ’70s and the very best Twilight Zone and Outer Limits episodes. The movie begins, as our IGN UK colleagues described atv the time, as The Shining in space, with touches of 2001 thrown in for good measure. But then this Kubrickian homage segues into Cronenberg country, and even has nods to Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classics as well as the 1981 “High Noon in space” thriller Outland. And yet despite all these stylistic and narrative nods to films past, Moon manages to feel completely fresh and authentic.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Director Michael Bay’s third installment in the movie franchise revealed that the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing was actually a secret mission involving the wreckage of a Cybertronian spaceship and legendary astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were in on it.
As explained in our A History of the World According to Michael Bay’s Transformers Movies: “The entire Apollo 11 operation was merely a cover for Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s true mission. During a brief period of radio silence, the two astronauts explored the wreckage of a ship called the Ark. Coming on the heels of the discovery of N.B.E.-01, mankind had further proof it wasn’t alone in the universe. But it wasn’t until 2011 when the Autobots learned of the Ark’s existence and figured out how to wake up its pilot, Sentinel Prime.”
Voiced by Leonard Nimoy, Sentinel Prime later brings the Decepticons left aboard the Ark to Earth to unleash a wave of Bayhem that only the Autobots and their human allies can stop.
Moonfall
Independence Day director Roland Emmerich revisited the disaster genre with his 2022 film about a mysterious force that dislodges the moon from its orbit, putting it on a collision course with Earth. Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson star as a pair of disgraced NASA astronauts, teamed with John Bradley’s conspiracy theorist, who must find a way to save the day.
For all its cosmic spectacle, IGN critic Siddhant Adlakha wasn’t over the moon about Emmerich’s film, writing in his Moonfall review that it’s “a hodgepodge of retread ground, with less humanity and artistry than Emmerich is known for, all stitched together in mechanical and uninspired fashion.”
Adlakha added that “the version of Moonfall that exists in the imagination, based on its various trailers and synopses, is much more delightful, intriguing, and awe-inspiring than what ends up on screen.”
Despicable Me
The original Despicable Me follows supervillain Gru (voiced by Steve Carell), who lives in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, which serves as the perfect cover for his vast underground lair where his Minions and his mad scientist colleague, Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand), builds gizmos and weaponry.
Having fallen on hard times, Gru aims to pull off his biggest heist yet: stealing the moon by shrinking it! But he’s competing with a younger upstart, the nerdy Vector (Jason Segel), and finds his cold heart slowly but surely melting when three adorable orphans — Margo, Edith and Agnes — enter his life. Suddenly finding himself responsible for something other than his own wicked schemes, Gru may just go from bad to dad.
Well, of course, Gru redeems himself in the end because otherwise Illumination and Universal never would’ve been able to launch their flagship animated franchise, which has so far yielded video games, theme park attractions, three movie sequels and three Minions spin-off movies, with the next installment, Minions & Monsters, hitting theaters in July.
In the Shadow of the Moon
This 2007 documentary chronicles NASA’s manned moon missions of the 1960s and ‘70s, interviewing 10 of the 24 astronauts from the Apollo program who reached the moon (Neil Armstrong, however, declined to be interviewed).
“Rather than framing their comments with superfluous narration, however, director David Sington allows the participants to speak for themselves, compiling rich, riveting and personal tales taken directly from the cockpits of their ships,” critic Todd Gilchrist writes in IGN’s In the Shadow of the Moon review.
“Moreover, the descriptions of the trips themselves are awe-inspiring — not the least of which because they were successful — and prove invigorating as they demonstrate an interest and a pursuit of things larger than personal comforts or local interests. These brave men were genuinely and passionately interested in going to new places no one had ever been, and it’s exhilarating to hear about them solving problems — both simple and complex — that ultimately and literally generate one historical precedent after another.”
Airplane II: The Sequel
While nowhere near the comedy classic that the 1980 original remains, Airplane II: The Sequel still offers plenty of yuks and memorable moments, many of them thanks to William Shatner’s send-up of his Captain Kirk persona.
Made in the heyday of the USA’s space shuttle program, Airplane II: The Sequel takes place in a near-future when a colony exists on the moon. The lunar shuttle Mayflower One isn’t ready for its inaugural flight, but that’s not going to keep the powers-that-be from scuttling its launch. It doesn’t help that the whistleblower is Ted Stryker, the PTSD-struck hero of the first film who once again finds himself behind the controls of a doomed flight, this time bound for the moon.
Although a few familiar faces from the first film return, it’s Shatner’s turn as the lunar base’s Commander Buck Murdock who steals the show this time. Shatner devours every moment of screen time he gets, making a meal out of riffing on his iconic Star Trek character.
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
This sequel to the 1997 blockbuster comedy sees Dr. Evil and his minions travel back in time to 1969 to steal Austin Powers’ mojo, rendering the swingin’ spy impotent.
Austin travels back in time to regain his mojo and thwart Dr. Evil’s plot to destroy Washington D.C. using a giant laser cannon – what he likes to call a “death star” – on his moon base and developed by the “Alan Parsons Project”.
The Spy Who Shagged Me introduces notable characters like Fat Bastard and Mini-Me, the latter of whom gets the upper hand in fighting Austin until he is “pooped” out into space.
What are your favorite moon movies and shows? Let us know in the comments.
