Apollo 11 is the latest film about the first moon landing. It’s a 2019 theatrical release that I missed, but it was produced by CNN Films so I caught it recently on CNN itself. Nothing better than a free movie! I had wanted to see this at the theater but it never opened locally… and, well, it just sounded like yet another doc about the moon shot and while that’s a great story, I figured it’d been done before.
And, actually, this is a unique look at the event. It’s told exclusively in archival footage… some of it the actual official footage (not many options when on the moon) but also other more incidental stuff. For example, before the launch, there’s a lot of helicopter footage of the civilians lining up to watch. Or footage of maintenance workers checking out a problem on the rocket. There’s no voice over…. just mission control and the astronauts. There is text briefly describing what’s going on and countdown statuses plus visual examples of spaceship maneuvers that I think were probably created back in 1969.
I was very fascinated by this stitched together retelling. It’s a good movie. Very much worth a watch just to see the nuts and bolts of the operation. Plus it’s airing on CNN so if you got cable, it’s easy enough to track down.
Score: 88