Celebrating The Moon Landing With Film

The space race is filled with so many amazing real-life stories of courage, valour, and danger, it’s no wonder that so many amazing films have been made out of the moon landing and the events surrounding it. Just recently we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the moon landing so we put together some of our favourite films that celebrate space exploration.
 
 
Moon
Duncan Jones directed this brilliant 2009 film which is from screenplay writer Nathan Parker. In a genre where special effects and amazing shots are the norm.  However, “Moon” shines for having been made on a shoestring budget. It’s a one-man show, though not necessarily a one-character show, in which Sam Rockwell gives a brilliant performance as an astronaut, Sam Bell, who’s near the end of a three-year tour of solitary duty on the moon.
The story starts as Sam Bell is supervising machines that mine helium for fusion power on Earth. Suddenly, however, he falls sick, and discovers, to his surprise, he’s not alone. Another Sam Bell has appeared, an apparent clone who insists very convincingly, that he isn’t a clone at all and that the original Sam Bell is the real clone.

 
First Man
“First Man” is a biopic story of the first man to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong, an intensely private man.  The story behind Damien Chazelle’s film was to tell the story of mankind’s boldest adventure but telling it through an emotionally closed-off hero, Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. The casting is ideal as Ryan Gosling plays Neil Armstrong (only that Gosling is Canadian not American), as an extremely brilliant problem solving engineer. The film is ultimately not about the trip to the moon but instead about human experience and the emotional cost all those who were involved in the voyage.
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A Trip to the Moon
The famous French filmmaker Georges Méliès made this film in the world’s first movie studio, a greenhouse-like structure that he built in a Paris suburb. As we watch the nine-minute trailblazer now, 117 years later, the science is a little bizarre  and silly for a modern audience. Six astronomers, wearing coats and carrying umbrellas to protect them from the gamma rays, climb into a shell which is shot by a giant cannon. The shell is rocked forwarded and hits the man in the moon smack in the eye. This is, of course, one of films most astounding and memorable scenes that is still recognizable by today's audiences.
 
 
 
Apollo 13
This is definitely one of the best space films of all time, only to be rivalled by Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film follows the story of the space disaster that befell three American astronauts on their way to a lunar landing in 1970. Directed by Ron Howard, the script is brilliant written by William Broyles Jr. and Al Reinert, as the perfect American story of heroism and bravery. Very rare is a film this perfect –from acting, lighting, camera work to direction. While the story is fairly well known, it brought a new understanding to the entire real life drama.