Forty years ago tonight we were on our way to the moon. By "we," I mean all of us who were alive then. The world was holding its breath. And while there was a lot else going on, everything seemed to stop, and wait. You can listen to the whole mission here from NASA. When you take a break from that (which to the geek in me overtops any studio movie you can imagine), come back here and discuss space travel. We'll be waiting for you.
Tonight's diary is written by annetteboardman, who thinks the idea of flying six miles up in a tin can is a bad idea, let alone going even higher (not to mention the tons of rocket fuel in close proximity to her fingers and toes).
As there are so many wonderful (and not so wonderful) films that take place at least partly in outer space, most of them (but not all) science fiction, the front matter here is limited to those that take place in this solar system. This leaves out, unfortunately, such spectacular space films as Alien (which I watched hunched down in my chair with face largely covered), the hysterical Dark Star (by John Carpenter, and Star Wars.
But there is a lot to look at, even within our solar system. The most riveting films to me (on this topic as well as others) are those based on real events. Here the voyage to the moon has the benefit of two of the finest docudramas of the American cinema: The Right Stuff and Apollo 13. When DarkSyde posted the video of the launch of Apollo 11, I thought "I'll watch this, but it won't make much of an impact." But I found myself sitting there, with tears streaming down my face. It was so exciting. While nothing quite captures the magic of that stunning view, the straining of the Saturn V rockets to lift the payload off the earth and into orbit, the liftoff sequence of Apollo 13 is pretty darn spectacular:
The main difference for me between the grainy footage of Apollo 11 and the film version of Apollo 13 is that in the 1995 movie, the liftoff looks easy. Smooth. You see the power of the rockets, but it is not as surprising that this works as it is with Apollo 11. To me the video is far more moving, and far more magical.
If you do a search for Apollo 11 on the internets, the chances are pretty good that within the first couple of sites pulled up will be at least one that asks if we really did get to the moon. The great hoax (that we ever got out of earth orbit) is the subject of Capricorn One. Of course, in Capricorn One the faked mission was to Mars rather than the moon, but James Brolin, Sam Waterston, and O.J. Simpson don't want to be killed off to prevent the news of the hoax getting out. Somehow, NASA turned down a request from the filmmakers to provide technical advice. Why do you suppose that was?
The space race (do you remember when it was called this? when the US and the Russians were racing to the moon as a proxy for the Cold War?) is represented in the 1969 movie Marooned, which came out in December of 1969, the year of Apollo 11's successful voyage. This movie, about the rescue of stranded American astronauts by Russian cosmonauts, was the impetus for the Apollo-Soyuz friendship mission of 1975, where the two spacecraft docked in orbit. I was seven years old when I saw Marooned, and it scared the living daylights out of me. I remember going to the bathroom late in the movie, and coming back to the balcony, sitting high up at the back, with my Mom joining me to calm me down. I had been so excited by the idea of space that she took me to the movie (I am sure I was absolutely intolerable until she agreed to take me). But it really was way too early in my life to see such a terrifying scenario, one that I understood all too well. This movie was featured on MST3K, the only film they slammed that had won an Academy Award (Best Visual Effects).
Similarly overwraught drama is to be found in the environmentalist film
Silent Running, starring Bruce Dern and several robots. The essence of this is that people have gotten rid of all plants on earth, and the only ones still alive are floating above the earth in giant greenhouses. When the order comes to destroy the greenhouses, Bruce Dern goes rogue. While this was also upsetting when I was little (how did my mother let me go to these movies? How did she cope with my bad dreams after I saw them?), to me now this one just looks silly. Joan Baez sang the end music:
A lot of people would argue that 2001 is the finest space movie ever made. The first two thirds of the movie, while a bit dated, are quite spectacular, but the more we hear from HAL the grumpier I get, and I particularly dislike the ending, which just seems like a drugged hallucination to me. And this from someone who loved the original Arthur C. Clarke short story that inspired the whole thing ("The Sentinel"). But I do think this is spectacular:
I have left out lots and lots of films -- those that show the end of the world (or a close approximation): When Worlds Collide (1951), Sunshine (2007), and Armageddon (1998) -- those that represent encounters with aliens: Independence Day (and others that don't have as big a space component) -- and those that have come out of television series: all the Star Trek movies, good and bad, and Serenity (from the Firefly tv series). But I am sure you can come up with tons more. Please do.