[Humor] Apollo 18:the movie

[Chunkboi]

Okay, checking to see that what I'm putting in does add to the thread and isn't just a bump...at least I hope this adds something.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jarvitä

 Wait, who am I kidding. This is hollywood, the LM will SWING AROUND THE MOON AT 10 GEES and sound will magically carry through vacuum.

Well, to be fair, in fiction, Hollywood can throw sounds in for dramatic effect. Also, space can be noisy, but not with sound. Tidal effects, incident radiation, reaction mass bouncing on the hull. Space is pretty noisy...just not with sound. Anything we "hear" would have to come from something incident on the hull/suit helmet or interfering with the radio. Joss Whedon at least tried to be plausible with Firefly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jarvitä

 Also, how would you possibly go around concealing a Saturn V launch? Those things weren't exactly stealthy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bujin

 That's the easy part. You just have to have enough government agents wandering around near the launch site so that at the moment of launch, and for the next 10 minutes or so, they have to point in the opposite direction and shout "what the hell is that?", make everyone look in the wrong direction, then blame the loud noise on some rather dodgy chilli they had last night.

I knew it. It's all part of some government conspiracy to make us think we never landed on the moon.

I would have said have Walter Cronkite come on in a national broadcast, point at the camera, and say, "Hey, look, what's that over there?" At just the right time.

Actually in the movie they did this mission on Christmas, so...
"The base chaplain is doing a nativity pageant with the kids, and when it comes to a star to lead three wise men, we don't screw around."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keatah

  In real life stuff doesn't bounce around like in blair witch or quantum of solace or the transporter #2 and #3.. GOD!!!!!

"I kicked the flight plan into the creek!"

Quote:

Originally Posted by T.Neo

 The difference is that Star Wars never ties reality directly to the fiction, even though the fiction of spaceflight portrayed ends up being believed by many- to the chagrin of spaceflight enthusiasts and Orbinauts the world over.

Ah yes, high-speed self-contained space vehicles which have super-powerful control thrusters and thrust vectoring, inertial dampening, and can contain life support, fuel, and supplies in a package that fits in a nice slim fuselage. Only bits and pieces work on paper, and I'd just love to see how they plan to engineer that thing...

[orbekler]

It seems that Apollo 18 complete movie is available on YT (don't ask me about copyrights, it's not my matter and I didn't upload it):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2Cvgw2rc60

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2Cvgw2rc60

[TMac3000]

Off to watch some Apollo 13 clips now...

[SpaceNut]

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!! Do not read on if you plan to watch the movie...

Don't waste your time. The movie sucked from every angle. I will say that they more or less tried to give it a "feel" of accuracy, it's still hard to get one by "us guys", and by that, I mean space fans like ourselves. For example, during the landing there was a 1201 alarm, but the unrealistic thing about that is that the 1202 and 1201 alarms only happened on the first mission and why they happened were figured out, and (to my knowledge) didn't happen again, hence, quite unlikely on a 7th moon landing. Seeing the LK Lander was cool, as I've never really seen a real one, and it looked quite accurate (externally) to the real thing, although I think the inside shots were "too big" as it was probably more tight inside than it appeared to be, but, beyond all that, as even hyper accurate movies like Apollo 13 even have their moments of Hollywood over reality.

The thing that, to me, made the movie suck, was the fact that there was pretty much no storyline... Ok, rocks are alive on the moon, form into spiders, and, of course, attack for no apparent reason. No answer is ever given, no explanation of anything ever really happens beyond you discovering it's "the rocks". There's really no major climactic event, no reason how or why the folks back home knew something was up, what was intended to learn from sending 3 guys to their doom, nothing, nada, zip. Most movies tie up loose ends, but this movie just makes a bunch, and ends. Overall, it was pretty boring to me, and the only thing that kept me watching was the fact that I was staring at really good mock ups of those fabulous machines. Even the LK looked spot on... and that's pretty much the only thing you can say was good about the move.

Two thumbs down here... don't even waste your time.

[Hlynkacg]

some thoughts on your review...

One: spiders bite people all the time for "no apperent reason" in fact it's kind of questionable to be trying to ascribe motivation and emotion to a spider in the first place.

Two: it's supposed to be a suspense/horror movie so the only real measure of suckage is who well it manages tension and scares you. "Tying up loose ends" is actually counter productive in such cases.

On the personally I give it a solid "meh". Not bad but not particularly good either.

Just chill out watch it for the hardware porn.

[SpaceNut]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hlynkacg

 some thoughts on your review...

One: spiders bite people all the time for "no apperent reason" in fact it's kind of questionable to be trying to ascribe motivation and emotion to a spider in the first place.

Two: it's supposed to be a suspense/horror movie so the only real measure of suckage is who well it manages tension and scares you. "Tying up loose ends" is actually counter productive in such cases.

On the personally I give it a solid "meh". Not bad but not particularly good either.

Just chill out watch it for the hardware porn.

Well, yeah, spiders do bite people, but not after just being a rock a few moments earlier. My point was that it's highly illogical for some alien life form to turn into some biological entity that formed on Earth, that's all. And as far as tension management and scaring goes, I wasn't tense or scared at any point throughout the movie, and even Shaggy, Scoob and the gang always figured it was "old mr whoever" who wanted to scare the kids away because of some capitalistic enterprise or away from some item of worth. Eventually revealing the reason they were sent there in the first place does have a reason for being in the movie. Even 2001, which was hard enough as it was to figure out explained that the true nature of the mission was withheld from them, and why.

[n122vu]

Agree with both of you. I saw this some months ago and was indifferent with the movie as a whole. I got excited when I saw the LK lander, said "Oh this should be interesting." My buddy watching it with me said "Why?" I said "Because that's a Russian lander." Then when I figured out way early that it was the rock that was alive I was already rolling my eyes at how this one was going to go. And sure enough, it did. Overall it was ok I guess from a technical standpoint, but the lack of plot, lack of interest in the characters, and lack of depth overall made it 86 minutes of my life that I'll never get back.

[Codz]

It was decent. I think it did what it set out to do; be a horror movie that uses Apollo-era setting and tech. The LK scenes were cool and the close ups of the A7LB spacesuits was also nice.

[statisticsnerd]

Everything about the plot was so asinine, I was laughing through the whole thing. This is one of those movies that was so bad that it was hilarious.

[SpaceNut]

Thanks n122vu...

I think the thing that bothers me the most was that what's the logic in throwing an entire Apollo crew under the bus with no stated reason. NASA would never go for it, as they painted it as if "the military" was behind the mission, and exactly how do you go about dragging an entire Apollo stack out to a launchpad and launch it "secretly". Even if you could, what was the point of them going??? No one back home ever seemed to want any sort of report, and communication with Houston was pretty sparse. In reality, virtually every nanosecond is laid out in steps and sub steps from launch to splashdown. It seems to me the entire mission was about setting up the detectors, which honestly could be done with automated landers even back then. Also, didn't they land in a polar region? Pretty neat trick for an Apollo era lander which were designed for equatorial landings only, not enough fuel for that much of an orbital change.

[Codz]

It's a horror movie, not a historical drama on the Apollo program. If you want that then you should go watch Apollo 13 or From Earth to the Moon. You've just got to just suspend your disbelief and enjoy the movie for what it is.

[Kyle]

I ignored the entire plot just for the technical detail, which was surprisingly accurate.

[Ghostrider]

After seeing it a couple of times...
I liked the hardware rebuilding and the attempt to have some accuracy in it. A lot of filmmakers don't even get close to that (see Transformers 3 with the shot of Apollo 11 heading towards the Moon without the LM docked). Of course, it has the usual trappings of BW-style movies and some.

I believe that the Moon is a great setting for a horror movie: you have complete isolation, home in view but so far away, no rescue possible in any acceptable timeframe, hostile environment and a limited number of locations in which to hide. However, if you want to make it "realistic" enough you have to work with a limited number of characters which reduces the plot options.

Then, unfortunately, you have the plot holes which are horribly evident: all the footage shot on the Moon in Apollo 18 comes from either the TV cameras or the handheld film cameras. Logically, only the former should be available because...

SPOILERS ALERT

If the LM remained on the Moon, and the CSM was destroyed in the collision with the LK, how did the filmed footage end up on Earth and be developed?

Then while the LK was very well recreated (too big on the inside, however), no amount of handwavium could conceal the fact that unless your astronaut is a) able to read Russian and b) familiar with the controls enough to operate them in his sleep (which is the degree of familiarity one has to have with them) there's no way he could RV with the CSM in a spacecraft that has a wholly different flight profile than the LM has. By the way, where is the Soyuz lunar spacecraft? Was it ordered back to Earth after they lost contact with the LK or what?
And I wonder if the LK could still work after an extended period of time...

Then, while the Apollo CSM is no X-Wing, it's fully able to maneouver on its own. Since it was already configured for rendezvous with the LK, why didn't the pilot thrust away when he saw the LK was on a collision course?

And there's also the question of why did they bother to design a mission patch for what was essentially a Black Op IN SPACE? First rule of clandestine ops, you "sanitize" everything. No ID, no tags, no serial numbers on equipment, the usual stuff. Moreover, they still control the mission from Houston, difficult to keep anything secret there. Why didn't they duplicate the control room at Cheyenne Mountain or SAC, or any covert installation? The hardware is duplicable, I suspect you can train some military personnel to act as Mission Control.

And of course, why bugs? They're not scary at all. Part of the appeal of BW was that you were never totally sure what was going on.