Humor Apollo 18:the movie

[Ark]

Love it! Blair Witch meets Alien on the Moon during an Apollo mission?

What's not to like?

I liked Duncan Jones's Moon too, even though the lunar gravity was never simulated either. For that matter it's done really badly in 2001 too.

The Hollywood rule on lunar gravity seems to be: Inside the base or spacecraft, Earth gravity applies and you move normally. Outside on the lunar surface you walk very very slowly, shuffling your feet along the ground.

I know! For cripe's sake it's just a premise for a movie, put aside your hatred of Apollo conspiracy theorists and just enjoy it. Space movies in general and Moon/Apollo movies in particular are so few and far between that you have to enjoy them when you can.

I think it's something that hasn't been done before, and the hard sci-fi/horror angle is right up my alley. I'm disappointed I won't get to check it out until 2012.

 

[Ghostrider]

I have a feeling the test audiences probably didn't like or get it. Which is bad because if they tried to be as "realistic" as possibile with proper Apollo equipment and procedures, they might end up "dumbing" them down to make it more marketable. I like the idea of a period piece horror movie with Apollo stuff but Test Audience Man who cannot tell a SPS from UPS probably doesn't.

 

[Ark]

That is an interesting point, to be so close to the release date and push it 9 months into the future suggests test screenings did NOT go well, and it was bad enough to make them almost gut the movie and start over. I wonder if the actual production of the movie even took that long.

 

[HAL9001]

That is an interesting point, to be so close to the release date and push it 9 months into the future suggests test screenings did NOT go well, and it was bad enough to make them almost gut the movie and start over. I wonder if the actual production of the movie even took that long.

"postprocessing solves everything, excepting my problems with the tax-office" - the simpsons

it also doesn't solve problems at the time-plan...

 

[fsci123]

I hate when they take real events and add aliens to them... This movie looks like a bootleg greenscreen movie made by an alien fan/conspiracy theorist... Im so sick of these movies that im going to make my own version of this movie:
Apollo 18 didnt happen... THE END

 

[Ghostrider]

Hey, real events + conspiracies gave us the X-Files and a lot of other funny fiction.

 

[fsci123]

Assuming i ever make a film i would NEVER EVER make a movie about the moon and make it look realistic... Feeds the fire for conspiracy theorist...:shrug:

 

[T.Neo]

Blair Witch meets Alien on the Moon during an Apollo mission?

What's not to like?

Everything. :rofl: :facepalm:

Space movies in general and Moon/Apollo movies in particular are so few and far between that you have to enjoy them when you can.

Yeah, but here's the thing: When space/moon/Apollo is portrayed, they murder it.

When was the last time there was an awesomely, scientifically thought out science fiction movie? 2001? Can we only think of one? Are there others? Moon, maybe? That's two of them?

If there's any kind of film that is few and far between, it is a scientifically thought out science fiction film. I'm tired of seeing films where they murder spaceflight science. At least some manage to make up for it. Others don't. And yet more manage to mangle historical events, like Transformers.

Maybe some people will regard it as a decent film. Others won't, and I'll most probably be among them. But whatever the case, it will just add to the ever growing heap of films, that either only barely cling onto being 'science fiction' by some technicality, or are centered on absurd premises.

 

[Keatah]

Moon 02 is better than this!

---------- Post added at 04:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:45 PM ----------

Well anyways, if you push towards 100% realism and accuracy you end up with little more than a real-life documentary about the SpaceShuttle or Skylab missions. I don't think there's any way around it.

 

[Columbia42]

Real life documentaries are fine by me. If I made a film it would be based on the history of the Soviet space program. It's a little known story that deserves to be told. It would also be cool to see a movie about the Russians beating us to the Moon (not that I buy into any of the conspiracies) just to see their very *interesting* 1960s lunar mission architecture in action.

 

[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.

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.

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

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."

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!"

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):

 

[TMac3000]

Off to watch some Apollo 13 clips now...

 

[John_L]

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.

 

[John_L]

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.

 

[John_L]

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.