New scifi film "Apollo 18"

[wd40]

Any initial opinions of "Apollo 18"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_18_(film)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RGhKzUUaME&feature=fvst

Or is it basically "The Blair Witch Project" in a vacuum?!

[Selenite]

Or is it basically "The Blair Witch Project" in a vacuum?!

The only vacuum is in the skulls of whomever would actually pay to see this rubbish. Wonder if we can get Buzz Aldrin to punch the producers?

[parallaxicality]

GIven that Buzz is serving as a consultant on Transformers 3, I think he's lost some credibility in that regard.

[KaiYeves]

GIven that Buzz is serving as a consultant on Transformers 3, I think he's lost some credibility in that regard.

Just remember, though- to paraphrase the statement about the 800-pound gorilla, he's our crazy old man.

[publiusr]

Hey, we might get some Saturn V CGI out of this.

[KaiYeves]

Hey, we might get some Saturn V CGI out of this.

Didn't we already get that with Apollo 13?

[Gemini]

I'm pretty sure that was actually a physical model.

[KaiYeves]

According to the website of Digital Domain, the special effects company responsable, we're both right (kinda):

"While audiences assumed the rocket launch scene was lifted from historical archives, it was actually a series of shots created by Digital Domain through a combination of models & miniatures (the rocket and launch pad) and CG animation (smoke, fire and landscape)."

[SRQHivemind]

Looks like a piece of forgettable dreck to me.
For one, the sheer idea that there could have been a Saturn V launch that "no one saw" is far too preposterous for my belief suspension system to handle.
Though to be fair when I first heard about this film and saw the trailer I'd come off of an Apollo 13/From The Earth To The Moon marathon.

It'll make my Netflix queue if it's passable. But it's films like this that keep sci-fi film and TV in the ghetto.

[Amber Robot]

Isn't the entire premise flawed from the start? If there had been an Apollo 18 launch people would have at least known of the launch.

Yes, yes, I'm being too nitpicky.

[Gillianren]

No, I don't think you are. I think even entertainment should pass the "basic logic" test.

[R.A.F.]

No, I don't think you are.

No, not at all. The producers of Apollo 18 could have set the story in a fictional universe, but they chose not to.

[Gemini]

I wonder if the Titan III could have been used for an EOR set-up i.e. one for the CSM (with the capsule and escape tower faired to appear as an unmanned vehicle), another with the LEM, and a third with the EDS.

I doubt this is the case for the movie.

[KaiYeves]

I wonder if the Titan III could have been used for an EOR set-up i.e. one for the CSM (with the capsule and escape tower faired to appear as an unmanned vehicle), another with the LEM, and a third with the EDS.

I doubt this is the case for the movie.

Offhand: Would that ultimately be less expensive or more than a Saturn V?

[Gemini]

Honestly, I'm the wrong guy to ask about cost analysis ( My engineering economy class was an uphill battle). However, my main aim here is to point a way that an Apollo lunar mission could appear to be a standard military launch instead.

[EDG]

Isn't the entire premise flawed from the start? If there had been an Apollo 18 launch people would have at least known of the launch.

Yes, yes, I'm being too nitpicky.

There's that, and the much-touted "found footage" concept doesn't even work, since (from what I've read of the plot summary on its wikipedia page) there's no way for the footage to actually get back to Earth!

[Noclevername]

There's that, and the much-touted "found footage" concept doesn't even work, since (from what I've read of the plot summary on its wikipedia page) there's no way for the footage to actually get back to Earth!

That's the sequel tag for "Apollo 19".

[parallaxicality]

Wow you guys really pegged it.

Warning, F-bombs copiously dropped in this review

Perhaps the best part of that review is that it linked to this:

"Apollo 18 is not a documentary," said Bert Ulrich, NASA's liaison for multimedia, film and television collaborations. "The film is a work of fiction".

Oh.

Though to be fair, how many people think that NASA is engaged in a vast conspiracy to hide the entire night sky from the public again?

[TJMac]

So, if I understand, this movie and its forgotten footage is an explanation of why we don't return to the moon? What's next, a movie about a Concorde passenger who saw, (pick one) a ghost, an alien, a skeleton, bigfoot, an invisible elf.....?

I overheard a conversation about this movie, and I just mentioned, "hey, you guys understand its impossible to secretly launch a rocket into space, right?" And one guy looks at me and says, "Well, they would do it at night." I was dumbfounded, and could not reply as I was trying to save my IQ points that were being sucked into the black hole of total and utter ignorance.

TJ

[Paul Beardsley]

So, if I understand, this movie and its forgotten footage is an explanation of why we don't return to the moon? What's next, a movie about a Concorde passenger who saw, (pick one) a ghost, an alien, a skeleton, bigfoot, an invisible elf.....?

Yeah, those idiots who believe in skeletons!

I overheard a conversation about this movie, and I just mentioned, "hey, you guys understand its impossible to secretly launch a rocket into space, right?" And one guy looks at me and says, "Well, they would do it at night." I was dumbfounded, and could not reply as I was trying to save my IQ points that were being sucked into the black hole of total and utter ignorance.

Come on, that's not entirely unreasonable. If they used inert fuel, there would be no blast to give them away...

[R.A.F.]

Yeah, those idiots who believe in skeletons!

Huh?? What about Geoff Peterson?

[Gillianren]

So, if I understand, this movie and its forgotten footage is an explanation of why we don't return to the moon? What's next, a movie about a Concorde passenger who saw, (pick one) a ghost, an alien, a skeleton, bigfoot, an invisible elf.....?

A gremlin. And either William Shatner or John Lithgow.

[KaiYeves]

Yeah, those idiots who believe in skeletons!

I want to post a link to the scene from the Tintin book Destination Moon with the skeleton here, but there don't seem to be any scans of it online...

[Starbuck]

So, if I understand, this movie and its forgotten footage is an explanation of why we don't return to the moon? What's next, a movie about a Concorde passenger who saw, (pick one) a ghost, an alien, a skeleton, bigfoot, an invisible elf.....?

I overheard a conversation about this movie, and I just mentioned, "hey, you guys understand its impossible to secretly launch a rocket into space, right?" And one guy looks at me and says, "Well, they would do it at night." I was dumbfounded, and could not reply as I was trying to save my IQ points that were being sucked into the black hole of total and utter ignorance.

TJ

Just FYI, they used stock footage of a Saturn V night (or maybe early morning) launch in the movie. Perhaps the implication is that SA-513 launched this mission, and NASA faked Skylab?

I thought the Soviet LK was pretty neat and seemed pretty accurate to what we know about that craft.

[fagricipni]

It occurs to me there could be one problem with the movie that might not be immediately obvious; where's or who's holding the camera? Ie, certain footage should not be able to be taken. The most obvious is that no pictures of the Apollo landings from outside the spacecraft exist -- the problem being how would one get the camera down there without landing on the moon in the first place. Another example comes to mind of the some of the scenes from the movie Apollo 13 -- which does not claim to be footage taken at the time of the events it depicts -- which would require a camera traveling with the spacecraft but not attached to either one because both spacecraft are moving relative to the camera. Another one that the makers of the movie Apollo 18* may not have thought of is that there are only two people on the moon; if both astronauts are in the scene and the camera is moving to track the astronauts, then WHO is holding the camera?

* I have to say "the movie" Apollo 18 because I always thought that this was Apollo 18.

[HenrikOlsen]

I think that's a part of the willing suspension of disbelief that's been in movies since day 2, when the hero and the villain battle at the edge of a cliff, do you wonder what coincidence caused a film crew to be at the bottom of the cliff as they were doing it?

And yes, if this is all framed as if the movie watched was filmed entirely by the crew, with no added shots, then it's a problem, but only then.

[Gillianren]

My understanding is that it claims to be found footage.

[fagricipni]

And yes, if this is all framed as if the movie watched was filmed entirely by the crew, with no added shots, then it's a problem, but only then.

As Gillianren points out the producers of the movie Apollo 18 claim it is found footage.

I used some of the scenes in the movie Apollo 13 as examples of what could have been done wrong in the movie Apollo 18, because they would be quite problematic had the producers claimed the movie Apollo 13 to be footage taken at the time of the events it depicts. I have no problem with those scenes in the movie Apollo 13 because the producers honestly present the movie as being a dramatization of the events of the actual Apollo 13; indeed, those scenes improve the movie Apollo 13, but those types of scenes should be impossible in the movie Apollo 18.

I have not yet seen the movie Apollo 18, so I don't know if the producers of that movie made that particular mistake; I was hoping, though, that someone who had could tell us if they did.

[Paul Beardsley]

The "found footage" idea isn't that different to the old literary device of someone writing an account of something while it is happening. H.P. Lovecraft took this to (intentionally?) amusing extremes in "Dagon" which ends with the viewpoint character informing us that he can hear the monster coming up the stairs, then writing, "The window!" (from which we assume he's desperate enough to jump out of the window, but not too desperate to let us know).

[parallaxicality]

Horror employs this tactic in many different ways. It's a useful horror device because it denies the certainty that someone will live to tell the tale, or the security of an omniscient narrator. The characters in the story are as clueless about what happens next as the reader. In literature the tactic is to use epistolary style, as both Dracula and Frankenstein use, as well as Lovecraft and Stephen King (If you think the end of Dagon is extreme, try reading "The Rats in the Walls", which ends with the narrator going insane and screaming in Gaelic- Stephen King aped this (he loves Lovecraft) in "The End of the Whole Mess", which has the narrator developing a degenerative mental disease as he writes and then forgetting how to type). On TV/Radio the tactic is "mock live", such as the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast or Ghostwatch. "Found footage" is simply this tactic applied to cinema.