Alicia
I love this movie so much
Stometer
Save your money for something good and enjoyable
SpuffyWeb
Sadly Over-hyped
adamkings
I watched this film expecting an inaccurate entertaining over the top sci-fi flick, generally popular in the 40's and 50's. Instead I got an inaccurate propaganda film which didn't entertain nor inform. It basically is forcing made up facts down your throats and if you resist you are deemed stupid and un-American. It is not a scientific film as it claims to be; rather it deals with making people accept the claims for political purposes. You know you are watching propaganda when it is a government project and the language is targeted towards weak (stupid) people, the citizens, from a powerful source, the government. I was insulted 10 minutes into the movie. It even gets worst when they use woody woodpecker to make their point. It's abusive as well as insulting. Don't watch this expecting an entertaining sci-fi or a documentary,it's neither.
Lechuguilla
The story centers on efforts to get to the moon. The film's intent seems to be to explain space travel in a realistic, scientifically accurate way that can be understood by ordinary people. That's commendable. But the approach is dreadful. In the first few minutes a group of potential financiers get treated, along with us viewers, to a five minute cartoon ... literally ... with Woody Woodpecker learning how a rocket ship could lift off of Earth, get to the moon, and return safely. Do the film's producers really regard viewers as having no more than a kindergarten mentality?The rationale for the rocket project is just as curious. Deadly serious, a scientist explains to these same financiers the project's necessity. "(Among nations), the race is on and we'd better win it ... The first country that can use the moon for the launching of missiles (cue dramatic pause) will control the earth! That, gentlemen, is the most important military fact of this century!" Okay, whatever.The rocket's crew consists of some scientists, and one idiot, brought in to replace an ailing pro. This idiot, named Joe, is the ultimate simpleton, reluctant to go along on the mission 'cause, like, he's got a hot date with a good-looking chick. And he has doubts about the rocket's success: "The thing won't work; it can't; it's crazy". Still, the captain coaxes him into going along, and Joe replies: "Okay, I'll set up there with you and twiddle the knobs ... hey, you guys are really serious, ain't cha."Most of the film consists of indoor sets and tons of dialogue. There's precious little in the way of interesting visuals until we get into the second half. Here, a desolate moonscape propels the imagination, finally, with a dark background peppered with stars.Background music is dreary. Costumes are consistent with the era's perception of space travel. Space helmets resemble old-fashioned ladies' hair dryers.The film's educational intent is noble. But the script talks down to its audience. There's too much dialogue, most of which is stodgy and lacks subtext. Special effects look cheap. Casting is perfunctory; acting is below average. I find "Destination Moon" boring, time-bound, and less sci-fi than cultural melodrama.
SpaceComics
Destination Moon was the first major Technicolor motion picture dealing with a trip to the moon, and the first serious, big budget science fiction film produced in the United States. Robert A. Heinlein (author of Starship Troopers, The Puppet Masters, Stranger in A Strange Land, and Space Cadet) co-wrote the screenplay very loosely from his 1947 novel Rocketship Galileo, although about all that remains unchanged in the film is the name Dr. Cargraves. In the book there is a veiled threat from unknown enemies that turn out to be Nazis (this was the first thing Heinlein wrote after the war) - in the film there's just a veiled reference to a communist threat. I suspect the film also draws from Heinlein's more sophisticated treatment from the same period, The Man Who Sold The Moon. The film's suspenseful and scientifically accurate plot depicts man's first voyage to and landing on the Moon, and the dangers of outer space travel. A Woody Woodpecker cartoon is included to demonstrate the principles of rocketry.George Pal's first science fiction film (earlier he had done Puppetoons and The Great Rupert), Destination Moon earned an Academy Award for Special Effects. Later Mr. Pal would produce more science fiction classics including When World's Collide, War Of The Worlds, and The Time Machine. Photographed in Technicolor with an original musical score by Leith Stevens and stunning artwork by Chesley Bonestell, Destination Moon is a milestone in special effects and a classic in the science fiction genre.It is said that this film was shown to President Eisenhower to persuade him to support the pre-NASA space programs. On 6 October 1988, after Robert Heinlein's death, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) awarded him the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal: "In recognition of his meritorious service to the Nation and mankind in advocating and promoting the exploration of space. Through dozens of superbly written novels and essays and his epoch-making movie Destination Moon, he helped inspire the Nation to take its first step into space and onto the Moon. Even after his death, his books live on as testimony to a man of purpose and vision, a man dedicated to encouraging others to dream, explore and achieve." -- James C. Fletcher, Administrator, NASA
jtwcosmos
"That isn't public opinion - it's a job of propaganda!"This is the story of how the Americans got to the Moon. It is also the first science-fiction movie that approaches the reality of outer space from a scientific perspective, or so they say. All I can say is that it is flat, stiff and boring, but at least it has pretty colors. And it won an Oscar for special effects.The story is quite simple. The Americans build a space rocket and send it to the Moon. It is nuclear powered, huge and shiny. It is ambitions, it is gonna take the combined effort of the entire might of the United States Industry and it's gonna cost them every bit of blood, sweat and tears they've got, but they'll make it.The propaganda is spread thick all over this ship ... err ... movie. There are all kinds of enemies out there who want the United States to fail and who would stop at nothing to make that happen. Fortunately for them, they don't have to try too hard, because the bad script and the stiff acting kill this mission far more successfully than they ever could. If you feel you're going too fast, some day, just watch this movie. It will slow you down in a jiffy. For example, they have a guy trying on a pair of boots for 5 minutes. Talk about a slow dresser! Obviously they do that only as long as they want to make a point, because after that they walk about with a spring in their heel, just like Fred Astaire on the ceiling. Aside from that, everything is just dandy.This is the first in a series of science-fiction movies produced by George Pal, who is also responsible for classics like "When Worlds Collide", "The War of the Worlds" "The Time Machine" and "Conquest of Space", of which I've seen the first three and intend to watch the fourth. I understand that this movie has sparked the crazy decades of science-fiction movies in the '50s and the '60s and if you decide to watch it then you will also understand why they had to come up with a whole bunch of monsters, alien invaders and 50 foot half naked babes: because otherwise they would have been just as boring as this movie is, obviously.Destination Moon. A great piece of history but... not much else. 6.3/10 is just about right, but only for history's sake.
