By Salt 106.5 Network Wednesday 10 Jul 2024MoviesReading Time: 2 minutes
“The truth is still the truth even if no-one believes it, and a lie is still a lie even if everyone believes it”.
Key Points
- Fly Me to the Moon isn’t about the conspiracy so much as bigger questions about how lies end up being believed,
- The film delivers some big themes with Mad Men-style charm and humour, and a touch of romance.
- Fly Me to the Moon is in cinemas July 11.
With that one line, Fly Me to the Moon makes itself worthy of attention.
Channing Tatum (21 Jump Street, Magic Mike) and Scarlett Johansson (The Avengers, Her) are Cole Davis and Kelly Jones. Two realistic, yet totally fictitious, characters involved in the Apollo 11 moon landing. One’s a former war vet and NASA official and the other is a savvy marketing executive employed by President Nixon to sell the moon-mission to America.
Fly Me to the Moon isn’t about the conspiracy so much as bigger questions about how lies end up being believed.
What results is the imagined origin story of the supposed “fake” moon landing footage, and America’s motivation for airing it.
While taking on a topic loved by conspiracy theorists, Fly Me to the Moon isn’t about the debate so much as bigger questions about how lies end up being believed, and why we reject the truth. It taps into reservations about technological progress and what place humans have amongst the stars.
Fly Me to the Moon, images supplied by Sony
One of the movie’s most powerful scenes is when Cole and Kelly try to convince a religious politician to favour funding the moon landing. The congressman opposes science distracting from the divine, but Cole sees science as an avenue to reveal God in creation.
Post 1969 we’re still asking these questions – even more so in the era of “misinformation” – actively contemplating the wisdom of venturing into space, colonising Mars and how much to meddle with what we don’t understand.
Fly Me to the Moon delivers some big themes with Mad Men-style charm and humour, and a touch of romance.
When God told Adam and Eve to “have dominion” over the earth and to rule it, did that include the heavens as well? And how should we wield that authority?
They’re themes that could feel heavy and clunky but Fly Me to the Moon delivers them with Mad Men-style charm and humour, and a touch of romance that makes it all feel quite magical.
Fly Me to the Moon is in cinemas July 11.
Article supplied with thanks to Laura Bennett. Laura is the host of Hope Afternoons and producer of a number of our podcasts, including UNDISTRACTED with Laura Bennett.
All images supplied by SONY and used with permission.