Apollo 11 Review

There's been a lot of movies in the last 10 years that have given me the opportunity to go to space. No, I'm not counting things like "Star Wars" or "Guardians of the Galaxy" when I'm saying this. I'm talking about movies like "Gravity," "The Martian" or last year's "First Man" that attempted to give accurate depictions of space travel. Despite how incredible these journeys have been for me, I found a movie this week that has to now hold the trump card for the most incredible theatrical experience I've had when it comes to space travel and that's this new documentary titled "Apollo 11." This is a movie that grabbed my attention when it premiered at Sundance back in January. I thought it would be something that I would have to wait until closer to the end of the year to experience, but it surprised me a bit by releasing here in March. It debuted in 120 IMAX locations this past weekend and is now set to expand to about 450 theaters total this upcoming weekend. How many of those will be IMAX screens? I have no idea because Marvel is set to debut "Captain Marvel" into over 4,300 theaters, which includes over 400 IMAX screens. So that opportunity might be gone, but I hope not because I saw it in my local IMAX theater on Tuesday and that was quite the surreal experience.

I often struggle when reviewing documentaries on this blog. I enjoy watching them, but I often don't know what exactly to say when reviewing them or what score to give at the end because they're a different style of filmmaking that I'm not accustomed to talking about in great length. And that's especially the case here as this is even more unique when it comes to documentaries, which is what I'll get to in a second. That means I'm a bit conflicted in regards to how to approach this. I almost settling for giving a quick few sentences on Facebook and Twitter, but I wanted to do something more than that given how incredible of an experience this was, so I'm diving into a blog post anyways and seeing how this goes. Forgive me if this is a bit more rough around the edges than usual. But yeah, the reason why this is so unique, even by documentary standards, is that this is almost completely a compilation of archival footage from the Apollo 11 mission back in July 1969. I say "almost" because there's a few moments where they put a graphic on the screen to fill in the gaps where there was no footage. But outside that, this is footage from 1969 that they put together. No narrator. No modern-day interviews. Just old footage that was enhanced for IMAX screens.

I suppose doing things this way is a bit risky because without a narrator guiding you through what's happening, there's the potential for the audience to get a bit lost or bored along the journey. But this is not the case. They way in which everything is edited together helps keep your attention for the whole run time and this is done by going back and forth through three different vantage points, most of which takes place between the control room in Houston and the astronauts in the spacecraft. This is what actually takes place of a narrator. We as an audience are clued in on everything that's happening so that we're not lost as if a narrator is guiding us through the experience, but it's the authentic audio from the control people that were communicating among themselves as well as with astronauts and other people in charge of the launch. I mean, there had to be a whole ton of communication among all of them in order for this to be a successful mission, so getting the narration from that vantage point was a clever way of doing things. And perhaps there was a bit of the TV broadcast from the time helping us as well? I'm not 100 percent sure on the latter, but either way, any human being that was talking in the documentary was from 1969 and not 2019 voice over, which I thought was a fascinating way to do this. 

The other aspect that I really enjoyed was there was a lot of shots included of the crowds of people around the rocket launch who were coming to observe this monumental event. It didn't feel like I was in a theater watching something that happened 50 years ago. It felt like I had been transported back in time and was a part of the crowd. I got to experience this event with the people. I got to see what the atmosphere was like that day. I got to see what it was like from their perspective when the rocket launched into space. It was a really cool experience. Then when they completed their mission a week or so later, I feel like I was a part of the crowd welcoming these three American heroes home. But at the same time, I felt like I was being taken on a tour through the control room in Houston and got to witness what it was like from their perspective in helping things run smoothly. Oftentimes when we see this perspective, all we see is a bunch of people in a room staring at the monitors or typing on keyboards. But with this movie I got to know a taste of what it was like for them to be working countless hours behind the scenes to make this work. I got to see their communication with the astronauts and their constant updates and discussions on how things were going.

Then of course we have the launch itself and the flight through space. We got a dramatized version of this last year in the movie "First Man" and those sequences were incredible in that movie, especially on the big screen in IMAX. No offense to Damien Chazelle and his crew, but it's just a whole new level of amazing when you're seeing the actual footage of the launch. They had a camera right next to the rocket as it took off, so in addition to us seeing what it was like from the crowd's perspective, we also got to see what it was like from the rocket itself. Add to that an excellent score for the documentary and fantastic sound design in remastering this footage to work on an IMAX screen and I was in pure awe as the rocket launched into space. This was also a very educational piece as not only did we get to experience the journey, but we were informed of how things were able to happen. There was a meter on the bottom of the screen that told us the speed of the rocket as well as the distance from the surface of the Earth, and later the Moon. With the help of previously mentioned graphics, we got to learn how the rocket traveled around the Earth, then launched itself into space at the right moment, as well as all the appropriate maneuvers required to make this happen.

I was very pleased with the education I received on how this all came about and I think this documentary could be perfectly served as classroom education for kids and adults for years to come. I also thoroughly enjoyed the journey through space, seeing the Earth get further and further away, looking out the same windows that our astronauts got to see while enjoying the dialogue that they were having among themselves. And then it was really cool as we arrived to the Moon. Again, we got to see as we circled around the Moon, looking at those meters, seeing how closer and closer we were getting to the surface of the Moon. I also kinda felt bad for Michael Collins as he had to stay behind and circle around the Moon for hours, while the other two separated and got to land on the surface and walk around. But I also learned how important his role was because him staying in space like that was critical to the three of them being able to get home. Without that, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong might as well have dug graves for themselves there on the Moon. Back to "First Man," I think their depiction of the Moon landing was excellently done. But again, nothing rivals seeing the actual footage of the Moon landing, the iconic speech from Armstrong, and them placing the flag.

The advertising of this movie focused heavily on the fact that there is previously unseen footage here of the Apollo 11 mission. I'm not enough of an expert on this subject to know which of these sequences were previously unseen footage vs. which of them had been widely known, I was just really blown away at how expertly put together all of this footage was so that we got to experience the entire mission starting from the hours leading up to it until their arrival at home from all vantage points in a way that was equally mind-blowing and educational. I haven't read up on this documentary much because I wanted to experience it firsthand without knowing anything, but now having seen this, I would love to see a documentary on the making of this. Maybe they'll have something like that in the special features when the movie is released to DVD. If so, I want to watch it and get all the commentary from the filmmakers. I think that would go a long way to enhancing this experience even more. As far as a grade goes...  how do I give a grade to this? That's like going on a tour of some sort of historical site then grading that tour. So I'm not going to. This is an incredible experience worth seeing on the biggest screen possible. We'll leave at that.