Destination Moon

1950 • 92 minutes

About this movie

Enduringly fascinating, Destination Moon takes you back in time to before the Space Age for a trip to the moon the way it should be done. You ll ride in a cigar-shaped rocket, wear a bubble-headed spacesuit, walk in space and worry how you're all going to get home on the remaining fuel. Although accurate to a remarkable degree, actual spaceflight turned out to be much more complex, but much less stylish. Destination Moon holds the honour of being the very first film of the 1950's science fiction craze. With a notable pedigree including George Pal (War of the Worlds, Tom Thumb, The Time Machine), a story by Robert Heinlein and perhaps the real star of the film, astronomical art by noted artist and designer Chelsey Bonestell, Destination Moon remains groundbreaking and hard-core science fiction. Pal consulted scientists and engineers to bring an authentic feel to the picture and there s actually little to no fantasy in it at all. Even 2001 ventures outside the known reality of space to embrace fanciful alien higher intelligences. Luna, Destination Moon s sleekly beautiful spaceship, with its cigar-shape contours and Cadillac fins set the style for how these craft should look and its takeoff cemented the reverse countdown into the public consciousness and later into reality. When man actually did land on the moon 19 years later the parallels were eerie. Not only were the basic flight mechanics similar, but Destination Moon had predicted Apollo 11's last minute adjustments to find a suitable landing site whilst running low on fuel. The Luna voyagers set foot on the moon and claim it in a speech later echoed by Neil Armstrong. Having set the scene, the science fiction films that followed, including Pal's own When Worlds Collide, got straight on with the horror and aliens. Destination Moon had done the job of educating the audiences.