8 Days: To the Moon and Back

The moon landings remain a remarkable chapter in the human story, when mankind threw incredible resources, ingenuity and courage into a venture into a place from which there was no prospect of rescue should that commitment prove to be inadequate. Audio recordings exist from most of the first succesful mission, and also film from that trip; by splicing in some dramatic reconstruction of the astronauts themselves (mostly immobile in their tiny spaceship) this film gets its audience as close as is possible to having actually been there themselves. And pointless as some say the voyage was, there's no getting away from the fact that even in fascimile, it still feels awesome. We may never get to Mars; but a few men stood on the moon, and that's pretty cool.

It's well done, but not entirely a documentary in my view. The addition of the three actors portraying the astronauts during the presentation is, well, not what I was expecting. They did a very good job of synching voices, which is far better than adding the director's own "concept" of what was said during the event. In other words, what we are hearing during the program is actual voice footage in spite of what we are seeing is not necessarily what it actually looked like in the cockpit of the command module and other devices.

What was interesting of note was the switch between 4:3 aspect ration and today's more common 16:9, with this being used anytime we were watching the astronauts in the capsule or various actions taken with said devices. Maybe this was done so the viewer can better note the real from the fake?

Anyway, this event was an important step in the US space race, and something those of us born and bred in the United States should be proud of and hopefully never forget.

This unusual documentary essentially recreates visuals to match actual audio recordings of the astronauts on their moon excursion. It's an engrossing story and it's fun to see how it played out from beginning to end (fun enough that's it's worth watching both this and Apollo 11, which covers the same territory).

The only thing I didn't care for was the gimmicky transitions. Sometimes when flicking through scenes one hears the sound of a TV getting staticky, other times film footage will run out to the marked-up end. I don't see the point in any of that; it just annoyed me. But that's a small thing.

Very good presentation. However I must protest that in all their Mission Control clips I didn't see one that showed Poppy Northcutt, the 25 year old NASA engineer in charge of the return trip from the moon. Major sexism here.

By a long long way, this is the best dramatized version of the Apollo 11 journey yet made. Much more inclusive to the viewer than the introspective First Man. Not giving anything away but every word spoken by the actors are from actual recordings, many when out of earshot of NASA. The special effects are truly mesmerizing. I couldn't recommend this more highly