The First Men in the Moon

An unashamedly old-fashioned adaptation of a lesser-known H. G. Wells novel, previously made into a movie (complete with Ray Harryhausen stop-motion aliens) back in 1964. Mark Gatiss should be applauded for bringing something less familiar to the screen, showing that there's still a market for small-screen science fiction and horror (he also made the retro horror anthology, CROOKED HOUSE).

Unfortunately, FIRST MEN IN THE MOON doesn't turn out to be the greatest film ever made. It's commendably old-fashioned, yes, featuring a great performance from none-other than Gatiss as a bizarre Edwardian mad scientist who creates a compound that will take his ship to the moon. Paired up with Gatiss is straight man Rory Kinnear, son of Roy and the spitting image of his father. Given that this production has an extremely low budget, much of the film is made up of dialogue as the pair fight, debate and argue, but of course the inevitable CGI effects eventually come when the twosome make their trip to the moon.

The good stuff: for once, the CGI aliens look pretty good, and on par with Harryhausen's own creations. There's plenty of humour to soften the story, and Gatiss and Kinnear work well together. The bad stuff: the story seems very twee in places and the plotting is stretched out to the extreme, with very little actual incident to fill the running time. It has the feel of a children's show, although bizarrely the BBC like to show this stuff on an obscure channel in the middle of the night. A shame, as the kids gorging themselves on the latest DOCTOR WHO would probably enjoy this – and it's something I myself would have loved if I'd seen it at an early age.

Because this is a remake of the 1964 film of the same title, that one had Edward Judd and Lionel Jeffries, both passed away now, this one has Rory Kinnear and Mark Gatiss in the same roles.

Its pretty much similar to the original, but with a newer look, the scenery on Earth (Hertfordshire) is not as good, but the acting is well up there, both actors bouncing off each other to make a better performance.

Again its the original HG Wells story that creates the quality. The special effects are better than the original but the images are a bit harsher, but nevertheless a good film, I would say that the original is slightly better than this but not much, I give this an 8, same as I did for the original, but this is an 8.0 where the original would have been an 8.5. Its that close, making this a successful re-make.

If you're expecting an action-packed movie of aliens vs. humans like the Alien franchise or the Predator franchise then forget about watching this. This is a family-friendly movie to watch with the family during a lazy afternoon. It was relatively loyal to the novel written by H. G. Wells. It discusses the dangers of imperialism and greed of the era and the pursuit of knowledge at any cost.

You have to give credit to Mark Gatiss who despite being in an obviously low-budget movie is able to entertain the viewer. I'm not too familiar with Rory Kinnear's work except that he played a great villain in iBoy and I like his work on the Bond franchise, but he played a great role in this movie too.

I have seen Sci-fi movies that have made me nauseous to watch them. However, this movie I believe paid a genuine homage to the 1950-60's science fiction movies. The one thing that I didn't like was the alien's appearance, which was a bit weak and could have used a bit more work.

I never read the book but this is vastly different than the original movie. I didn't notice that it was made for TV until now but that explains the extremely low budget. Even with a low budget, the special effects were better than in the original. The story itself though is equally bad. At one point a guy dreams that he is in a silent movie and it's very bizarre. It's clearly just an excuse to shoehorn Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton into the movie. The end doesn't even make any sense. Mark Gatiss does have an interesting take on the story though. This is definitely worth watching if you have seen the original movie, just to see that time couldn't make it any better.

This was an interesting sort of a remake,, I couldnt decide if it was a genuine remake or an attempt to turn out a brand new film for very very few dollars. I would strongly advise anyone to go find the original and watch it instead. Its so close in places that i watched to see if they had slotted new actors into old scenes , if thats the case it was quite clever , if it was all new ,, it was quite sad.