Wow doesn't begin to do justice to the experience of this movie. Thank you Tom Hanks for your passion and for helping us to understand what it was like to be there through this film, and through the mini-series From the Earth to the Moon.
Today I saw Magnificent Desolation at my local IMAX and I highly recommend it to anyone who was a child of the space race or an adult during that time. I found the make-up of the crowd really interesting; a lot of guys in their 40's like me who probably built all the spacecraft models as kids, taking their own children to the movie to show them what going to the moon was all about.
For me, it was like a religious experience. At the beginning there is a shot they created of Buzz Aldrin climbing down the ladder of the lunar module to take his first steps, and the viewer's perspective is of standing about 100 feet away on the surface, watching. It was so realistic I felt I had been transported back in time and was watching the history making event as it actually happened. For a few moments I was overwhelmed at the sudden realization of what Armstrong and Aldrin had experienced, and literally had tears in my eyes while watching the scene.
The 3D effects on the IMAX screen are so good that you find you often need to refocus your eyes to look at different things in the scene. It's a bit disconcerting at first, compared to a normal movie, but after a few minutes you adjust and enjoy the experience.
Shots of the inside of the Apollo 15 lunar module as it was descending to the plain at Hadley were very cool, and looking out the window was almost like being there. It was very realistic. On the lunar surface they did a fantastic job of integrating the high quality still photos taken by the astronauts to create a lunar landscape that was so real looking you would swear you could reach out and pick up a rock to take home.
The movie is relatively short (less than 50 mins.) so the documentary content is brief and concise, focusing on the concept/vision of going to the moon rather than a lot of details about how it was done (for that type of story, see the twelve episodes of From the Earth to the Moon). The documentary sections were interspersed with the re-creation of scenes showing what it was really like to land and work there. I left the theater with a true sense of understanding and awe of what it must have been like to have journeyed to the moon.
Two thumbs up
Today I saw Magnificent Desolation at my local IMAX and I highly recommend it to anyone who was a child of the space race or an adult during that time. I found the make-up of the crowd really interesting; a lot of guys in their 40's like me who probably built all the spacecraft models as kids, taking their own children to the movie to show them what going to the moon was all about.
For me, it was like a religious experience. At the beginning there is a shot they created of Buzz Aldrin climbing down the ladder of the lunar module to take his first steps, and the viewer's perspective is of standing about 100 feet away on the surface, watching. It was so realistic I felt I had been transported back in time and was watching the history making event as it actually happened. For a few moments I was overwhelmed at the sudden realization of what Armstrong and Aldrin had experienced, and literally had tears in my eyes while watching the scene.
The 3D effects on the IMAX screen are so good that you find you often need to refocus your eyes to look at different things in the scene. It's a bit disconcerting at first, compared to a normal movie, but after a few minutes you adjust and enjoy the experience.
Shots of the inside of the Apollo 15 lunar module as it was descending to the plain at Hadley were very cool, and looking out the window was almost like being there. It was very realistic. On the lunar surface they did a fantastic job of integrating the high quality still photos taken by the astronauts to create a lunar landscape that was so real looking you would swear you could reach out and pick up a rock to take home.
The movie is relatively short (less than 50 mins.) so the documentary content is brief and concise, focusing on the concept/vision of going to the moon rather than a lot of details about how it was done (for that type of story, see the twelve episodes of From the Earth to the Moon). The documentary sections were interspersed with the re-creation of scenes showing what it was really like to land and work there. I left the theater with a true sense of understanding and awe of what it must have been like to have journeyed to the moon.
Two thumbs up