Too much of everything

hyped garbage

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

First, honesty in advertising, I grew up in Melbourne, Florida from 1956 until 1968. So, my opinion about the Space Program would be similar to asking someone who grew up in Detroit during that period about the automobile. As may be obvious, my father worked at the Cape, which meant he only came home to sleep. Yes, the Space Program was where WW III was fought...and won. And I don't mean Apollo, my father didn't even work on it. All he could ever tell me was that he was in "foreign technology." But I did grow up in a town with a spaceport as well as an airport. And as intimate as my knowledge has been, I constantly heard things in this movie I had not only never heard before, but hadn't dreamed of. An astronaut has a member of their immediate family commit suicide rather than deal with the public notoriety! Yes, the media put family members through hell, that's well known. But suicide? So I agree with the first review.Perhaps it could have been edited better. I don't know, I'm not a movie maker. The only thing I found distracting was because I don't recognize faces well. So I would have liked frequent, perhaps constant name labels. But if you want to know these people better than you ever have before, here you will hear, and see (I never really realized how important and lucky it was that we sent an artist to the Moon) things you won't hear or see anywhere else.As for the two negative reviews. How can someone claim to have lived through Apollo and not know the number of men who walked on the Moon? XI to XVII minus XIII equals six landings. Can't multiply 2 X 6 = 12? Are you "Smarter Than a First Grader?" If you care enough to watch films on a topic, but can't do First Grade arithmetic, how can your thoughts on the subject of the films matter? But you deserve points for honesty about yourself.As for the reviewer who seems to have missed their chance to throw eggs at the returning astronauts, we did it in a _hurry_ for political reasons. And killed three men through unbelievable stupidity because of hurrying. As the saying goes, "The dinosaurs didn't have a Space Program." For those that need an explanation, the most biologically successful species that has _ever_ existed on this planet had all of its eggs in one basket. So we have what's left of them for fried food. If we don't keep pushing to get off this planet, we won't even be as successful as the dinosaurs. Grow or die. Like Gravity, it's the Law!I want to include a heartfelt thank you to those that made this movie. Both in front of, and behind the cameras. If you have any interest in the men who walked on the Moon, as human beings, see this movie. Even if you think you already have seen everything there is to see on the subject. Hopefully, it is out on DVD by now. I just finished seeing it on Encore! Drama (EDRAM) on TV a few minutes ago. And stopped in the middle of emailing my father about it.

I was expecting to like this more than I did. I was born in 1943, so I lived through all of the events chronicled in this film as an adult, and have seen lots of documentary coverage of those events. The subject is one that always inspires and moves me, so it seemed foolproof.But the way this film was constructed and edited did not work for me. I found the lack of narration or exposition a drawback. Even knowing as much as I do about the events, I did not realize that only twelve men have stepped onto the moon, from 1969 through 1972 (the film tells us all of that only at the end), and at the time this was made, only nine of them were still alive (that is never mentioned). Knowing those facts up front would have enhanced my appreciation of what I was seeing. Other statistics about the program would have been useful too - cost, number of people involved, etc. Those would help put it all in perspective more.Seven faces are a lot to keep track of, especially in the first part of the film, and especially when the editing cuts from one to another so quickly. Focusing on each of them separately, at least at first, would have been easier to follow, and to me more effective. Or the film should have used some device to identify them more clearly each time they appeared.Nor did I learn anything surprising about the subject, but it was interesting to find out what each of the seven men has done since, and how it affected them.I found the Columbus segment a waste of time. With some narrative background, or opinions of historians, it might have been interesting, but as presented it was just pointless.Eugene Cernan says we should have a permanent base on the moon - "It really is the key to our future." Why? More explanation of that would have been interesting to me, as well as what each of the other men thinks about that, or where he thinks the space program should go.Buzz Aldrin mentions that even right after the first landing, some Americans disapproved of the program. Further exploration of that would have been welcome. Not everyone (including me) thinks that the "benefits" of our space program have justified the cost, or that it makes sense to try to go back to the moon, or to Mars. In 1958, Nobel-prize winning physicist and mathematician Max Born called the space program "A triumph of the intellect, but a tragic failure of reason." I think that applies even more now.The title tells us that the makers of this film were trying to create an emotional experience, of course, not an intellectual one, and perhaps that is the problem. The emotion should grow out of an honest description of the events, not a contrived exploitation of them. For example, I thought the music was a bit manipulative.All in all, not a waste of time, but - at least for someone who already knows the subject pretty well - not a must-see.

There is no question that the space/moon race was only a result of cold war. Unfortunately many people can't or won't forget that and still treats discovery of space as such, which is just ridiculously. The movie is nicely done, but still leaves an impression that's more like an advertisement and cover mostly the positive point of view together with known mistakes they made in the process. Unfortunately they do not cover most questions that are still unanswered to this day and they are just avoiding them, filling the space with "hero" material. I ask myself many times why would a man who walked on the moon gave so little commentaries on it and done so little public appearances, with his face always like he has a lemon in his mouth ... The movie is a nice documentary, but is also much more a commercial.p.s. Someone would think if they landed on the moon in 1969 when computer was a size of a car (or a few cars) that they would have weekly landings now days and not that they can't answer a few questions about it ... Don't you think so ?

I could not disagree more with the previous posting that criticized "In the Shadow of the Moon". I thought "In the Shadow of the Moon" was exceptionally beautiful and inspiring - slightly more artistically done and poetic, in a way, as a film experience than "The Wonder of It All." "Shadow" did most certainly discuss all the other missions and the groundwork that earlier missions laid for the moon landings, plus the historical background of the entire space program. And the interviews in "Shadow" with Alan Bean and Gene Cernan (among others) were for the landings that followed Apollo 11. So it was not restricted to Apollo 11 only. Plus significant time was spent on Apollo 13. Both The Wonder of It All and In the Shadow of the Moon are important to see and cover similar content. "Shadow" interviews other astronauts while "Wonder" interviews only those who actually walked on the surface of the moon. Both are highly recommended.