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In 1996 the UK morning TV show The Big Breakfast invited a conspiracy theorist on to explain why he believed the moon landings had been faked. After the guy had laid out his evidence the host/comedian/one time star of Neighbours Mark Little then invited none other than Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin out to offer a counter argument. This interview has stuck in my memory for almost thirty years, and while watching it again for the first time now it is less dynamic and mic droppy than I recall, it’s still a nice bit of telly.

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The reason this broadcast moment has stayed with me is because of my own fascination with this period of history. I’m not old enough to remember it myself, the last moon mission was five months before I was born, but it was a big part of my childhood because of my father’s interest in it. I vividly remember leafing through his copy of the August 1969 edition of Life Magazine with Aldrin on the cover and hearing his passionate retellings of all that went on. I now have a print of that Life cover framed in my house along with a 1 metre replica of the Saturn rockets used to get the men to their lunar destination.

Interestingly this new film covers both the work of the people behind this incredible achievement and the idea that it might all have been entirely fabricated. It captures the romance of the missions that I got totally caught up in at a young age while also seeming to explain why the rumour that it’s all a lie has been around almost since it happened. A more sceptical person might feel that in its explanation of the origins of the idea of it all happening on a sound stage this movie doth protest too much, like a floundering parent who’s just been caught taking the tooth out from under their kid’s pillow, but that person is not me.

They way the story juggles these seemingly opposing notions is by concentrating both on Channing Tatum’s mission controller and Scarlet Johansson’s marketing manager. While we see the scientists, astronauts and technicians preparing for the first landing , we also see what it took to supposedly spin real events in such a way that the world would want to follow and support them. The suggestion is that history might have been a little manipulated, to the point that they would have faked it if it hadn’t actually happened, but it did happen, honest.

So the movie demonstrably settles on the fact that Neil Armstrong did in reality take that giant leap, with Buzz following him while Michael Collins waited aboard the command module. It certainly isn’t prepared to shake that cherished belief. Yet so much of the narrative around this is so made up as to almost make the whole film a metaphor for itself. Johansson’s Kelly Jones certainly isn’t a real person (or is she?) but neither is Tatum’s Cole Davis. In truth Gene Kranz was the man running that mission in July ‘69 but he might well have objected to his life being told with quite so many factual liberties. Of course he might also not like being written out of this account but he had his moment being played by Ed Harris in Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 so he’s already been immortalised by the silver screen. This really is the most Hollywoodised version of this story possible but it makes it quite a fun film. Importantly it remains respectful of some of the harder elements and tragedy of what went on at this time too.

There could also be something in this film, with all that it does, choosing to come out now. The need to beat the Soviet Union to the moon is a big part of the narrative here and it may be no accident that this is coming out as relations between the US and Russia are as strained as they have been for some time. The fact is that current events around this are also being told and shaped by the media more than perhaps they ever have been, and the movie might even be making a statement about this as well.

If you want a movie that celebrates the space race, most definitely more than Damien Chazelle’s First Man and maybe even more than Howard’s classic film, then Fly Me to the Moon is that. If you’re after a gentle romance then sure, you’ll get that too. If you are hoping for some commentary on how the official accounts of significant occurrences are told through a certain type of lens, both then and now, then you it’s possible that this is here for you as well. If you want to get to the absolute truth though then look somewhere else. Possibly not to that Big Breakfast clip but somewhere.

Fly Me to the Moon is a slick film, with strong star performances, heaps of 60’s nostalgia and neat direction. If that is also something you want then we genuinely have take off.

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