Those are the words of Buzz Aldrin as he walked on the moon with Neil Armstrong on July 20, 1969. It’s also the title of a new 3D IMAX movie produced by Tom Hanks that tries to give you the feeling of walking on the moon.
It’s not just hype; it really is the closest you can come to walking on the moon without actually going there. I’ve just seen it, and though it’s pricey for a movie and it’s only 40 minutes long, it’s worth every penny.
The lunar landscapes are painstakingly, lovingly recreated, especially the site of Apollo 15’s landing, Hadley Rille. There’s some spectacular scenery there–the Apennine mountain range, the plain at Hadley, and the long, sinuous trench of the Rille itself. It’s a good choice for special treatment, and 15’s commander, Dave Scott, served as technical consultant on the movie.
It seems most people don’t remember 15, only Armstrong and Aldrin’s 11. Part of the mission of the movie is to tell the story of those other lunar landings, the ones that didn’t get so much coverage, and yet were even more spectacular. Those guys on the last three flights–15, 16, and 17–lived on the moon for three days at a time.
I’ve spent many hours watching the TV downlink from Apollo 15 trying my damndest to imagine myself there, to see the Earth hanging over the dead, blasted landscape, to feel myself at a sixth of my normal weight. As best as I can tell, director Mark Cowen got it right. And just to prove it, he dares to show clips from the astronauts’ actual footage along with the recreations. It looks seamless.
Except on one point, the only mar on an otherwise flawless production. There’s sound in space in this movie. Why is it that filmmakers can’t resist embellishing scenes of spaceships and astronauts with engine rumblings and, as in the scene this shot is taken from, footsteps.
When the boots of the guy playing Scott come at you the dust flies in your face. A cool effect in 3D, except that it’s accompanied by the sound of pebbles raining down on you. When I heard that I was immediately yanked back down to Earth to a sound stage and some foley artist spilling sand on a microphone.
2001: A Space Odyssey proved back in 1968 that the best way to take viewers out of this world is to tell it like it is–without sound in space. (I still think that’s the best science fiction film ever made, but that’s another story.)
Go see Magnificent Desolation. Hell, go see it a couple or three times; I probably will. Just, if you’re a purist like me, try to overlook the misguided sound design and focus instead on the gorgeous scenery.
Well, if you were in a suit and you were hit by the sand you would hear it plinking off of your suit. Sound does travel in space. Just not through the vacuum. It travels through other materials such as the spacecraft, your suit, the ground, etc. Shuttle astronauts have always commented on how noisy being in space really is due to all of the equipment you bring with you. The folley artists in Apollo 13 got it mostly right and I suspect the ones in Magnificent Desolation did too. Hanks is to much of an Apollo geek to let something like that slip by.
True, but the shots I’m talking about are from an omniscient, exterior POV, not from the POV of someone actually present (and wearing a sound-conducting spacesuit). For instance, when the LM is landing, the outside shot has engine noise and thruster banging, which would only be heard inside the craft. I think there’s even an orbital shot with a “whizzing noise” as the craft hurtles around the moon, but I’d have to see it again to make sure.
Okay, so maybe it’s a minor point, but I’m spoiled by 2001, where you only hear noises when you’re in an interior POV. Like when Bowman gets blown into an open airlock from the outside, and you only hear sounds when the outer door closes. Or when a moon bus speeds over the lunar surface in utter silence until the scene cuts to the interior, when you hear equipment noise and people talking.
Hi Michael B,
I’m with you. 2001 got it right. If the POV is not inside a pressure vessel such as one of the character’s spacesuits, then the scene should be as quiet as – well – vacuum. And even from inside a suit, you should only hear fans and breathing and stuff faintly conducted through whatever the suit is touching. It’s a minor point, I suppose – but if you’re shooting for realism, why go out of your way to create something that’s not really there?
Ahhh, I think I’m going to have to go and watch 2001 again. Look what you’ve gone and done 🙂
It’s a minor point, I suppose – but if you’re shooting for realism, why go out of your way to create something that’s not really there?
Because – for most people – realism is that you can hear pebbles kicked from a boot or that the LEM should make some kind of noise. Absent those touchstones and it might feel stiff and wrong.
This film isn’t – I think – aimed at space geeks but a general audiance. This might be as nitpicky (and fruitless) as my yammering on about implausible effects in war movies or a period movie showing a Staunton set decades before that pattern was designed and so on.
Most people just don’t care about the nit picks. Of course, I learned a long time ago that my wife was one of the those people so I’ve learned to hold my tongue for the sake of enjoying a movie with her.