MovieChat Forums > Apollo 11 (2019) Discussion > Excellent compliment to other, more conv...

Excellent compliment to other, more conventional Apollo documentaries


Saw it today. Great film!

It's different in style from the typical documentary: No talking heads, no narration, and the use of music is fairly sparse. It very much takes a fly-on-the-wall, you-are-there approach. Instead of just a quick shot or two of the crowd at Cape Canaveral, it takes you INSIDE the crowd. Instead of just shots from Mission Control, it puts you literally inside the halls of NASA. Where other films would just give you a quick cut of something, this film lingers.

When it does use music, it's very effective. And it's not the typical grand orchestral score, but instead much of the soundtrack is synthy, electronic-sounding tracks that give the film a distinct, sometimes eery feeling and vibe. It's very effective.

I wouldn't recommend this film as someone's first Apollo documentary--I'd say go watch something more conventional--but this doc is an excellent compliment to those other films for people who already know the story.

My biggest takeaway is simply this: It's amazing the plan worked. There was so much that could go wrong and doom our astronauts, and yet, amazingly and against all odds, they were triumphant.

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I just read Rocket Men by Craig Nelson (there’s several books with this title), about Apollo 11. I was about to search online to watch the footage, and just realized this docu is out.

I highly suggest the book. It’s probably mentioned in the film, but when Armstrong was looking for a place to land and he kept finding huge craters or boulders, and the tech in Houston is counting down how many more seconds of fuel he has, the doctor in Houston monitoring him said his heart rate got up to 160-165. Yeow!!

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Yeah, they get into the heart rate thing a bit. Not only there but also during liftoff and I believe one other time. As I recall, Armstrong always had a slightly higher heart rate than the others. I don't know if this is biologic or psychological. In any case, it's been said that most people have a few real key moments in their life where they have to make the right decisions or put in some special effort. This was defiantly one of those moments for Armstrong. He was going to either succeed or fail in a big way. He knew it and he also knew that it was also a life or death moment as well. Slightly out of that window of fuel consumption would likely have been fatal for him and Aldrin.

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Wow, I didn't know Armstrong's heart rate got up that high during landing sequence. Still, it was the only landing of the 6 that got that close to the abort limit. They didn't even get close to the abort limit in the countless simulations done back on earth.
From what I remember Armstrong already was upset they were landing long..there were multiple alarms blaring off in his ears, he had to avoid a strewn field by slowing descent all the while trying to see downrange for a clear landing spot. It was probably the most notable landing in history, right up along with Lindbergh and if I recall Lindbergh had a really tough time during final approach as well.

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Armstrong had to take over manual landing control when the guidance computer overloaded. He could clearly see the original landing area was strewn with boulders and craters. He had to choose another landing site and was very close to running out of fuel. You will hear CapCom tensely say "30 seconds" of fuel remaining before they landed. Mission Control was holding its breath collectively. Even Buzz Aldrin was telling Armstrong to set it down. I think Armstrong's heart rate was nominal considering the circumstances.

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No talking heads. Praise be. This was the best documentary of space flight ever.

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It really was quite good and definitely felt fresh in terms of its content and style.

Did you ever see When We Left Earth?

I recently picked it up on DVD and the price is AMAZING for the four-disc set. It's definitely worth the price if you haven't seen it.

https://www.amazon.com/When-We-Left-Earth-Missions/dp/B001BEK8CY

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