'Fly Me to the Moon' explores the ultimate space race conspiracy theory. Here's what's fact and fiction in the movie.
"Fly Me to the Moon" leans into the conspiracy theory that the moon landing was faked. But there are some moments of truth in the movie.
Dan McFadden / Courtesy of Sony Pictures
- "Fly Me to the Moon" is a romance about a publicist and the NASA director during the space race.
- The pair film a fake moon landing in case NASA's mission fails.
- The movie is fictional, but it draws on some historical facts.
"Fly Me to the Moon," Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum's new romantic comedy-drama about faking the moon landing, is fictional but draws on some true historical events.
The film is set in the 1960s and follows marketing expert Kelly Jones (Johansson) as she tries to garner support from the American public for NASA's moon mission.
The White House eventually tasks Kelly with filming a fake moon landing in case the real one fails. Apollo 11 spaceship launch director Cole Davis (Tatum) opposes Kelly's plan, believing it will discredit NASA's efforts.
This storyline leans into the conspiracy theory that NASA faked the US moon landing in 1969.
The theory began to spread in 1976 when Bill Kaysing, a writer who briefly worked at a rocket engine company, published a book called "We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle," which claimed that the government faked the moon landing to compete with the USSR.
Though NASA has denied this claim, it has become embedded in pop culture.
Greg Berlanti, the director of the new film, told The Hollywood Reporter on Monday that the movie is really about the importance of the truth.
"When you see the movie, without giving away the ending, you realize that so much of it is about why the truth is important," Berlanti said. "And so I think I was fine to take on an OG conspiracy theory, knowing that in the end, what we were really trying to say why the truth matters."
Berlanti told Entertainment Weekly in May that NASA gave the production team their blessing and allowed them to film at Cape Kennedy in Florida, where Apollo 11 launched in 1969.
Here are the accurate moments in "Fly Me To The Moon."
Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins are the few characters in the movie based on real-life figures
Courtesy of Sony Pictures
The lead characters in "Fly Me To The Moon," Kelly and Cole, appear to be fictional. However, the movie does feature some real-life figures.
Nick Dillenburg, Christian Zuber, and Colin Woodell play Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin: the first humans to land on the moon.
The movie also features NASA astronauts Ed White, Roger Chaffee, and Gus Grissom. In real life and in the movie, they died in a cabin fire in 1967 during a launch rehearsal test for the Apollo 1 spaceship.
The final two real-life figures in the movie are former USSR president Nikita Khrushchev and Yuri Gargarin, the first man to travel to space in 1961.
NASA used a public relations campaign promote the space program
Dan McFadden / Courtesy of Sony Pictures
Kelly didn't exist, but NASA had an extensive public relations campaign to promote the space program in the 1960s.
At the time, the US was fighting the Vietnam War, dealing with racial tensions during the civil rights movement, and worrying about a potential nuclear war with the USSR.
So officials had to persuade the public that the space program was worth the money.
According to David Meerman Scott and Richard Jurek's book, "Marketing the Moon," NASA decided to promote facts about space travel through methods including press releases and educational programs to get the public interested. NASA thought being transparent would win the public over.
Television networks did simulate part of the space flight, but the landing was not faked
Dan McFadden / Courtesy of Sony Pictures
NASA's PR team helped television stations broadcast live footage of part of Apollo 11's flight.
Television networks used models to simulate the rest of the space flight when live footage was unavailable. But there's no evidence to suggests NASA or any network tried to fake the moon landing.
A television camera was mounted on the side of Apollo 11 to capture Armstrong's first steps on the moon, and the rest is history.
"Fly Me to the Moon" is out now in theaters.