Apollo 11 Parent Guide

Sitting in a capsule with only 218 cubic feet of space, 363 feet above the marshy Floridian landscape, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins prepare to make history. Once they ignite their rocket engines, they will burn 20 tons of fuel per second and produce 7.5 million pounds of thrust to break free of Earth’s orbit.This moment is familiar to anyone with an interest in space travel. However, NASA shot a lot more footage over the eight days of the Apollo 11 mission. In this riveting documentary film, director Todd Douglas Miller worked with NASA and a post-production studio to restore this footage and provide a previously unseen perspective on the mission that sent the first man to the moon.

If you have a chance to see this movie, see it on the largest screen you can find. The scale of the space program is astoundingly apparent in Apollo 11 and this can best be appreciated on an IMAX or other big screen. In the opening sequences, the unbelievable size of the Vehicle Assembly Building, crawler-transporter, and Saturn V rocket are just as awe-inspiring as the famous Star Destroyer crawl from the beginning of Star Wars: A New Hope. I would argue they are even more so, because these things actually exist in the real world. Having been to the Kennedy Space Center and stood under a Saturn V rocket, I can confidently tell you that watching this film is as close as you can get to the real thing without traveling to Florida.

By sticking entirely to historical footage, with no added interviews or commentary, Todd Douglas Miller has created an amazingly immersive view of the mission. According to the closing credits, even the soundtrack (created by Matt Morton) was made up entirely of instruments and sounds which were available in July of 1969. Fortunately, this attention to historical detail has not detracted from the artfulness of the film. To my eye, the shot of ice cracking and falling from the rocket body into the flames of Apolo11’s engines at lift off is as stunning and beautiful as the cinematography in any indie art film you can name.

With Apollo 11’s G-rating, there’s virtually nothing for parents to be concerned about. That said, parts of the movie can be very loud and intense, and very young or sensitive children might be frightened. The rest of the film might also be a little difficult for kids, as it has little dialogue and focuses mainly on the historically recorded audio transmissions between Mission Control and the Command Module and NASA’s original footage.

As a massive space nerd, I’d recommend this to everybody. The jaw-dropping footage of the various modules docking and ejecting in space is worth the price of the ticket on its own (and even brings to mind some of the more bizarre conspiracy theories claiming Stanley Kubrick as the director of faked moon landings). However, the film is also absolutely compelling in disproving any such conspiracies and includes an incredible wealth of detail and sublime beauty in almost every scene. And hey, if nothing else, you’ll probably learn something. It’s not every day you get an educational film as gorgeous as this one.