How Fly Me to the Moon Attempts to Handle Danger of the Moon Landing Conspiracy Theory

This article contains Fly Me to the Moon spoilers.

It’s a breathtaking shot. More than 50 years after the world watched Neil Armstrong take his one small step for man, and his one giant leap for all mankind, we now see those steps toward the lunar surface from Armstrong’s point-of-view. As the door to the Apollo 11 capsule opens, it is from the astronauts’ perspective we glimpse the fresh, unvarnished moon rock awaiting human footprints.

If this image felt faintly familiar while watching Greg Berlanti’s Fly Me to the Moon, a fusion of the an old school ‘90s romantic comedy with the slipperiness of a conspiracy thriller laugher of the same era, that’s because it’s more or less the same shot in Damien Chazelle’s First Man, an underrated Armstrong biopic that waits until this exact moment to change the film stock and camera lens to true IMAX.