As the romcom revival continues, Fly Me To The Moon has officially landed in cinemas, led by Hollywood stalwarts Scarlet Johansson and Channing Tatum. It whisks us back to the 1960s, with the Space Race in full swing, and surrounds NASA’s creation of a ‘back-up’, staged moon landing just in case Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins didn’t actually make it. Here’s exactly what to expect from the film – plus the weird true story underpinning it all.

Fly Me To The Moon: Plot, Cast & Back Story

Originally titled Project Artemis, Apple announced it was working on a Space Race film in March 2022, with a budget surpassing $100 million. Finally getting around to filming in October 2022, Fly Me To The Moon sat in post-production for a long time due to delayed distribution deals – but it’s finally in cinemas now.

What Is Fly Me To The Moon About?

Transporting us back to 1960s America, Fly Me To The Moon is set in the midst of the Space Race between Cold War rivals USA and Russia. As NASA creeps ever closer to landing a space rocket on the moon, and even getting a spaceman to take man’s first steps on the cratered surface, directors start to worry just what might happen if they don’t succeed and, God forbid, Russia does.

Enter Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson), a marketing specialist enlisted to fix NASA’s public image. Working closely with NASA’s director Cole Davis (Channing Tatum), sparks fly in all directions as Kelly wreaks havoc on Cole’s plans. And White House Nixon aide Moe (Woody Harrelson) deems the mission too important to fail, Kelly has a new task: staging a ‘back up’ fake moon landing.

Who Stars?

• Scarlett Johansson as Kelly Jones
• Channing Tatum as Cole Davis
• Jim Rash as Lance Vespertine
• Ray Romano as Henry Smalls
• Woody Harrelson as Moe Berkus
• Anna Garcia as Ruby Martin
• Donald Elise Watkins as Stu Bryce
• Noah Robbins as Don Harper
• Colin Woodell as Buzz Aldrin
• Christian Zuber as Michael Collins
• Nick Dillenburg as Neil Armstrong
• Christian Clemenson as Press Agent Walter
• Gene Jones as Senator Hopp
• Joe Chrest as Senator Vanning
• Stephanie Kurtzuba as Jolene Vanning
• Colin Jost as Senator Cook
• Peter Jacobson as Chuck Meadows
• Bill Barrett as Cole Impersonator
• Greg Kriek as Henry Impersonator
• Art Newkirk as General Alexei Leonov
• Ashley Kings as Patricia Collins
• Jonathan Orea Lopez as a beach spectator
• Eva Pilar as a secretary
• Corbin Flanders as Henry’s son
• Chad Crowe
• Will Jacobs
• Melissa Litow
• Lauren Revard
• Jesse Mueller

Is It Based On A True Story?

Directed by Greg Berlanti with a story by Keenan Flynn and Bill Kirstein and a script by Rose Gilroy, some elements of Fly Me To The Moon are true, other elements are fictional, and other elements take the truth and spin it for the screen. For one, NASA naturally insists they never filmed a fake moon landing. Speaking to TIME, Bill Barry, NASA’s chief historian from 2010 to 2020, says: ‘There’s no evidence whatsoever that NASA ever faked a moonwalk.’

Of course, conspiracy theorists still maintain that people have never made it to the moon (including 10 percent of Americans), with many detractors inspired by former US naval officer Bill Kaysing’s 1976 self-published book We Never Went To The Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle, published amid growing scepticism for the government, from the Vietnam War to Watergate. Arguably, Fly Me To The Moon is fuel on the fire – albeit tongue in cheek. Interestingly, the US’ competition, the Soviet Union, never questioned the legitimacy of NASA’s accomplishment.

Plus, in Fly Me To The Moon, there is a large emphasis on marketing the moon and creating partnerships with companies like Omega. It’s true that money was spent making the moon landing more appealing to the American public, who thought money would be better spent on solid ground amid the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. Writer Rose Gilroy drew on David Meerman Scott and Richard Jurek’s book Marketing the Moon to bring this side of the story to life; the book details how NASA used product placement, magazine articles and TV ads to inspire an interest in space and the moon in Americans.

That said, NASA employees are actually not allowed to endorse products. As it says on NASA’s website, ‘as a government agency, NASA will not promote or endorse or appear to promote or endorse a commercial product, service, or activity.’ Barry adds: ‘In dealing with the public in any form, I was regularly reminded by our legal folks that giving even the appearance of an endorsement for a commercial product would get me in big trouble.’

Is Kelly Jones A Real Person?

Scarlett Johansson’s character Kelly Jones is not a real woman, but there was a real head of public affairs at NASA during the ‘60s: Julian Scheer. Scheer oversaw a press office style team of ex-journalists who assisted the media in covering the space programme and profiling astronauts. The run up to the moon landing in 1969, rather than plotting to film a fake moon landing, NASA’s press team were more concerned about what they would tell the world if any of the astronauts died during the mission. In fact, countless statements were carefully prepared to that effect – thankfully never used.

In Fly Me To The Moon, Kelly clashes with Channing Tatum’s NASA director character Cole Davis – setting the duo up for an enemies to lovers arc. And there really was a clash between Julian and NASA’s flight director Deke Slayton. As Gilroy tells USA Today, ‘There really was a massive argument of, “You want to put a camera on (the module)? What, are you crazy? We’re just trying to get up there”. Of course we fictionalized it, made Julian a woman and totally changed her backstory. But the heart of that existed, and those conversations did happen down at NASA.’

Is The Apollo 1 Story Real?

In Fly Me To The Moon, Cole is haunted by the events of Apollo 1 – a very real, tragic story in which three astronauts were killed in a cabin fire during a launch test. The story is drawn into Cole’s character, with the three astronauts close friends of Cole’s in the world of the film. ‘Cole is really an amalgamation of so many of the flight directors and people who had to deal with the grief of Apollo 1, and then continue on to try and do the impossible,’ Gilroy tells USA Today. ‘Cole the character is not real, but his grief is. Thousands of people who had jobs like that had to go into work every day, knowing they’re carrying the legacy of people they lost.’

(source: https://www.countryandtownhouse.com/culture/fly-me-to-the-moon-movie/ )

Bart Sibrel is a filmmaker, writer, and investigative journalist. He’s the director of the films “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon” and “Astronauts Gone Wild: An Investigation Into the Authenticity of the Moon Landings,” and author of the book “Moon Man: The True Story of a Filmmaker on the CIA Hit List.”

https://www.sibrel.com/

#AwE130, MKUltra a mind control experiment by the CIA, they had to admit in the 70’s that the project was operational in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. The CIA destroyed almost all documentation relating to MKUltra and claimed that it was a more or less failed experiment, but was it? In this presentation I will make the connection between the Apollo moon landings and MKUltra. I will show evidence that MKUltra was a great success by convincing (brainwashing) the world (YOU), they landed a man on the moon. The introduction to Bill Kaysing’s book “We Never Went To The Moon”. A June 14, 1970, Knight Newspaper article asked 1,721 people in six different cities whether they really believed that U.S. astronauts had been to the moon and back. According to the newspaper, a significant number did not believe it. “The most common reasons given by skeptics were that the US did it to deceive the Russians and Chinese,…….” The Apollo moon landings and MKUltra you were the experiment!

What if Neil Armstrong’s famed moon landing in 1969 was a lie – one of the biggest lies ever told? A major piece of “evidence” seems to suggest that America’s lunar conquest was a hoax. People have noticed that Neil Armstrong’s space boots do not match his footprints on the moon.

To date, Neil Armstrong’s iconic moon landing outfit is one of the most attractive treasures housed at the Smithsonian Museum. The outfit stands tall among the multitude of aviation and space artifacts in the Washington DC museum. According to the National Air and Space Museum, Armstrong’s spacesuit is a “key part” of “one of the single greatest achievements in the history of mankind.”

The suits, which are made from non-flammable material and include a liquid cooling garment, were designed to provide relative comfort for 115 hours. The white suit, which also came with gloves and attached helmets, can serve for 14 days in a pressure-free mode. But it was the boots that caught the most attention.

The soles of the boots at the Smithsonian Museum are markedly different from those of Neil Armstrong and his landing partner, Buzz Aldrin’s footprints on the moon. A photo of Armstrong’s footprint threads is horizontal and nothing like the smooth and plain soles of the boots in the museum. (source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/evidence-proves-one-of-the-most-impactful-events-in-history-was-a-lie/ar-AA1hJyOv )

This is the classic “We Never Went to the Moon” by Bill Kaysing, which kicked off the entire moon hoax craze of the 1970s.
Bill Kaysing was head of the technical presentation’s unit at the Rocketdyne Propulsion Field Laboratory in California from 1956 to 1963. This period encompassed the major planning for the engine and components of the Apollo project. During this time, Kaysing held security clearances with the U.S. Air Force and the Atomic Energy Commission. This is the original 1986 interview with Kaysing by Ross Marshall. It was Kaysing, right or wrong, who really brought serious questions to the Apollo Moon Program, questions that were brought to film in the 1972 James Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever.

For the first time in almost half a century, Russia has launched a lunar mission in the hope of building a base together with China on the south pole of the moon.

Not only they killed he guy in Cannon Base but also they got rid of astronaut Jim Irwin how I proved in the book THE FASTEST PEN OF THE WEST.

Dmitry Rogozin, the former head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, expressed scepticism on the validity of the US Apollo 11 mission’s 1969 Moon landing, stating he had not yet seen convincing evidence.

Rogozin claimed in a post on his Telegram channel on Sunday that he started his personal search for the truth “about ten years ago” while still employed by the Russian government. He claimed that he developed doubts about the Americans landing on the Moon after observing how rested the Apollo 11 crew appeared in comparison to the exhausted Soviet cosmonauts who had just returned from their missions.

Rogozin claimed to have asked Roscosmos for proof at the time. All he got in return was a book that detailed Soviet cosmonaut Aleksey Leonov’s conversation with American astronauts, during which they revealed to him that they had visited the Moon.

The former official said that after being named head of Roscosmos in 2018, he kept up his efforts. Rogozin, however, claims that he was not given any supporting documentation. Instead, he claimed that a number of anonymous academics harshly criticised him for damaging the “sacred cooperation with NASA.”

Another claim made by the former head of Roscosmos was that he had “received an angry phone call from a top-ranking official” who allegedly accused him of disrupting international relations.

‘Hard landing’ of moon mission Moon mission makes ‘hard landing’

In his last statement, Rogozin said that despite the enormous advancement in technology since the late 1960s, he still finds it hard to believe that the US was once able to accomplish the feat but is now unable to.

However, he asserts that he discovered that Washington had “its people in [the Russian] establishment.”