A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon

I watched this video at a friend's house. I'm glad I did not waste money buying this one. The video cover has a scene from the 1975 movie Capricorn One. The movie starts out with several clips of rocket blow-ups, most not related to manned flight. Sibrel's smoking gun is a short video clip of the astronauts preparing a video broadcast. He edits in his own voice-over instead of letting us listen to what the crew had to say. The video curiously ends with a showing of the Zapruder film. His claims about radiation, shielding, star photography, and others lead me to believe is he extremely ignorant or has some sort of ax to grind against NASA, the astronauts, or American in general. His science is bad, and so is this video.

There are so many incorrect statements in this so-called "documentary" that I found myself shouting at the television.

Bart Sibrel might be able to produce a flashy looking DVD, but he is sadly lacking at looking at the science behind his claims.

He relies on either being inaccurate, not telling the full story, or the old favourite "government always lies to us" innuendos, and people believing what is told to them and not checking on the accuracy or details behind the claims.

What's more, his "exclusive" or "unreleased" footage is freely available over the internet from various sites.

Further reading about the circumstances regarding the filming of this production shows that he used false pretenses to gain interviews, and has used creative editing of the responses in order to promote his own opinions.

All of the claims made by Mr Sibrel about "inaccuracies", "mistakes", or "whistleblowing" in the Apollo programme have been thoroughly disproven.

How do I get that 40-odd minutes of my life back?

The comments here are more related to the event than to the movie itself. Here we read what WE think about the Moon landing, which is not the point of these comments. I think this movie is not good, because it is a propaganda movie, not a documentary. The author should have tried to be more objective and to try to give us another opinions, not only his (For example, FOX's documentary "Conspiracy Theory, Did We Land On The Moon?" did it much better). But this movie has some good moments, such as a parallel with JFK's assassination - it is a great example how the government has been making the fools of its citizens for decades, and will be making, years from now. Hey, really, what are they afraid of, why everything has to be sealed for such a long time? There must be a big lie involved! And what I think about the lending - I believe it's a hoax, because the American government is such a great liar! And I don't need evidences presented in this movie - for me, my own evidences and common sense is quite enough: why Mr. Armstrong left the Apollo program and NASA itself almost right after the first "lending"? Why he has never talked to the press, except on a couple of press conferences with "no further questions" pattern? Why several astronauts and Apollo-related people died mysteriously? Why Soviets have never land on the Moon, when they were much more ahead of Americans in space exploration (3 years in unmanned hard landing missions to the Moon)? Do you think they gave up just like that? Why don't we go to the Moon nowadays, it should be peace of cake compared with 1960s and 1970s efforts? It is 35 years (and counting) from the final Apollo mission, don't you tell me there is nothing left to explore on the Moon! And for God sake, how could it happen the original tapes are missing, it is FIRST MOON LANDING, not just a students' excursion - sorry, we lost our tapes, just like that! No one can convince me there wasn't something compromising on those tapes! We have to admit - something really funny happens, despite the evidences and "evidences". Personally, I think the man is not capable of going to the Moon and returning safely.

My boyfriend's room mate brought this movie home from his uncle's house and suggested we all watch it with him. At first, I didn't know what to expect, I mean how could the government POSSIBLY have staged a mission to the moon and a lunar landing! Think of all the people who would be involved and having to have them sworn to secrecy about the whole thing or else they may be eliminated? Sounds crazy, right? Well this movie is really fun to watch - it makes you re-think one of the greatest moments in American history. It gives your brain a workout and sparks some interesting debates as to whether or not Apollo 11 actually landed on the moon, let alone with people inside it who were able to walk out of the craft. It raises such topics as shadows on the videos, interesting never publicized video footage, interviews (or lack thereof), lighting on the space craft, photographs (or lack thereof), video *oops*'s, Russia, the cold war, China, future missions to the moon, staged conversations between the astronauts and mission control, the strength and construction of the space craft itself, and things of that nature. Definitely worth a viewing. Keep in mind it's a pretty cheaply made documentary so you can't expect much along the lines of video quality.

Writer/Director Bart Sibrel bases his work here around a can of film that he says was mistakenly sent to him by NASA. He says it shows the astronauts faking the television footage of their trip to the moon by employing camera tricks. The astronauts were in low Earth orbit all the time, and editors on the ground composed this raw footage into just a few seconds of finished film.

Unfortunately Sibrel's research is so slipshod that he doesn't realize his "backstage" footage is really taken in large part from the 30-minute live telecast (also on that reel) that was seen by millions, not hidden away in NASA vaults as he implies. And we have to wonder why Sibrel puts his own conspiratorial narration over the astronauts' audio in the footage, because hearing the astronauts in their own words clearly spells out that the astronauts were just testing the camera, not faking footage.

Finally, anyone can see the raw footage for themselves without having to buy Sibrel's hacked-up version of it. (He shows you more of the Zapruder film of JFK's assassination than of his "smoking gun".) Sibrel thinks he's the only one who's seen it. What's more revealing is the clips from that raw footage that Sibrel chose NOT to use, such as those clearly showing the appropriately distant Earth being eclipsed by the window frames and so forth, destroying his claim that mattes and transparencies were placed in the spacecraft windows to create the illusion of a faraway Earth.

As with most films of this type, Sibrel relies on innuendo, inexpert assumption, misleading commentary, and selective quotation to manipulate the viewer into accepting a conclusion for which there is not a shred of actual evidence.