Honestly I shouldn't even be giving this movie a review because the plot is so barebones and weak that it is essentially copy and pasted from a ton of other sci-fi films, but because it is one of the first sci-fi films in color I feel like I have to address it. One thing that this movie should be known for more than its story is the fact that it depicts a moon landing almost 2 decades before the actual thing, and it's surprisingly realistic. The moon is shown to have craters and rocky formations on its surface that would end up being accurate to what the crew of Apollo 11 would later see. Essentially, the movie is about space enthusiasts who get industrialists to build them a rocket to fly to the moon with, and once in space, they engage in strange things like walking on the outside of the ship's hull while its moving. One of the astronauts slips off, but is later retrieved. The movie gets slightly more dramatic toward the end, when it is shown that even though the moon landing was successful, the descent used too much fuel, so now the ship cannot reach the necessary speed to escape the moon's atmosphere. The men desperately scour the ship for heavy objects that are deemed non important to the mission and toss them overboard in order to free up weight, but still no luck. They come to the conclusion that someone must sacrifice himself and stay on the moon if the rest are to make it back to earth, but after discarding the ship's radio they're all able to leave safely. This cliche of having someone stay behind so the rest can make it back is ripped straight from Fritz Lang's Frau Im Mond, but the writers probably figured that movie is so old nobody would notice the copying. This movie practically paved the way for more science fiction films involving space, but by modern standards it doesn't look like much.
Review of Destination Moon
