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Banner image: Channing Tatum and Ray Romano in "Fly Me to the Moon." (Credit: Sony Pictures)

Romcom lovers rejoice: This week, moviegoers can watch the sparks fly between Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson in 鈥淔ly Me to the Moon,鈥� a chemistry lesson set against the backdrop of the Apollo space program. The film appears Thursday in theaters and on Apple TV+ later this year.

For Rick Stevens, a CU Boulder media scholar who studies, among other topics, pop culture and the challenges of communicating about science, the movie is ripe for discussion. 鈥淔ly Me to the Moon鈥� pits Tatum, a fictional and buttoned-down NASA director in the 1960s, against Johansson, a PR maven who鈥檚 been hired to 鈥渟ell the moon.鈥� It also pokes fun at conspiracy theories that have swirled around NASA for decades鈥攐ne subplot follows Johansson鈥檚 efforts to film a fake version of the moon landing, just in case the real one doesn鈥檛 work out.

Stevens, an associate professor in the Department of Media Studies and self-described science and science fiction fan, saw 鈥淔ly Me to the Moon鈥� during an advanced screening in Denver. He gives his take on what he calls a 鈥渨onderfully tense鈥� popcorn flick鈥攁nd why conspiracy theories around a fake moon landing have persisted more than 50 years later.听

What did you think about 鈥楩ly Me to the Moon鈥櫶齩n your first watch?

The film is very effective, first of all, at returning the viewer to the heightened anxiety of that time. Today, we forget how much anxiety there was around the Cold War, around the Nixon administration around the Vietnam War, the counterculture movement, Civil Rights Movement, all of that.听

It also captures the excitement of that time. Every time you see an Atlas rocket take off, the theater shakes.

What does the movie say about the challenges of communicating about science?

It does a great job getting the cultural conversations on the ground鈥攖hinking about this dual framework of NASA being an organization dedicated, of course, to science and putting people in environments where they hadn鈥檛 been before.听

At the same time, NASA has to hire PR firms to try to get the public to understand and get excited about science. For some of the characters, their job is to 鈥渟ell the moon鈥�: Why did Apollo matter? Why should we be excited?

How do the science-type characters react to that?

You see the resistance. That鈥檚 what the film is ultimately about鈥攖he tension around engineers who take as given that their mission is going to be understood as good, and not liking the way their realities were being spun. That church and state separation between the public and the private sector is discussed quite a bit throughout the film. But NASA embraces that PR dark side, as it were, over and over. It鈥檚 wonderfully tense.

Let鈥檚 get to conspiracy theories. Where did the idea that the moon landing was faked come from?

That conspiracy theory comes about mainly in the early 鈥�70s. Richard Slotkin, who's a sociologist, talks about the 鈥減aranoid style鈥澨齩f politics in that era. It鈥檚 after Watergate, after the Pentagon Papers and after all of these revelations that the military, the government听and even, at times, members of the media have not necessarily been giving an accurate version of events. It creates a space for conspiracy theories to flourish.听

Why does this conspiracy theory have such staying power?

Part of my research is thinking about those moments when there's a big shock to the system. The moon landing, the Challenger disaster, 9/11鈥攁ll of these are events when our normal routines were disrupted, and it leaves people searching for meaning.听

Media outlets are not designed to give people reassurance and meaning. They鈥檙e trying to produce a record of events based on documented statements and images. The difference between those logics creates this fertile ground for certain people who have reasons to mistrust institutions to spin all kinds of fanciful theories.

Do you think there鈥檚 a danger of giving credence to the conspiracy, even if it鈥檚 tongue-in-cheek?

I imagine when this film hits theaters and Apple TV+, Google searches for 鈥渋s this film real?鈥澨齛re going to trend. There was a little part of me that thought, going into the theater, 鈥淎m I okay with Apple putting it out there as a possibility?鈥澨鼴ut every year somewhere between 5% and 10% of Americans believe the moon landing was faked. And that鈥檚 without any evidence or NASA giving any shred of confirmation.

So you鈥檙e saying the conspiracy is already out there, might as well joke about it?

Characters in the film go to extraordinary lengths to reproduce the moon on a soundstage. It makes it seem very unlikely that such a thing could have actually happened, especially without someone noticing. I think that avoiding this space is more damaging than getting into, exploring it, having a little fun with it, and then pointing out it would be ridiculous to think that the moon landing could have been faked.听

Ultimately, what does the film say about NASA and science at the time?

The film shows through dialogue and character interactions that NASA is caught. It鈥檚 caught with PR it doesn't want to do and caught with the Nixon administration and its goals. NASA becomes the ultimate 鈥渨e're going to solve this problem鈥� force, which is really a strong pro-science statement.