MovieChat Forums > Le voyage dans la lune (1902) Discussion > The 'goofs' people submitted for this fi...

The 'goofs' people submitted for this film are ridiculous


I really can't believe most of the "goofs" submitted for this film.

People point out that the space travelers watch an Earthrise, but that this would never happen on the Moon. And that the ship lands on an "inland" area on the Moon, but they fall off the edge at the end. And that even though they saw the Earth above them, when they fall off the Moon's edge they fall straight onto Earth, which would not be possible since the Earth had been directly above them previously.

WHAT?!! This movie is a fantasy. It was supposed to be silly, not literal. The Moon has no "edge" -- so how could it have an "inland" section? They can't "fall off" the Moon, so what does it matter where the Earth was?

Melies wasn't trying to create a scientific prophecy. This isn't George Pal doing Destination Moon 48 years later. It's not the documentary For All Mankind. It's an exercise in humor. Even in 1902 people knew you couldn't just fall off the Moon, any more than you can "fall off" the Earth. To criticize this movie on these things is ridiculous. You might as well submit a goof for the Three Stooges movie Have Rocket, Will Travel stating that the film is in error for depicting a unicorn on Venus.

I'm just mildly surprised IMDb would accept most of the goofs listed here. You know, you need to put this stuff into some sort of rational context.

Say! How come no one's submitted one pointing out that the Moon has no "face", so the rocket couldn't hit the "Man in the Moon's" eye, and he couldn't grimace when it strikes him? I mean, God, that mistake's so obvious!

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How right you are, hobnob53! You just gotta laugh, though, don't you...with some of the stuff that people write.

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Not to mention that no one at IMDb seems to bother to apply any common sense to assessing these submissions. Maybe there's something in their eye....

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yes, just the fact that this movie was made the way it was more than 100 years ago is amazing, the fact that they even colored it by hand is also amazing.

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You're right. When I hear people who are so enamored of CGI talk about how well computers do such things, I cringe when I think how little they know or understand or appreciate about the painstaking labor by actual people using their own skills and artistry to make something that enchants us 110 years later, while a hundred years from now most of today's vacuous movies with repetitive eye-candy effects will be indistinguishable one from the other.

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95% of the eye candy films made are already indistinguishable from one another.

"America isn't ready for a gay, mexican chicken sandwich" - Poultrygeist

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Yes, you're absolutely right. But I was speaking in the context of a remove of over a century, as with this film. Although, who knows? Perhaps by 2014 the general I.Q will have declined so far that the Transformers series will be regarded as iconic cultural masterpieces, alongside those ads for Progressive Insurance.

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Hobnob: I was just about to post the same thing and then noticed your thread. Unbelievable that people actually bother to post goofs for a movie from 1902 lol. Planes and rockets didn't even exist yet, so clearly you'd THINK we would be able to cut them some slack and not apply early 21st century ideas of physics and astrophysics.

Even if it WASN'T a fantasy, there still is no point in pointing out "goofs" from the turn of the twentieth century hahaha. I'm not sure who the bigger morons are, the ones who posted those thinking they were somehow being intelligent, or the IMDB staff who thought those were worth putting in. While we're at it, why don't we also post a goof for every "continuity" error, which is just about every shot of the movie since camera frame rates were so much lower and it looks often as if things are jumping from spot to spot. People's lack of common sense is absolutely astounding sometimes.

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Hi hexedd, glad to see somebody else caught this stuff too!

I suppose we could also criticize the movie because its hand-painted colors don't match the actual colors on the moon. I mean, you'd think Melies would have looked through his telescope once in a while to get it right!

As to your "bigger moron" contest, I'd say the people who submitted such things win by a nose. The IMDb staff is more likely simply being lazy and inattentive, going through the motions while waiting for that next paycheck.

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And i just want to point out that when they are traveling to the moon, the moon has a face. I dont know if anyone here has ever looked trough a telescope, but THE MOON HAS NO FACE!

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Good point, nobody has commented on that yet! ;)

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAIJ3Rh5Qxs

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Good point, nobody has commented on that yet! ;)


Yeah, except me, in my OP.

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Yes, I know - the little wink at the end was supposed to convey light-hearted silliness/sarcasm. Sorry, I should have made it more obvious.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAIJ3Rh5Qxs

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Oh, yes, I wondered about that. Normally I'm not very bright at the hour I wrote that post. Sorry!

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LMAO. Is this for real? 

Poorly Lived and Poorly Died, Poorly Buried and No One Cried

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Oh, it's real all right, Popper. Truth is stranger than stupidity.

🌝

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