Moonshot (2022)
Review of Moonshot (2022), directed by Chris Winterbauer
I originally wrote a review for Moonshot over at MovieWeb, but wow. I truly had to reign myself in for that review, although it was fairly scathing in terms of my usual gauge for review tolerance. I found out about this movie by stalking Lana Condor’s Wikipedia page, as I saw she had this upcoming movie up with Cole Sprouse for HBO Max.
Saw the trailer had over five million hits on YouTube, so when the time came, I pitched it to my editor who agreed to publish it. With the science fiction romantic comedy element, along with the combination of Cole Sprouse and Lana Condor, I think was just coming into the movie with too many expectations.
Let’s dive into this review.
Two young adults come to realize what truly matters in life when they arrive on Mars.
We begin Moonshot with Walt. The year is 2049 and Walt is the relatable college student. He has literally changed his major many, many times and has taken out hundreds of loans in order to pay for his education. He is the epitome of college burnout, as he has become a barista on campus. His boss is a robot that makes fun of him, so there’s that as well.
But if there’s one thing we need to know about Walt, it’s this: he loves space so, so much. His idol is a rich billionaire who started a human colony on Mars (Elon Musk? Is that you?) and so Walt wants to go to Mars, but one ticket costs a million dollars. The only way to make it to Mars is to get accepted into the student program, but Walt has been rejected a whopping thirty-seven times.
PhD student Sophie (Condor) is dating a guy named Calvin, who is actually on the student program on Mars. They’ve been doing long distance for a year now, but in the first arc of the movie we learn that Calvin will be on Mars indefinitely.
When Sophie first meets Walt a birthday party (he creepily wanders into her room and breaks her boyfriend’s gift), they are immediately established as fenemies, making trope #1. Sophie, later out of rage, buys a million dollar ticket in front of Walt, he sneaks onto the ship with her, then the movie slowly spirals into a series of questionable scriptwriting.
I have many, many questions about this movie. It makes a mockery out of Walt and the fact he doesn’t have money, which I found extremely problematic.
If the joke was made once or twice, fine, I wouldn’t be mad about it. But this joke is brought up again and again by people clearly of a wealthier status than him, including Sophie, and it honestly becomes kind of disgusting after a point.
It becomes a point of elitism and class privileges, and I don’t find the ending of Sophie and him getting together because earlier she was literally making fun of his social status and calling him an idiot for not being on the same level as her.
This class aspect is then brought up when Calvin’s audition video for the space program is found by Walt. Calvin’s parents work for the government or something, so they all got to go to space—except Sophie, their adopted kid, who has a fear of flying that suddenly disappears when she is actually flying.
In his audition video, Calvin is clearly stammering and Sophie is heard telling him what to do. If this isn’t nepotism at play, then what is it? If Calvin was able to get into the program on his first try and Walt, who has done this thirty-seven times and is clearly very, very passionate can’t, something is wrong with the system.
The whole going to space thing was also definitely commentary. Earth is said to be a trash dump in this universe for the wealthy living on Mars, then a ticket to Mars only costs you a million dollars for a commercial seat.
The fact some billionaire is running all of this makes this even worse in an Elon Musk kind of manner. Walt is then exploited by this guy (who also happened to be his hero), leading him to board the next spaceship home.
We also have the dead parents trope brought up, but then it never appears again. There are so many holes in this plot that I ran out of fingers to count them on.
The pilot of the spaceship also clearly knew that Walt wasn’t supposed to be on there, which made some of the events even weirder when this all came to light. I think the spaceship captain was inserted for a comedic factor, but I honestly didn’t find her funny at all.
The two leads lack a particular kind of chemistry that is needed for a romantic comedy, while the science fiction elements fall short. That one scene where they walk out onto space is nice, but that’s about it.
It’s everything we’ve seen before trying to disguise itself as sci-fi, which is why it falls so flat. With the holes in the story and the lack of character development, it seems like Moonshot fizzles out before it even reaches halfway to the red planet.
Overall Thoughts
Don’t waste your time. I was enraged enough to try and think about throwing my popcorn at the screen (spoiler: I did not. I silently turned the television off, fumed, and then sat there and thought about how I had to write that review for work). It’s a plethora of missed opportunities, but because of other HBO movies that have come out like The Fallout and Kimi, I genuinely had high hopes for this one. It unfortunately failed to deliver. Just skip it.
