“Fly Me to the Moon”: When Fiction Invites Us to Question Official History

Fly Me to the Moon (2024)¹ follows a brilliant marketing strategist, Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson), who is blackmailed by a government agent into first promoting the Apollo 11 mission to the American public and then overseeing the production of a staged moon landing. In some respects, the film evokes a distinctly libertarian concern: an individual confronted by a coercive and secretive government apparatus, compelled to comply under threat of force rather than through voluntary consent. Yet the narrative stops short of mounting a sustained critique of federally funded institutions, ultimately affirming the grandeur of a massive public project and celebrating a collective national achievement. Nor does it articulate a systematic defense of markets, privatization, limited government, or individual rights as an explicit philosophical framework. Even so, despite the film’s ambiguity and at times convoluted plot, we believe it warrants examination from a libertarian perspective. While Fly Me to the Moon does not call into question the reality of the Apollo 11 moon landing, it does something arguably more provocative. It depicts a government determined to broadcast a manufactured simulacrum irrespective of the truth. In doing so, the film opens a space for broader critical reflection on the unreliability of official history and the extent to which state power can manage and distort the public record.

Skepticism toward government-​sanctioned accounts—particularly in the case of high-​profile events—is often dismissed in mainstream discourse and disparagingly labeled “conspiracy theory,” a rhetorical move that preemptively forecloses inquiry rather than engaging with it on substantive grounds. As a result, many are reluctant even to entertain the possibility that lived reality might diverge substantially from officially sanctioned versions of events. Fiction, however, offers a unique arena for exploring alternative possibilities, allowing virtually any scenario to be provisionally imagined as real. By situating Apollo 11 within a fictionalized framework of media strategy and contingency planning, Fly Me to the Moon invites audiences to suspend disbelief and inhabit a speculative counter-​narrative. Even if this suspension lasts only for the duration of the film, it may nonetheless encourage viewers to cultivate habits of independent reflection. Fiction thus expands the horizon of the thinkable, inviting audiences to consider propositions they might otherwise reject as incompatible with their worldview.

The film opens with an unidentified voice-​over narration acknowledging “debate about what follows,” before going on to assert his perspective as authoritative: “I was there and this is the real story … mostly.” This assertion immediately prompts the audience to question its trustworthiness. Although the first-​person speaker claims authority based on personal presence, the voice remains disembodied and anonymous, withholding the very identity that might secure its legitimacy. At the same time, the promise of a “real story” that is only “mostly” true introduces a deliberate ambiguity between fact and fabrication. From the outset, then, the film foregrounds the unreliability of narration, inviting viewers to adopt an attitude of skepticism.

Before the narrative proper begins, Fly Me to the Moon situates its story within a dense collage of archival footage, television broadcasts, and newspaper headlines that juxtapose two defining events in 1960s America: NASA’s space program and the Vietnam War. The editing establishes a visual and rhetorical parallel between these two arenas, framing each as a fraught proving ground for American power and credibility. A broadcaster’s characterization of the moon mission as a “race to beat the Russians with the national goal of putting a man on the moon within this decade” casts the Apollo program less as a scientific endeavor than as an extension of Cold War rivalry, a symbolic struggle for ideological dominance between the United States and the Soviet Union. Yet the montage also underscores repeated setbacks on both fronts. The Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik and its early successes in manned spaceflight contrast with headlines announcing American rocket failures and public embarrassment, culminating with the tragedy of three astronauts’ deaths in the Apollo 1 fire. In Vietnam, the war “rages on” amid mounting casualties, anti-​war protests, and growing public disapproval. By presenting the faltering space program against a backdrop of military stalemate, domestic unrest, and budget cuts, the film initially portrays the Apollo 11 project as a politically vulnerable and financially burdensome enterprise whose future appears deeply uncertain.

The view of NASA from the inside proves no more reassuring. Launch director Cole Davis (Channing Tatum) is shown locating the source of a hydrogen leak—and extinguishing a small fire—with nothing more than a broom. Even the vending machines malfunction in this “underfunded and understaffed” environment, reinforcing the impression of an institution operating far below the polished, state-​of-​the-​art image it seeks to project.

Before Kelly Jones is brought on board to remedy NASA’s public relations and budgetary troubles, the film shows her thriving in her own element in Manhattan. As she enters a corporate boardroom, she is initially dismissed by the male business executives who assume she is a secretary: “Wrong room, sweetheart, we don’t need dictation.” Undeterred, she introduces herself and her role as the head strategist: “I’m Kelly Jones, I’ll be running the meeting today.” The men, continuing to underestimate her, tout their company as “progressive” for employing “sixteen women in the sten pool” and condescendingly declare: “We’re selling sports cars—to men.” Kelly turns the situation to her advantage, reframing marketing through the lens of domestic decision-​making and highlighting that wives, rather than husbands, ultimately determine major purchases such as automobiles. With ingenuity and charm, she not only transforms the men’s perception of her—and potentially of women more broadly—but also persuades them to adopt her surprising marketing strategy: selling sports cars by highlighting seatbelt safety, a feature installed only in anticipation of government regulations. This sequence establishes Kelly as a force capable of changing perspectives. As she later explains, “It’s called selling. We’re not lying to the customer, we’re changing the way they think.”

Kelly’s subsequent conversation with her assistant Ruby shows that she is equally adept at cutting through surface appearances. When Kelly asks Ruby to call her contact at Dow Chemical, Ruby protests: “People should be boycotting Dow, they make napalm.” Stuck in slogans and moral imperatives, Ruby is unable to see beyond her own ideological perspective. Kelly, however, responds with a pragmatic insight: “People say they’re boycotting but they’re still buying sandwich bags. They also sell Saran Wrap and styrofoam. Are people going to stop using styrofoam? What’s your coffee in right now?” By pointing out the hidden links between a harmful chemical and common household products, Kelly not only deftly exposes the hypocrisy of her assistant’s virtue signaling, but also demonstrates her grasp of the complex realities that underlie everyday decisions.

Following her boardroom triumph, Kelly is approached by Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson), a shadowy operative from the president’s office, who enlists her as a “marketing specialist” to “sell the moon landing” and to rebrand NASA. He forces her to accept the assignment by threatening to expose a dark secret from her past. In sharp contrast to Kelly’s method of skillful voluntary persuasion, Moe’s modus operandi—in this scene and throughout the film—is coercion. Whether by blackmailing Kelly or later overruling Cole, Moe embodies the blunt exercise of state power. Every one of his actions establish him as the antagonist, while the government, through his conduct, is depicted as manipulative and untrustworthy—driven solely by strategic outcomes and indifferent to truth or consent.²

While businesses advertise to increase sales in a competitive market, we may not immediately think of governments as needing to advertise since—as Max Weber famously remarked—the state maintains a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within its political boundaries. In practice, however, governments actively engage in strategies to shape public perception. In comparing private-​sector advertising to what he calls “governmental propaganda” (emphasis in the original), Murray Rothbard evokes “the hordes of press agents, publicists, and propagandists working for government agencies, bombarding the taxpayers with propaganda which the latter have been forced to support” (emphasis in the original).³Kelly’s role at NASA reflects this historical reality: “The agency did make a concerted effort and was mostly successful in marketing the moon through the work of a team of public relations specialists. More than just providing mission commentary, the members of NASA’s public affairs offices churned out pamphlets, press kits, bylined articles and ready-​to-​air radio and television features.”⁴

At NASA, Kelly introduces herself and Ruby as the new public affairs team. Despite Cole’s initial disapproval, she gradually earns his respect by implementing marketing strategies that successfully secure funding for the mission. She likewise wins over the rest of NASA’s scientists and engineers, a group composed predominantly of young men with an average age of twenty-six—a detail thatsuggests both their youthful idealism and technical ingenuity. Kelly’s keen ability to discern incentives and calibrate her messaging enables her to connect effortlessly with diverse audiences. Yet this skill often entails a degree of fabrication. When NASA engineers refuse to be interviewed, she casts actors to impersonate them, recording staged testimonies as if they were genuine. These interventions blur the boundary between documentation and simulation, underscoring how easily images of authority and authenticity can be constructed.

Kelly’s role extends beyond clever promotion; she also lobbies senators to secure continued funding for the space program, employing psychological manipulation to influence their decisions. She tailors her arguments to each listener’s priorities, identifying the selling points most likely to persuade them. For example, she wins over one senator with her convincingly assumed Georgia accent and carefully performed femininity, despite his previous plan to direct funds toward local flood relief. Another senator, initially concerned that the space program would divert resources from weapons development, is quickly persuaded that controlling the moon is simply an extension of military strategy. The ease with which the film’s politicians change their minds reinforces a sobering point: decisions involving billions of taxpayer dollars can hinge less on principled deliberation than on the persuasive power of a savvy rhetorical strategy.

As Kelly makes progress, televised updates of NASA’s successes compete for the American public’s attention alongside grim reports from the Vietnam War, creating the sense of rival narratives vying for prominence. This tension spills into the fictional plot when Kelly learns that Neil Armstrong’s appearance has been assigned to a 3 p.m. timeslot—presumably drawing fewer viewers—because of breaking news from the war. The images shown on the television screen are so impactful that the broadcaster concedes that “words don’t describe it.” This moment serves as the catalyst for Kelly’s new plan: filming the moon landing for direct public broadcast. Although Cole initially rejects the proposal, he is compelled to adopt it after Moe insists that the President supports it.

Moe then seizes upon the planned filming to advance a more sinister objective. Breaking into Kelly’s motel room, he orders her to orchestrate a fully staged moon landing—complete with actors and a meticulously constructed set—to be deployed as a contingency should the real mission fail. No longer content to manufacture public enthusiasm for the lunar venture, Moe wants to guarantee the appearance of its success, irrespective of what might occur in reality. To that end, he unveils Project Artemis, named for the Greek moon goddess and twin sister of Apollo, as a shadow program. Cornered into compliance by yet another threat, Kelly protests that deception on such a grand scale could not possibly remain concealed: “Thousands of people work here.” Moe counters that “thousands of people work at a classified location in the desert that experiments on a fleet of extraterrestrial pods that we found at the bottom of the ocean, and you never heard about that.” When Kelly dismisses the claim—“Come on, that’s not true”—Moe replies with disquieting ambiguity: “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.” As Moe leaves, his parting remark that “Panama beckons” further gestures toward a world of covert operations and unaccountable power beyond the reach of public scrutiny.

Kelly hires a director friend of hers and crew to surreptitiously construct a realistic moon set inside the NASA compound, complete with simulated lunar dust. The scene in which she compels the director to accept the assignment, though humorous on the surface, lays bare the deadly force behind state power: “I cannot accept that.” “They will shoot you.” “What’s my budget?”

The film takes an even darker turn when Moe orders Kelly to broadcast the staged landing “start to finish,” synchronized with the astronauts’ audio, even if the real moon landing is successful. After Kelly eventually confesses the scheme to Cole, Moe summons them both and reframes the deception as “a matter of national security.” According to his reasoning, “the mission isn’t about landing on the moon anymore. It is about watching America beat Russia on TV.” Moe pushes the studio version because it will allow him to command “a controlled setting.” When perception is paramount, truth becomes expendable.

Kelly and Cole ultimately work with their respective teams to secretly defy Moe’s orders, rewiring the camera so that it transmits the real landing rather than the staged version. As the spacecraft approaches the moon, Moe waits in the studio, expecting to see on television the same version that will be shot on set. The film then recreates the descent to the lunar surface in a way that feels authentic within the fiction itself, seamlessly blending three distinct spatial layers—historical archival footage, the film’s astronauts in orbit, and the actors performing on the studio set. The sequence initially presents archival images from inside the vessel looking out at the moon, intercut with close-​ups of the fictional astronauts in space. A subjective camera then frames the astronauts from behind as they open the hatch and prepare to exit the craft. In a continuous shot, the camera begins to drift slowly outward and down toward the ladder—only to reveal that the landscape is not the moon but the studio set. Through this edited sequence, the film formally demonstrates how easily fact and fiction can be confounded and how the very perception of reality can be engineered, compelling the audience to constantly question what is real.

The viewers are not the only ones hard pressed to distinguish fact from artifice. At first, the team effort to deceive Moe proceeds according to plan: the director cues the actors so that their movements align precisely with the audio and images transmitted from space. At a certain point, however, Neil Armstrong informs Cole that the video-​feed light is off and suspects that a power surge may have disabled the camera. Cole relays the concern to Kelly, worried that they may be watching only the studio footage after all. Kelly glances back and forth between the set and her monitor: the actors’ movements and the meticulously constructed stage are virtually identical to what appears on the screen in front of her. The illusion has been executed with such precision that not even Kelly can distinguish reality from its simulation.

The truth is confirmed only when a black cat darts across the studio set—without appearing on the monitor. The broadcast indeed proves to be the real moon landing. Although Moe had insisted on using the staged version to maintain total control, that very illusion of control is shattered when the unpredictable real world intrudes upon the carefully constructed fake one. What was intended to guarantee dominance instead exposes the fragility of managed perception. In light of the international uproar that would have followed the inexplicable spectacle of a cat on the moon, Moe acknowledges that Kelly saved the day by defying his orders.

Moe may have failed in his plan to broadcast the staged version of the Apollo 11 landing, but the film suggests that the US government nevertheless succeeded in projecting a persuasive narrative to the world. The celebrated words of Neil Armstrong—“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”—alongside the inscription on the lunar plaque, “We came in peace for all mankind,” employ lofty, universalist rhetoric. Yet, underlying this impression of harmony and human achievement, the film repeatedly frames the mission as, on the contrary, part of an ideological struggle against the Soviet Union, aimed at asserting global dominance. As Moe succinctly puts it, “It is a race for which ideology gets to run things,” highlighting the degree to which geopolitics and mediated representation determine which version of history reaches the public.

Although Kelly outwitted Moe in the immediate confrontation, she can reasonably infer that she will remain under his constant scrutiny for the rest of her life. His parting words—“If you ever need me … Just holler, I’m probably listening”—are delivered in a joking manner, yet carry an unsettling undertone. This veiled threat echoes Moe’s earlier warning to the film crew that anyone exposing the secret will spend the rest of their days “in a dark dank prison cell on an island.” In our post 9/11 world, such imagery can only evoke the indefinite and extrajudicial confinement associated with the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

As Moe makes his exit, Kelly calls after him: “Are there really aliens out there?” His enigmatic reply that “they walk among us” is provocatively open to interpretation.⁵ Yet the film’s closing words are not Moe’s cryptic assertion but the stark warning emblazoned above the building’s entrance: “Government property. No trespassing.” After capturing this message, the camera slowly pulls back in an aerial retreat to reveal the vast surrounding landscape. Its sweeping gaze evokes an unseen, omnipresent authority that has haunted the narrative all along, not least through Moe’s repeated and unexpected appearances. The final shot thus juxtaposes two forms of power: the restrictive authority guarding sealed government spaces and the expansive, pervasive surveillance cast over everything beyond its doors.

The film’s resonance extends beyond its immediate context, inviting reflection on any number of historical moments in which official accounts have been met with widespread skepticism or later contradicted by subsequent evidence. Controversies surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the September 11 attacks and subsequent Iraq War, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine rollout, are among the most prominent examples. As former US State Department employee William Blum remarked: “No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-​minded you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine.”⁶

By all industrial measures, Fly Me to the Moon qualifies as a mainstream production: it was backed by a major Hollywood studio, had a reported budget of approximately $100 million, and received the full cooperation of NASA, including on-​location filming at the Kennedy Space Center.⁷ And the film certainly does not make the controversial claim that the entire Apollo 11 landing was fabricated. Nonetheless, it offers a provocative meditation on truth and perception, urging viewers to remain skeptical of all narratives—whether market advertisements or governmental propaganda. More pointedly, it portrays a government willing to coerce individuals and deceive the public. In doing so, the film underscores how easily “reality” can be manufactured—and how, once mediated through a television screen, the distinction between authentic and fabricated images can become virtually impossible to discern. The result is a cautionary tale that warns against uncritical trust in official narratives and affirms the necessity of skepticism and verification in an age when images can be engineered with ease. The film thus opens a space of imaginative possibility in which doubt toward even the most firmly established mainstream narratives can take shape. As Kelly reflects near the film’s conclusion, “Truth is still the truth even if nobody believes it. A lie is still a lie even if everybody believes it.”