The film follows the crewed missions to the Moon made by the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The documentary reviews both the footage and media available to the public at the time of the missions, as well as NASA films and materials which had not been opened in over 30 years. All of this has been sourced and remastered in HD by the stock footage company Footagevault. Augmenting the archival audio and video are contemporary interviews with some surviving Apollo era astronauts, including Alan Bean, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin, John Young, David Scott, Charlie Duke, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt. The former astronauts have the only speaking roles in the film, although occasional supplementary information is presented on screen with text and archival television footage presents the words of journalists such as Jules Bergman and Walter Cronkite. The only surviving Moon walker at the time not to participate was Neil Armstrong, the first person to set foot on the Moon. The documentary shares its name with a book by space historians Colin Burgess and Francis French, and both include many original interviews with Apollo lunar astronauts. The documentary offers a view of the Apollo program that is complementary to the book and is neither a source nor a tie-in.
Participants
Ten former astronauts appear in In the Shadow of the Moon. During the Apollo Program, twenty-four men reached the vicinity of the Moon. Of the twelve who actually set foot on the lunar surface, eight appear on camera. Two other astronauts who are featured in In the Shadow of the Moon orbited around the Moon without landing. All crewed Apollo flights with the exception of Apollo 7, which was an Earth-orbit mission, were represented in the film. The film is presented by Ron Howard, but there is no narration in the film.
Critics gave the film very positive reviews. Metacritic reports that In the Shadow of the Moon has a score of 84 out of 100, based on 34 critics, classifying the film's reception as "Universal acclaim". Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a 95% approval rating, based on 113 reviews. Roger Ebert called it "spellbinding". Entertainment Weekly rated the movie an A. The Los Angeles Times called the film a "fresh and compelling film, made with intelligence and emotion". Meanwhile, The Hollywood Reporter concluded that "The value of this film, not just to moviegoers today but to future generations, is simply enormous." On 23 June 2008, the Independent Investigations Group honoured In the Shadow of the Moon for promoting scientific skepticism in media; the award was received by producer Duncan Copp.
