Is Apollo 10 1/2 Based On A True Story? | Screen Rant
Is Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood based on a true story? Netflix's animated movie comes from acclaimed Oscar-nominated filmmaker Richard Linklater (Boyhood) and utilizes the technique known as rotoscoping similar to his films Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly. That means Apollo 10 1/2 was filmed with live actors, whose performances were then traced over to give the character animation a more realistic appearance.
The movie features the voices of past Linklater collaborators Jack Black, Glen Powell, and Bill Wise, along with Zachary Levi and Milo Coy, in the story of a young boy recruited by NASA for a trip to the Moon. The solo mission, called Apollo 10 1/2, is sort of a secret test run before Apollo 11's mission. Interwoven with the kid's fantasy of going to outer space is a more down-to-earth tale of a boy growing up in the late 1960s against the backdrop of the first manned mission to the Moon. While that second, more grounded part of the movie is based around the true events of Apollo 11, don't discount the possibility that the other segment is entirely made up.
In the summer of 1969, NASA launched the Apollo 11 mission that saw astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins make it into lunar orbit, with the former two ultimately landing on the Moon. That mission inspired Richard Linklater, as it did many people around the world. The future filmmaker resided in the suburbs of Houston, Texas, where NASA's Mission Control Center housed the flight control for America's space program. Linklater grew up to become one of the most prolific independent filmmakers, and many of his movies have drawn inspiration from his own life, as with the coming-of-age classics Dazed and Confused and Boyhood. In that regard, Apollo 10 1/2 is partly based on the true story of Linklater's childhood, albeit with a number of embellishments.
Not all of Linklater's real life lines up with that of Stan, though. Unlike Stan, Linklater only has two siblings, both of them older sisters - but he was still the youngest in his family. His father also didn't work at NASA, as is depicted in Apollo 10 1/2. The general feeling of being a kid at the time does come from Linklater's memory, as do many of the little events and pop culture references that make up the first half of the movie. As narrated by Black in the role of Stan in adulthood, much of Apollo 10 1/2 plays like an animated documentary about the years leading up to the Moon landing, chronicling everything from the context of the Cold War to what TV shows kids were watching.
More than the usual historical details found in documentaries on the 1960s, Linklater's movie offers a more personal and atmospheric truth of the times. A lot of the anecdotal minutiae regarding going to the drive-in, making prank phone calls, popsicle injuries, school playground activities, and little league (a staple of Linklater's childhood and his films) seem generally relatable yet also feel so specific as to have come from real experiences. Apollo 10 1/2 also portrays the doom and gloom of those days, such as political assassinations and the Vietnam conflict, but also the optimism of space exploration and how excitement for the Moon landing seemed to permeate everything around a kid's life that year - including his dreams. So while much of Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Childhood is fictional, a core part of the film is rooted in a true story of Linklater's early life.
Source: Screenrant
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