This thing has to begin somewhere and it might as well begin with the hip thing that all the kids are talking about these days–a bad conspiracy theory movie from the ’70s. Capricorn One came out the same year as Star Wars, and is more a cultural critique than science fiction movie. After declining interest in the space program for the last few Apollo moon landings, NASA decides to fake a manned trip to Mars, to the apparent surprise of the astronauts, who presumably have spent years training for this mission.
From a cinematic perspective, it’s shocking how much talent could be squeezed into this film with such bad results. Elliott Gould, James Brolin, Sam Waterston, Hal Holbrook, Telly Savalas, David Huddleston, O.J. Simpson… Ok, maybe that last one is not too surprising. This film is bad. 1970s wacka-chicka-wacka-chicka bad.
It also feeds into the moon landing conspiracy theories that were emerging at the time and, unfortunately, persist to this day. Despite endless evidence to the contrary, people continue to believe that the Moon landings were faked. We will revisit this topic again.