By Patrick Kevin Day, Todd Martens and Jevon Phillips
Forty years ago, astronauts Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin (pictured) and Neil Armstrong, along with Michael Collins (who remained in the capsule), became the first humans to set foot on the surface of Earth’s moon. [UPDATED: An earlier post said that Michael Collins also set foot on the Moon. He did not physically reach the moon.] The Apollo missions continued until 1972, at which time mankind took a very, very long break from walking on the moon. In fact, we haven’t been back since.
But on film, humans have never stopped going to the moon -- ours and any other moons we come across. Some have been unquestionably awe-inspiring (see “2001”) some have been decidedly underwhelming, like Galileo‘s Child, and others have been a hot topic of controversy for decades (the forest moon of Endor and its cuddly inhabitants). To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, we look back at a few moon flicks worth remembering. (NASA / EPA)