Richard Linklater is rotoscoping the moon landing in the Apollo 10 1/2 trailer
With Jack Black’s help, the Boyhood director is sending children to space. Cartoon children, that is.
Richard Linklater is returning to his very recognizable brand of animation. Using the rotoscoping visual effects he used to turn Alex Jones into a cartoon in Waking Life, Linklater plans to send a kid into space with Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood.
Landing on Netflix next month, Apollo 10 1/2 takes viewers back to the summer of ‘69. It was a summer that seemed to last forever, but also, it was the summer of the moon landing. In Linklater’s retelling, though, a secret NASA program needs one special little boy to go in a special little rocket and save the world. Sort of. We just hope that the little boy can help Mars, which is in desperate need of moms.
Here’s the logline from Netflix:
Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood tells the story of the first moon landing in the summer of 1969 from two interwoven perspectives – the astronaut and mission control view of the triumphant moment, and through the eyes of a kid growing up in Houston, Texas who has intergalactic dreams of his own.
The trailer has more in common with Dazed And Confused than A Scanner Darkly despite the sci-fi story. Linklater set the movie in his hometown of Houston, Texas, in the late 60s, where his cartoon family comments on the “vibe shift” of the changing decade. And what a vibe shift it was. Long hair on men. Bell bottom jeans. People going into space. The vibe would never be the same.
Per Deadline, Linklater said that he began working on the movie during Boyhood’s 20-year production:
Eighteen years ago, I was pulling out memories of 2nd grade to help me construct the narrative of Boyhood’s second year. Even though that movie is a celebration of the non-extraordinary, it became clear to me I had lived through and close to something truly extraordinary – the grandest and most enduring engineering feat in human history. I think it took decades for us to fully process that the Apollo program and walking on the moon was the apex because we’d all believed it was just a great beginning.
Linklater won’t be taking on the mission alone. He’s re-teaming with his Bernie bro and School Of Rock classmate Jack Black, as well as Glen Powell and Zachary Levi.
Apollo 10 1/2 launches on Netflix on April 1.