Georges Méliès was a magician before he was a filmmaker. That matters. If you watch A Trip to the Moon movie today, you aren't just looking at a dusty relic from 1902; you’re watching the moment humanity realized that cameras could lie for the sake of art. It’s short. It’s silent. It’s hand-tinted in colors that look like a psychedelic storybook. But honestly, without this weird French masterpiece about astronomers hitting the Man in the Moon in the eye with a capsule, we wouldn't have Star Wars or Dune.
Cinema was boring before Méliès. People used to go to the theater just to see a train pull into a station or workers leaving a factory. Boring stuff. Real life. Méliès saw a camera and thought, "I can make people disappear with this." He brought the stagecraft of a Parisian illusionist to the silver screen, and Le Voyage dans la Lune (its original French title) became the world's first true block-buster. It was pirated by Thomas Edison, celebrated by audiences, and then almost lost to history forever.
The Most Iconic Shot in Film History (and the Mistake People Make)
You know the image. A rocket stuck in the right eye of a grumpy-looking moon. It’s everywhere. T-shirts, Smashing Pumpkins music videos, coffee mugs. Most people think A Trip to the Moon movie is just that one shot, but the narrative is actually a chaotic, high-energy satire of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.
It starts with a bunch of astronomers in wizard-like robes arguing in a hall. They decide to build a giant cannon. They launch. They land. They sleep on the moon's surface while stars with human faces watch them. Then, things get violent. The "Selenites"—the moon's inhabitants—show up and start exploding into puffs of smoke when hit with umbrellas. It’s bizarre. It's frantic. It’s basically a 1902 fever dream that cost a fortune to make—about 10,000 francs, which was huge at the time.
💡 You might also like: Actor Most Academy Awards: The Record Nobody Is Breaking Anytime Soon
Méliès didn't use a telescope to research this. He didn't care about physics. He cared about the "trick." He used "stop substitution," where he’d stop the camera, move an actor, and start it again. To the audience in 1902, this was actual magic. They had never seen a person turn into a puff of smoke.
Why the 2011 Color Restoration Changed Everything
For decades, we only had scratchy, black-and-white versions of the film. It looked old. It felt distant. Then, a hand-colored print was discovered in Spain in 1993. It was in terrible shape. It was essentially a puck of decomposed film.
It took years of digital surgery to bring it back. When the restored color version premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011, featuring a new soundtrack by the band Air, it felt like a brand-new movie. The colors aren't "realistic." They are vibrant pinks, yellows, and greens that were originally painted onto the film strip frame-by-frame by a workshop of women in Paris. Seeing it in color makes you realize that Méliès wasn't trying to document a space mission; he was creating a moving painting.
📖 Related: Ace of Base All That She Wants: Why This Dark Reggae-Pop Hit Still Haunts Us
The Thomas Edison Scandal and the Birth of Film Piracy
Here is a bit of tea from 1902. Méliès wanted to make a killing in the United States. He planned to distribute the film himself. But Thomas Edison’s film technicians got their hands on a print in London. They brought it back to America, made a bunch of copies, and sold them. Edison made a fortune. Méliès got almost nothing.
This basically ruined Méliès. He eventually went bankrupt, burned many of his original sets and costumes in a fit of despair, and ended up selling toys and candy at a kiosk in the Gare Montparnasse railway station. It’s a heartbreaking story. The man who invented special effects was forgotten until a group of film fans recognized him decades later.
- Directed by: Georges Méliès
- Release Year: 1902
- Runtime: Roughly 12 to 14 minutes depending on frame rate
- Based on: From the Earth to the Moon and The First Men in the Moon
How to Actually Watch It Today
Don't just watch a low-quality YouTube rip. You've got to find the restored version. The difference in detail is staggering. You can see the texture of the cardboard sets and the sweat on the actors' faces.
👉 See also: '03 Bonnie and Clyde: What Most People Get Wrong About Jay-Z and Beyoncé
Modern viewers often find the "acting" funny. It’s very theatrical. Lots of arm-waving. That’s because, in 1902, there was no such thing as "film acting." You acted for the back row of a theater. If you didn't move your whole body, the audience wouldn't know what you were feeling.
The film also has a weirdly colonialist vibe if you look closely. These European scientists show up, kill the locals with umbrellas, and kidnap one to bring back to Earth as a trophy. It’s a fascinating, if uncomfortable, window into the mindset of the early 20th century. Scholars like Matthew Solomon have written extensively about how the film satirizes the scientific community of the day while simultaneously leaning into the tropes of the era.
The Special Effects We Still Use
Every time you see a "jump cut" in a TikTok or a Marvel movie uses a green screen, you are seeing the DNA of A Trip to the Moon movie. Méliès pioneered the "dissolve," where one image fades into another. He used double exposure to make actors appear twice in the same frame. He was a one-man ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) before computers existed.
Actionable Insights for Film Buffs
If you want to truly appreciate this film, don't watch it in a vacuum.
- Watch Scorsese's 'Hugo' first. Martin Scorsese made this movie as a love letter to Méliès (played by Ben Kingsley). It dramatizes the discovery of the lost filmmaker and explains the "magic" of his process in a way that’s easy to digest.
- Compare the frame rates. If the movement looks too fast and "Charlie Chaplin-esque," you're watching it at the wrong speed. Silent films weren't meant to look frantic; they were shot at a lower frame rate than modern films, and seeing them at the correct 14 or 16 frames per second makes them feel much more natural.
- Listen to the 'Air' Soundtrack. The French electronic duo Air composed a score for the color restoration. It’s moody, spacey, and fits the vibe way better than the generic "honky-tonk" piano music often slapped onto silent films.
A Trip to the Moon movie isn't just a history lesson. It’s a reminder that movies started as a way to show us things that couldn't possibly happen. It’s 14 minutes of pure, unadulterated imagination. Go find the 2011 restoration, turn off your phone, and imagine you’re in a tent in 1902 seeing a rocket hit the moon for the very first time. It still works.