A crowd of people, all dressed like wizards, are dancing around while a guy scribbles some kind of simplistic blueprint on a blackboard. This wide shot continues for far too long before it cuts to them constructing a large capsule. Once it's complete, some dudes get inside, it's loaded into a giant, cylindrical chamber - much like that of a gun - and fired at the moon. This is, of course, where the iconic moon-face gets shot in the eye. The guys jump out of the bullet and dance around while breathing sweet, sweet moon-air. After a few seconds, they have blankets and are off to sleep while some images appear above them - such as people's heads in stars and planets n' shit. It starts snowing (moon snow, I presume) and the party retreats to an underground moon-cave full of giant mushrooms. One of the mushrooms grows and they stand back, flailing their arms at it (silent film miming). A scrawny acrobat in some kind of mask appears and crawls around before one of the guys smacks it with his umbrella and it combusts into a puff of smoke. Another jumps out. Same outcome. Then a whole herd of moon-monkeys burst on screen and capture the space travelers, leading them down to their moon-emperor. They make a swift getaway (again with exploding moon-monkeys) and retreat back to the ship...
This film was certainly full of new concepts for the mesmerized public of the early 1900s. Transitional dissolves, animation, and nicely blended painted set designs. Other than the technical aspects, "A Trip to the Moon" is fun to watch due how goddamn strange it is. Quite a proverbial acid trip. Of course, film historian types will get a boner from the significance of it's influence on the evolution of cinema.
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