Tuesday 3 April 2018

Operation Avalanche

After my somewhat tepid feelings towards Moonwalkers, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/moonwalkers.html, I was dubious about yet another fictional film about the fake moon landings. I decided to watch Operation Avalanche (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3776826/) on Amazon Prime when I heard about it at a conference. It is a "found footage" independent drama from Canada, released in 2016. It is shot in the style of Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, however it is clearly of a much a higher budget than those other two contemporary productions, being of a period setting that is well-reconstructed; with genuine 1960's cars, fashions and hairstyles etc. The story follows a group of rather geeky young film-making students who are recruited by the CIA for a mission to pose undercover at NASA, pretending to make a documentary about the Apollo Programme. The government believes the agency has been penetrated by a Soviet mole. Along with their formal project footage, the team film their adventures on portable cine cameras, the equivalent in those days of modern phone-cams. They fail to catch the spy, but during the course of their investigations they discover that NASA know secretly that a manned moon landing is impossible within the timeframe demanded by President Kennedy in May of 1961, before the end of 1969. There is also the threat that the Russians will get there first, giving them a hat-trick in the Space Race. The agents subsequently find themselves embroiled in a plot to make fake footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing in a studio which will be passed off to the world as the real thing.

The story and script are intricate and far better constructed than Moonwalkers. The acting is very good. The movie varies in tone considerably. At times, especially in the early scenes, it is something of a comedy. For example the team have to bug the telephone of James Webb, the NASA director for most of the Apollo Programme; and they gain much amusement by secretly recording him flirting lasciviously with his girlfriend. At other times the film is quite macabre. The ending is very shocking and violent. One interesting and chilling aspect is that the CIA have a "plan B" in case the film crew cannot produce the fake footage quickly enough or of realistic enough quality. They will shoot down the Apollo Saturn V rocket and blame in on the USSR. They call this "Operation Northwoods". Operation Northwoods is a real false flag operation proposed by the CIA after the Cuban Revolution. They suggested that the agency should carry out terrorist attacks in American cities, sink ships, crash airliners, murder Cuban refugees and many other atrocities, which would then be blamed on the Castro regime. This would justify all-out war on Cuba and the removal of Fidel Castro, see: https://www.wanttoknow.info/010501operationnorthwoods. It's interesting that the producers of Operation Avalanche have called their fictional space equivalent by the same name. Do they hope people will go out and Google it? I recommend watching Operation Avalanche. It serves as a very informative introduction, in fictional allegory, to the fake moon landing subject. It also includes explanations of common objections from Apollo-believers. We're approaching the half-century anniversary of the major Apollo achievements; the first manned mission, Apollo 8, will hit the fifty-year mark in December this year. Unlike Moonwalkers, I don't detect any themes of disinformation in Operation Avalanche, although others might well disagree. If anything, I think this film inspires awareness of the issues and doubts over the official story about the first human expedition onto another world.
And: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/kubricks-daughter-on-moon-landings.html.

4 comments:

Spencer said...

I've spent the last 35 years researching this and I'm convinced there was no moon landing. One day the world will know. I also agree with David Icke that the moon was once a spacecraft and is entirely hollow. People laughed when David said that but they won't be laughing when it is confirmed that he was right. Cheers Ben.

Ben Emlyn-Jones said...

Hi Spencer. I don't know about there being no moon landing at all. It seems unlikely nobody has been to the moon using the Secret Space Programme, but no way did Apollo do it. As for the moon being hollow? I'm not so sure.

Carl said...

Hiya Ben, I'm with Spencer on this one. No way did NASA go there and no-one ever has. The US gov paid $50 BILLION to the USSR to keep quiet about it. It was a con job and I'm surprised you haven't worked that out. Although, I am being cordial here, what you say about a Secret Space program sounds intriguing. Do you have any decent links about it as I am always willing to bend if need be. And Icke is dead right about the moon being a spaceship built by two brothers a long time ago. I've read all I can about it, that Icke has written and I am fully convinced he is right. Do you think one day he will be finally vindicated? I hope he is as he has a canny knack of being correct.

All the best

Carl

Ben Emlyn-Jones said...

Hi Carl.
Sure. This video is a good informative summary of the subject: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x27gjft
All the best.
Ben