Moonshot

There is a peculiar kind of modern heartbreak in liking a movie that no longer officially exists. In the analog days, a film could be "lost" if the celluloid rotted in a vault; in the 2020s, it happens because a CEO decides a tax write-off is more valuable than a digital file. Moonshot is one of those digital ghosts—a charming, neon-soaked YA space adventure that premiered on HBO Max in March 2022 and was unceremoniously purged from the platform just five months later. I watched this while wearing a pair of mismatched wool socks that I later found out had a hole in the big toe, which honestly felt like a fitting metaphor for a movie that’s cozy but slightly falling apart at its scientific seams.

The Coffee Shop at the End of the Universe

At its heart, Moonshot isn't really trying to be Interstellar. It’s a "road trip" movie where the road happens to be a vacuum and the car is a luxury liner headed to a terraformed Mars. Cole Sprouse plays Walt, a professional "average guy" who has been rejected from the Mars program thirty-seven times. He works as an assistant to a barista robot and dreams of the Red Planet, mostly because he had a fleeting, one-night connection with a girl named Ginny (Emily Rudd) who moved there.

Enter Sophie, played by the perpetually likable Lana Condor. Sophie is a high-achieving student whose boyfriend, Calvin (Mason Gooding), is already on Mars being perfect and successful. Through a series of contrivances involving stowaway logic that makes a TSA checkpoint look like a high-security bunker, Walt sneaks onto Sophie’s flight. They spend the next 35 days in transit, bickering, bonding, and navigating the social hierarchy of a spaceship that looks suspiciously like a high-end Silicon Valley co-working space.

Soft Science and High Spirits

If you’re the type of person who gets a migraine when a movie ignores the fundamental laws of thermodynamics, Moonshot might be a struggle. This is "Soft Sci-Fi" in its plushiest form. Mars has been terraformed into a lush, suburban paradise that looks like a very expensive neighborhood in Portland, and everyone wears chic, breathable linens. Director Christopher Winterbauer prioritizes the "Rom" over the "Sci," treating the setting as a vibrant, aesthetic backdrop rather than a hostile environment.

The visual realization is actually quite lovely. In an era where "prestige" sci-fi often opts for a palette of "Depressing Concrete Gray," Moonshot leans into teals, oranges, and warm wood grains. It’s an optimistic future, which feels like a radical choice in 2022. The production design makes the spaceship feel lived-in—not with grime, but with the clutter of human personality. It captures that specific contemporary anxiety: even when we reach the stars, we’re still going to be worried about our data plans and our crush's Instagram feed.

The Chemistry of Content

The heavy lifting is done by Lana Condor and Cole Sprouse. Condor is arguably the queen of the modern streaming rom-com, and she brings a grounded, slightly frazzled energy to Sophie that keeps the movie from drifting into total fluff. Sprouse, meanwhile, leans into a quirky, motor-mouthed persona that feels like a caffeinated version of his Riverdale character. Their chemistry works because it’s built on the classic "Grumpy/Sunshine" trope, but swapped—she’s the pragmatic realist, and he’s the delusional dreamer.

Michelle Buteau also shows up as the ship’s captain, and frankly, I would watch a three-hour spin-off about her dealing with annoying passengers. She provides a much-needed edge to a story that occasionally threatens to get too sugary. It’s essentially 'The Martian' if Matt Damon had spent the whole time thirsting over a girl who likes to organize her pens by ink density.

A Casualty of the Streaming Wars

What makes Moonshot a fascinating case study for the contemporary critic is its status as a "discarded" film. It arrived during the peak of the streaming gold rush, when platforms were throwing money at mid-budget genre hybrids to see what stuck. When the Warner Bros. Discovery merger happened in 2022, Moonshot was one of the titles deleted to save on residuals and taxes. This lack of "theatrical legacy" or even "permanent streaming home" gives it a strange, forbidden-fruit quality.

It’s a movie that says a lot about the 2020s: our obsession with finding "the one" across impossible distances, the privatization of space travel, and the disposability of digital art. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it does put some very stylish LED lights on it.

While it’s currently a bit of a scavenger hunt to find a legal way to watch it, Moonshot is a bright spot in a genre that often takes itself too seriously. It’s a breezy, 100-minute reminder that even in a future where we’ve conquered the solar system, we’re still just monkeys in tin cans trying to figure out who to sit next to at lunch. It’s a shame the algorithms didn't give it more time to breathe, because as far as "disappearing" movies go, this one deserved to stay in orbit.