In Korea, July and August are the summer vacation period, so Korean film companies release films with a lot of budget during this period. The film that announced the start of the summer peak season of 2023 was 'The Moon'. This film is the first film in Korean film history to deal with lunar exploration. However, both the audience and critics harshly criticized this film. July and August are the months when the most movie tickets are sold in Korea, but only 500,000 tickets were sold for ‘The Moon’. In order to recover the production and marketing costs of this film, more than 6 million tickets had to be sold.**

The story of the film revolves around the events that unfold when Korea's first lunar probe drifts in space. A total of three astronauts boarded this spacecraft, but due to a technical defect, two of them, except Hwang Seon-woo (Do Kyung-soo), died in space. Hwang Seon-woo, who was left alone in space, successfully landed on the moon despite the pleas of the Earth headquarters and returned to Earth alive.

However, this film spends more time on the characters' past and the emotional conflicts that result from it than on lunar exploration. The theme of humanity going to the moon has been used since 'A Trip to the Moon' (Le Voyage dans la Lune, 1902), the first science fiction film in human history. This is probably due to the tension and curiosity that comes with the unknown space. However, this film does not use the space of the moon in a (bad sense) traditional way. Instead of showing adventure and discovery in a strange world, close-up shots of people crying in Korean funeral homes keep appearing.**

Even when Hwang Seon-woo (Do Kyung-soo) lands on the moon, the film doesn't show what you'd expect from a lunar exploration film. When Hwang Seon-woo landed on the moon, the voice of a news anchor explaining how great this moment is for Korea was inserted into the scene. It would have been better to show the silence of space. Instead of expressing the excitement or fear that one would feel in an extraterrestrial space like the moon, this film forces patriotism on the audience.** The space of the moon doesn't feel like a strange new world at all, and it's just another device to spill out the sad stories of the characters.

The film's Rotten Tomatoes score is 23%, and it's been criticized for being xenophobic, not just illogical. However, this film also has its own merits. It makes even the most disliked Marvel movies feel like masterpieces like 'Citizen Kane' (Citizen Kane, 1941). The actual footage of the Apollo 11 crew running around on the lunar surface in 1969, humming 'dada-da', is much more entertaining than this film.**