Capricorn One (1977)
Directed by Peter Hyams
No — Capricorn One is not woke, scoring 13 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Peter Hyams made Capricorn One in 1977, a year when a thriller could still suggest that the government faked a Mars landing and simply let the audience enjoy the ride.
Consciousness Markers
The conspiracy is explicitly motivated by NASA funding and private contractors' billions in profits, giving the film a mild anti-corporate, anti-institutional streak, though it is a plot device rather than a polemic.
The cast is overwhelmingly white, though O. J. Simpson appears as one of the three astronauts, a notable but unremarked bit of colorblind casting for 1977.
The film delivers a cynical message about government and media deception, but it does so through suspense and action rather than preachy exposition.
Brenda Vaccaro and Karen Black play a reporter and a wife respectively, but neither role advances any feminist argument; they function as conventional supporting figures.
No LGBTQ+ characters, themes, or subtext of any kind appear in this Cold War-era conspiracy thriller.
O. J. Simpson's astronaut is presented without any racial commentary or consciousness; the film has no interest in race as a subject.
No environmental or climate themes are present in this space-hoax narrative.
No body-positivity themes or messaging appear in the film.
No neurodivergent characters or themes are depicted.
The film is a wholly fictional conspiracy yarn, not a revisionist account of real historical events.
Why it received this score
Peter Hyams made Capricorn One in 1977, a year when a thriller could still suggest that the government faked a Mars landing and simply let the audience enjoy the ride. The premise is sturdy: three astronauts are yanked from the launch pad and parked on a desert soundstage, forced to perform a mission that never happened. Elliott Gould's reporter snoops, gets fired, gets shot at, and hires a crop duster. The film has no interest in instructing anyone. It wants to entertain, and it mostly does.
Viewed through the lens of contemporary cultural markers, the picture is a near-vacuum, and there is something almost restful about that. O. J. Simpson appears as one of the three astronauts, a piece of colorblind casting the film never acknowledges, comments on, or builds into anything. Brenda Vaccaro and Karen Black occupy the conventional slots of reporter and worried wife, and neither role argues for anything beyond the plot's forward motion. The conspiracy itself carries a faint anti-corporate charge: NASA's funding and the contractors' billions are named as the motive for the deception. It is a plot device, not a polemic, and the film never stops to sermonize about it.
The cynicism here is of the Watergate vintage, aimed at institutions and television, and it arrives through suspense instead of speeches. Nobody in the cast lectures the audience. The result is a modest, efficient thriller that has aged into an artifact of a different cultural moment, one in which a movie could distrust the government without also filing a position paper. It is not a film with a message. It is a film with a helicopter chase, and in 1977 that was considered sufficient.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
In order to protect the reputation of the American space program, a team of NASA administrators turn the first Mars mission into a phony Mars landing. Under threat of harm to their families the astronauts play their part in the deception on a staged set in a deserted military base. But once the real ship returns to Earth and burns up on re-entry, the astronauts become liabilities. Now, with the help of a crusading reporter, they must battle a sinister conspiracy that will stop at nothing to keep the truth hidden.
Questions about Capricorn One
Is Capricorn One woke?
No — Capricorn One is not woke, scoring 13 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does Capricorn One have any woke elements?
Very few. None of the 10 markers reaches 30, the level where a marker counts as present; the highest is Eat the Rich at 20.
How does Capricorn One compare to other 1977 movies?
It ranks #3 of the 27 films from 1977 we've scored; their average is 8. The wokest is A Special Day (60).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.