Georges Méliès 'Le Voyage Dans La Lune' 1902 Moon Face Rocket Impact

Created in 1902, this iconic image captures the climactic moment from Georges Méliès' groundbreaking silent film 'Le Voyage Dans La Lune,' adapted from Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. At a time when cinema itself was barely a decade old, Méliès fused theater, magic, and nascent science fiction into something wholly new. The anthropomorphic Moon — its cratered face grimacing as a bullet-shaped capsule lodges in its eye — became one of the most recognizable images in the history of both film and science fiction.