The French film historian Thierry Lefebvre hypothesizes that Méliès drew upon both of these works, but in different ways: he appears to have taken the structure of the film—"a trip to the Moon, a Moon landing, an encounter with extraterrestrials with a deformity, an underground trek, an interview with the Man in the Moon, and a brutal return to reality back on Earth"—directly from the 1901 attraction, but also incorporated many plot elements (including the presence of six astronomers with pseudo-scientific names, telescopes that transform into stools, a moonshot cannon mounted above ground, a scene in which the Moon appears to approach the viewer, a lunar snowstorm, an earthrise scene, and umbrella-wielding travellers), not to mention the parodic tone of the film, from the Offenbach operetta.