I don't think it was staged or something but if I look at 2001: A Space Odyssey, I really am fascinated by the good visual effects, so the raw filming could probably have been done, but most Nasa documents of that time are online and there is no possiblity everything would have been fake.
Nah, the technology to fake the moon landing straight up didn't exist in the 60s. There's a really good video on youtube that goes over it but I can't seem to find it right now. But basically, even though there were some nice techniques to make special effects for movies, they wouldn't have worked for faking an actual moon landing.
For some reason, to me at least, there is a good amount of irony in this. Almost like because the technology and techniques to replicate a convincing moon landing weren't around they just went there instead lol