Of course we went to the Moon - you cannot fake all the infrastructure that went into putting several people into orbit, several tons of material into Low Earth Orbit, High Earth Orbit, and Lunar orbit plus the surface of the Moon itself. We still bounce laser beams off of mirrors left behind on the surface.

What I do believe, however, is that The Powers That Be "covered their bases". They knew another Apollo 1/AS-204 and Apollo 13 was just a matter of rolling the dice. So to prevent possible embarrassment with the Soviet Union and the world, The Powers That Be acted.

They made the movie(s) at the same time the astronauts were going to the Moon.

That way, even if the astronauts contacted UFO aliens on the Moon, or had a catastrophic accident, or something completely unknown happened - the movie footage would roll on, pacifying the American public and stupefying the rivals to American superiority. Maybe clips of the movie footage was spliced in with actual missions - to cover up reconnaissance with Lunar glass dome cities, or special experiments the public didn't need to know about.

So my theory is: both happened. Just because we couldn't lose to the Russians, not after spending billions of dollars getting there. But when the covert reverse-engineered UFO craft became viable, the Watergate incident took UFO knowledge away from the Presidency, and in the hands of people who didn't need all-American astronauts on live TV. They just needed qualified test pilots obeying orders, flying UFO craft all over the Solar System, no backup movie crew wanted.