“First Man” (2018)—Neil Armstrong story - from “La La Land” director

That's the failure of school teachers. The Falcon Heavy launch should have been playing in every grade school in the country, they were serious about their desire to increase STEM education. You want kids excited about science and technology? Musk sent a red hot rod into freaking SPACE! That was the coolest thing in decades!

 

Funny how some people still manage that with tiny world-spanning computers in their pockets.

Things going wrong will always be inherently more dramatic than things going right.

 

Sure they omitted it, because it wasn’t important from the main character’s point of view, not for some nefarious reason.

I thought it was a fantastic film, hewing to its goal of being about “the first man” and the impact on him and his family, not the typical rah-rah celebration of the space program that many people seem to have expected.

John K.

 

Is "First Man" more about Armstrong, or more about the moon landing?

I haven't seen it yet, but reading this thread makes it seem like the movie is more about Armstrong, and people would rather have a movie more focused on the moon landing.

 

It’s more about Armstrong. How he became an astronaut, his family life, etc.

 

It is also a film that takes its time to infuse gravitas into the undertaking. Armstrong was a civilian engineer who found the science in the undertaking fascinating. He had seen the Earth as few others had before even knowing whether he would be chosen to take the moonshot. It's a sober portrayal, for sure. The attempt to build excitement through the sensation of being in the driver's seat at every possible point along the journey works for some of us, clearly not for others.

It is, in fact, rocket science that provides much of the context for the action of the film.

 

I agree with this article’s point that a lot of people seem to have forgotten or become numb to what an incredible achievement it was to put a man on the moon in the 1960s. You always hear that the cell phones in our pockets today have more computing power than the computers that calculated Armstrong’s journey, and whether or not the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft in this film were unrealistically dirty, I thought the film did a good job of showing how cramped, tiny, and, by today’s standards, technologically primitive the vehicles that took men to the moon were. There were no touch screens or HAL-like talking computers in these spaceships, but instead toggle switches and analog readouts. That the Apollo program succeeded, and did so without taking the lives of ten times more astronauts than it actually did, was a borderline miracle. The clip at the end of the film of JFK asking “why do we choose to go to the moon?” made me tear up, although of course I had seen it many times before. But today it is inspiring, and a little sad, to see a President inspire a country to come together to achieve such a great feat. It’s a tragedy that the Apollo program was canceled in the early 70s: there should have been a moon base and a moon colony for the past four or five decades. Perhaps one day we can get back to the spirit of exploration and achievement we see in this film.

 

Anytime you wanna get that film funded, cast, written and shot, the world is waiting. Nothing's stopping you, except your belief that you had a vote in this one.

I'm certainly not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying you can't go to the Dairy Queen and start telling them they should make their banana splits with anchovies; they're probably doing okay with their own product research, thaaaaaannks...

 

I apologise if my post offended you, that wasn't my intention. I was just wondering out loud if the marketing for the movie didn't lead people in the right direction.

 

No, not offended at all. It's just a reminder that what the public sees as what a film "should have been", often fails to take into account, the studio usually makes the film they see as the product based on a lot of factors unrelated to what seems the more obvious hook of the subject matter.

A tone-deaf studio wasting their budget taking the wrong portion of an issue to highlight, well, there's certainly a lot to unpack concerning this side of the coin. It's just that, as moviegoers who don't have any skin in this game, we are free to opine for the film we may have wished for...but we don't work there.

Sad part is, once a major studio has already done a film about a subject that leaves no market for another film on the same subject albeit with a different angle, sometimes that film never gets made.

 

I actually already have a mother, thank you.

Ignored!

 

Oh, geez...sorry if I wasn't supposed to make an empathetic comment in somebody's thread. Be sure and remind everybody else in all the other threads you have a mother, in case they also bring up information you hae already considered within your lifetime. It will help other people not waste the time conversing with you as well.

 

What 'First Man' Gets Right and Wrong About the Moon Landing

 

And why not hope for the best? If the movie is really good we get to enjoy a really good movie.

 

I found the previous comment about public opinion not being able to change the outcome of how a movie is made to be savvy and informative and on point. Not sure what the reply after referred to, but I saw nothing condescending in your comments. Thanks for posting.

 

I saw it yesterday with my father. He and I were avid watchers of every mission so it was cool to relive it with him. We saw it in IMAX, which was very effective with the moon landing itself (my hands were actually sweating) but off-putting for everything else. I probably wouldn't have gone if I'd know this was filmed in that "shakey-cam" style that I can't stand. Why do some directors think this is great? In IMAX it actually made me a little queasy, especially with extreme closeups of faces. I guess I'd never make it as an astronaut.

The launch and space shots were great. Watching these guys get packed into tin cans and fired into space is definitely not for the claustrophobic. It just re-affirmed my belief that those guys had balls bigger than cantelopes.

I'm not sure what to make of it overall. The depiction of Armstrong's domestic life didn't do much for me. I kept wanting more about space. Armstrong was so notoriously low key that it was off-putting, although reportedly accurate.

 

I think it's more about the unknown than old news. As you said yourself it's about nothing prior to one's personal history.

 

I've not seen this yet, but am interested in the way this film follows up as a Ryan Gosling vehicle after the underwhelming effort of the Blade Runner sequel. Gosling seems to have gotten a notable share of the criticism of First Man for too underplaying his part. Count me as one who thought he was not well cast in that BR sequel. Is this more of the same?

I really don't want to be a Gosling hater as I have really liked some of his work. But I am approaching the conclusion that he's neither much of a box office draw nor particularly adept at playing certain parts.

 

And work very well for the X-15 part, although the movie didn't give the audience an idea just how terrifying the "flying bedstead" was. (By the way, when is that other badass Scott Crossfield going to get some respect?)

Yeah, I kept wanting to see more of the people in the program, and the other two astronauts, especially Collins.

 

Money most of the people hate Ryan Gosling haven't seen enough of his work. Drive, The Nice Guys and Lars and the Real Girl all show his range.

 

I really should stop dictating things and then not reading them within 30 minutes. In the previous sentence, "it seems to me" was mistranslated as "money."

 

I first really liked him in Blue Valentine. Excellent work, and I thought he was very good in Drive and The Nice Guys.

But he is certainly capable of being miscast, or for some reason not delivering. Imo he was rather disappointing in the sequel Blade Runner.

 

Fair enough. It's just a pet peeve when people dismiss an actor based on only a couple of films. You, on the other hand, have seen enough of his work to have a valid opinion of his range.

 

Gosling has a penchant for playing quiet, watchful characters... which means when he plays those roles he doesn't end up doing all that much on screen. Personally I always find him charismatic to watch even when he's doing nothing -- the movie star thing -- but that's very much in the eye of the beholder. But he can deliver in more extroverted roles so his ability is not in question for me.

 

The flag was actually a late addition to the mission plan, which is why they didn't bring a dedicated flagpole, but repurposed a tool handle.

Like there would be any doubt that we made it to the Moon if we hadn't?