I think the Apollo 11 landing in From the Earth to the Moon was portrayed more accurately and provided more details of actual events, specially technically, than First Man. To be fair, the series had more run time to devote to true historical documentation perspective while the movie was artistically more about Armstrong and family, with the NASA elements relegated a little more towards the background.
Anecdote time: I once worked for someone who was employed on the LEM program in New York. He mentioned that after finally watching From the Earth to the Moon, he was stunned to see they even got the little Grumman employee badge symbols correct for the subsystem access allowed.
I decided not to watch after the producers left out the flag scene.
Rewriting key moments in history isn’t acceptable. It’s deeply offensive to those of us who witnessed this history.
I vividly remember our elementary school set up tv’s so we could watch the moon landing. It was one of my most memorable days in grade school.
The Astronauts were like super heroes to us kids.
They didn’t “leave out” the placing of the flag, any more than they “left out” any of a dozen other activities during the Apollo 11 EVA. They simply weren’t part of the film. Within the flow of the film, the “absence” of this scene is not noticeable, no matter how patriotic you are.
They show characters discussing how the Soviet Union has repeatedly beaten the United States in the “space race”, and how the U.S. is therefore planning to beat the Soviets by doing something far more ambitious than anyone has yet tried.
They show giant rockets launching into space, with “UNITED STATES” in big letters on the sides of them (not to mention American flags).
They show an American flag on the Moon, next to the LM.
But, they don’t actually show the American astronauts thrusting the American flag into the virgin soil of the Moon! I mean, they don’t show the astronauts planting a U.N. flag, or a red Commie flag with a hammer and sickle, or a Rainbow Peace Symbol Flag, or anything like that. But still, they leave out the crucial lunar deflowering by an American astronaut using an American flag! (They also left out the famous plaque left by the astronauts that said “HERE MEN FROM THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE GREATEST COUNTRY ON EARTH, FIRST SET FOOT ON THE MOON!!! WE CAME TO SHOW THAT THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS BETTER AND GREATER THAN ALL OTHER COUNTRIES, ESPECIALLY FRANCE!!! AND CANADA!!!”)
So, therefore the whole movie is just libtard globalist Cultural Marxist propaganda.
Erecting the flag was actually an enormous pain in the ass and portraying it accurately would have been an anti-climax. It took a lot of fiddling to get the flag to lay out straight (there is a metal arms in the top to make the flag stick straight out because there is of course no wind on the Moon) and it took more time thatn planned to get it to line up. It was supposed to drape flat but because of static and bunching it looks like it is rippling in the wind, which was a need but unplanned effect. Apollo 12 had even more problems with the flag and left it with the top longeron hanging down limply at an acute angle.
The whole purported offense over the film not showing the installation of the flag (even though it can clearly be seen as Armstrong and Aldrin are preparing to leave) is just stupid manufactured outrage, as if a film centered on the American lunar program and a genuine and humble (if slightly flawed) hero in Armstrong was insufficiently jingoistic to satisfy the butt-hurt sensibilities of people looking for something to be upset about.
The filmmakers could also (with complete historical justification) have included a shot of the American flag being knocked over into the lunar dirt when the Apollo 11 astronauts took off to return home, followed by a nice time lapse or montage of the Stars and Stripes being slowly bleached away and turned into a white flag.
It is not socially acceptable–especially in this day and age of #MeToo, Harvey Weinstein, and Bill Cosby–to wave one’s penis around in public, so we have to have a token emblem. If we designed a flag today it would probably look something like this.
Exactly; think about it- how famous is the footage of the flag planting from Apollo 11? The answer is - not very.
What people remember is the audio, and seeing Armstrong hop off the ladder, along with a bunch of still photographs of Aldrin doing stuff like facing the flag, gathering samples, etc… (Armstrong apparently took most of the photos).
The movie leaves out or glosses over a LOT of other NASA stuff in it’s relentless quest to concentrate on Armstrong and his family to the exclusion of everything else. I half suspect that the movie only mentions Elliott See’s plane crash and the Apollo 1 fire because Armstrong was close to See and Ed White. Had they not had a personal connection, they’d probably have skipped them as well.
They do show the flag in place prominently very quickly after they get out of the LEM- they just don’t show them fumbling around with it on the surface.
The flag controvery was amplified by Ryan Gosling’s statement that the flag placing was left out because it was a ‘global’ achievement, or words to that effect. That was him just spitballing, but it pissed a lot of people off who thought he was stating the position of the director.
Yeah the “controversy” was more Right Wing Fox News nonsense designed to make people angry for a day or two. There are plenty of flags in the movie and the movie has plenty a Americanism throughout. The people who created those stories probably already forgot about them.
What I took away from the movie is that it was first, foremost and always a film about Neil Armstrong, not a movie about Apollo 11, not about the Apollo program, and not about NASA.
I guess a lot of people can’t really comprehend the idea of a movie about Neil Armstrong NOT being nearly completely focused on Apollo 11 and the moon landing. Which I suppose is the point of the movie- it has a laser focus on the man and how all these various things affected him. Stuff like the flag raising or Apollo 8, or ticker-tape parades afterward are left out because they don’t illuminate anything about Armstrong or his character.
Don’t worry, a lot of Canadians had their minds blown recently upon learning they didn’t actually burn down the White House despite being taught that in high school. I remember Canadians getting pissed off some TV show about the War of 1812 didn’t mention that at all at the time.
Finally saw the movie tonight. And I did not follow this thread that closely because I did not want too many spoilers.
Going in, I had concerns about Ryan Gosling playing Neil Armstrong, …
… and, he does a very good job with it. Not bad, not bad.
Claire Foy was excellent.
So, I really liked the movie. It’s all about Armstrong, from his point of view, and from the point of view of Janet Armstrong’s. Very well done. Armstrong, so stoic, so private, so reticent.
I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the flag not being portrayed. It did not need to be.
Very good movie — but maybe it’s because I was born in 1961 and those guys were my heroes and I loved following the space missions. That’s my bias.
I saw the film yesterday. My only criticism is that I think it should have ended immediately after he dropped the rosary (?) into the crater. The quarantine scene added nothing to the film.
