I saw it last night. I have not been as huge a fan of Damien Chazelle as most people. I think his films are well made, but have never really connected with or liked the stories he has made (speaking of Whiplash and La La Land). I don't think those films are overrated, they just didn't connect with me for some reason.

First Man is a different story. It was finally a story that complimented Chazelle's technique, in my opinion. I love that he took this BIG story of going to the moon, and really whittled it down to one family, one man. And the whole film is a study in grief and how it changes us and our relationships. There are lots of quiet moments where Ryan Gosling is absolutely amazing. You can feel the grief around his neck and see that he his holding back an ocean of tears and sorrow behind his eyes.

If you are wanting to know some films to compare it to, I'd say its like Apollo 13 meets Manchester by the Sea. Most space race films I've seen can really get into checking off events that historically happened but don't do a great job of dwelling on they impacted those involved. An example of how this film handled that would be the Apollo 1 disaster. You know it's coming, and all you can think about is how crushing it is going to be for Neil and his family, not what a set back it is for the program.

And I saw that some people have a problem with the ending, but I read that isn't completely fabricated. The filmmakers read that in on of Armstrong's family members biography or notes. It was never confirmed by Armstrong, but it isn't something they just pulled out of thin air. Here is the podcast where Chazelle talks about it if you want to give it a listen:

https://varietyplayback.libsyn.com/damien-chazelle-first-man

I am very torn on this film - there were definitely things I loved but also things I thought were dry and artistically I get what he was going for but it did not work for me in several cases.

I get that Armstrong was the sole focus here and that made some things tough. But he was also an interesting character study just not your typical rah rah grandiose hero.

I also have zero issue with the flag thing - it wasn't the point and there was plenty of other dramatic Americanisms (flags galore and the world celebrating this american accomplishment, etc.)....

The flight scenes particularly the crisis moments in test flights, etc. were incredibly disorienting - while that was intentional and heightened the tension maybe, it did not help in the storytelling and was more confusing then helpful imho.

Loved the human element of the entire thing though. But the performances also did not grab me (while they may be realistic portrayals).

Torn.


Now admittedly I may have been completely thrown off by an incident in my theater I was directly involved with.

So I was at a Studio Movie Grill where you have food and alcohol service - swivel chairs we were at the counter the row behind us had the little half tables between chairs - about 3/4 of the way back. the theater was not very full. There was no one else on our row. And the row behind us had 2 people to the right behind us and 3 people way over to the left behind us. the back section had just a family of 4 with 2 small kids in the middle.

So this old couple (I'm 52 but they were much older at least 65) were behind us in seats 1-2 and we were in seats 4-5 of our row. Before the movie they were certainly enjoying themselves drinking eating and talking. I didn't even care then the movie had not started. they were actually quiet through the previews and as the movie started. I don't know if it being so dry early on especially exacerbated this but about 10 minutes into the movie she starts talking.

And I mean just blatantly talking at normal volume to her spouse. Not once or occasionally but like a full blown conversation. After a minute or so I loudly "SSSHHHHH" them......she kinds huffs and quiets down. 3-5 minutes later she starts talking again. I look at my wife and she says "they aren't even talking about the movie".....I "SHHHHHHHH" them again looking at them by swiveling my chair. He nudges her and she turns and looks at me and then gives me an eye roll.

Not 5 minutes later she starts in again. I spin my chair completely around and loudly say "SERIOUSLY???".... she turns and looks at me and I say "We can hear EVERYTHING you are saying"... she literally says "How RUDE".

So now I figure I got my point across and it's quiet for a good 10 minutes or so. Suddenly I feel a tap on my shoulder but I look and it is not my wife to my right. I'm confused but go back to watching the movie......
maybe 2 minutes later I realize what it was because a piece of ice again hits my arm and skitters across my chest and to the floor beneath me. I look at my wife and say she threw ice at me...my wife says yeah i think she hit me once too I didn't know what it was.

So I now pop up storm down the aisle past them and angrily say to her "you stupid f-ing c***".

I get our waiter who is standing there at the back parallel to them and say I need the manager immediately. they have gone completely quiet now. I step outside briefly and tell the manager what happened. He immediately radios his GM he says who tells them to summon the cop on duty there. He tells me to wait there for the cop and goes in to talk to them. He comes back and says they denied everything. Meanwhile the cop shows up and I tell her (black female cop - just FYI) and she asks if I saw them throw the ice and I say no but it hit my right shoulder and nobody else is behind us to the right. The waiter confirms she heard them talking loudly several times and me ssshhhhing them but did not see the ice throwing. he says ok "you want them removed?".... and I say yeah.

the manager goes back in and tells them they need to leave. he comes out and says they refuse. The cop tells me I can go sit back down but almost immediately behind him though the husband comes out - the cop summons him over to her and I pass back by and go inside returning to my seat. the manager again comes in and the lady very loudly says she is not leaving she is watching the movie. A minute later the cop lady comes in (husband is still outside) and tells her to get her things and come with her NOW. She reluctantly and slowly complies.

So that all happened in the first 40 minutes or so.

Very distracting. But I was happy with how it was handled. I never asked for comp-ed tickets or anything maybe I should have. But I just wanted to watch the damn movie.

I've never had that kind of experience - I've shhhhh'ed some people but never got to the point that I had to get a manager or had anything thrown at me. My wife after said she thought they were drunk before they came and they had a full bottle and maybe other drinks on the table too. So I guess they were hammered.

So weird - the manager when I first told the story actually asked "are they young?" and I was like "no... they are older than me" and pointed to my white hair - lol.

This reminded me a lot of The Revenant. Beautifully shot, very well written and acted, but overall, pretty boring. I'd watch individual scenes again, but not the entire movie.

Yikes. That's a terrible experience. About a year or so ago, my wife and I saw a teenage movie (don't remember which one it was) and the audience was nothing but early teens. They talked nonstop, ran around the theater, took pictures with the flash on, etc. it was ridiculous. Complained to the manager after and she legit gave us probably 15 free movie passes that worked for imax too. We finally just used them up seeing First Man.

I'm not sure it makes sense to spoiler tags the stuff below, since everybody knows what happens. But just in case.

To me, there is no excuse for a movie about Neil Armstrong to ever be boring. The guy was the first man to walk on the moon who had 7 near death experiences prior to Apollo. He flew in the Korean War (where he nearly became a POW). How in the hell can you make a movie about a guy like that boring?

Secondly, I have never heard that he was about to be grounded after his X-15 flight. I currently cannot find any evidence of that other than articles that recap the movie. If that is not true then that is slander, as far as I'm concerned. I do know that it wasn't his last X-15 flight. So there is that.

Also, why the heck did they keep shaking the hell out of the camera? I can understand during launch scenes and whatnot, but why the hell do it when they just standing in the kitchen holding a conversation? That got really distracting and annoying.

Also, one scene I was really looking forward to from the Trailer wasn't in the movie at all. It was the first scene in the first trailer where Armstrong was watching Apollo 4 launch (the first Saturn V) and the building they were in started falling apart. Instead, they skipped Apollo 2 through Apollo 9.

In addition, if they wanted to focus on life outside of NASA, why did they cut the house fire scene, where Armstrong ran in and save his kids? They kept a bunch of scenes with awkward silence between he and his wife, but cut that? I say cut the scenes where Armstrong is just like everybody else, and keep the scenes that make him exceptional. Otherwise, why make a movie about an exceptional man?


Now for the good:

The Apollo launch scene was much better than Apollo 13. I had heard that the entire launch was from the perspective of inside the capsule. It looked like it was going to go that way when they did it with the Gemini launch. Thankfully, they didn't do that for Apollo. I do wish they didn't use as much original footage. I would have preferred they re-render that in IMAX resolution, but that is a nitpick.

aTmAg said:

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Sex Panther said:

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aTmAg said:

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Belton Ag said:

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I don't think a girl needs to see a woman on the screen to be inspired by the movie. There's a lot of screen time devoted to the physics of rocketry and engineering, I'd think your daughter would really like it.

I plan on taking my daughter, who isn't old enough to be into the mathematics but is obsessed with all things space and NASA right now.

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My daughter is sorta iffy on the engineering as a career path. But she is naturally pretty damn good at math, and I think with a little inspiration maybe she would go that way. All I can do is try.

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Then you should definitely have her watch Hidden Figures

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I haven't seen that movie, but it has a sort of "militant" vibe that I'm not interested in. I don't want her to think of herself as a "woman engineer" but merely as an "engineer".

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I'm not trying to derail this thread, but I've got to respond to this. I'm a 43 year old woman, Class of '97 with my BS from A&M in Aerospace Engineering. I watched the shuttle launch as a kid and knew then that I wanted to be a part of NASA. I've had an amazing and exciting career working at NASA and for the DoD in spite of constantly being told along the way that "girls don't do that". Even now I'm usually the only woman in the room in work meetings, or just one of a few, but I've never thought of myself as a "woman" engineer. I'm an engineer, period.

I'm also a huge fan of NASA's history and have met more than a dozen of the Apollo era astronauts, flight directors, and mission control engineers.

Hidden Figures is a great movie. There is not a damn thing "militant" about it. To make that statement based on trailers, it says a hell of a lot more about you than it does the movie. The movie does show the sexism and racism of that time, but it's not done in any kind of preachy way. Militant? No. It shows the barriers those women dealt with outside of learning astrophysics and computer coding and how they were able to achieve success through hard work and determination.

I had a dream as a kid and wasn't going to let anything get in my way. Thankfully things are better for today's young girls. I hardly ever saw examples of females doing what I wanted to do as a kid. I can only speak for myself but it would have meant so much to have had more examples for me to see and learn about when I was young.

HF ended up meaning a lot more to me than I expected. Even at 43, it was nice to finally see an example of women succeeding in this field.

There's a book called The X-15 Rocket Plane written by Michelle Evans that goes into details about Neil's issues at that time. It's true, not slander.

Popcorn ready

Great post.

X-43 said:

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aTmAg said:

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Sex Panther said:

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aTmAg said:

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Belton Ag said:

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I don't think a girl needs to see a woman on the screen to be inspired by the movie. There's a lot of screen time devoted to the physics of rocketry and engineering, I'd think your daughter would really like it.

I plan on taking my daughter, who isn't old enough to be into the mathematics but is obsessed with all things space and NASA right now.

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My daughter is sorta iffy on the engineering as a career path. But she is naturally pretty damn good at math, and I think with a little inspiration maybe she would go that way. All I can do is try.

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Then you should definitely have her watch Hidden Figures

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I haven't seen that movie, but it has a sort of "militant" vibe that I'm not interested in. I don't want her to think of herself as a "woman engineer" but merely as an "engineer".

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I'm not trying to derail this thread, but I've got to respond to this. I'm a 43 year old woman, Class of '97 with my BS from A&M in Aerospace Engineering. I watched the shuttle launch as a kid and knew then that I wanted to be a part of NASA. I've had an amazing and exciting career working at NASA and for the DoD in spite of constantly being told along the way that "girls don't do that". Even now I'm usually the only woman in the room in work meetings, or just one of a few, but I've never thought of myself as a "woman" engineer. I'm an engineer, period.

I'm also a huge fan of NASA's history and have met more than a dozen of the Apollo era astronauts, flight directors, and mission control engineers.

Hidden Figures is a great movie. There is not a damn thing "militant" about it. To make that statement based on trailers, it says a hell of a lot more about you than it does the movie. The movie does show the sexism and racism of that time, but it's not done in any kind of preachy way. Militant? No. It shows the barriers those women dealt with outside of learning astrophysics and computer coding and how they were able to achieve success through hard work and determination.

I had a dream as a kid and wasn't going to let anything get in my way. Thankfully things are better for today's young girls. I hardly ever saw examples of females doing what I wanted to do as a kid. I can only speak for myself but it would have meant so much to have had more examples for me to see and learn about when I was young.

HF ended up meaning a lot more to me than I expected. Even at 43, it was nice to finally see an example of women succeeding in this field.

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I looked it up the other day, apparently that movie has a crapload of BS in it. While NASA did have to follow Texas Jim Crow laws and have separate areas for bathrooms and whatnot, the women portrayed felt they were considered part of the team at the workplace. In fact Katherine Johnson said, "I didn't feel the segregation at NASA". The main racist/bigoted protagonist that they portrayed in the movie never existed. He was created out of thin air.

Because the movie apparently seems to be fixated on race, it looks that the movie didn't even touch on Margaret Hamilton who was probably the most achieved women engineer in the entire Space Program at the time (at least I don't see her on the credits). She not only was working as an engineer, she was a lead at a very young age. Contrary to popular opinion, the primary reason women were/are underrepresented in engineering is because very few women opt to go into engineering. Not because old white men are working together to keep them down.

Well-said, X-43.

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So I now pop up storm down the aisle past them and angrily say to her "you stupid f-ing c***".

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Wow. This is awesome.

double aught said:

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Quote:

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So I now pop up storm down the aisle past them and angrily say to her "you stupid f-ing c***".

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Wow. This is awesome.

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Yeah lost my cool there - not something I would normally say to anyone.

The fact that they (especially the husband) did not react to that in any way told me that they knew they went too far and they knew they were guilty. They never even mentioned that to the cop or manager.

I'm betting he has to defend her a lot and make excuses for her behavior.

The movie wasn't fixated on race. You'd know that if you'd actually watched it. It didn't even take place in Texas.

So by googling some things, you're an expert on how those women felt at the time?

Of course there are inaccuracies and made up characters in the movie. It's a movie based on historical events, not a documentary.

Welcome to the losing-your-cool-in-a-movie-theater club. Granted, I've never used the c-word, but I have thrown things at people before, and might have shoved a shoulder or two harder than I should have. I'm not proud of it, but I can't not see red when people pull out their phones for long periods of time or talk loudly/incessantly, and I will never give up the good fight.

At this point, it's best to just ignore him. I and many others blocked him long ago, but he's notorious for doing exactly what you're claiming... making a mountain out of molehill before actually seeing something for himself, thinking he's an expert on every last subject, displaying blatant ignorance, etc. I've even used the same "documentary" reasoning/logic that you just did, to no avail. He does this on every single thread. All that said, you've done an excellent job of arguing your perspective, and the vast majority of us here are right there with you.

X-43 said:

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The movie wasn't fixated on race. You'd know that if you'd actually watched it. It didn't even take place in Texas.

So by googling some things, you're an expert on how those women felt at the time?

Of course there are inaccuracies and made up characters in the movie. It's a movie based on historical events, not a documentary.

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I tend to trust statements about what women felt when they are quotes directly from the women in question.

Take it to the hidden figures thread maybe. You can gripe about it to yourself all you want to.

Never takes a hint. Nor an explicit request. No matter how many blue stars support the opposition.

Defiant stupidity. Ruining threads in politics and entertainment.

The only thing that works is the ignore feature. And not quoting.

Why does every thread I post in on this board wind up like this? Do y'all do this stupid **** in Big Brother or Dancing with the Stars threads too?

It's definitely a problem. Part of it is the sensitivity to politics being injected more and more into every last thread on this board, and maybe those like me who hate it should just keep our mouths shut and let it play out and then die. Responding usually only makes it worse. But the other part of it is that aTmAg feels the need to inject himself into as many conversations as possible. And it's beyond just politics. Zombie absolutely hit the nail on the head. I blocked aTm weeks ago and yet I still can't escape him ruining thread after thread after thread with his incessant arguing, mind-bumbling diatribes, and know-it-all attitude, no matter the subject (all of which is quoted by others to either argue against him or show just how insane he is). Worse yet, despite the dozens of people who have openly said they've blocked him, despite all the stars in opposition to his posts, he now thinks it's his cross to bear to stand up to the "bullies" of the Entertainment Board. That's how he rationalizes coming back time and again despite the fact that the vast majority of this board cannot stand him, and is beyond vocal about it. He acts as if someone is writing a biography on how he stands up to all the persecution he faces here, and endlessly/literally talks about how he's going to speak "truth" to us plebeians and it's just utterly insufferable. I don't know what the answer is, other than to hope that he finally gets his fill of how much he ruins things here, and then leaves forever.

Also the Big Brother thread is lit. Come on in next season... #TeamBrett 4 life

TCTTS said:

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It's definitely a problem. Part of it is the sensitivity to politics being injected more and more into every last thread on this board, and maybe those like me who hate it should just keep our mouths shut and let it play out and then die. Responding usually only makes it worse. But the other part of it is that aTm feels the need to inject himself into as many conversation as possible. And it's beyond politics. Zombie absolutely hit the nail on the head. I blocked aTmAg weeks ago and yet I still can't escape him ruining thread after thread after thread with his insesant arguing, mind-bumbling diatribes, and know-it-all attitude, no matter the subject. Worse yet, despite the dozens of people who have openly said they've blocked him, despite all the stars in opposition to his posts, he now thinks it's his cross to bare to stand up to the "bullies" of the Entertainment Board. That's how he rationalizes coming back time and again despite the fact that the vast majority of this board cannot stand him, and is beyond vocal about it. He acts as if someone is writing a biography on how he stood up to all the persecution he faces here, and how he's going to speak "truth" to us "liberal" plebeians and it's just utterly insufferable. I don't know what the answer is, other than to hope that he finally gets his fill of how much he ruins things here, and then leaves forever.

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I know you have me on ignore.. but the answer is to not be jackasses to people merely because they disagree with you. That's what started and perpetuates this whole thing.

TCTTS said:

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It's definitely a problem. Part of it is the sensitivity to politics being injected more and more into every last thread on this board

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Unfortunately politics is being injected more and more into all things these days. Sports, entertainment... everything; I guess it follows that it should creep into entertainment threads as well.

Indeed. And I'm all for political discourse, the proper threads/forums to do so, etc., but when so much of it here is just so blunt and random and injected into the most innocuous, non-political conversations, it gets so tiring. And then I'm as guilty as anyone in getting caught up the resulting argument, which never does anyone any good.

Forget IMAX. Go see it in a Dolby Cinema if you can. The picture is better and the sound is on another level. I really enjoyed the scenes in the cockpit where you could barely see what was happening outside the window but could feel how terrifying it must have been. Traveling hundreds of miles through the atmosphere in a glorified bucket of bolts just hoping the dozens of engineers before you did their job. Absolutely nothing you can do. The Dolby Atmos was pretty awesome. You're constantly hearing switches and thrusters turn on and off around you and your seat rumbles.

Saw it. Loved it.

Hard Pass.

You'll start learning not to piss off the natives when you need their money. What a flop.

claym711 said:

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Hard Pass.

You'll start learning not to piss off the natives when you need their money. What a flop.

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What's a bummer is now it will take 50 years for somebody else to try to make another Armstrong movie that is worthy of the man.

aTmAg said:

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claym711 said:

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Hard Pass.

You'll start learning not to piss off the natives when you need their money. What a flop.

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What's a bummer is now it will take 50 years for somebody else to try to make another Armstrong movie that is worthy of the man.

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Saw it this weekend. Completely disagree. Best movie of the year IMO and an excellent tribute to Neil Armstrong. I walked away from the movie having a deeper understanding and appreciation of the inner turmoils Armstrong was dealing with at the time. Expect multiple Oscar nominations for this movie.

claym711 said:

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Hard Pass.

You'll start learning not to piss off the natives when you need their money. What a flop.

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What's the context for this statement?

aTmAg said:

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Also, why the heck did they keep shaking the hell out of the camera? I can understand during launch scenes and whatnot, but why the hell do it when they just standing in the kitchen holding a conversation? That got really distracting and annoying.

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that was my biggest problem with the movie. even the launches are way over dramatized,, did the filmmakers not do any research on that? the other tech details were amazing, why did they shake the camera enough to kill a person?



there is a video inside the astp during launch. actually quite calm



soyuz also quite calm



shuttle shakes a bit, but nowhere near as much as in this movie

JRC0811 said:

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claym711 said:

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Hard Pass.

You'll start learning not to piss off the natives when you need their money. What a flop.

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What's the context for this statement?

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https://deadline.com/2018/10/what-words-cost-first-man-quite-a-lot-1202482492/

mallen said:

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aTmAg said:

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claym711 said:

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Hard Pass.

You'll start learning not to piss off the natives when you need their money. What a flop.

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What's a bummer is now it will take 50 years for somebody else to try to make another Armstrong movie that is worthy of the man.

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Saw it this weekend. Completely disagree. Best movie of the year IMO and an excellent tribute to Neil Armstrong. I walked away from the movie having a deeper understanding and appreciation of the inner turmoils Armstrong was dealing with at the time. Expect multiple Oscar nominations for this movie.

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Except you don't have a deeper understanding. They made up the part about him throwing the bracelet into the crater. And I think they went way overboard on making him an emotional robot throughout the entire movie to make that bracelet moment have more impact.

From what I can tell, he was not an emotional robot. He was a favorite professor at the University of Cincinnati who was loved by his students, even though his classes were considered difficult. He was known as being humble yet extremely easy to talk to instead of how he was presented in the movie. Yes he became reclusive, especially after the moon landing, but not because he was a robot, but because was uncomfortable with fame. He didn't want to make the whole achievement about him and didn't want to be defined by a moment that happened before age 40. From everything I have seen, on person to person level, he was just like everybody else.