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First Man (on the Moon) - Neil Armstrong Biopic


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6 minutes ago, Red Five said:

Ramjet your review took me from imax next week to probably Redbox in a few months.

no shit.  I was planning a trip to the bob bullock next week to see it in all of its IMAX glory and ramjet just casually walked by and punched me in the dick without looking up from his phone.  now my enthusiasm is gone.  I’ve lost my optimism, my joie de vivre.  I may just skip the redbox too.  

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16 hours ago, RPM said:

Watched it live on a 17" Zenith B&W with Walter doing play by play. Had a t-shirt that showed the LEM  on the surface and said "The Eagle has landed!"

Wore that shirt until it literally fell apart.

Saw the launch and the moonwalk. Dad worked for Von Braun but his job wasn't essential to the launch. He grew up in Daytona and had family near the cape so we went there for the launch. I was 12 and spent the night inthe backyard in a tent and could see the launch pad across the river all night long.  Cool to have been there. And everyone saw the moonwalk in black and white since a color camera was too heavy

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7 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Thought I read somewhere that the moon pics were in color, but they were transmitted back in b&w so that’s what the tv feeds got. 

I looked it up. More details than expected.

https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/equipping-apollo-for-color-television

 

tldr - concerns over bandwidth made them choose black and white since they knew it would work. It would have been very bad to get there and then not see anything because they chose color. They then found they had enough bandwidth for color in future

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Saw this today. It was ok I guess. They over did it on the sappy family aspect stuff.  Should have used that time on the actual mission training etc. Since there is absolutely no evidence that the crater scene actually occurred, just leave it out. Hollywood making up their own history.  The jittery camera (or whatever it's called) was annoying.  Finally, the whole flag controversy is just stupid. 

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36 minutes ago, cabowabo said:

 Since there is absolutely no evidence that the crater scene actually occurred, just leave it out. Hollywood making up their own history.  

I’m no missile man but I did read about that scene.  while there is no recorded evidence of armstrong doing that it is known that astronauts visiting the moon would often leave things behind.  at least I read that on a website.  so you can take it as gospel.  

the point is it very well could have happened. 

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Since they're making up shit, I would have hoped that they would have filmed a scene where Mike Collins said, "fuck you guys, I didn't get to walk on the moon" and fired the retros to leave lunar orbit, laughing monstrously the entire time.

I mean, I'd pay to see that.

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6 minutes ago, phdhorn said:

Since they're making up shit, I would have hoped that they would have filmed a scene where Mike Collins said, "fuck you guys, I didn't get to walk on the moon" and fired the retros to leave lunar orbit, laughing monstrously the entire time.

I mean, I'd pay to see that.

giphy.gif

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I saw it yesterday.

Overall, it's a spectacular piece of filmmaking that -- if you are at all interested in spaceflight or Apollo - should be seen in a theater.

In many ways, it reminded me of DUNKIRK... a film that was/is an absolute technical marvel but left me wanting a little more on an emotional front.

Agreed with Ramjet about specifically wanting more in terms of *why* Neil was selected to be the Apollo 11 commander.  I get that they showed him cool under pressure and excellent in life threatening situations (X-15, Gemini 8, LLRV accident) and to be a committed astronaut... but all of those guys were like that or they wouldn't have been astronauts... so what was it about Neil as to why he was selected over Jim Lovell or Pete Conrad or Dave Scott or any of the others?

I feel like all we needed was one more scene of a Deke Slayton, Chris Kraft and/or whomever in a meeting room talking about the final selection of the crew for 11.  That would have added just one more layer to the film that was needed. 

Also agreed they went a little overboard with the vibrations during ascent, but I understand why. Yeah the vibrations weren't that bad in real life, but they wanted to communicate visceral physical toll that spaceflight takes... so I didn't mind it so much.  (As an aside the way they shot/edited the thruster malfunction on Gemini 8 was amazing. You REALLY felt the danger there.)

And again -- my overall reaction was a positive one. I'll reiterate that it is a SPECTACULAR piece of filmmaking that really deserves to be seen in the theater. It's almost worth it alone for the shot when they open the LM hatch to the lunar surface.  Just breathtaking. 

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1 hour ago, phdhorn said:

Since they're making up shit, I would have hoped that they would have filmed a scene where Mike Collins said, "fuck you guys, I didn't get to walk on the moon" and fired the retros to leave lunar orbit, laughing monstrously the entire time.

I mean, I'd pay to see that.

When they showed the moon horizon, I was hoping an alien spacecraft appeared and the movie became something else entirely for the last 30 minutes.

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21 minutes ago, oSuJeff97 said:

I feel like all we needed was one more scene of a Deke Slayton, Chris Kraft and/or whomever in a meeting room talking about the final selection of the crew for 11.  That would have added just one more layer to the film that was needed. 

Yeah - agree 100%.  SOMETHING needed to be added to flesh out the "why Neil?" aspect a bit more.  That scene would've been excellent.

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14 minutes ago, RamjetFDO said:

Yeah - agree 100%.  SOMETHING needed to be added to flesh out the "why Neil?" aspect a bit more.  That scene would've been excellent.

Yeah.

Also curious - I know you didn't like the vibrations on ascent, but what did you think of the Gemini 8 sequence? 

I thought that whole sequence, from them locating the Agena and docking to the thruster malfunction/recovery was just STUNNING filmmaking.

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Just now, oSuJeff97 said:

Yeah.

Also curious - I know you didn't like the vibrations on ascent, but what did you think of the Gemini 8 sequence? 

I thought that whole sequence, from them locating the Agena and docking to the thruster malfunction/recovery was just STUNNING filmmaking.

In my (long-winded web) review, I said that it was the overuse of the VIBRATIONCAM™ that actually took away from the Gemini 8 scenes by making it less effective, but nonetheless awesome.  Had they toned down the overuse of vibrations elsewhere, the Gemini 8 sequence would've been perfect.

Quote

The overuse of this camera technique actually took away from the unique danger of the Gemini 8 experience, especially in the almost-fatal rotation that Armstrong and David Scott found themselves. That sequence, where the projected feeling of disorientation, almost blacking out, and general helplessness was exquisitely filmed.

 

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44 minutes ago, CooterBrown said:

When they showed the moon horizon, I was hoping an alien spacecraft appeared and the movie became something else entirely for the last 30 minutes.

There was some movie called Apollo 18 or something a few years back.  Ever see that?  It's kinda that way.  About little spidery things that kilt astronauts on the moon.  Pretty good stuff.

I wonder if it was non-fiction?

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On ‎10‎/‎13‎/‎2018 at 3:04 PM, miguelito said:

I'm never going to watch another movie ever again. 

Awe, hang in there guy...

On ‎10‎/‎14‎/‎2018 at 10:05 AM, kingkoopa6 said:

Why does Rice play Texas?

 

damn ramjet, how do you really feel?

Ramjet didn't just make me not want to pay to see this movie...he may have made it so I'll never watch a movie again....

 

 

 

 

J/K, I'm still going to see this and see what the hoopla is about

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 This is a very well done documentary, “Space Age”. Episode 2, “To the Moon”, has an interesting interview with Bill Anders of Apollo 8 where he describes the violence of the launch. 

The whole thing is worth watching, but starting at the 14:00 mark, Anders describes the launch as shaking so much that they couldn’t see the gauges and says that Frank Borman released his hold on the abort handle because he was afraid that the shaking was going to cause him to unintentionally pull the handle and abort the whole thing.

Interesting stuff. 

https://ihavenotv.com/to-the-moon-the-space-age-nasas-story

 

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Apollo 6 had a significant "pogo effect", which almost had some bad results - it did screw up the trajectory.

 

Apollo 8 had some specific and noticeable engine vibrations noted by the crew, that was resolved for future Saturn V launches.

 

It wasn't too horrible, because this is from the flight transcript after staging:

 

000:03:31 Borman: Houston, how do you read? Apollo 8.

 

000:03:34 Collins: We hear you loud and clear, Apollo 8.

 

000:03:35 Borman: Okay. The first stage was very smooth, and this one is smoother.

 

000:03:40 Collins: Understand; smooth and smoother. Looks good here.

 

 

 

It was well documented, and not present on Apollo 11.

 

 

 

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Saw an interview with Amrstrong’s sons.  They were involved with the script and the actors, and were the ones who pushed for some of the humor that they said their dad had, but that a lot of people didn’t see.  They were very happy with the movie, and thought Gosling nailed their dad’s...efficiency with words.  

 

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The vibracam was way overdone and especially annoying in the Claire foy scenes. I could've done without any Claire foy tbh. The way her accent breaks in the more dramatic scenes was distracting. Wish they focused more on NA's bkgd and also explained more in-depth the surrounding characters. For instance who was coach Taylor and why was he important? Or who were the other astronauts and what parts did they play other than being there at the same time? Most of the cinematography was beautifully shot. Did the Armstrongs live in clear lake?

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On 10/15/2018 at 8:58 PM, RamjetFDO said:

Apollo 6 had a significant "pogo effect", which almost had some bad results - it did screw up the trajectory.

 

Apollo 8 had some specific and noticeable engine vibrations noted by the crew, that was resolved for future Saturn V launches.

 

It wasn't too horrible, because this is from the flight transcript after staging:

 

000:03:31 Borman: Houston, how do you read? Apollo 8.

 

000:03:34 Collins: We hear you loud and clear, Apollo 8.

 

000:03:35 Borman: Okay. The first stage was very smooth, and this one is smoother.

 

000:03:40 Collins: Understand; smooth and smoother. Looks good here.

 

Interesting. I actually just re-watched "When We Left Earth" and there was a part where Bill Anders talked about the vibrations on Apollo 8 ascent. He said it was shaking so bad that they could barely read the instruments and he said Borman even took his hand off the abort lever because he was worried the shaking would cause him to trigger it on accident.

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Also - for anyone interested, Damien Chazele (sp?) recently did an interview on Fresh Air where he talked about the production.  Very interesting.

One thing I thought was cool... they used basically no CGI in the film.  All of the shots in the Gemini and Apollo vehicles were done in full-scale models that were built and put on huge gimbals so they could move them around.  They used super large LED TVs showing the earth/stars/moon/etc. outside the windows of the vehicles for the actors instead of green screens so they would have something to react to.

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Thoroughly enjoyed this movie since it was right in my wheelhouse (grew up in the 60's).  Brought back a lot of fond memories including the X-15 model I built as a kid and watching in amazement every space launch that was televised.  How this ever succeeded with the science that was available at that time is miraculous. 

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I really wanted to love this but holy hell that was a boring 2.5 hours

Pretty much this. I was seven years old when it happened and really into NASA. They could have made a much better film. I really like Foy in other roles but she was tough to watch. If Armstrong's wife really acted like that in the last scene then she must have been one of the most unpleasant wives on the planet. You can smile just a little when you first see your husband after a successful mission.
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Pretty much this. I was seven years old when it happened and really into NASA. They could have made a much better film. I really like Foy in other roles but she was tough to watch. If Armstrong's wife really acted like that in the last scene then she must have been one of the most unpleasant wives on the planet. You can smile just a little when you first see your husband after a successful mission.


Thought it made it more interesting. Could watch Claire Foy all day.

Outstanding filmmaking. Totally immersive experience.
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On 10/28/2018 at 5:27 AM, HouTex said:

If Armstrong's wife really acted like that in the last scene then she must have been one of the most unpleasant wives on the planet. You can smile just a little when you first see your husband after a successful mission.

They did end up divorced.  

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