Even Imax Eye Candy Could Persuade Me To Purchase First Man To View It Again

Rating: 5/10 (1 February 2019)

Let me begin by saying that I suffer from the challenge of comparing the actions and emotions of a historical film with my recollections of the actual events as they happened. For many years I have used two movies, Philip Kaufman's The Right Stuff and Ron Howard's Apollo 13, in conjunction to my memory of actual historical events as a yardstick to gage the merits of a new release such as First Man. Though I have not seen First Man in 4K, I did view the IMAX biographical movie based on the Neil Armstrong biography, First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, written by James R. Hansen. First Man tells the story of Neil Armstrong's career relating to his Apollo 11 flight, leading up to the astronaut representing humanity by being the first to step on the surface of the moon.
While many of the Saturn V launch sequences look spectacular in the large screen format, I find the drama of the story line falls short due to more to the emotional limitations of the screen play, rather than the actual acting acumen of the movie's cast.
<<< Warning spoiler alert, if you continue reading... >>> Where First Man fails, is its apparent attempt to recreate similar tensions portrayed in the movie The Right Stuff, by the original seven Mercury astronauts and test pilot Chuck Yeager (For example: between astronauts vs test pilots, physicians vs astronaut candidates, scientists vs politicians, press vs astronaut families, and even Russia vs USA) in a film that portrays a single space launch/event, like Apollo 13. Unfortunately, Apollo 13 is more a homage to the spirit of cooperation and innovation of engineers and astronauts the overcome the deadly spectre of a multiple systems failure following an explosion of a major component of the Lunar Spacecraft's service module. Apollo 13 does create its own set of tension that successfully propels the story line (integrating dissimilar, incompatible systems between the Command and Lunar modules to provide life support to the crew, the stresses experienced by the astronauts family in dealing with the press, neighbors, politicians, NASA policies, as well as the need for finding transparency to the truth by Armstrong's Wife vs shield his elderly mother from the life-threatening circumstances).
The Right Stuff also successfully incorporates elements of superstition and mysticism (Yeager's need for a stick of Beemans Gum before a flight and John Glen's glowing space gadgets seemingly in sync with the flying embers of an Australian bushman's bonfire). The film version of The Right Stuff uses the right combination of Hollywood embellishment and elements taken from Tom Wolfe's book to create an interesting perspective of key events in the US Space Program).
By contrast, we find only Tom Hanks can give us a balanced combination of acting and narration of the book, Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 , authored by astronaut Jim Lovell and journalist Jeffrey Kluger.
Both Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff, succeed with great, memorable soundtracks that not only blend in with story line, but manage to elevate their respective film, a major element that seems sorely missing from First Man. Many critics consider the soundtrack of First Man to be great, but unlike Apollo 13 or The Right Stuff, no song from First Man lingers in the memory as do the tracks from the other two.
Let me throw two more exceptional biographical movies about flight that, in my opinion, pass muster. First, there is Jimmy Stewart's portrayal of Charles Lindberg's solo transatlantic flight in Billy Wilder's The Spirit of St. Louis, which happens to also have a memorable soundtrack. More recently, Klim Shipenko's Salyut-7 which shows us that America does not have a monopoly on giving us a sense of the challenges of pushing humanity and technology beyond the limits, as to create a crises which is rescued from disaster by a combination of piloting skill, engineering prowess, trust, and luck. Like the crew of Salyut - 7, the movie succeeds visually and dramatically in spite of relying on English subtitles to tell the dialog. And the film's great soundtrack needs no translation.
Of the five flight movies described in this review, only First Man is only on that I have no inclination to purchase or interest view more than once, hence the average five out of ten star rating.