Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: First Man

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Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 11-10-2018, 12:51 PM:

This isn't exactly an action-packed thrill-a-minute movie, but it's definitely interesting.

There's more of a focus on Neil Armstrong's relationship with his wife and the other astronauts than on the technical aspects of the moon landing.

Saskatchewan even gets a mention fairly early in the movie. [Smile]

After watching the movie I was inspired to look up a few things.

Why is Saskatchewan mentioned in the movie?

Dr. Harold Johns

Why is there always that BLEEP in space communications? BLEEP "Hello mission control, etc and so forth" BLEEP "We read you and blah blah" BLEEP....

Quindar Tones

It's an opportunity to learn something about the moon mission and what went on behind the scenes leading up to the iconic television broadcast. But anyone who's looking for an edge-of-the-seat thriller will probably be disappointed.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-17-2018, 01:32 PM:

Pretty good movie overall, and very thought provoking.

All the actors did a fine job, although I found myself wishing they'd focused more on the whole Apollo 11 crew -- although the movie WAS called "First Man" and not "First Men," I thought the other guys got a little overshadowed.

I was kind of put-off by the shaky-cam in many scenes. A little of that goes a long way. But the movie did do a good job of relating what it must have felt like to be those guys in that situation.

I also found myself wishing there were more exterior shots of the various vehicles - even the big Saturn 5 rocket only gets a small couple of scenes.

The fictional bit at the end where Armstrong threw his daughter's bracelet into a crater was pretty nonsensical to me, considering the filmmakers went to great lengths to be accurate in most other ways. He had other mementos that he took with him, they could have easily focused on those instead.

Remembering the small controversy that erupted when the movie was released, about the filmmakers not including a scene of Armstrong planting the U.S. flag on the lunar surface...I know that decision caters to the whole "America is NOT the greatest country in the world" mind-set, which is OK, but since this is an American-made movie about a major American project, would it have killed them to include that moment? They could have downplayed it, or made it matter-of-fact, but to completely leave it out when it was clearly a big part of the overall journey is a little, well, un-American. (The flag IS shown, at least, but it's in a brief, far-away shot.)

Other than that quibble, I really liked the on-moon sequence, although I'm glad they didn't show that part in real-time! (It was about six hours from the landing before the crew stepped out of the LEM.)

Comparisons to that other big-time Apollo movie, "Apollo 13," are inevitable. I think this movie maybe did a better job of conveying the training and preparation necessary for this mission, and it caught the difficulty of the tasks at hand better. I thought "Apollo 13" flowed better from a story standpoint, and the script did a much better job of conveying what was happening at each moment -- where this movie relies more just on the images to get its points across. "Apollo 13" makes the astronauts seem more like regular guys than this movie did, and I thought "Apollo 13" showed the outside-the-ship angles a lot better than "First Man" did.

I liked both films -- however I don't really have much desire to see this one again, but "Apollo 13" is a favorite that I never get tired of seeing. I guess, to me, that makes "Apollo 13" the better of the two.

2.5 out of 5 stars from me. Probably would have been a 3 if not for the incessant shaky-cam.

Posted by Mark Ogden (Member # 43) on 11-17-2018, 03:02 PM:

quote: Mike Blakesley
about a major American project

But it's NOT about that. It's about Neil Armstrong, solely, which is why I suspect it's called First Man, and not "How America Got To The Moon" or somesuch thing. It's Armstrong and what drove him and what haunted him without the nationalism.

I'm with the filmmakers. A flag-planting scene would've been way out of place. It's not they story they wanted to tell, although you could also make an argument that the story they did tell, about what Armstrong did before he got back into the LEM, was utter BS with no historical substantiation whatever.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-17-2018, 04:05 PM:

I guess that was what bugged me about it, because it was just about him, but the entire mission wasn't a one-man show so the movie left me wanting to have learned more about the whole thing. I get where you're coming from.

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 11-26-2018, 10:24 AM:

I couldn't stand the camera work, some of the hand held jerky movement was grating beyond belief. The IMAX shot in 1.90 was a total jaw dropper of a scene.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 02-24-2019, 07:10 AM:

BUY AN EFFIN TRIPOD! Jonathan is spot on. Yeah, you put a camera on a shake rig for the flight shots, but you effin take it OFF the rig for the rest of the film. I guess they forgot that part. Handheld bullsheet shake-arama thru most of the damn movie, and for no good reason. In many places it seemed that it was being done on purpose -- steady- cams don't have that much shake; their whole purpose is so you can have handheld flexibility WITHOUT lots of shake...you know, that's why they call them STEADY-cams. Seems like here they WANTED normal shots to look like home movies. Annoying as all getout.

It is quite interesting how they shot the capsule spinning out of control by utilized a LED screen wall instead of a green screen, so the actors can actually see the effects happening in real time rather than needing to imagine what will be inserted later. And that is one humungus LED screen wall in front of the set. The video on the LED wall is synced with the cameras so the movement of the capsule on the hydraulics motion platform matches the movement on the LED screen in front of it. Seems like a fairly revolutionary advance over the green screen process.