Directed by Oscar-winner Damien Chazelle, First Man roared out of elite film festivals with a ton of buzz and rave reviews. The movie took a big tumble, though, when moviegoers learned that one of the most iconic moments of the last century was arrogantly removed for touchy-feely and oh-so woke globalist purposes.
“If we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take,” Kennedy wrote.
And this is why the planting of the American flag on the moon is so important. Not out of some sense of patriotism (though that matters), not for jingoistic reasons, and not even for American reasons. As Kennedy so eloquently put it, with the whole world watching, the planting of that flag was about the choices people would make between tyranny and freedom, about which side they would choose.
America did not win the Space Race only for Americans, we defeated the evil Soviets to send a message to the whole world.
It is simply absurd for Chazelle to argue that Armstrong’s “memories” would omit the inspiration behind the Apollo 11 mission, the key moment that solidified the whole reason for it. Everything Armstrong and his fellow pioneers risked their lives for was about getting to that moment, and the omission of that moment is not only arrogance on the part of Chazelle and his screenwriter, it informs us that this a story told by storytellers who are way out of their depth.
Yes, as has been tirelessly noted by reactionaries, there are other shots of Old Glory in First Man, but this argument is insulting and condescending, as though we are just a bunch of censorious rubes counting shots of the flag. Our criticism, though, is not about some hollow rush of shallow patriotism at the sight of the stars and stripes, it is about TRUTH, about what matters, about accuracy, and most of all, it is about what Neil Armstrong and these other brave men risked and lost their lives for.
To begin with, to put it as simply as possible, I think the American people are just tired of this shit, tired of Hollywood celebrating every culture in the world while denigrating ours. Hollywood enjoys the best of America — wealth, fame, personal freedom, artistic freedom — they are the freest and most spoiled culture in the history of the world, and still they shit all over of us — and we are sick of it.
Ryan Gosling, who plays Armstrong said, “I think this was widely regarded in the end as a human achievement [and] that’s how we chose to view it.”