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I absolutely loved the film and thought it was an incredible piece of art and a piercingly realistic depiction of a certain VERY REAL type of masculinity. You're lucky that you find it unbelievable / overdramatic.

Anyway, when I was a kid I used to love seeing those burnt capsules in the Science Museum in London. So crazy to see the story rendered to beautifully, along with the politics, the oxygen fires, the bouncing off the atmosphere... I couldn't have asked for anything more.

I thought his portrayal was a realistic vision of the pitfalls of masculinity, and not melodramatic at all. My dad's like that, except he smiles instead of having the blank Gosling face. My dad didn't cry even at his own mother's funeral.

Seeing Gosling/Armstrong closing up the notebooks where he'd been trying to figure out how to cure his daughter's brain cancer, seeing him cover his face to cry silently, seeing him snap at his friend "Do you think I left there because I wanted to talk?", his fear of his emotions... It was just so true to life. I cried multiple times in that film. Of course films are always a bit romanticised - I have to say at no point was the illusion broken for me.

I think that film gets into my top 3 films along with Gattaca and The Matrix.

I love Drive but it was really Blade Runner 2049 that made me realise that his "silent" roles are actually a deceptively simple comment of the state of masculinity, kind of like American Psycho (film > book IMO - interestingly the screenwriter of the film was a woman and the directory of the film was a woman, and the film & book are a critique of that version of masculinity).

Also Ryan's performance in The Big Short made me realise that he is CHOOSING to do his "silent" stuff when he does. He's a very talented actor.



Some of us can spot it. In the Apollo 13 movie, I could tell the real dialog (recorded in history) from the fake dialog.

The big failure was right after the explosion. There was a desire to show the level of stress at that time, so the script writers had the astronauts be antagonistic toward each other and generally unproductive. As I watched that, I instantly saw a bunch of wimpy unstable Hollywood types instead of carefully screened professional test pilots.

The intro dialog was also really forced, and the historical dialog contradicted the direction that rockets were fired when returning.


Makes sense. I didn't even think about how real test pilots might react after the explosion. Guess it would have been too cold for general viewing. The grandparent comment would have found it even more unbelievable I guess.

I don't dispute that the film fudged reality to get to a more relatable emotional truth - I actually like that kind of thing.


Parent comment isn't even talking about first man - they're talking about apollo 13.


Sorry, got confused.




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