'First Man' first weekend a box office flop--as it should be

As a young man in the late 1960s, I remember how the United States was in fierce competition with the then Soviet Union in the race for the moon. A few years before that, when, in 1957 the Soviet's Sputnik went into orbit, I was one of the kids who became interested in this race. I built model rockets from scratch, read "Satellites, Rockets and Outer Space" by Willy Ley, and was one of a million kids cheerleading our nation in this race to be the first country to put a man on the moon.

America launched our own satellites, sent monkeys into orbit and we went full bore into the race.

Then it happened. Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong's trip to the moon. We all sat around the black and white TV, tense, hoping and literally praying for the safe landing of Armstrong and the crew on the moon.

It was such an incredible moment for the country. We were so damn proud to be Americans when Armstrong planted the American flag. "One small step for man . . . one giant step for mankind," were his words, although it's possible he said "for a man," but that's not terribly important. What was important was that America was first.

Of course, they made a movie about it titled First Man. Directed by Damien Chazelle, First Man received a ton of rave reviews and huge profits were anticipated even after sinking anywhere between $100 million to $125 million to produce and publicize.

But it tanked at the box office, with a mere $16.2 million on opening weekend. It was projected to do at least $19 million to $21 million, but even those numbers are downplayed to avoid possible embarrassment and inspire free publicity if it should over-perform.

When moviegoers discovered that one of the most, if not the most iconic moments of the entire last century was not included in the movie--the planting of the American flag on the moon. In fact, they didn't even have an American flag on the spacesuits of the astronauts which, of course, were part of the uniform.

How arrogant and globalist of those woke producers for leaving out the one thing that every American who was alive and not in diapers at the time remembers.

The Apollo 11 mission was the single most important moment in the Space Race and a huge accomplishment in the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

Before this mission, the Soviets were way ahead of us with the Sputnik launch and their other accomplishments. And it was President Kennedy who understood how high the stakes were and he directed NASA to put a man on the moon.

"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard," Kennedy said at the end of 1962. But he knew it was even more than that and he told Congress in 1961, soon after assuming the presidency, that the Space Race was bigger than mere bragging rights.

"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," JFK wrote, at a time when Democrats were more like today's Republicans.

"Now it is time to take longer strides--time for a great new American enterprise--time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on Earth," he said.

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth," he urged. "No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space, and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."

And we did it with a computer with less memory than today's laptop.

This is what makes the planting of the American flag on the moon one of the most important and iconic moments of the Twentieth Century. It was a choice between tyranny and freedom. It was about patriotism and pride, but pride in a good sense. And by winning the Space Race and beating the evil Soviet empire, we sent a clear message to the entire world.

That the movie did not include our flag reflects a total lack of understanding of Armstrong's mission, and their mindless explanations about the omission illustrates their tone deaf ignorance of the entire mission.

Ryan Gosling, who plays Neil Armstrong said, "I think this was widely regarded in the end as a human achievement [and] that's how we chose to view it."

What an idiotic remark. The entire mission was an American achievement requiring great ingenuity and yes, capitalism to fund it. I believe it was Truman Capote who once said that all actors are not very bright, and Gosling proves it.

Chazelle said, "I wanted the primary focus in that scene to be on Neil's solitary moments on the moon--his point of view as he first exited the LEM, his time spent at Little West Crater, the memories that may have crossed his mind during his lunar EVA."

Proof that Chazelle is clueless. Did he think that Armstrong's "memories" were devoid of what inspired the mission in the first place? The entire reason for going there? Chazelle may have won an Oscar, but he was in over his head on this one by not including the American flag being planted on the moon.

I will not watch the movie; not even after it's re-run on Netflix or elsewhere. I want to remember the mission the way it was to the American child whose patriotism and pride of country was branded in me forever.

If they don't show us truth in what we know actually happened, they don't deserve our consideration. And they can pretend their weekend flop had nothing to do with the flag, but of course we know the real truth.


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