First Man has been hailed by fans after it has been released on Amazon Prime for streaming.
Released in 2018, First Man is a biographical drama that follows the life of Neil Armstrong, focusing on the years leading up to NASA’s historic Apollo 11 mission and the first manned moon landing in 1969.
The film opens up with Armstrong’s aspirations and fears, the risks of space exploration, and the emotional toll that comes with becoming a national hero.
⭐ The main cast includes:
Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong
Claire Foy as Janet Armstrong (Neil’s wife)
Jason Clarke as Ed White
Kyle Chandler as Deke Slayton
Corey Stoll as Buzz Aldrin
Rotten Tomatoes rating
The underrated flick holds a Rotten Tomatoes score of 87%, indicating that 87% of critics gave it positive reviews.
Viewers reactions
There have also been plenty of positive people praising the First Man on Reddit.
One social media user wrote, “I remember this kind of came and went in 2018, winning one technical Oscar and underperforming at the box office.
“I finally watched it and it’s probably one of the best astronaut movies I’ve ever seen. It really captures the sheer terror of space travel, and Gosling is fantastic as a man so weighed down by grief that he can only focus on his job. The sound and score are also incredible, typical in any Chazelle movie.”
A second person chimed in, “I saw this in IMAX with a decent crowd. I’ll never forget the reaction when they first open the door, the camera zooms out onto the moon, everything goes silent, and the aspect ratio switches to IMAX. Very few movies have a moment that is that fucking good.”
Meanwhile, another viewer praised the movie’s deception of grief. They loved how it focused on Armstrong’s loss, not just the space race.
They said, “i’m really glad that you mentioned grief because damn: the balls on chazelle to make a movie about going to the moon where that’s a secondary plot point to the main story of how a man deals with the loss of a child.
“it bothers me when people strip it down to something so reductive like a “sad man” movie (a criticism that i’ve heard multiple times). gosling’s armstrong is a broken person tasked with doing something incredibly dangerous, and by laser focusing on armstrong’s grief the movie is able to strip away a lot of the mythos that surrounds the space race.
They continued, “imo too many people expected this film to be some kind of a thrilling historical docudrama, and what they got was an intense character study instead. it’s not a perfect movie, but gosling is very good in it and chazelle manages to make early space travel seem just as terrifying as it actually was.”
First Man premiered at the Venice Film Festival on August 29, 2018, and was released in the U.S. on October 12.
It earned critical positive responses, particularly the Moon landing scene. Despite this, it underperformed at the box office, making $105.7 million on a $59 million budget. It received four Oscar nominations and won Best Visual Effects.