Will ‘First Man’ Be a Definitive Cinematic Look at Neil Armstrong?

The first footage from Damien Chazelle’s biopic recalls a ‘Whiplash’-level intensity and sports some clear ideas about the iconic astronaut’s heroism.

There are a good number of movie and TV depictions of NASA’s Apollo program, the series of human spaceflight missions which sought to put Americans on the moon between the late 1960s and early 1970s. They include Ron Howard’s big and small screen tributes, several documentaries, a handful of comedies (including one about a fly with a dream of going to the moon), Transformers and Men in Black sequels, and even some anti-moon landing conspiracy films. Overall, this particular sliver of real-life space exploration has been both revered and dismissed over the years.

Of course, Neil Armstrong — the first person to walk on the moon — has appeared as a character in some of these productions throughout the Apollo program film canon. Tony Goldwyn in Howard’s miniseries From Earth to the Moon, Jeffrey Nordling in the docudrama Apollo 11, and Daniel Lapaine in the TV movie Moonshot are notable examples, although these performances tend to function as smaller parts in service of larger stories. But with Damien Chazelle‘s First Man perhaps we expect something different.

Whether due to the power of Armstrong’s legacy or a concerted effort on the part of filmmakers to fictionalize and further immortalize that moment of the first moon landing, the trailer for First Man certainly appears like a very modern and Hollywood vision of a specific time in history. Not to the extent of depicting Apollo 11 as a mission to stop some Decepticons, of course, but everything about First Man feels like a top-notch space exploration thriller, regardless of the real story behind it. Watch the trailer below.

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