Damien Chazelle, the mind behind would-be Best Picture winner La La Land if it weren’t for an admin stuff-up, has spent the last couple of years working hard on his new film First Man, a biopic of Neil Armstrong starring Ryan Gosling as the famous astronaut, and the fruits of his labour were finally shown to the world for the first time at the Venice Film Festival.
Drawing strong praise for its direction and the acting from Gosling and leading lady Claire Foy, things are looking up for First Man. But alas, something apparently always has to go slightly wrong in moments like these, which in this case is a small bunch of Americans who are getting their mad on over the movie.
The cause of their rage? First Man doesn’t have a shot of Armstrong planting the American flag into the moon’s surface.
Leading this wave of anger over the lack of flag-in-moon action in First Man is, unsurprisingly, a bunch of conservative Americans who worship at the altar of one Donald Trump, such as the hosts of Fox & Friends and US senator Marco “I’ve got the spine of a jellyfish” Rubio.
According to these fine folk, not showing the American flag being planted on the moon is akin to “non-patriotism” and the Fox & Friends panel went one further by calling Gosling an “idiot” for not doing the deed before trying reeeeeeally hard to connect the issue with the whole thing over NFL football players kneeling during the national anthem. Yes, this is all as dumb as you think it is.
It honestly seemed like if you gave them an extra few minutes to talk about this, they would 100% back the idea of a new First Man cut that had a scene of Trump doing the flag-planting himself.
This is total lunacy. And a disservice at a time when our people need reminders of what we can achieve when we work together. The American people paid for that mission,on rockets built by Americans,with American technology & carrying American astronauts. It wasn’t a UN mission. https://t.co/eGwBq7hj8C
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) August 31, 2018
Fox & Friends Rages at Ryan Gosling For Moon Landing Flag Comment: He’s ‘an Idiot!’ https://t.co/B2TrpCI7Bo pic.twitter.com/9iglZ2YXBh
— Mediaite (@Mediaite) August 31, 2018
Firstly, it’s a goddamn movie, not a documentary. If you want to see the American flag being planted on the moon, go look up the actual clip of Neil Armstrong doing the dirty on YouTube.
The fact that the American flag appears multiple times – including on the moon – in First Man is conveniently lost on those “patriotic” Americans, not to mention the fact that Gosling is Canadian and not, you know, American.
Chazelle has since issued a statement in response to the dumb backlash, saying that his movie has got nothing to do with American politics (duh) and is mainly about Neil Armstrong and the achievements of human history, and not the sticking of flags on moons.
Gosling himself responded to the dumb backlash with a much-too-sensible answer that his take was that Armstrong thought of the moon landing as a “human achievement” rather an an American one. He’s right about that one because I distinctly recall Armstrong saying the world “mankind” in his infamous moon landing speech instead of “American-kind”.
And just to pile on the conservatives’ dumb backlash, the Armstrong family also spoke up about the whole issue and were in full support of the movie and the lack of flag-in-moon scenes.
Needless to say, people had a field day tearing down the convervatives’ argument and the boy were there some gems.
You can see the fucking flag in FIRST MAN.
— erickohn (@erickohn) September 1, 2018
As a patriotic American, I, for one, am profoundly disappointed that Damien Chazelle chose not include a scene with Donald Trump planting the flag on the moon in First Man.
— Franklin Leonard (@franklinleonard) August 31, 2018
Why wouldn't they just have an American cut of First Man where we see the flag planted on the moon accompanied by the theme to Team America?
— Frank J. Fleming (@IMAO_) August 31, 2018
I wonder what Neil Armstrong himself would think about whether it was an American or human achievement. Let’s search his quotes…
“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for America.”
Wait, no, he said:
“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”
— Steve Cox (@RealSteveCox) August 31, 2018
Given how the Venice Film Festival was blessed with some divine intervention when Lady Gaga appeared, I guess it’s only fair that it is evened out with some stupidity.
Seeing as how I’ve used up way too much time talking about the dumbassery of conservative Americans, it’s only fair I balance it out with something less headscratching, so here’s the First Man trailer, which BTW features no American flags.
