First Man

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  • Review: First Man is out of this world NO WAIT I CAN DO BETTER

    Movie Review | Ali Gray | 28th September 2018

    I am from a generation who never had a Moon landing, and it’s probably just as well. I suspect 9/11 is to be our defining shared collective experience, one that united us in terror instead of awe, huddled as we were around TVs and computer screens to watch the world change forever, just not for the better. My generation would be unable to process a positive event of such magnitude without cynicism: if the Moon landing happened in 2018, the memes would be played out by breakfast, the conspiracy theories would be in effect by lunch and the astronaut who stepped off the spacecraft would be Milkshake Ducked by dinner (reminder: we couldn’t even enjoy the fact that scientists landed a probe on a fucking COMET because one of the engineers was wearing a sexist shirt). We deify Elon Musk, we don’t deserve a Moon landing. Watching First Man is probably as close as my generation is ever going to get to watching the human race extend its reach beyond the stars: it is a refreshingly old-fashioned, unashamedly straightforward account of mankind’s headiest achievement, and even speaking for a generation who are generally numb to this brand of back-patting throwback bio, I found its bald-faced nostalgia quite moving.