Let’s light this candle!
The Right Stuff is a damn near perfect film. I really wanted to give this five stars and I nearly did. However for a film that gets so much right, it gets one thing incredibly wrong in my opinion. Gus Grissom.
By the time Apollo rolled around in 1966, Grissom was the astronaut. There’s a reason he was chosen to command both the first manned Gemini flight and what would have been the first Apollo flight had that fateful test not occurred. Yet this film makes him out to be a bumbling, ham-headed idiot who purposefully blew the hatch off his craft, something that was later disproven. Like I said, there’s a reason he was chosen to be one of the first but this film doesn’t portray him in a positive light at all which really impacted the way I feel about it. There’s dramatic licence then there’s just falsehood and this crosses that line.
That being said, the casting is incredible. Not only are there some powerhouse names here but somehow they all look like the people they’re portraying. Ed Harris is a dead ringer for John Glenn and he nails his personality as does Scott Glenn as Al Shepard. The way he goes from cheery to icy is just amazing and is exactly how the real Shepard was reported to be like.
Whilst I watched this for all the Mercury stuff, I was more thrilled by the story of Chuck Yeager as portrayed by the brilliant Sam Shepard. I knew a bit about Yeager before watching this but I feel like this film does a great job of telling his story. Not only that but the scenes of him flying his various craft are incredible. I need to know how they shot that stuff.
The effects are great and oddly wondrous. I love the firefly sequence and it’s just a testament to how magical practical effects truly are. I love all the sets and the model work that was involved in making this film. If this had been made today, I don’t think it would have had half the soul that this film has.
As I mentioned before, if it hadn’t been for that quite bizarre portrayal of Gus Grissom this would have been five stars from me. What a film!
Let’s light this candle!
The Right Stuff is a damn near perfect film. I really wanted to give this five stars and I nearly did. However for a film that gets so much right, it gets one thing incredibly wrong in my opinion. Gus Grissom.
By the time Apollo rolled around in 1966, Grissom was the astronaut. There’s a reason he was chosen to command both the first manned Gemini flight and what would have been the first Apollo flight had that fateful test not occurred. Yet this film makes him out to be a bumbling, ham-headed idiot who purposefully blew the hatch off his craft, something that was later disproven. Like I said, there’s a reason he was chosen to be one of the first but this film doesn’t portray him in a positive light at all which really impacted the way I feel about it. There’s dramatic licence then there’s just falsehood and this crosses that line.
That being said, the casting is incredible. Not only are there some powerhouse names here but somehow they all look like the people they’re portraying. Ed Harris is a dead ringer for John Glenn and he nails his personality as does Scott Glenn as Al Shepard. The way he goes from cheery to icy is just amazing and is exactly how the real Shepard was reported to be like.
Whilst I watched this for all the Mercury stuff, I was more thrilled by the story of Chuck Yeager as portrayed by the brilliant Sam Shepard. I knew a bit about Yeager before watching this but I feel like this film does a great job of telling his story. Not only that but the scenes of him flying his various craft are incredible. I need to know how they shot that stuff.
The effects are great and oddly wondrous. I love the firefly sequence and it’s just a testament to how magical practical effects truly are. I love all the sets and the model work that was involved in making this film. If this had been made today, I don’t think it would have had half the soul that this film has.
As I mentioned before, if it hadn’t been for that quite bizarre portrayal of Gus Grissom this would have been five stars from me. What a film!
