I’m a huge fan of NASA true stories (and ones that aren’t true but have the same milieu, like The Martian.) I am also a big fan of Damien Chazelle and Ryan Gosling, so I flipped when I heard that there was going to be a movie that combines all three of these things. And I really did like getting to watch it. The problem was, it didn’t really take full advantage of some of those things.
Sure, it’s shot beautifully. Nobody knows light like Damien Chazelle, that’s for sure. The scenes on the lunar surface took my breath away. And it was an interesting choice to shoot much of the space action (if it can be called that) in interiors. Never has a film so effectively captured the claustrophobia of being inside a Gemini capsule. Especially on the big screen.
And I do love the filter that’s laid across the whole film. The combination of the slight graininess and the color grading really gave the impression that this was made sometime in the 70’s or 80’s. Very Right Stuff.
But, oh, man, was it morose. Ryan Gosling, great actor though he is, spent most of the film looking depressed and not getting to emote except with his eyes. Claire Foy's Janet is just super anxious and intense. As my mom pointed out, you don’t go to the moon if you’re not actually enthusiastic about it. But even the exciting news (like, I’M GOING TO THE MOON for instance) didn’t seem to produce any real reaction here. It was all just sad worrying. 
The last scene was the epitome of the problems with the film. It’s the first time they’ve seen each other in a month. He’s just come back from an incredible achievement, and according to the established visual language, he’s finally let go of his biggest source of pain on the way. The danger, the anxiety, is over with. And what do they do? They don’t talk, they don’t even smile. It’s just more depressed staring. Hell of a payoff, huh? (And if you're going to say, "not every movie needs to be happy," okay, but every movie DOES need a release of tension, dammit.)
There’s a lot of interesting dichotomies to the space program in the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo era. It’s a huge scientific advancement taking on the vastness of space and making history on a daily basis—but it’s also just a bunch of military guys bonding. The job necessitates that everything must be taken very seriously—but at the same time, you can’t take anything seriously, or the weight will crush you. And it’s a few crucial individuals taking the first steps—but it’s also a huge network of people working around the clock to make it happen. This film explored none of that dichotomy. There was no lightness, no sense of bonding (even of the audience with the characters, since we get such a fleeting sketch of most of them), and no real triumph. As an artsy period piece about a man coping with loss through his work, it works just fine. But as a NASA film, it never really takes off.
First Man spends all of its time worrying what will happen if Armstrong’s mission doesn’t succeed. But it never stops for a moment to ask, what if it does?