Last Friday, I attended the showing of First Man, a two-hour story about Neil Armstrong and his journey into space on the Apollo 11.  Going into the movie, I was expecting it to be more about the technical aspects of getting into space through the development of the spaceship; however, these took a backseat to a family-oriented story and the struggles Armstrong faced before his historic moment in space.  After his young daughter dies of a brain tumor, Armstrong joins NASA astronauts in an attempt to win the space race against the Soviet Union.  While preparing for the lunar mission, Armstrong befriends other astronauts and faces more losses in the process.

This movie was much more emotional than I was expecting it to be.  As Armstrong began to lose those close to him, it was clear that he began to cope by putting walls up around himself.  Towards the end of the movie, he even began to grow emotionally distant from his wife, Janet, and family.  However, before he goes up into space, Janet forces Armstrong to face this new side of himself by telling his children that he might die during his journey — the same kind of loss he had faced countless times before.  Thus, this movie is less about the journey to space itself and more what it symbolizes in the process of Armstrong’s development as a character and a human.