From a 50s sci-fi curio to Hollywood blockbusters, there have been giant leaps in films that reach for the moonFirst Man is in cinemas now, in all its crashing, whooshing, non-flag-waving glory, reminding audiences afresh that the space race has served Hollywood remarkably well over the years.
Even at its most scientifically credible, there’s an eternal streak of fantasy to the business of launching human beings far beyond Earth: for most of us, the sheer unimaginability of such a mission lends even the most prosaic space-travel stories a tingle of fascination.Damien Chazelle’s gripping moon-landing drama can stand proudly upright in the astronaut canon, but it also left me hungry to revisit The Right Stuff (1983), which I, like many critics, had long regarded as Hollywood’s crowning achievement on the subject.
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