Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon and the master of the understatement. “It, you know, was a pretty simple statement, talking about stepping off something,” he later said when asked about his legendary first words on the lunar surface. “It was what it was.”
Shrewdly chosen by Nasa to make that mission work – to troubleshoot unpredictable life and death situations on the fly and to represent not just America but the world – Armstrong was unquestionably the man for the job. Flying to the moon, landing and walking on it, let alone getting home safely, was man conquering the impossible. The stuff of dreams. Science fiction author Arthur C Clarke wrote that, from then on, history and fiction had “become inexorably linked”.
Despite his humility, Armstrong had spent some time thinking of what he might say when he stepped on to the moon – he knew what it meant. “Humankind has had some amazing journeys,” says James Hansen, professor of history at Alabama’s Auburn University and author of the book First Man: The Life of Neil A Armstrong, from which Damien Chazelle’s film First Man is adapted. “There have been major technological events. Splitting the atom. But going to the moon, it’s kind of like the Chinese stepping off the Formosa straits for the first time. The major movement of peoples. The Vikings making it all the way to Greenland. These amazing stories of humanity moving and seeking and exploring. If we just stay put in one place, we don’t learn. To have our species leaving our own planet and stepping on to another heavenly body for the first time, it’s a major event in the history of humankind. Neil certainly recognised that, and I think he built that into the words that he said when he walked off the lunar module on to the surface.”
The world witnessed Armstrong’s great leap: nearly 600 million rapt people, a fifth of the planet’s population back then, were glued to their radios and televisions, all experiencing the event. John F Kennedy had, in 1961, promised that it would happen by the end of the decade: “The eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond,” he said. Nasa then raced to make that wild promise a reality, and not without loss of life along the way. But the world needed it.
“It was a time of such incredibly high tension nationally and internationally, and I think everyone felt we were right on the brink of potential world war III,” said Armstrong in 2001. “I don’t think anybody, even the people in the backwoods of Montana, were unaware of this tension. I was very aware of it.” Getting to the moon, he thought, could transcend it all. Armstrong was a fighter pilot between 1950 and 1952, flying 78 missions in the Korean war before he was 22. “He never showed any fear in any of his close calls,” said his brother Dean. He became a research pilot for Nasa, flying more than 200 different aircraft before becoming an astronaut. “The unknowns were rampant,” he later said of the moon landing, but he batted off phantom computer alarms, enormous boulders and just 20 seconds of fuel remaining as he touched down. “The Eagle has landed,” he radioed to Houston. “You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue, we’re breathing again,” the controller responded.
First Man is a soulful, sensitive portrayal of Armstrong’s personal journey, with Damien Chazelle focusing on Armstrong’s intimate thoughts and feelings, bringing one of history’s most iconic moments down to Earth. “This was a feat beyond imagination – it was truly a giant leap for mankind,” says Chazelle. “This film is about one of the most extraordinary accomplishments not only in American history, but in human history. My hope is that by digging under the surface and humanising the icon, we can better understand just how difficult, audacious and heroic this moment really was.”
By concentrating on the man, Chazelle makes his film resonate for all of us – as the event itself did 49 years ago. “The plaque left on the leg of the lunar lander said: ‘Here, men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. We came in peace for all mankind,’” says Hansen. “This was a human achievement that we all share. It was a moment of global commonality and consciousness, something we all participated in. It was a brief pause in all the disillusion of humankind – we all took a breath and stepped away and saw that we had something very much in common.”
With men having set foot on the moon, anything seemed possible. The future had begun, and with it a world of opportunity. To experience it was to be inspired. “He changed the world. And, of course, he certainly changed me,” wrote science communicator Bill Nye after Armstrong died in 2012. “Neil Armstrong raised the expectations, the hopes and dreams of every human on Earth. Thanks to him, we all believe that humans can achieve great things, that we can learn about our place among the stars, that we can all reach up and out, that we can fly, and change the world.”
First Man is released nationwide on 12 October – book tickets here
