L'étoffe des héros

Don't expect a thrilling build-up to the USA's first man in space. You have to settle for the inter-relationship squabbles between the astronauts (and spouses) which most of the time comprises conversation with no action. It's a drama which does not make interesting viewing, in fact it's mostly boring.

How is it that writers & directors continue to try to pass off alternative/revisionist crap as historically accurate? While the events themselves may be accurate, the portrayals of the astronauts, NASA employees, their combined families, etc., is severely myopic and filtered through today's politically correct & fragile viewpoints. None of them were perfect, none of their families were...but they did what had to be done at a time when death could be all but guaranteed. I give it a D for this very narrow and shallow take on a classic novel & reality.

This series is a trip into the Disney Alternate Cinematic Universe where the Mercury astronauts are actually self-absorbed millennial frat boys. I truly believe the the Wolfe book and the 1983 film sat unread and unviewed next to the writer's lap top. You can avoid the rest if you wish.

Yet another casualty of the tendency of modern writers being unable to identify with intelligent, educated, accomplished people with initiative. As a result, this iteration all but ignores their skills and accomplishments and instead focuses on portraying them as undisciplined jerks becasue the writers can't distinguish between traits like competitive versus combative, or driven versus reckless. Instead of celebrating the swell of patriotism and technological innovation that occurred during the formation and growth of the space program we instead get a boring melodrama about how white men are jerks, even when they are nice. Were these men perfect? No. People as driven and brazen as them are inherently flawed when it comes to social interaction, but that's not the same as being unruly. The misguided focus is so bad we see nothing depicting the reasons why the Mercury Seven were chosen. It's "look at what a bunch of jerks theses guys are" and suddenly BAM! "We've got our seven". Uh, what? Read the book and watch the film instead. Both captured that time much more faithfully while neither focusing on the astronaut's flaws nor sugar-coating them.

The secret story if why Chuck Yeager couldn't get into his plane for the test flight:

Yeager was a drinker and when he drank he liked to cheat on his wife. After a night of boozing and hooking up with women he went home to his angry wife. An argument ensued and Yeager jumped on to his horse and took off, he shortly fell off the horse and broke his ribs. The test flight was either the next day or very soon after and due to the broken rib Yeager was unable to open the hatch of the airplane. If he couldn't open the hatch on his own the entire thing would have been canceled. But the flight manager took a broom handle and broke it so Yeager could use this to open the hatch. This resulting in Charles W Russell earning the nickname of Hatch.