Movie Review – The Right Stuff

The Right Stuff (1983)
Written & Directed by Phillip Kaufman

It’s pretty silly to say with a straight face that the United States “won the space race.” This win is predicated on a single event, landing a man on the moon. That’s an awe-inspiring feat, but I don’t understand why that was the thing that made America the winner. From a narrow-minded jingoistic sense, I understand why it was the only thing the United States focused the full force of mass media on. Thus, it was made the winning event through the propagandistic media. Let’s review the space-faring accomplishments made during this time.

Here are the Soviet space firsts: first artificial satellite (Sputnik 1, 1957), first animal in space (Laika, 1957), First photographs of the far side of the moon (Luna 3, 1959), first person in space (Yuri Gagarin, 1961), first woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova, 1963), first spacewalk (Alexei Leonov, 1965), first spacecraft to land on the moon (Luna 9, 1966), first spacecraft to land on another planet (Venus, Venera 7, 1970), first space station (Salyut 1, 1971), and first spacecraft to land on Mars (Mars 3, 1971).

Here are the United States’ space firsts: first person on the moon (Neil Armstrong, 1969). 

How the United States “won the space race” is still a mystery. The accomplishments of the US space program were undoubtedly impressive, but just as if not more were what the Soviets’ accomplished. Anyone unwilling to admit this is not being intellectually honest about these feats of humanity and is still caught up in Cold War/Red Scare nonsense. I think it is even more impressive when you take into account that 35 years prior to that first artificial satellite, the Soviet Union was one of the poorest, most war-ravaged countries in the world. 

The key takeaway from all of this is that humans can accomplish amazing things through publicly-funded scientific research, whether you were in the United States or the Soviet Union. These were not private corporations doing this; these were public institutions. We also should remember that the United States poured so much taxpayer money into these ventures because of how impressive the Soviets were at developing space exploration. The Right Stuff even presents this, in broad strokes, as a looming fear of…the Soviets embarrassing the States? 

The Right Stuff, based on the nonfiction book by Tom Wolfe, tells the story of the Mercury space program and many of the firsts that the States accomplished (after the Soviets). It’s not so much a film with a singular cohesive narrative but a series of episodes, moments from these years that have historical significance. We start in 1947 with Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepherd) breaking the sound barrier for the first time (The Soviets would follow the next year). 

Yeager’s breaking of the sound barrier created a lot of acclaim in the media, and over the next six years, a group of pilots were selected to participate in the Mercury program. Its goal is to put a human being into Earth’s orbit before the Soviets (spoiler, they do not make that deadline). Among those selected as the Mercury Seven are Gordon Cooper (Dennis Quaid) and Gus Grissom (Fred Ward). Later additions, and two of the most famous American astronauts, are Alan Shepard (Scott Glenn) and John Glenn (Ed Harris). Over the next five years, these pilots accomplished quite a bit.

I would not say that The Right Stuff is boring; there are a lot of neat things that happen. But it doesn’t have a narrative spine to connect everything, so it often feels disconnected. Because the film never focuses on a single person or character arc, it is tough to be invested. There are hints that it might be from time to time. We see how complicated the cocky Gordo Cooper is and just a bit at how this affects his wife. It’s implied that these astronauts took advantage of the female groupies they began to accrue despite almost every man being married. There’s a brief moment where John Glenn calls them out about this, but it never really amounts to much, something I could say about many character moments in this film. I only saw these guys as one-dimensional, except for Chuck Yeager, who gets as close to a complete arc as anyone in the movie. He has a clear goal: get to outer space, even for a brief moment, and I found myself invested in that story, though its two halves act as almost bookends to everything else. 

This film focused on the myths of the space program, not the reality. Astronauts frequently argue with the scientists working for the space program, most of them with foreign accents. And wouldn’t you know it, the flyboys are always right. I can say with a lot of assurance that in a similar situation, I will go with what the scientist who has obsessively devoted their life to the minutiae of physics has to say over a guy who is very good at flying a jet. Flying a jet is more than I can do, but the scientist knows why the jet can fly; it’s not always the case with the pilot. It doesn’t surprise me to see more American anti-intellectualism, which is ever-present in these COVID-infected times. 

As anti-communist propaganda goes, it delivers all the greatest hits, especially the Lone Hero trope. According to Hollywood, no one ever achieves anything collectively. It’s only individual hotshots that ever achieve anything, not people working together. This makes it so that your average American always feels a sense of gnawing inadequacy. “If John Glenn could orbit the Earth because he’s such a badass loner, why can’t I make something out of my life? I must be a failure. Thus, I should grind more; somehow, I will make it.” The space program worked because a collective of scientists and pilots worked together towards a goal. That’s how everything in life works. Most loners in this field are guys who crash & burn into ashes inside their homemade space rockets. Oh yes, it was publicly funded, not a private corporation in charge of everything. 

I think Philip Kaufman is a decent director. His Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake is better than the original, in my opinion. He also has some moments of sheer brilliance here, with aerial photography being a real standout. I suspect the people who remember this picture fondly are thinking more about that element than they are about the performances or storytelling. They were thrilled at the scenes where people go into the sky and go fast and go to space. I agree; those scenes were great. But the film is over three hours long, and what it provides is not enough for me to give it a thumbs up.

What I felt most when The Right Stuff was over was how much more interested I would be in a Ken Burns documentary series about the Mercury space program. Interviews with the surviving astronauts and footage from the actual events. I’d learn a bit more, and Burns would do better character development than what this film accomplished. There are interesting bits here and there; it even has some decent comedy from Harry Shearer and Jeff Goldblum as feds trying to get the program started. Would I ever watch this again? Probably not. I would be up for seeing it on a larger screen to see how the aerial sequences play out on that scale; they would be fun. Overall, not something I found all that terribly fun to watch.