Did Neil Armstrong toss a bracelet which was engraved with deceased daughter Karen’s name on it into a crater on the moon? First Man would have you believe that this actually happened. In fact, it never did. The movie even shows Armstrong crying as he tosses the bracelet. That never happened either. apparently the “First Man’ producers and director Damien Chazelle thought that landing on the moon just wasnt dramatic enough, so they inserted a major element at the climax at the movie that is pure fiction.
via the Washington Post:
It’s the emotional climax of the film: Neil Armstrong in his spacesuit standing on the lip of a crater on the moon, holding a bracelet spelling out the name of daughter Karen, who’d died seven years earlier before her third birthday.
Played by Ryan Gosling, Armstrong tosses the bracelet into the depths of the dark crater, as tears stream down his face, a stirring farewell scene that comes toward the end of “First Man,” the Armstrong biopic directed by Damien Chazelle that opens nationwide Friday.
There’s just one problem. There is no evidence that it ever happened. Historians say it is likely another example of Hollywood injecting a bit of dramatic fiction to heighten the movie’s emotional punch.
In reality, Neil Armstrong’s wife was annoyed with her husband because he had neglected to bring any mementos to the moon in memory of his family. Other Apollo astronauts paid tribute to their families on the moon. Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon in 1972, wrote his daughter’s initials in the lunar dust before he departed. Buzz Aldrin carried photos of his children, and Charlie Duke left a photo of his family on the lunar surface
So why did the producers of the movie insert a fictional scene that never happened? To sell tickets. The problem is that thousand of people who see ‘First Man’ will now believe that this fictional event actually happened. It’s a poetic moment, meant to humanize a steely, unemotional Armstrong, but it is pure fiction and nothing else.
via the Washington Post:
In the authorized biography that inspired the film, author James Hansen wrote that the mementos Armstrong took to the moon were limited — some medallions commemorating the Apollo 11 lunar mission, jewelry for his wife, a piece of the Wright Brothers’ airplane and his college fraternity pin.
“I didn’t bring anything else for myself,” Hansen quotes Armstrong as saying.
His then-wife Janet Armstrong was apparently distressed that “Armstrong took nothing else for family members — not even for his two boys,” Hansen wrote, adding: “Another loved one that Neil apparently did not remember by taking anything of hers to the moon was his daughter Karen.”
