Such a great movie!
One of the rare 3 hour+ movies out there never gets boring and can be watched over and over imo.
shareAmazing movie!
Those guys were real heroes to my country...
Check out the book if you have time
MovieChat Forums > The Right Stuff (1984) Discussion > Such a great movie!
It really is a classic, something that should be replayed frequently and put on all the critics' top 100 film lists.
It's the perfect mixture of drama, adventure, comedy, terrific acting, spectacular visuals, and the art of adapting unadaptable books to the screen. Everything I like!
Well put as usual!
shareI could see it being a Top 100 film. In fact, I'm surprised that it's absent from AFI's Top 100 list:
https://www.afi.com/100years/movies10.aspx
I definitely think The Right Stuff is more worthy than several of those films for inclusion and would be more than happy to bump Chinatown, Raging Bull or Rear Window, for instance, to get it on there.
Perhaps what's even more egregious is that with a rating of 7.9 on IMDB it's not even in the IMDB Top 250.
And I agree with your summation, especially about the comedy, which was the most surprising element for me. It's actually a pretty funny film!
And it has some really terrific acting as well, from a huge ensemble cast of guys who went onto great things. It even has people like Jeff Goldblum and Kathy Baker in small roles, as well as starting Ed Harris's career as a major actor. And all the men are hot, hot, hot!
It really does have everything I like in a movie, and I'd happily bump "Rear Window" off the AFI top 100 list to make room for it.
A lot of female viewers don't care for it. Probably because there are no female characters of significance in it. Kind of a sausage shop movie.
shareIt's the best Space Race movie I've seen and captures the spirit of America and the world of that time.
shareIt's certainly a great film, but not quite sure if I'd say it's the best I've seen. Maybe it's just because it's held a place in my heart since I first saw it in the theater, and I just saw The Right Stuff last night, but I think I'd still have to put Apollo 13 ahead of it. But that could change as I watch The Right Stuff more and let is settle into my psyche.
In any case, they're both great movies.
"Apollo 13" is a terrific film, but it seems to be largely forgotten. That really is a shame, it's such a good movie.
But it'll never replace "The Right Stuff" in my heart! "Apollo 13" is a very straightforward historical drama, and a damn good one that's as historically accurate as movies get... but "The Right Stuff" is stylistically unique. I can't think of another film that combines history, hilarity, drama, action, adventure, science non-fiction, and oodles of very hot men... and makes it all work.
I would agree that Apollo 13 doesn't seem to be remembered as well as it should be, and honestly I have never thought it has gotten the credit it deserves. Yes, it's regarded as a great movie by most, but it only has a 7.6 on IMDB and isn't even in the Top 250. It's a better film than that and is, in my opinion, Ron Howard's best movie.
I do understand what you're saying about the stylistic flourishes undergirding The Right Stuff, though. Some of the creative choices that go into the film took me by surprise when I watched it recently and it really did make the film a more interesting and more enjoyable viewing experience than it would've been if the director had taken a more conventional approach.
I don't know how much Apollo 13 is remembered nowadays but you have to remember, Apollo 13 was a HUGE hit at the theaters in 1995, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars over it's budget.
On the other hand, The Right Stuff was a box office bomb in 1983, so much so the production company went bankrupt.
Of course, Apollo 13 was more of a summer blockbuster and The Right Stuff was more of an ensemble action piece groomed to win Ocsars. Also, TRS was much longer(over 3 hours!) and had a Oct release date which didn't help much.
I think they're both great movies but TRS has a special place in my heart as the acting, story, rousing music were all fantastic!
Now that you mention it, I do remember that The Right Stuff ended up performing poorly at the box office. That seems strange to me and I wonder why. I'm sure that it has made quite a bit in profit through television screenings and home video sales since then.
While TRS did contribute to The Ladd Company's demise, however, from what I understand the real nail in that coffin was Warner Brothers pulling out of a partnership the two had together. After Warner bailed, they just couldn't stay afloat.
There's actually a good documentary about Alan Ladd Jr, who founded The Ladd Company, on Hulu right now. Here's the trailer if you're interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es1w1pmOMFU
That doc is actually why I ended up watching The Right Stuff in the first place.
The Ladd Company ended up getting resurrected a handful of years later and went on to co-produce Braveheart.
Didn't John Glenn launch a bid for the presidency right around the time the film was released? I think he did, and part of the reason the film didn't do well was that at least in some quarters, it was seen as a 2-hour commercial for the Glenn presidential campaign.
Maybe that was it, because it certainly couldn't have failed because it wasn't entertaining. It is SUCH a fun movie!
Ha, I can't say that I even knew that John Glenn ever even ran for President. That's a new one to me.
In the documentary that I mentioned earlier (Laddie) someone speculated that TRS seemed a little too artsy for some people and I think there also was some mention of how there was some confusion over whether or not it was a documentary or something along those lines.
It certainly was a bad release date(Oct 83) for The Right Stuff. I was still a teenager and I remember the Oct releases in 81 and 82 were mostly teen oriented. In 81 I remember Halloween II and Time Bandits and in 82 everybody in my high school went to see Creepshow..other must see movies were First Blood and another Halloween movie. Sure, I saw TRS when it came out in Oct 83, I had just joined the Air Force so it was almost mandatory viewing. I do remember falling asleep during it once because it was so long lol. I also remember being stationed very near my hometown and when I got back from basic my friends insisted I catch up to the movies I missed while I was away for 7 weeks. We went to dollar movie theaters and saw Cujo, Strange Brew, Easy Money, and a couple of others. Funny, a few months before I went into basic I read a bunch of Stephen King books and all a sudden there were Stephen King movies galore; Dead Zone, Cujo, Christine, Firestarter, Cat's Eye..
Anyway, back to The Right Stuff. It's a great movie that thankfully eventually found an audience as it is still heralded to this very day..and deservedly so!
October does seem like perhaps an odd month to release it in just because it would be competing with horror films. November probably would've been better.
I'm sure, though, it wasn't released in the summer because they had their eye on awards season. It may not have made much money, but it did win some Oscars so from an awards standpoint it was a success.
Agreed. It is the best space-project movie out there. Outstanding cast! 2nd to it would be Apollo 13.
It was nice to see this movie get a bump in the threads. Worth chiming in to laud its greatness.
I'd have to give some hard thought to whether I'd put The Right Stuff or Apollo 13 in the top spot, especially as Apollo 13 has been my favorite space program movie for many years.
We really don't have enough good space program movies when you think about it. I mean, how many are there really?
There's The Right Stuff and Apollo 13. Hidden Figures and First Man. And. . . Is that it? Is there anything else, without getting into purely fictional territory like Mission to Mars, Interstellar, etc?
Apollo 11 if you haven't seen will blow your socks off. In Imax if possible. Should be compulsory viewing for .... well everyone. How we got to the moon with duct tape and cigarettes and zero security.
shareI actually have seen Apollo 11 twice, once in IMAX and then again when it aired on CNN about a week ago. As you say, it's excellent. The quality of the footage in the film is amazing and it's also crazy how much stuff they were able to dig up that hadn't been seen before.
And as you also allude to, it's amazing the Apollo crew was able to pull it off with such limited resources, when even one thing going wrong would've doomed the whole mission.
Truly amazing. Everyone was smoking and if that wasn't enough out came the cigars. But the thing that blew us away were the bystanders shaking hands with the astronauts as they made their way to the rocket - we wouldn't be close enough to even see them today. One more thing; the chap walking between the huge caterpillar tracks of the rocket transporter as it moved along the road - clearly making sure nothing got caught in the tracks. I am pretty certain today that that would be a health and safety violation :-)
Thnx for the thoughts
Ha ha. Yeah, I guess some things have changed.
Since you mentioned bystanders, I'll point out that I really loved the shots of all the crowds and the way that the documentary used footage that allowed us to GO INSIDE the crowd and really get a sense of what it was like to be there that day as an observer.
Speaking of documentaries about the space program, I recently watched this series and it was also very good:
https://www.amazon.com/When-We-Left-Earth-Missions/dp/B001BEK8CY
That price for the DVD set can't be beat.
Yes it was an amazingly innocent time and of course probably made folks feel that they were much closer and involved with what then was a mind boggling endeavor.
I have not come across this set before looks excellent - thank you.
Apropos of nothing we watched by coincidence The Right Stuff and Chernobyl back to back. Fascinating contrast and tough to imagine how the Russians were able to compete at all.
Just thought you should know that the BR for Apollo 11 arrived today :-) and we have a digital version (Itunes - low price currently) of When we left Earth I just discovered that my wife purchased - that's me set for the weekend!!
shareI share the love and respect you all have for this film. You might also want to watch the Tom Hanks-produced HBO limited series, From The Earth To The Moon.
shareI've been meaning to watch From the Earth to the Moon for years but just haven't gotten around to it. I knew that it never been released on Blu-Ray but it looks like it's FINALLY coming:
https://www.amazon.com/Earth-Moon-DC-BD-Blu-ray/dp/B07QH82N1Z
I will have to pick it up.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you say that it's one of the few movies of such length where you just don't find yourself checking your watch or thinking that it would be better if it were a little shorter. If anything, it might be improved if it were LONGER.
It's a film that had been on my list of movies to watch for years and I finally got around to it last night. I'm glad I did! It's a great movie with a great cast and it's certainly one of the best space race movies ever made.
Apollo is the "big show" and so that program gets the most attention--rightly so I'd have to say--but it's nice to see the Mercury guys get a film of their own as well. They were, after all, the tip of the American spear in the competition with the Russians.
I admit the director's name, Phillip Kaufman, didn't jump out at me when I read it. So I was surprised to learn that he went on to make another film that I've seen many times, the underappreciated Quills with Joaquin Phoenix and Geoffrey Rush.
Philip Kaufman at his peak was the master of a long running film. He reminds me of Paul Thomas Anderson in a way. He made such European cinema like films in a way, he didn't feel like like an American filmmaker. To get films like The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Henry & June even Quills made by American studios deserve plaudits. He's got a few masterpieces under his belt, like The Right Stuff, Invasion of The Body Snatchers, The Wanderers and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Films like Henry & June and Quills are flawed but definitely better then most directors films. Also check out The White Dawn and The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, two underrated earlier films made by Kaufman. Some of his later work isn't the strongest.
A undervalued and underrated film director who deserves more love then he gets. The Right Stuff for me is the greatest American film of the 80's.
Nice.
I'll have to check out more of his work. As of right now, I've only seen The Right Stuff, Quills and Rising Sun. Seeing that he directed Rising Sun was also a surprise.
Apparently he's also a credited writer on Raiders of the Lost Ark.
It's kind of funny you bring up Paul Thomas Anderson BTW, as I just rewatched Magnolia for the first time since it's initial release just a few nights ago.
Yes this film is great. I like Apollo 13 too. Really disappointed with First Man. But the CNN special on Apollo 11 was really good.
shareThis movie is so good, I wish it had been longer.
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