by Nathaniel R
Raise your hand in the comments if you needed this month of enticing trailers. I sure did. There have been too many weeks this spring and early summer where too few interesting options appeared in movie theaters asking for our money. Suddenly June's onslaught of teasing has led us to hope that 2018 will turn itself into a stellar film year... and thus a competitive Oscar season to come. We've already discussed A Star is Born, White Boy Rick, The Children Act, Suspiria, Widows, Mowgli, and Christopher Robin. Now we have the latest from Oscar winning young director Damien Chazelle (Whiplash, La La Land) and it's the historical drama First Man about Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) and the moon landing.
As with A Star is Born before it, this trailer lives up to the movie's 'on paper' promise and will only feed into more pre-release Oscar hype. Let's Yes No and Maybe So™ it after the jump...
THE TRAILER
YES
- Ryan Gosling is one of our favorite movie stars and actors so we'll see him in anything
- We were worried about Claire Foy being saddled with the traditionally thankless "supportive wife" role here (well thankless, artistically, as Oscar often responds to such roles) but she looks genuinely riveting in these short glimpses -- especially when she's yelling at the men "You're a bunch of boys. You don't have anything under control!" Hello, Oscar clip! Hopefully it's an unexpectedly meaty role that she aces and the trailer isn't just overpromising the Foy ascension.
- Though La La Land has many needless detractors it was stunning to look at, a big leap up from Whiplash in the visual department, and Chazelle continues that growing visual confidence here. We hope he's shaping up to be a director with a sturdy trusted team who churn out one beautiful film after another. For his fourth picture he's kept most of the same key team again: Oscar winners Linus Sandgren behind the camera, Justin Hurwitz in the recording booth, and Tom Cross in the editing room. Mary Zophres who received a well deserved but unusual Oscar nomination for La La Land's contemporary costumes, is also back. The only big change that we're noticing at this early juncture is the production designer. David Wasco won an Oscar for La La Land but for some reason it's Nathan Crowley taking over the production design duties for this Chazelle film. Crowley is also a terrific designer (The Prestige, Dunkirk, Interstellar, and The Dark Knight). This is all a very long way of saying the team on this movie is super gifted and we're excited to see what they'll do with this material.
- It's always hard to suss out line readings and vocal registers in trailers since the editing is in slivers so it might just be my imagination but Corey Stoll, Patrick Fugit, and Claire Foy in particular sound like they're doing strong vocal work, totally in period and accented.
- The cinematography looks crazy stunning.
MAYBE SO
- We know how the story ends so how will they keep the tension up -- there's a lot of suggestion here that our hero / astronaut could die at any moment but might that feel empty in feature-length form since obviously Neil Armstrong didn't die but walked on the moon.
- For all his gifts Damien Chazelle has not shown much aptitude in giving his supporting characters anything to do or anything worth doing. His films have generally focused on just two people. This story should technically require a village and we see a lot of famous faces flash by: Patrick Fugit, Pablo Schreiber, Kyle Chandler, Corey Stoll, Ciaran Hands, Jason Clarke... and there are still more "names" in the cast list that we didn't spot in the trailer. That's a lot of great actors to waste if Chazelle doesn't up his game in the ensemble department.
- Both Apollo 13 (1995) and The Right Stuff (1983) really hold up and were Oscar favorites in their years. Those are tall film shadows to live under. Can it measure up?
NO
- Is Claire Foy the only woman in this movie?! Frustrating.
But we're a total yes. How about you? And how do you think this will fare at the Oscars?