Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/03/the-latest-trailer-for-univers.html
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Why?
Just looks like another load of Great Man hagiography to me.
He’s no astronaut Mike Dexter.
If there’s any 20th century person who is going to be remembered by name in 10,000 years, I’d take Neil Armstrong against the field.
Sometimes seeing how other people achieved wonderful things through skill, persistence and courage, can inspire us to do more than we thought we were capable of.
Good luck, Mr. Gorsky!
I see that in other parts of the internet, the trailer is getting flak for not being jingoistic enough, and not including the planting of the flag (which fell over from the backwash of the LM taking off and is now probably all white, having been bleached by years of hard UV). It seems that there’s not much of the “We came in peace, for all mankind” sentiment still out there.
He went there in that thing? After all the McCain hero ambiguity hand wringing and wondering whether he picked Palin on purpose to throw the election, I’ll happily take Armstrong at face value as the real and total deal.
Unrelated question: That music. With the blaring chords out of silence. Where have I heard something like that recently? Music is by Hurwitz, recently of La La Land, so it’s not that. Anyone? It’s bugging me.
Well, it’s in just about every action movie trailer of the last 10 years or so. So maybe you’ve just had it pounded into you by movie trailers.
Honestly, I doubt there ever was. It was always an exercise in military posturing. Kennedy did a nice job framing it as a mission for all mankind and the dawn of a new era of collaborative frontier-pushing, but the reality was a lot more cynical.
Still, damn inspiring stuff. Maybe the momentous nature of it just moved humanity’s hope meter up a bit for a few decades.
I’ll go further: In 10,000 years, the instant of Apollo 11’s MECO will be used as the dividing line between the two great ages of humankind. Is there a more literal symbol of our brains setting us free from our bounds?
I think the usual answer to that question is Inception.
Yep, that was it. Seeing as I just watched that for the first time a couple of months ago, the time warp is accounted for.
I love that song!
Think about it this way: it was one of the first times in centuries that a white man planted a flag somewhere that non-white people weren’t already living.
You may feel that way, but he might not even have made it if not for the accomplishments of Katherine Johnson.
The flip side of the we-never-went-there conspiracy theory, is, of course, the we-found-alien-shit-there theory. The latter idea seems less popular than the former, though.