- Astronaut Neil Armstrong occupies a pretty special place in world history, having one of the most famous sentences in the world.

- That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

- But maybe not any other sentences. You may have never heard the man talk. A very private person who's been the subject of films and biographies and the like, but First Man really holds the camera lens on him, his career, his family, and a lot more. 

So, in the wake of the new Ryan Gosling movie, we thought we'd look at a few things that the film shows about Neil Armstrong that you may not have known and a few things that the film skips. 

The best scenes in First Man are incredible flight sequences where we get to see Neil Armstrong really flex his prowess as a pilot, and he was a test pilot first and foremost, which we get to see in one of his many test flights pushing spacecraft and airplanes and jet planes to the earth's atmosphere. The beginning of the film actually looks like he might be launching into space in some sort of space shuttle. Turns out he's flying an X15 experimental craft. Getting to the edge of the atmosphere, this sequence is an incredible test of a plane's g-force capabilities to see how a pilot can go to the edge of the atmosphere and get back to earth. Things go wrong, and the sequence plays out with these incredibly tight zooms on the actor playing Neil Armstrong trying to contend with this and survive on the fly, doing so pretty much miraculously having to contend with skills that you don't necessarily train for as a standard test pilot. It's a really interesting show of the kind of pilot that Neil Armstrong proved to be, showing as opposed to telling. 

We don't get to see, in First Man, every step of the way to that successful Apollo 11 mission, but we do get to follow a few instances of failure. A really big one, Apollo One, is featured. Now, this is because even though Neil Armstrong was not a member of this crew, his very good friends and colleagues at NASA, three of them in particular, passed away as a result of a major electrical malfunction. What we do get to see in the film is actually quite harrowing, this sort of failure. You get to see pilots dealing with minor issues before a very sudden electrical malfunction causes a great explosion and fire. Everybody involved died, and the scene is PG, but also really dark and troubling, and you do get a few of these sequences in the film because First Man is trying to impress upon viewers that our way to the moon was pretty dark. 

Neil Armstrong was rocked by tragedy even before becoming part of the Apollo and Gemini missions. This came in the form of the tragic loss of his two and a half year old daughter, Karen. She had a brain tumor, and you get to see, in the beginning of the film, a lot of very quiet long shots, either of happy times where he's spending his final months with his daughter or sadder times when she's in some intense hospital scenarios with really weird experimental treatments being applied to her head. There is indeed a lot of tragedy along the way in First Man, and this focus at the beginning of the film carries on all the way to the end of the movie. 

There are things missing, though, about that look at that daughter. For example, her nickname, Muffin, otherwise Muffy, is completely skipped, which is a bit of an emotional pin that we were surprised to see missing in the film. When it comes to something that's not in First Man, arguably the biggest thing is Neil's own interpretation of the most famous line in the film, 'one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind' because Neil Armstrong himself has loudly argued that that's not what he said. He would tell you that he said 'one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind' and talked about this in interviews in the years to come. This is completely skated over in the film, as Ryan Gosling, when he steps onto the moon, enjoys the same sort of static crackle over his voice that we get from the quote that we've heard so many times, meaning if Ryan himself went in and slurred the 'a' in 'a man,' that's kinda covered up in a crackle and static. So, interesting choice that we never get to hear about that controversy that I believe mattered a lot more to Armstrong than anybody else. 

Another thing missing from the film is a huge chunk of Neil Armstrong's life, mainly his entire childhood and a lot of his personality. Now, these are more intangible things as opposed to big, historic moments, but we never see him as a kid. That beginning sequence where he's flying that crazy X15 plane? That's the first sign of him that we get. We don't even see him doing other test flights, other sort of rises in the ranks, let alone his upbringing in Ohio and his controlling, very religious mom. Some people would argue that the book First Man spends too much time talking about his childhood, but it is interesting to see First Man essentially say we're starting with the man right before he really got into the moon missions. 

Could we be seeing a grittier, harder edged look at NASA heroes and astronauts in films to come? It's possible. Films like The Right Stuff and Apollo 11 have often been full of fanfare and bravado and heroism, and First Man is very different. It, as I said, is about tragedy, hardship, really tough close to the vest kinds of personalities as opposed to folks who hold a flag in their hand and shout that they landed on the moon and these sort of big, brave things. First Man is very introspective, dark, and as a result, it'll be interesting to see how people respond to it, how they like looking at Neil Armstrong in a different way, really, for many people, the first time that they get that good of a look at him. But there's plenty more of our scientific and moon and space exploration worlds to cover in American history, some big tragedies. 

So, First Man could be the first of many of these kinds of films to come. We kinda hope so. Certainly would love something that is a little harder edged and a little weirder in terms of looking at the incredible world of amazing space travel. So, if that stuff ever comes out, we'll be sure to check it out over at Ars Technica.