The Right Stuff feels familiar as 1960s prestige TV comes to Disney+

[Karlston]

The Right Stuff feels familiar as 1960s prestige TV comes to Disney+

Based on Tom Wolfe's book, it's better than Apple's For All Mankind.

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It was Tom Wolfe's book The Right Stuff that told me the reason airline pilots all sound the same is because they're all emulating the West Virginia drawl of test pilot Chuck Yeager. Published in 1979, it was the story of the beginning of the American space program and the Mercury Seven astronauts.

 

But it was also the story of how NASA was a bunch of weenies because when they picked test pilots to be astronauts, they left out the greatest test pilot of all: Chuck Yeager. And it's a story that Philip Kaufman stuck with in 1983 when he adapted The Right Stuff into an overly long movie that only an aerospace nerd could love.

 

The inherent superiority of Chuck Yeager over the Mercury Seven is not a story you will learn in the new Disney+ series The Right Stuff, which starts streaming on October 9. "Based on" Wolfe's book and produced by National Geographic and Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way, this new adaptation wisely chooses to keep things focused on the space race's first superstars, including Suits' Patrick J. Adams as John Glenn and Mad Men's Aaron Staton as Wally Schirra.

 

Ditching the high desert and the breaking of the sound barrier allows The Right Stuff to spend a lot more time exploring the lives of the new astronauts as NASA establishes itself and tries to make that whole rocket thing work as well as those darn communists.

 

Listing image by National Geographic/Greg Page

 

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Despite the help of Nazi rocketeer Wernher Von Braun (played by Sacha Seberg), there are plenty of problems with the Atlas rocket. And the day-to-day work for a shiny new astronaut mostly involves touring suppliers around the country, leaving wives and children at home to fend off a highly inquisitive press. On top of that, NASA bosses Bob Gilruth (played by Patrick Fischler) and Chris Kraft (played by Eric Ladin) have to constantly worry about whether or not a skeptical Congress will stop paying for it all.

 

Some of this will be familiar stuff if you've watched The Astronaut Wives Club—suffice it to say that hotshot 1950s test pilots weren't too good at that whole marital fidelity thing, by and large. Some early reviews have also compared The Right Stuff to AMC's Mad Men—perhaps unavoidable given the period, the philandering, and even a shared cast member.

 

Plenty may also seem familiar to viewers of Apple's recent alt-history space race, For All Mankind. That show, set a decade later in a world where the USSR gets to the moon first, pokes some of the same anthills. However, to this viewer, The Right Stuff is more successful than that ongoing "what if?" in terms of telling an engaging story. And it's less ham-handed with the way it highlights the endemic sexism of the period, as well as NASA's embrace of Nazi rocket scientists in the aftermath of World War II.

 

One thing there's not very much of—at least not in the first five episodes—is spaceflight. But Disney+ subscribers have a whole galaxy's worth of space action just waiting for them; now the streaming channel also has a grown-up period drama to offer as well.

 

The Right Stuff premieres on Friday, October 9 with the first two episodes, and a new episode will follow each week after that.

 

 

The Right Stuff feels familiar as 1960s prestige TV comes to Disney+

 

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[funkyy]

I saw "The Right Stuff" movie, and I didn't think it was "...an overly long movie that only an aerospace nerd could love."

It was an excellent movie, telling Chuck Yeager's story parallel to the selected astronauts' story.

It was well made and had drama, humour and a coherent story line....and I've seen it more than once since it was made.

I'd recommend it to anyone wanting a well acted, non violent "true" story.....and I'm not an aerospace nerd!!

The guy who wrote the above article on "arsTECHNICA" doesn't know his "ars" from his elbow!!

[Karlston]

9 minutes ago, funkyy said:

The guy who wrote the above article on "arsTECHNICA" doesn't know his "ars" from his elbow!

 

I agree, it was a good movie and also think that journo is talking through his arsTechnica.