The right’s bogus attacks on Ryan Gosling’s Neil Armstrong movie "First Man"

Unlike Business Insider, Breitbart or many of the other publications fueling this controversy, I was in attendance for the First Man premiere in Venice. And having actually seen the film, can confirm that while the physical act of planting the American flag into the moon is not portrayed, there are several shots of the American flag flying on the moon—including one long shot as Armstrong and co. disembark.

What’s more, this is an incredibly patriotic film, one that not only does an exceptional job at humanizing astronauts Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins and all of the other folks at NASA who were instrumental in achieving this historical accomplishment, but also contains numerous scenes of Americans gathered around televisions and radios listening to the moon landing, archival footage of then-President John F. Kennedy’s man-on-the-moon speech, and children in the streets gleefully waving miniature American flags. I mean, there’s even a shot in the film’s trailer of an American child looking up at an American flag waving outside of his home, in awe.