While First Man is ostensibly a biopic, it's a much more intimate and personal character study than most celebrations of real-life figures. First Man Wasn't About The Moon, It Was About Neil Armstrong's Daughter They look at each other in silence, awed by the big and small of what's happened, and embrace as best they can: holding hands up against the glass separating them. Kennedy's famous speech vowing to go to the Moon by the end of the 1960s, a fantastical goal they've now achieved.įinally, in its last scene, First Man returns to just Neil, reuniting him with Janet. There, he lifts his vizor and takes in the isolation before dropping his dead daughter Karen's bracelet into the crater.īack on Earth, Neil and Buzz are put into quarantine - as first men, there's no knowledge of what they could bring back - and the film finally embraces the importance of its events: the duo watch a replay of John F. Instead, the film focuses on Neil's alone time and complete tranquility at the Little West Crater. We see Neil take the small step and make his " giant leap" proclamation, but aside from collecting dirt samples, there's not much of the expected ephemera: needlessly controversial, the US flag is never shown. As has been made abundantly clear following the film's festival premiere, though, it's a somewhat skewed take. Obviously, the final act of First Man is the Moon landing itself, recreated entirely in-camera to stunning effect. : What First Man's Ending REALLY Means.This Page: First Man's Ending Explained.Here's what First Man's ending really means. The plot reaches its close in the expected way, yet the story is something far more insular. That's what makes the ending of First Man so beguiling. Related: Read Screen Rant's First Man Review But as much as this is a movie about the Space Race, everything about Chazelle's storytelling approach is more about finding the man within the historic achievement for the space agency, America, and all of humanity. We follow Ryan Gosling as Neil and Claire Foy as wife Janet from his early days as a pilot, joining NASA, training and time on the Gemini program - including the near-fatal Gemini 8 mission - all building towards the fate-redefining Apollo 11 mission. The latest movie from director Damien Chazelle is, of course, the story of Neil Armstrong, commander of Apollo 11 and the first man on the Moon. But its final moments - Neil Armstrong's iconic Moon landing and his bittersweet return to Earth - are most certainly some of its most perplexing. In fact, First Man as a movie is not what you expect. First Man's ending is not what you expect.