10 Things Movies Get Wrong About Space
7. The Colour Of The Sky As You Exit The Atmosphere - First Man
Though it's undoubtedly an intense all out attack on the senses, there's actually a couple of issues in the opening scene to Damien Chazelle's First Man (2018).
As Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) flies an X-15 rocket-powered space jet up high into the sky, you can't escape the absolute racket his plane is making. This is supposed to add drama and suspense to the scene, yet in reality a pilot wouldn't hear any of that in the cockpit and a plane like that would actually fly quite smoothly.
On top of this, as Armstrong starts to exit the Earth's atmosphere you'll notice the sky do something quite odd.
Instead of it becoming darker as the plane climbs higher and higher - due to there being less and less air to refract the light - it becomes oddly lighter and then suddenly turns black. The actual process would be much more gradual and wouldn't feel like someone has just switched the lights off at night.
First Man gets a lot of things spot on throughout the movie, however this particular scene may have sacrificed realism for drama and aesthetics a little too much.