‘The Right Stuff’ Fails to Live Up to the Legacy of the Works That Came Before

Let's talk about the absence of Chuck Yeager, for starters.

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I was not excited when I saw National Geographic and Disney had plans to adapt Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff. I am a big Tom Wolfe fan,  and I feel a certain amount of fear whenever I hear one of his works is being adapted for film or television—thanks in large part to Brian De Palma and his disastrous take on The Bonfire of the Vanities. Especially since The Right Stuff had already been  superbly adapted to film by director Phillip Kaufman in 1983, and the odds that lightning would strike twice seemed slim.The first two episodes dropped on Disney+ last Friday, and—while not disastrous—the show perhaps unsurprisingly fails to live up to the book or the film bearing the same name. 

The Right Stuff is executive produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and brings together a cast of semi-famous TV actors and actresses, with Suits’ Patrick Adams as John Glenn leading the series. The actors turn in perfectly fine performances, but, sadly, the script didn’t give them much to work with. The writing is thin; with too many clichés and too much clunky exposition—we get to know about Alan Shepard by hearing a one-night stand literally list facts about Shepard to him as he leaves bed—but the script struggles on a much deeper level as well.

One of the central aspects of Wolfe’s writing that I love is his incredible sense of style; he wielded the English language in such a way that he could make any subject matter not just interesting, but beautiful to read about.That is not something that translates easily to film. But when you can’t have Wolfe’s verve, the second best thing one could have in retelling one of his stories is the spirit of the work. Unfortunately, it’s clear from the start of NatGeo’s The Right Stuff that it’s lacking in that spirit.

The show leaves out test pilot extraordinaire Chuck Yeager entirely, which brings us to what I believe should be a central tenet of filmmaking: If you can include Chuck Yeager in your work and you don’t, you are, to be polite, an absolute idiot. The man fell off a horse and broke his ribs the night before he was due to fly an experimental plane in an attempt to break the sound barrier. He showed up the next day and with the help of a friend jury-rigged the plane so he could shut the door since he couldn’t move his torso to do so normally, then went on to become the first person in history to break the sound barrier, an accomplishment that was immediately classified. Yeager epitomizes the right stuff, that ineffable combination of courage and skill and duty and machismo that Wolfe was so interested in exploring, and his absence in the show embodies the central problem of the show: those behind it don’t seem to understand what the right stuff is, at least not well enough to portray it on TV.

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  1. Avatar photo
    DougAz

    Chuck Yeager, a fellow WV boy, was brought to my Eagle Scout award dinner by US Representative Ken Hechler (wrote Bridge Over Remagen). When THAT hero gives you that award, you hope and strive to live up to some his courage and fortitude. Obviously I'm a long time fan, and it is sad he hasn't had a bit more recongnition of his helping to pave the way.

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    Nick H

    "If you can include Chuck Yeager in your work and you don’t, you are, to be polite, an absolute idiot." Indeed. I suppose I can see limiting the story in some cases, but if you're doing a series on TV where you can include more of the story than you would in a two hour film, leaving Yeager out is just dumb.

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    Wade Paulsen

    Although I'm a Tom Wolfe fan, the fact that he wrote the story of the Mercury astronauts from a certain point of view doesn't mean that his point of view is the only correct one -- or even the best one. The first person I saw who proposed adapting "The Right Stuff" to film while leaving out Chuck Yeager was the great screenwriter William Goldman, who actually wrote the first screenplay for the book while omitting Yeager, which he discusses in his 1983 autobiography "Adventures in the Screen Trade". I've never seen nor read Goldman's version, but judging by his other work around that period, I have no doubt that his version would have been excellent. Now, I presume Goldman's screenplay still exists, and I also presume that Disney+ didn't use it for its adaptation. I also have no idea about whether the Disney+ version is good or bad, because I haven't seen it. But one thing I'm certain about is that dismissing the Disney+ version because it omits Yeager is more the work of a fanboy than of a critic.

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      scott

      I fully admit it. I am a Yeager fanboy, USAF vet. If Yeager asked me to kick a moose in the teeth, I'd do it....gladly. But he wouldn't do that, because Yeager would do it himself.

      To be serious, though. The Right Stuff is about the men who took on a mission that most thought wasn't possible. Those men were pilots in a time when technology was going beyond what many thought human pilots could withstand. In my opinion, it's a story about the culture of our pilots at the time. Leaving Yeager out of the picture would be like taking a photo of the late 70s Steelers without Mean Joe Green in the picture. It just ain't right.

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        tallcupofcoffee

        Frickin Mean Joe Greene.

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    Jason Gibson

    Alec what's your favorite Tom Wolfe novel?

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    Kentucky78

    Had a friend was from Hamlin WV, home of Chuck Yeager. He had always admired his hometown hero. He ran into Chuck at the airport and introduced himself but Yeager was rude and annoyed. He was obviously deflated and saddened.

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    1. JohnO

      I've heard a number of reports, on web forums where people are interested in air war history, restored WWII planes etc. of people who met Chuck Yeager and he was not nice to them, though I have never met him myself. His achievements are what they are, and I've also never been a celebrity expected to be receptive and gracious to fans at a moment's notice at all times. Just saying, your friend's experience isn't exceptional from what I've heard.

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  6. PM

    So the Right Stuff lacks the right stuff...

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  7. K-man

    Hank Steuver gave a lukewarm review in The Washington Post (he also primly noted in the first few lines of the review that the astronauts were “of course” all-male and all “White,” note the capitalization).

    “The Right Stuff” is a decent movie, and has one of the best soundtracks ever, but it is poor history. Don’t know if this remake is any better, and I get a faint whiff of the “Mad Men” vibe that COMMENTARY described – a show designed to show that we are smarter than our parents.

    But leaving all that aside, the book “The Right Stuff” is difficult to adapt. It isn’t really a history of the Mercury program. It is a portrait of the culture of military flying, with the experimental test pilot at the top, then fighter, bomber, transport pilots in that order, and the poor unwashed who never get to fly at the bottom. Yeager is this culture’s archetype and his style is imitated throughout the culture, even by civilian airline pilots. The selection of the Mercury astronauts upends this culture. They won’t be pilots in the traditional sense, since because of Cold War imperatives we aren’t going to patiently evolve an orbital vehicle out of the X-15 rocket plane program. Instead we are going to launch the astronauts as payload on a missile. Also, thanks to JFK, they are being hyped to the extreme as America’s greatest pilots, something with which they are uncomfortable given that pilots they consider their superiors, Yeager and others, continue to work in obscurity. This is fascinating, but hard to translate into a drama.

    I think the two best “true space” dramas remain the film “Apollo 13” and the miniseries “From the Earth to the Moon.” “First Man” was terrible (JPod was right). I think the two best documentaries are “In the Shadow of the Moon” and last year’s “Apollo 11” (JPod was wrong).

    Given the face-plant of “First Man,” I think there’s still room for an Apollo bio-pic, maybe an expanded version of the Alan Shepard “Miles and Miles” episode of “From the Earth to the Moon.” The Shuttle era deserves a movie or miniseries too. I nominate Mike Mullane’s “Riding Rockets.” But, instead, we get a remake of “The Right Stuff.” At least “The Astronaut Wives Club” wasn’t a remake.

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    Rod Bennett

    You don't mention that the filmmakers seem to have intentionally left all of the *humor* out of the thing along with Chuck Yeager. Apparently they didn't understand why either one of them was there in the Kaufman original to begin with; as if that classic were just a failed attempted to make the same sort of cliched, inspirational "American spirit" film everyone else makes, spoiled by an inexplicable decision to shoehorn in some "laughs." Is there really anyone out there who thinks Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff" (book or 1983 film) would be better without its Tom Wolfe-ism? Apparently so, God help us.

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    Angie

    The 1983 version was awesome and I generally don't care for most remakes, some you can critique based on good in its own way..but, mostly they just can't live up to the originals

    I am tickled to see a movie/tv review on here...hope it continues

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    Victor Clairmont

    Wait so....is Alec Dent not just the official fact checker but the official TV/movie reviewer for The Dispatch?

    Like Sonny Bunch or something?

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      Angie

      That is my guess....and I welcome it...I think we needed a Movie critic...a Book Club would also be on my list

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        tallcupofcoffee

        A book club, frankly, seems obvious and should have happened 6 months ago.

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          Angie

          Yeah, considering how much everyone talks about books...lol
          I have mentioned it several times but, never got any feedback from the Dispatch staff

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