Dropping the flag from US Moon mission in Armstrong biopic was ‘lunacy’, says senator

ONE of America’s most prominent Republicans has joined criticism of the Neil Armstrong biopic First Man for not depicting the moment he planted an American flag on the moon.

Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who ran against Donald Trump for the party’s presidential nomination in 2016, said the filmmakers’ decision was “lunacy”.

There was a backlash from Rightwing Americans yesterday as news outlets covered the story and the hashtag “#Boycottfirstman” appeared on Twitter.

Fox News, the Right-leaning cable news channel, carried the story with the strapline “Downplaying US patriotism”, while conservative news website The Daily Caller said that “a key bit of history is being cut from the film”.

It came after The Daily Telegraph reported that Ryan Gosling, the actor playing Armstrong in the film about his 1969 journey to the moon, had defended the decision, saying the astronaut did not see himself as an “American hero”.

Mr Rubio said yesterday: “This is total lunacy. And a disservice at a time when our people need reminders of what we can achieve when we work together. The American people paid for that mission, on rockets built by Americans, with American technology and carrying American astronauts. It wasn’t a UN mission.”

The planting of the flag was controversial at the time. There was disagreement over whether a US or United Nations flag should be used.

Armstrong said later: “In the end it was decided by Congress that this was a United States project. We were not going to make any territorial claim, but we were to let people know that we were here and put up a US flag.”

Gosling defended the decision at the Venice Film Festival earlier this week, saying: “I think this was widely regarded as a human achievement [and] that’s how we chose to view it.”