YMMV / The Right Stuff

• Angst Dissonance: Grissom's prolonged attempt to prove he's not a "squirming hatch-blower." It's unfortunate, but at that point the movie has been going on for over an hour and it's hard to care about one guy's reputation amidst other people's fears of dying in space or the Soviets beating the US. To be fair, he's also put his life at a deal of risk (he almost drowned while waiting for retrieval, even though it wasn't made explicit in the film), and it is justified that he felt hurt and humiliated by the substantial difference in treatment by the authorities (although it's hinted that the President had other things on his mind at the moment.) Plus, it could be argued that for these guys reputation was almost - if not equally - as important as their life (Walter Schirra even made it a point to clear Grissom's name on his flight by deliberately blowing the hatch after retrieval - another event not shown in the movie.) The scene is mostly undermined by the fact that we know in real life the interaction between NASA and Grissom wasn't nearly as antagonistic.
• Awesome Music: Certainly the high point of Bill Conti's composing career.
  • A truly awesome film soundtrack — although the poster mentions a soundtrack album, it wasn't released until 2009 (thank you, Varèse Sarabande's CD Club); some of it was re-recorded for an album alongside extracts from Conti's North and South (U.S.).
  • It may have something to do with the fact that the main theme's similarity to Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto teeters on the ragged edge of plagiarism (then again, such things never stopped other composers' music from getting released).
  • "Mars" and "Jupiter" from Gustav Holst's "The Planets" are used to an epic effect during John Glenn's launch.
  • Henry Mancini's The White Dawn also turns up.
  • The very apropos Clair de Lune during Sally Rand's dance.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The lines "You know what makes this bird go up? Funding makes this bird go up.", and "No bucks, no Buck Rogers.", was very painful when NASA was at a standstill after the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011.
  • The "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue details how Gus Grissom was the first of the Mercury 7 astronauts to pass on, perishing in the Apollo 1 fire in 1967. In real life, his actor, Fred Ward, was also the first of the actors who played the Mercury 7 astronauts to pass away, doing so in May 2022.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: On seeing the capsule for the first time, the astronauts refer to themselves as "Spam in a can." Popular belief has it that Spam is short for "spiced ham." The name of the ape who made the first flight? HAM.
  • HAM is actually an acronym for Holloman Aero-Medical Research Laboratories. Up until his flight, he was known as Number 65.
• Signature Scene: The scene of the astronauts taking a Team Power Walk together, which has since gone on to be one of the most referenced and parodied moments in pop culture.
• Squick:
  • In the book, the description of finding the dead test pilot's cloth helmet liner with brain matter in it.
  • The book ends describing Chuck Yeager's flight (and subsequent ejection) from an NF-104A. It includes such descriptions as hot "lava" pouring down his face and over his eye and having to remove, with a knife, a glove that had melted onto his skin.
  • In the movie, Shepard peeing in his spacesuit. Which actually did happen, due to unforeseen weather delays in the launch of Freedom 7.

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