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I noticed that they skipped the landing of Friendship 7 in The Right Stuff.

I was waiting to see how the astronaut will make it out, as I know the landing deploy got wrong in middle of orbiting the earth, but they didn't actually show it.

Why was the landing of Friendship 7 skipped in the movie?

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  • They can only fit SO much stuff into the movie. There was a lot going on. Plus, it's not a documentary. They need to get to telling A story. Not a dozen. Jun 5, 2016 at 7:41

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Friendship 7's splashdown was mundane.

The Right Stuff depicted two splashdowns. First they showed Shepherd's Freedom 7 splashdown, because it was the first one and thus held some suspense. The scene showed the audience what a splashdown looks like and what happens when everything goes right. Second, they showed Grissom's Liberty Bell 7 splashdown. This time, there was a mishap at splashdown and therefore that too was a suspenseful scene, worthy of the audience's time.

By the time we get to Friendship 7, the audience has seen a good splashdown and a bad splashdown. Since the splashdown of Friendship 7 was pretty much uneventful, showing it would have been a waste of time from a story-telling (and run-time) standpoint. The audience had already seen a good splashdown with the first one.

The drama of Friendship 7 was in the many orbits, the warning light ground control received, and the rocky re-entry, all of which were depicted in detail in the film precisely because they were dramatic.

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