October Sky

October Sky is a film released in 1999, directed by Joe Johnston. It was based on Homer Hickam Jr.'s autobiography "Rocket Boys". It follows a boy by the name of Homer Hickam in the mining town of Coalwood, West Virgina, where almost every man works in the mine. After seeing the Sputnik satellite pass over the town while in orbit, Homer becomes inspired to seek a career in rocketry, and leave the town for a new life. He plans to showcase his homemade rockets at the local science fair, though the townsfolk believe he has no chance of succeeding.

Despite this, Homer teams up with the school geek and fellow rocket enthusiast Quentin, and recruits four of his friends into helping him. Though they fail at their first few attempts, they make several successful launches after experimenting with the fuel and rocket design. However, they run into problems with the law when it is believed that one of their rockets landed astray and caused a nearby forest fire, causing them to be disqualified from the science fair. As if this weren't bad enough, Homer's father is injured in a mining accident, and now Homer must leave school and take up the work in order to support the family, leaving him with no time to help prove that the forest fire was not their fault. The boys' math teacher has a firm belief in what they're doing, and gives Homer a book on rocket science, from which Homer teaches himself how to calculate a rocket's trajectory, allowing him to find their own rocket and prove the group's innocence.

They enter their rockets in the local science fair and win first place, allowing them to move on to national science fair in Indianapolis. Only Homer leaves, because of the school's limited funding. Their display wins there as well with flying colors, as Homer receives countless scholarship offers before returning to Coalwood as a hero.

"Homer: Dad, Dr. von Braun is a great scientist. But he isn't my hero."
 * Adaptational Villainy: Homer's father. He was a lot less of a Jerkass in the book, and more supportive of Homer's rocketry work. He even helped Homer with some of the advanced math that gets credited to Quentin in the movie. (Turns out managing a mine requires intelligence and knowledge of engineering. Who'da thunk it?)
 * Composite Character: October Sky merged Sherman Siers and Jimmy O'Dell into one character called Sherman O'Dell, while the book kept them separate.
 * Dogged Nice Guy: Homer is this to Dorothy Plunk, who ends up dating his brother.
 * Eating Lunch Alone: Quentin does this, usually while reading. Homer walks up and asks about how to construct a rocket, but Quentin doesn't take it seriously until Homer actually sits down. Incidentally, the entire cafeteria takes close note of this development.
 * Exact Words: After the second attempted launch lands at the mine (which wasn't empty at the time), Homer's dad forbids Homer from any more rockets "on company property." Homer waits until after he and his friends are alone to highlight the last part, and he's not discouraged when they protest that the company owns all the land for miles around.
 * The Film of the Book: The story is based on Homer Hickham's memoir, Rocket Boys
 * The One Who Made It Out: Homer Hickam especially, but all of the Rocket Boys qualify.
 * Hard Work Montage: The boys trying to get their rockets to stop exploding on the launchpad.
 * I Like Those Odds: O'Dell
 * Ill Girl: The kind and encouraging schoolteacher, Miss Riley, who is revealed to suffer from Hodgkin's Disease during the third act of the film, giving the Rocket Boys that extra emotional push to pull off their last, climactic, rocket launch.
 * Papa Wolf: Homer Sr. subverts this trope by being the Papa Wolf to someone else's son when he sees Roy Lee being beaten by his stepfather.
 * Poor Communication Leads To Wrongful Arrests: Nobody shows the boys the rocket that caused the forest fire until after Homer uses the math book to find where their rocket landed, proving it wasn't their fault.
 * Railroad Tracks of Doom: Subverted: The boys rip up the tracks of a supposedly-abandoned spur line to sell the iron for scrap. One of the boys lampshades this trope, asking if the the tracks really are unused. Sure enough, the moment they've got the heavy rail fully out of alignment, they hear a whistle... Frantically, they try to get the rail back in place, seemingly to no avail as the locomotive bears down on them... Then at the last moment, the train turns away down the main line; and the camera pulls back to reveal that the line they tore up was inactive.
 * Recognition Failure: One of the first people to congratulate Homer for winning the national science fair is his hero, Wernher von Braun. Homer doesn't recognize him.
 * "Well Done, Son" Guy: Homer's mother calls out her husband on the fact that he doesn't miss a single football game featuring Homer's older brother, but he hasn't been to a single one of Homer's rocket launches. Homer sets the record straight near the end of the movie:


 * Working Title: The working title, "Rocket Boys" (also the name of Homer Hickham's memoir which the movie was based on), is an anagram of October Sky.