A Million Miles Away
The circumference of the earth is less than, but close to, 25,000 miles. That is the biggest circle you can get on our Earth! So if you followed that line, you’d travel a shit ton. But that isn’t a MILLION Miles. Which apparently a large enough number to be impressive.
A Million Miles Away, how far away is that? In this movie, we are talking about someone going to the International Space Station. How far away is that? Well, apparently the giant space station that orbits our planet is only 254 miles away. Heck, outer space is only 62 miles away.
A million is a lot more than that. So maybe the moon is a million miles away? I don’t know, I don’t know space. Another quick google search is telling me the moon is 238,900 miles away. That…that’s is not even 1/4 of a million miles. You could go to the moon and back and the moon and back, and you’d still be rounding up to a million and not surpassing it. What the hell.
Basically, if you want to go a million miles away, you are going to go somewhere past the moon and just in empty space. Venus and Mars are both many many millions of miles away. I guess that is all I am getting at. What the hell is this title? No one in this movie goes that far. No one ever has. Damn metaphors.
I just feel so lied to! And about numbers, the most sacred type of character.
Jose (Michael Peña) grew up a kid always on the move. Born in California, his parents were migrant workers, who had to work many farms to pick food that people need to eat. And that included the kids as well. This affected education! Different schools, showing up late, and more. But the good news is, Jose was smart, real smart, and he excelled despite it. He wasn’t ashamed of his life, but the lack of opportunities sure did suck. He wanted to do great things. He wanted to go to outer space.
And sure enough, that is what he did. He got a job as an engineer, he had people assume he was a janitor, and he found issues that could help save lives. And despite not making it the first, second, or third time. He applied over and over again, to get on that NASA astronaut training program, with the help of his wife (Rosa Salazar) who supported his dreams, no matter how stupid everyone else thought they were.
Was that a spoiler? Nah, this is a real dude. I literally linked to his Wikipedia page earlier.
Also starring Julio Cesar Cedillo and Veronica Falcón.
“Taking pride in your work” is one of 2023’s “Best Advice from Boomers” nominations.
I prefer my biographical films to be about people I don’t know anything about, or at least, know little about. But we have two main types now. One that tries to tell the whole story, with some struggles, but rushes through it all. Or the kind that focuses on a pivotal or narrow moment in the life, their greatest achievement.
This is certainly the former. A mostly by the books story, meant to inspire some kids to join NASA or at least join the space program. Honestly, thinking about it. This is a movie coming out on Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime also had Troop Zero a few years ago. A lot of movies meant to inspire people about outer space. Amazon also is of course Blue Origin, and has their own space program thing going on. Sounds like we got some corporate synergy going on here, of very different branches, to get some people who want to join Blue Origin in the future. Sure the movies are pro NASA, but NASA had no competition until recently.
Back to the film, Peña plays this character really straight, with charm, and its not a comedy film. He isn’t sarcastic. He is hopeful and inspirational. (Little did he know he’d get to go to space again after The Martian). This is a really good role for him, the problem is, the movie is just so standard. Reading the Wiki article, I can already see the movie implied different things from the reality, which is disappointing, but doesn’t really affect my rating. I also really liked Salazar in here. It is frustrating when you watch movies about people trying to achieve great things, and then the spouse role is regulated to someone who doesn’t support them, or nags, or doesn’t get it. (That is one of my issues with Miracle, it felt so unnecessary). Just like. Support your loved ones people.
With A Million Miles Away, you are going to get a movie exactly as you expect it from the description. Unless of course you expect someone to actually travel a million miles away, but I already went over that.
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