Explorers (1985)

Another Spielberg-ian family film from director Joe Dante, although unlike his previous film, Gremlins, it isn’t produced by Steven Spielberg’s production house, despite it being obviously influenced in its wide-eyed sense of discovery, optimism, and sentimentality toward alien contact by E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  The film is very much in keeping with the notion that our first contact will be with technologically advanced, benevolent beings who mean no harm, though Dante goes further by showing the protagonists that the threat of contact will not come from the aliens, but by humans who fear the things they do not understand, going through montages of films and television transmissions that explore those very issues in our science fiction.

The film had originally been meant as a vehicle for Wolfgang Petersen (to whom one of the character’s names is dedicated) after the success of his The Neverending Story the year prior.  Petersen had notions that the producers felt would make the film too European, especially in relocating the action to his home land of Germany, so they dropped their discussions with him in favor of finding a director who had more American sensibilities, resulting in Joe Dante landing the gig. 

Dante has claimed that his film was never quite finished, with the studio not letting him complete the shoot, forcing him into editing what he had into something that made sense, then rushing it into theaters before it was quite ready for even that.  Long feeling disappointed that Explorers was not everything he had envisioned it could be, Dante has subsequently revisited the film, adding an extra scene he had filmed, removing others in the home video release years later.  Even with the production problems, the story holds together remarkably well, and it is even a modestly enjoyable experience, helped tremendously by quality casting.

Explorers marks the big screen debuts of two future stars, Ethan Hawke (Mystery DateBefore Sunrise) and River Phoenix (The Last CrusadeSneakers), who, along with Jason Presson (Lady in White, The Stone Boy), make up the three young boys with a thirst for adventure and scientific exploration.  In their dreams, the boys have a connection to a circuit board that they eventually use to build their own little hovering spacecraft, thanks to the help of a strange spherical energy capsule in which they place an abandoned tilt-a-whirl carriage that they use their computer to control.  The makeshift spaceship gets them into all sorts of adventures, before culminating in a close encounter with aliens in outer space.

Fans of Joe Dante will recognize many of his trademark elements, starting with the aforementioned alliance with the wide-eyed outlook commonly associated with Steven Spielberg’s style of filmmaking.  Dante also pays many homages to early animators and cinematic influences stemming from a lifelong love of B-Movies, cartoons, and 1950s and early 1960s television.  He also continues to employ a plethora of in-jokes for the adults to wax nostalgic over, while still dishing up enough exciting visual elements to keep the kids entertained in the audience.

The casting of the three main boys is where much of the film works, the result of screening nearly 4,000 contenders for the three roles.  Ethan Hawke, who had never acted before in anything, would be cast in a strange twist of luck, tagging along with a friend who was auditioning, then given a chance on a whim and ended up impressing everyone with his natural acting ability.  River Phoenix plays the nerdy Wolfgang, albeit reluctantly, having wanted the part that would be played by Jason Presson as the tough but troubled boy Darren; he identified much more with Darren than Wolfgang, despite turning in a nice performance nonetheless.  Presson is the often forgotten member of the trio, primarily because the other two would become so successful, but he’s just as up tot he task as the others in a comforting, matter-of-fact way that grounds the more rambunctious mannerisms of the other two friends.

While Explorers is a simplistic and not terribly mind-expanding adventure, it retains a likability through good characterizations and a sense of fun.  In many ways, Dante reversed the trend that he had started in the much more malevolent Gremlins by imbuing his characters and situations with a good deal of sweetness, which comes off as genuine and innocent.  Like other Spielbergian influenced films, this one is all about the fulfillment of one’s boyhood dreams in a time when we all believed that anything could happen. 

Despite the finer qualities, the patience for some members of the viewing audience will start to wane when the overly cartoon-like aliens are introduced, spewing out silly gags that are neither funny nor necessary, lip-synching or embodying the personas of old entertainment icons like Marilyn Monroe, Ed Sullivan, or Groucho Marx. However, even within the seemingly jokey nature of the climax, in which aliens that have learned how to communicate with humans solely through what they’ve discovered by capturing TV broadcasts, there are some poignant notions of how human beings are governed more by fear than trust when it comes to encountering something foreign.  This metaphor also extends to our fear of each other based on different races, religions and other cultural divides, with the aliens standing in as the subject of potential prejudicial attacks, showing clips from times in American society where seemingly benign entertainment was coated with fearful and suspicious examples of hostility toward the “other.”

The costume and set design are also not altogether viscerally appealing, which probably resulted in frustration for the marketers of the film who probably wanted cute little creatures that every boy and girl would want to own a doll of.  As a result, the film tanked at the box office, not even making $10 million at the box office, crushed by the wake of the massively popular Back to the Future, which was only in ts second week of release when Explorers debuted to vie for the same audience, and then further buried by a re-issue of E.T. into theaters the following week.

Over the years, though, it has gained a small following over the years among people nostalgic for the family films of the mid-1980s, such as The Goonies and Stand By Me.  Given that its actually a decent film despite the fact that it wasn’t finished and many story elements that had been meant to bring a better sense of philosophy and wonderment were jettisoned, one can only speculate about how great Explorers could have been with the time and care normally afforded to films that have something more to say.

Qwipster’s rating: B-

MPAA Rated: PG for mild language and violence
Running Time: 109 min.


Cast: Ethan Hawke, River Phoenix, Jason Presson, Amanda Peterson, Robert Picardo, Dick Miller, Mary Kay Place, James Cromwell, Dana Ivey, Meshach Taylor, Danny Nucci
Director: Joe Dante
Screenplay: Eric Luke

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