<<Movies of my Childhood list
“The adventure begins in your
own backyard” was the tagline for this 80’s childhood gem of a movie. What an
awesome premise for a film. When we were kids, we spent countless hours in the
backyard, running around with our imaginations and ideas, determined to launch
our own adventure outside our house. Whether it was digging a hole in the
backyard deep enough to reach China or building the most Awesomest cubby house
around, countless hours were spent in the garden from dawn until dark, where
we only went inside to eat or because our parents told us to come in before we
caught a cold. “Explorers” was born out of this idea; what happens when kids
play for too long unsupervised? Sure, they can get into trouble, and come
inside covered in dirt. But sometimes, just sometimes, they might make an
amazing, scientific discovery.
My memories of this movie up
until just a year ago when I randomly picked it up on DVD, where instilled
within my mind in foggy frames. When I first had the idea of writing this
series of reviews, I spoke to several people my age and older what were the
most memorable movies to them from when we were kids. I was hoping someone
would say the name of a movie I remembered vaguely, but could never remember
the title of. All I could fathom in my memory was a story about a few boys who
built some kind of spaceship, half of which is a giant red chair. With a
computer inside controlling the whole thing, they go into space and meet some
aliens. A fascinating image of a film I couldn’t remember. And when I described
these memories, no one else seemed to remember it either. What Was It Called???
Thank God for YouTube, as I came to watch some video a guy made on the best
kids movies of the 1980’s and there it was – Explorers.
Three friends, who love
anything to do with aliens, UFO’s and space, watch late night movies like “The
War of the Worlds” and fall asleep with the TV on. In their dreams, they
imagine themselves flying through a cloudy night sky. In one such dream, an
idea comes to one of the boys, Ben (Ethan Hawke), which he cannot understand or
decipher in his dream. As he awakes with a fright, knowing that he’s dreamt
something significant, he races over to his table, grabbing paper and pen, and
draws down the image he dreamt, trying desperately to capture what he just
envisioned in his sleep. After drawing an unusual image as best as he can, Ben grabs his walkie talkie and
calls his mate Wolfgang (River Phoenix) who lives on the other side of the
neighbourhood. Waking him up in the middle of the night to ramble off his idea,
Ben tells Wolfgang he drew as much as he could remember and asks him to take a
look at it the next day at school.
The next day at school,
before Ben can talk about his visionary dream to Wolfgang, he is the target of
bullies, and they are punks of the most delinquent sort. Outcast kid Darren
(Jason Presson) steps in to break up the scrummage, and leads the bullies away
on a chase. Ben catches up
to Darren to thank him, and the two get to know one another, walking through
the woods, pushing their bikes along and sharing stories about their
dysfunctional parents. As Wolfgang didn’t show up to school that day, Ben
invites Darren over to meet the junior professor.
With the oddest parents of
any kid around, Wolfgang isn't any more normal himself, dressing and talking
like a scientist at the age of 12. In the crowded home basement, he tinkers
around amongst piles of equipment and wiring, inventing one thing after
another, and able to do such things as rig a computer chip up to a TV screen,
and instruct it to build things from scratch. It’s a wonder he hasn’t been
discovered by Harvard or MIT. Rather, he invents things for the fun of it,
never imagining the breakthrough he will make. The particular scientific
discovery which kicks things into action in the film, is directing a force of
energy to any location, anywhere, simply by entering its co-ordinates. As Ben
and Darren arrive at Wolfgang’s house after school, he shows them this amazing
breakthrough, and here the other two boys decide they want to be a part of it.
Ben claims the idea was his, given he described the image from his dream to
Wolfgang who used it to make the discovery (and miss a day of school in the
process), whereas Darren will go on to show he is the hands-on kid who can
build things, like a mechanic or engineer. Ben is the dreamer, Wolfgang is the
thinker and Darren is the doer. Together, this trio of explorers will each play
an important part in the creation and take-off of a very special project.
Wolfgang’s latest experiment
has more power than he could have calculated himself, so gradually the three
boys try to control the energy source, through a series of experiments.
Accidentally, they discover the energy source acts like a sphere which can also
be used as a travelling device. Wolfgang gets enveloped into it and whizzed
around at high speed. Darren suggests devising a way to sit inside it, so the
boys can travel around, anywhere, anytime and do, anything.
Off they go to the local
junkyard, sneaking in to gather up some scrap parts and begin to build….
something. What they will build they don’t know yet, but it will take them
places they never imagined they could go. Maybe even into Outer Space…
Our three Explorers succeed
in their crazy idea and manage to build a space ship, scraped together with a
large, red chair from an old amusement ride, a garbage can and a NASA sticker
as the icing on the cake. Installing their computer inside, the boys do the
unthinkable – use their self-made craft to harness the power of the energy
sphere, and take off! Up and away they go, rising above their local
neighbourhood, soaring above hundreds of houses and spooked dogs that bark up
at them from below. They fly across their town at high speed, and quickly learn
how to control its accelerated path of flight. But the further and longer they
fly around, the more their adventure gets out of control.
Back on the ground, and with
a taste for adventure in the air, the boys think what the next best step should
be. Ben, ever the dreamer, wants to go back up. Wolfgang, the cautious and
calculating one, wants to run more tests, whereas Darren just waits for the
other two to decide what’s next. The three male actors do a great job with
their parts, and have a very natural chemistry on screen. A young Ethan Hawke
(in his acting debut) is perfectly cast as Ben; the whimsical, wondering boy
who wishes to be an astronaut. Jason Presson also does well as Darren, the
cool, calm customer who acts first and thinks later. But the real breakthrough
here is without a doubt, River Phoenix. The immensely talented young actor was
years ahead of his age in terms of acting ability and it’s a shame his life
ended so prematurely at the age of 23. Also starring in his first film here, he
carries his character with confidence and craft, showing a refined style of
acting unrivalled by any other child actor of his generation, and still, most
young actors working today.
After the boys have some fun
flying around in their homemade UFO, the film takes an interesting turn, as
they lift up off the ground again, but a little too high this time and discover
themselves in space. Out of their depth and out of this world, they continue to
Explore, each of them wearing their usual hat; Dreamer, Thinker and Doer. A
winning combination when it comes to being the first human beings to meet some
unusual and unorthodox aliens.
The Explorers perfectly
captures the way kids spent their spare time in the 80’s. Video games were an
emerging trend and more of a luxury at this point. Watching TV was reserved for
Friday and Saturday nights only. Never staying indoors for long, kids killed
the hours by building stuff outside, in the middle of their backyards, out of
their garages, or down in the basement. Rummaging up whatever they could get
their hands on, and putting random objects together piece by piece. The goal
was to create what couldn’t be created. No limits, no rules and no reasons to
give up. I recall doing this myself when I was younger.
On one such occasion, when I
was about six and my family and I were living in Scotland, I was walking back
from school and excited because my older cousin was coming over to visit. I was
going through a phase of inventing stuff myself, probably having just seen
Explorers a couple years before most likely. I had picked out my devices from
home, and just needed the finishing touch. At the bottom of the street where I
lived, there were some construction workers standing around an open drain. With
their attention drawn to the hole in the ground, I quietly and without
suspicion, walked passed and helped myself to one of the bright orange safety
cones. They had four or five other ones there so I figured they wouldn’t miss
it. Carting it up the steep hill of our street to our house at the top, I
arrived home before my cousins got there.
Racing upstairs to my room, I
set up my invention. From memory, there was also a hair dryer, a piece of
string and maybe a coat hanger involved. I tied them all together, and in my
own little mind, a brilliant idea was taking shape. Shortly after, I heard my
cousin arrive downstairs. I raced to the top of the stairs, told him to come up
and ran back ahead into my room, ready to unveil my creation. I turned on the
hair dryer, and my idea did it’s job – which was absolutely nothing. I did my
best to explain how it worked to my older cousin, determined to impress him
with how smart I was. But I can recall him looking down at a few random
household items, as a well as an orange safety cone that clearly shouldn’t have
been there, and he smiled. Mum then came up, shocked to see part of a
construction site in my bedroom. She asked where I got it, and I aptly said,
”Down the street. The men weren’t using it” Mum shut down my invention, and
sent me back down the street to return it, where a construction worker with his
arms up in disbelief thanked me when he saw I had returned the cone that
mysteriously disappeared.
I can thank the movie
Explorers for inspiring this great idea, which never had a chance to get off
the ground. I vowed to return to it one day, and make it work – no matter what.
Until then, I would settle for watching this awesome movie about three boyhood
friends who go into outer space.
Explorers stands as one of my
personal favourite childhood movies from the 1980’s. The idea was a classic
example of letting kids be kids and do the things they dreamt about. Ben,
Darren and Wolfgang were heroes, because they took their idea, and made it
happen. No adults could stop them, and with boundless persistence and plenty of
dedication, it worked. Along with a dose of pure imagination and endless
energy, the Explorers proved the sky wasn’t just the limit – it was the
destination.
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