<<Movies of My Childhood list
Flight of the Navigator
“Flight
of the Navigator” plays with the imagination of children better than almost any
other movie of the eighties. Every kid believes there is life outside our own
world. Space is an never-ending realm of other planets, stars and UFO’s. How
cool would it be if one of the UFO’s visited Earth? And ever better – you got
to fly it!
Young
David has a small world; consisting of his parents, his annoying little
brother, and his dog Bruiser. David’s the kind of kid who blends into the
background. He doesn’t cause trouble and can’t get the attention of the girl he
likes. It’s the summer of 1978, but so far it’s a pretty lousy one for him.
On just another night, David’s
parents give him the job of going to collect his younger brother Jeff from a
friends place. The little brat surprises David in the woods, scaring the crap
out of him. Losing his bearings a bit, David wanders off through the woods, and
slips, falling into a deep ditch. When he comes to, it seems to David that only
a few minutes have passed. He climbs out of the ditch and heads home. But when
he gets there, a strange looking lady answers the door “What are you doing in
my home?” David asks, then runs in, up the stairs and into his old room. But
it’s completely different, and an old man sits in there, asking the boy what’s
wrong. Obviously confused and terrified, David cowers down at the bottom of the
stairs and asks the couple “Where’s my mum and dad?”
The police pick him and realise the
boy has been reported missing – for the past eight years. Asking him the same
questions over and over, the police can’t make sense of why David has just
reappeared, and why he insists on telling them he’s twelve years old and the
year is 1978. David is then taken to a house he’s never seen before where the
police go to the door, which is answered by a man who looks strangely familiar.
It’s his dad. David jumps out of the car, and runs up to the house to see both
his parents, who have aged. With grey hair and wrinkled skin, they look
completely shocked to see their son.
Taken to the hospital for some
tests, the doctors and David’s parents can’t figure out how David has returned
after being missing for eight years, and for some reason hasn’t aged a day past
twelve. The last thing David remembers before everything got wierd was falling
into the ditch, passing out then waking up to climb back up. This only felt
like minutes to him, but it’s in fact been eight whole years. In that time,
David went somewhere but he has no memory of it. His mind
seems to know what happened, even if he can’t remember. When hooked up to some
machines at hospital, strange images start to appear on screen; looking like an
orb of some kind, David can’t explain why he is somehow able to send these
picture from his mind to a computer. But NASA has a theory, and approach David
to offer him some answers to his personal mystery.
David decides to follow the NASA
stiffs in suits back to their base, where they run a series of tests. With
their special equipment, they’re able to scan David’s mind and download the
massive amounts of data stored in there, which include blueprints for that orb
shaped thing from before, as well as pages of words written in an
unrecognisable language. Then the icing on the cake is the location of a planet
in a galaxy far, far away where the originator of the information comes from.
For some reason, this alien chose David to carry all his information, and
before David even realises it, this being from another world wants to reconnect
with the boy.
David is beckoned to a hangar on the
NASA base, by a voice. Unable to hear him clearly or make out what he’s saying,
David tries to follow where it’s coming from. Although he’s being kept under
constant supervision in a locked room, one of the bases assistants Carolyn
(Sarah Jessica Parker in one of her earliest roles) helps David to slip out of
the room and past the guards, to the hangar where the voice that calls him is
waiting. Not sure what to expect, David finds himself in a room with what can
only be a UFO. A silver orb that is seamless and hovering above the ground.
NASA has been unable to open it, but it lets David in with no hesitation.
Stepping aboard, David enters the heart of the ship, and it’s nothing less than
beautiful and magnificent.
Once aboard, the ship wakes up and
speaks to David, addressing him as “The Navigator”. As NASA storm the bunker,
the ship begins to move, following every instruction David gives it. Taking
off, flying fast and low above the ground, David starts to learn he can control
the ship and go wherever he wants to. The ship informs David that he picked him
up after he fell into the ditch. The ship unloaded all his information and
directional coordinates into David’s mind, and then returned him to the place
he found him. The ship crashed and was discovered by NASA who hauled it off to
their base. The ship tells David it had been trying to call him to get his information
back and the directions to his home planet, hence the reason why the ship calls
David, The Navigator. David feels overwhelmed by this responsibility, so in
exchange for helping the UFO, who he calls Max, to get back to his world, David
wants Max to take him home.
Flying across the world to get home,
David forms a relationship with Max (voiced by Pee Wee Herman), learning about
his journeys across space, whereas David educates the ship on more human things
such as music and the name of the various locations they fly over.
Flight of the Navigator is one of
those rare movies, that has the 1980’s written all over it, but tells a story
that is modern and was quite ahead of it’s time. What makes this film stands
out is its brilliant musical score, which was electronically orchestrated using
a Synclavier, which was one of the earliest digital synthesizers used for
making music. The soundtrack perfectly accompanies scenes of the UFO flying
over cities, deserts and oceans. To listen to a sample of this music click here.
The concept of this movie is just
awesome in every single way. When we’re kids, we don’t just believe there is
life in outer space – we know there is life out there. We spend
more time looking up at the night sky with it’s sea of stars, searching for
anything that resembles a spaceship. We sit and wait in hope that we will be
the one who gets to see a UFO flying above the earth, and if we’re lucky enough,
meet the Little Green Man inside it. David is the character we get to live that
fantasy through. And not only does he meet the robotic alien inside its craft,
he gets to fricken fly it! It doesn’t get any cooler than that. At age 12 he’s
not even old enough to drive or go many places on his own, but when chosen by
Max to be his navigator, David is in charge and learns to fly the ship over
cities, through forests and even under the ocean.
At its heart, Flight of the
Navigator is about the importance of home. Both David and Max want to get home
and inevitably help each other out to get there. David is faced with the choice
of whether to return to the home of his future, or return to the home of his
past, where he really came from. But that won’t be easy.
Jump on board with Flight of the
Navigator. It’s a classic kid’s film you’ll want to experience time and time
again. A real gem.
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