Before Gremlins, Joe Dante was the go-to guy for innovative, indie horror that broke new ground while simultaneously honouring the classics; but the moment that those vicious little green brutes were unleashed upon the sanctity of the Christmas movie, the director found himself taking a slightly altered route in career. Post Gremlins, Dante became arguably the best Spielberg surrogate in the business as he knocked out various family films that lent heavily on Dante’s talent for crafting movies that instantly felt warmly nostalgic, even back in the 80s when it was fresh and new. Never was this more evident than in Explorers, a family movie that kind of played like The Goonies in space and saw typical Spielbergian youths collide with Dante’s obsession with Looney Tunes inspired wackiness to surprisingly thoughtful effect – however, possibly the biggest surprise of all was the fact that, somehow, Spielberg had absolutely nothing to do with it…
Ben Crandall is a young teen who regularly falls asleep in front of his beloved sci-fi movies, but as of late, he’s started having vivid dreams that has him soaring over a vast, alien landscape that heavily resembles a gigantic circuit board. Relating the design from the dream to his egghead best friend Wolfgang Müller, the two boys manage to construct the microchip when they aren’t desperately avoiding bullies at school and, along with local poor kid Darren Woods, slot it into a computer to see what happens.
What happens is that it generates an electromagnetic bubble whose direction, speed and size can be controlled by the kids with a keyboard and after the odd, life threatening snafu, the hit upon the idea to use their new discovery to enable them to construct a flying device.
Building a rickety craft they dub the Thunder Road (thank you, Springsteen) that they can sit in while the bubble moves them around with no inertia at all, their maiden flight almost ends up in disaster when a mysterious force hijacks their computer programme and causes them to hurtle up into outer space while they lack the small detail of not having enough oxygen. Yet, after returning to Earth with a bump, they are blessed with yet more dreams of crazy, unearthly schematics to help past their teething problems and make it into space.
Ever the font of positivity, Ben is convinced that whomever is sending them these dreams wants to make contact, they once again launch themselves into the inky black of space where their mysterious benefactors await – but no one, not even Ben, could conceive of what exactly is waiting for them at the end of their journey: a couple of alien lifeforms that have taken mankind’s popular culture a little too literally…
I genuinely believe that if Explorers hadn’t been plagued by such bad luck and it’s fair share of production problems, we could have had an undisputed sci-fi/family classic that would have easily rivaled (and merged) both The Goonies and E.T. as the film seems incredibly ahead of it’s time. However, the studio at the time insisted that the film’s release be brought ahead a few months meaning that the movie went before the camera before a third act even existed – something which proves to be fairly apparent by the gonzo final half hour. However, on top of that, the film also had the incredible misfortune to hit cinemas while Back To The Future still held the box office in a vice-like grip and it came out one day before Live Aid happened, thus getting as overshadowed as being in the presence of a gargantuan, alien starship. Talk about you bad luck…
However, while the finished product doesn’t quite stand toe to toe with Dante’s best, there’s still an overwhelming feeling of hope that radiates outward from the thing the proves to be immensely endearing. In fact, Explorers seems to be trying to go for the complete opposite tone to Gremlins, which took great pleasure in trashing as many wholesome tropes as humanly possible. Here our three young leads (including the debuts of an offensively young looking Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix) are literal dreamers with Ben in particular having a very Dante-esque love of 50s science fiction as War Of The Worlds and This Island Earth seemingly plays endlessly on his television set.
However, there’s a very good chance that some audiences at the time would have found Explorers to be surprisingly slow and deliberate for what is essentially a family fantasy comedy, but the measured pace and nicely detailed characterization makes the string of discoveries and subsequent building and testing of this weird new tech oddly believable – even when Ben misuses the bubble to spy on the girl from school he has a crush on (hey, it was the 80s).
Admittedly, the troubles with script’s third act are signposted by a subplot involving Dick Miller’s intervening helicopter pilot that goes virtually nowhere, but once Ben, Wolfgang and Darren finally streaks off into the final frontier, Explorers makes a shift into light speed as Dante movies from indulging in his love of classic sci-fi to indulging in his other love of wacky, cartoon cartoon stuff that takes us to a truly insane finale that almost feels like its teleported in from another movie entirely.
While it’s an undeniable fact that the two different halves of Explorers admittedly fit about as well as a lego and a duplo brick, the section where the boys finally meet up with their extraterrestrial benefactors is as crazy and unhinged as the first half is measured. The big twist is that Wak and Neek, the two aliens who have been e-mailing the means to meet them via Ben’s subconscious aren’t the reverential, wise beings the teen was hoping for and are instead hyperactive goofs who’s only insight into earth’s culture is thousands of hours of television and rock and roll. The result is a hapless Robert Picardo who is entombed alive within a magnificent Rob Bottin rubber suit that makes what Jim Carrey had to endure in The Grinch look like a soothing massage. And yet, both the hapless Picado (a regular victim of both Bottin and Dante) and a similarly encased Leslie Rickert give ridiculously kinetic performances despite having to lug around excruciatingly uncomfortable looking, full body prosthetics that only leaves their mouths visible.
It’s a ballsy ending that’s made all the more unpredictable by the revelation that Wak and Neek are actually a couple of naive kids who have stolen their dad’s car (read: spaceship) in order to make first contact and you’d be forgiven for initially being as disappointed as Ben is when the reality sets in. But the years have thankfully been kind to Explorers and even though it may be imperfectly formed (non one could have guessed from the opening half that the film would contain a slimy, green otherworldly being miming to a Little Richard song), it still has tons of ideas more than your average family film.
Definitely worth exploring.
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