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Explorers
“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 is not much stranger, 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 kid 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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