Kid empowerment films had it going on in the 80s. You could argue Home Alone was the ultimate culmination of the genre, but the 80s were where the groundwork was laid. You had films, to varying degrees of quality, such as Stand by Me, E.T: The Extra Terrestrial, Wizard, Gremlins, Mac & Me, and 9-1/2 Weeks. And life was good. It’s also when Flight of the Navigator came out.
Flight, if you never saw it, was about a little boy who hit his head in the woods only to wake up eight years later. Except he hasn’t aged, and when NASA runs tests on him they find a whole bunch of starcharts in his head because NASA has that technology – if there’re starcharts in your head, NASA’s gonna find them.
As this is happening, a mysterious spaceship crashes into some heavy-duty power lines and is taken to the same NASA facility where this young David is being housed*. To escape, David hides inside a hallway monitoring robot that brings him to the spaceship where he meets Max, basically a droid that hangs from the ceiling and sees with a disco ball. Also, he’s Paul Reubens – and it was he who puts those star charts in David’s head! Together, and with Max’s alien pets, they go on wild adventures through the skies.
Come to think of it, this movie was fucking awesome.
Anyways, the director and writer of the excellent Safety Not Guaranteed (Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly, respectively) will be doing the remake. So yeah, this likely means Trevorrow’s out of the running for Star Wars. It also means I have a DVD to buy.
*NASA was kind of the bad guy here. There’s a direct correlation between this film and their budget getting slaughtered, a statement in which I have no evidence to back up.
4 comments
Loved Explorers. Flight was retarded on steroids.
This is a good film for a remake-good premise that had a poor execution. If done right this could be a good film-possibly with a mainstream mumble core sensibility( if that is possible)? That would be an interesting interpretation of the material.
Also, the NASA comment was pretty funny Tim, you are definetly improving…
Holy shit, was that really Paul Reubens? All these years, I thought it was just somebody doing a bad Pee Wee impersonation.
To each their own and all that but my god I think its totally the reverse of that! I rewatched Explorers recently and while it does have its fun 80s charm it just gets more and more stupid as the movie progresses. “Retarded on steroids” about covers the whole bit inside the spaceship at the end. Not saying Flight of the Navigator didn’t have its retarded moments (i could of done with out the abrupt personality shift in Max… but they had to cater to the kids I understand that) but its just a better film overall then Explorers. IMO of course. 🙂
As for this remake it seems pretty unnecessary but i’m not totally against the idea. Flight of the Navigator was a fun and cool movie from my childhood. I think kids today would still dig the premise so I hope Disney does well with this film.
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