Explorers (1985)

I only watched this movies because of river phoenix he is such a great actor and the other kids were good too, the storyline is nice I really liked it i was enjoying everything until the aliens showed up it was so unnecessary I really hate the fact that they met up with the aliens it's so stupid i literally skipped half of the aliens scenes I couldn't bear to watch it. honestly the movie could've been better but the alien thing ruined the whole movie

Just saw Ethan Hawke promoting his new movie on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallow (June 15, 2017). Can't believe he's 46. Well it got me reminiscing about his first movie, Explorers. So here I am. It may not be an epic flick but it is a classic. The movie My Science Project falls in the same category. Watching Explorers takes me back to my childhood.

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 scrimmage, 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.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. 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.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.

Ben Crandall (Ethan Hawke), an alien-obsessed kid, dreams one night of a circuit board. Drawing out the circuit, he and his friends Wolfgang (River Phoenix) and Darren set it up, and discover they have been given the basis for a starship. Setting off in the ThunderRoad, as they name their ship, they find the aliens Ben hopes they would find... but are they what they seem? Joe Dante is an interesting character. Rising from the films of Roger Corman, he has made some of the great horror films -- "Howling", "Piranha" and "Gremlins". But he also has made some classic kid movies. While it is not strange for someone to make different kinds of films, it is interesting to see how one mind can approach two very different ideas. (Though we are treated to a newspaper that suggests "Explorers" exists in the same world as "Gremlins".) Along with "Flight of the Navigator", this was one of the two great kids-meet-aliens movies of the 1980s. You could possibly add "Mac and Me", but to include that in there would be giving it too much credit. Allegedly, the studio finished the film without Dante and what we see is basically a work print. If that is true, it is a darn fine work print. What more would Dante have done? Interestingly, a different but related theme was explored by Bob Balaban in his episode of "Amazing Stories" this same year (called "Fine Tuning"). They would make an excellent double feature.