Explorers (1985) on Netflix
PG19851h 49mAdventureComedyFamily
Ben Crandall dreams of flying over a city-like circuit board and draws it for Wolfgang Müller, a child prodigy. With Darren Woods, the boys build a spacecraft from an abandoned Tilt-A-Whirl car.
- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb6.4/1025,903 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes49%
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Plot summary
Ben Crandall lives in a Maryland suburb and falls asleep to old science fiction films, then dreams of flying through clouds above a vast circuit board shaped like a city. He wakes and sketches the diagram for Wolfgang Müller, a child prodigy. Wolfgang builds a microchip from the drawings, and the chip generates an electromagnetic bubble that can travel enormous distances and speeds without inertia. Darren Woods, a friend with mechanical skills and connections at a local junkyard, helps assemble a rudimentary spacecraft from an abandoned Tilt-A-Whirl car, which they name Thunder Road. Ben develops a crush on Lori Swenson, unsure whether it is mutual. Further dreams lead Wolfgang to a way of producing unlimited oxygen, and the boys settle on a plan to search the galaxy for alien life.
Cast
- Georg Oldenas Steve Jackson's Gang
- Chance Schwassas Steve Jackson's Gang
Show all 20 cast
- Tricia Bartholomeas Girl in Classroom
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Explorers (1985)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- "The studio changed hands in the middle of production, and they decided they needed the movie much quicker than we thought," Dante said. "So we shot the picture under very hurried auspices. The paint on the sets was literally wet and when the kids stepped into the spaceship they sunk into cement because it wasn't dry."
- Rushed into production, the film was never properly finished. Dante revealed that the studio demanded he stop editing and rush for a July release, where it was overshadowed by the Live Aid concert, held one day after the film came out, and by stiff competition from Back to the Future, which had opened nine days earlier.
- About an hour and a half of footage was left on the cutting room floor. "There was a lot of spiritual kind of stuff in the movie that didn't make it in at all," Dante said of a theory of the time about the world mind: "Now the only picture where that theory is even mentioned is Exorcist II unfortunately."
- Both Hawke and Phoenix made their feature film debuts in Explorers. Phoenix was originally considered to play Darren, but when Dante chose Jason Presson for that part, Dante thought Phoenix was good enough to play another role and cast him against type as the nerdy Wolfgang.
- Cherie Currie was considered for a part but, according to her autobiography, she was in the throes of drug dependency at the time and could not even make it to a meeting.
