Amen.
I too saw EXPLORERS as a child (I was 11 when it debuted) and LOVED it - one of my all time favorites - UNTIL the aliens appeared and suddenly sent the movie to a nauseating chill. Everybody else my age agreed.
I got to meet Jason Presson once and complimented him on the young cast's remarkably real, naturalistic and understated acting style, some of the best ever accomplished. Although he didn't act in much else (Amazing Stories, etc), he appreciated the notice. I discussed the production with him; what it was like working with Dante; the size of the sets on the Melrose lot, etc.
To help understand what went wrong with Explorers, remember that this movie was only greenlit by Paramount as a result of 1984's blockbuster Gremlins. Joe Dante was very hot at the moment, and he was given enormous creative freedom - similar to Bryan Singer on next year's Superman. Eric Luke's rough-draft screenplay was selected, even though nobody really knew what to do for the ACT III climax in space... EXPLORERS was ramped up into design and preproduction, so that filming could commence in October 1984.
That fall, as Hollywood's studios prepared a slate of productions to release summer 1985, there was a wave of "teenage science project" concepts, when each studio felt a need for a powerful summer hit in the teen-science genre in order to compete against the other studios' versions (Back to the Future, Weird Science, Real Genius, My Science Project, Manhattan Project, etc).
With Paramount teamed up with then-hot Gremlins director Dante, they hired ILM as a full partner, spending a fortune for a marathon of top-notch FX... EXPLORERS was going to be elaborate and complicated, with Dante indulging many of his lifelong fantasies, now given full carte blanche and a healthy tab. This movie was going to be one of Paramount's major summer releases.
Many months later the studio realized there was trouble - only after advance screenings held w/ test audiences revealed that virtually EVERYONE hated the final act of the movie, when the aliens appear. By this point, much work had gone into the film (and much $$$ spent), so Paramount feared an embarrassing disaster. They could have stalled the production, temporarily putting EXPLORERS "on hold" while allowing a few creative members of the team to reinvent the story to link the first two acts to a different conclusion.
However, this option would have cost Paramount additional money, and mean that they would miss out on the valuable summer marketplace, with no guarantee of fixing the Act III problem that was appalling the audience. Meanwhile, Universal released the year's biggest blockbuster - BACK TO THE FUTURE - over the July 4 weekend. Audiences were delighted with that project, spreading enthusiastic word of mouth like wildfire.
In a panic, Paramount yanked EXPLORERS away from Dante - who hadn't even finished editing - and released it on July 12 as a "work in progress," hoping that somehow the magic of being a Spielberg protege (as Zemeckis was proving) would rub off on Dante. Explorers more or less died - earning only $9 million, while BTTF cruised past $200m easily. Paramount lost their investment, but for their bottom-line-obsessed board members, they were at least able to use the financial loss of EXPLORERS to help their taxes that year by marking off the entire production.
Dante was frustrated and humiliated, having wanted to deliver something special, but wasn't able to - and now looked somewhat foolish, as if he's squandered all of the goodwill that Gremlins had earned him. (Spielberg was still willing to hire him - as INNERSPACE proved shortly thereafter.)
EXPLORERS played solidly on video and cable, where more viewers discovered its ambitious scope, design, mood and atmosphere. But its generally impressive quality - the acting, music, FX - were never able to overcome the story's fatal flaw. That's sad and unfortunate, since this movie was darn near revolutionary in its potential.
I've still got my Explorers poster, and would never trade or sell it.
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RobZombie01930
20 years ago
"I've still got my Explorers poster, and would never trade or sell it."
I've got five hundred bucks that says you will.
Anyway, I completely understand now. Cause man did that alien scene suck majorly... ruined the whole movie for me...
Stop sucking and Realise how much I kick ass.
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greenie4242
20 years ago
Just after it was released, I saw the first half of 'Explorers' then the tape was eaten up by my VCR. For years in my mind, it was one of the best movies out and I couldn't wait to see the rest. Years later I watched it on TV and saw the whole thing. What a let-down when the aliens arrived! I had the same feeling after seeing the newly released Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie - After YEARS of loving the story in all its versions, loving the ideas behind it, building up the sense of adventure and excitement, all you ended up with at the end of the new movie was a bunch of stupid looking Sesame Street muppets and some hundred-year-old slapstick humour, completely out of place in the futiristic world they'd been trying so hard to build in your mind. Very unsatisfying. But the first hour was still great!
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Punk19
19 years ago
The first half was a little drabish. It started getting good towards to the end.
I hide in your closet....I hide in your basement....I hide under your bed.
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Blam_Mel
19 years ago
The first half of the film was amazing, but the whole "Alien kids are mischievous too!" was stupid and the "We should fear ourselves" was moral trite bs. The aliens were annoying, and the stupid musical number thing was horrid. The end should have been so much better, but it was just a couple of annoying aliens out joy riding in their dad's stolen space ship, who were as scared of the kids they abducted as the kids were of them. It's a victim of a terrible third act.
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stuartcork7
19 years ago
Okay, we have all bitched about the end of the film. Although if we are honest, the majority of our complaints are from when we first saw it and it burst the bubble of excitement. There are at least some good points or at least lines from that third act.
When Ben points out that he is disappointed after meeting the aliens. He says it isn't what he expected. (That voiced it all, not everything on an adeventure is going to be awe inspiring). Then Wak says 'I know I must look strange to you, but imagine how you look to me?' Maybe the screenplay for this act was poor, but some of the lines at the very least had potential and thought provoking tendencies. Perhaps more time was all that Joe needed to put this right. At least we can see that there was some potential there already.
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jcapogrossi
15 years ago
I saw this movie as a 13 year old in 1985 and I was not dissapointed by the aliens at the end.
In fact, the whole fact that the aliens were watching 1950's tv shows (The Honeymooners, etc), etc, was an idea that was pretty cool back in 1985...
The 80's in popular film was a time when there was a lot of commentary on the 50's (Back to the Future, etc) so that fits the time frame...
Granted, there could have been more "Spielbergian wonder" added to the meeting of the aliens...
But guess what-- It wasnt Spielberg that directed this movie- it was- yep- Joe Dante....
....what does that mean? It means you're going to get Spielberg mixed with the classic Warner Bros cartoons. The wistfulness of E.T. vs Bugs Bunny's wisecracking
Joe Dante is no carbon copy director, that guy was a unique individual back then, as well as now, and his films all have a trademark set of references to his own background as a filmmaker. Sure, he was a Spielberg proteje', but he used that to his advantage to get these films made back then...
After shocking audiences with "Gremlins", I think Dante wanted to make a film that would NOT scare kids. The result was this film.
I would be OK to let my 8 year old daughter watch Explorers.
I still WON'T let her watch Gremlins.
If you want a deep, meaningful film that does NOT "trivialize" the meeting of a human with "aliens"...you have other films you can view...
(Close Encounters, Contact, heck even 2001 if you have to go really esoterical on it)
This was a 10-13 year old kid's movie, & in my humble opinion, it was made for them.... I think the wisecracking alien (Wak) was pretty funny, and back then, in the 80's, it was actually very cool.
This movie was not trying to make "E.T. part 2" or "Close Encounters part 2"...this was a unique film with a different ending than what one might expect.
Especially now, in our CGI enveloped, comic book entrenched version of "sci fi" movies we have (HellboyII, GI Joe, the Hulk with Edward Norton, etc, etc), I think films like Explorers represents what was good about movies in the 80's, and partly also shows what we are missing in films in 2009-2010.
One opinion
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