Blu-Ray/Movie Review: Explorers

 

Explorers is a 1985 film starring a very young Ethan Hawke (in his first movie role) and a very young River Phoenix (both were around 13 years old at the time the movie was shot), Darren Presson, Amanda Peterson, Robert Picardo, Dick Miller, Meshach Taylor, and James Cromwell. 

The premise of the movie is that Hawke's character, Ben, who is huge into space, aliens, and science fiction, dreams of what is essentially a circuit that can create a force sphere that can allow for space flight. Phoenix plays Wolfgang, a science nerd who builds the circuit, and Jason Presson plays Darren, a kid who is kind of a loner but gets caught up in the experiment and helps to build a ship. Of course, they end up going into space and meeting actual aliens, but there is a bit of a twist to that part of the story. Picardo played several roles in the movie. He is, of course, probably best known for his role on Star Trek Voyager, but he is almost unrecognizable in each of the roles, including that of the "main" alien. 

The blu-ray set is a two-disc set. One includes the theatrical version of the movie, and the other contains the home video version of the film. Surprisingly, the theatrical version is a few minutes longer than the home video release. Each disc has the same bonus features, the main ones being an hour-long making-of feature, deleted scenes (that can be played with or without commentary by the director), interviews with a couple of different crew members, and the theatrical trailer. A good amount of material for those who like watching the extras.

Overall, the movie, while certainly dated, is still very enjoyable. It has a pretty timeless theme that helps distract from the fact that it feels like a mid-80s movie. Interestingly, the making-of feature reveals that the final version of the movie was incomplete, but it had to be finished to meet the summer release deadline. So elements had to be taken out, and the edit that was released to theaters was not what the director, Joe Dante, wanted to release. Even so, the movie was well-written and well-acted, despite the leading actors being kids and still very inexperienced. For many people, this is probably a nostalgia movie they remember from their childhood, but if you haven't seen it, it is definitely worth checking out.