Setting up shop at Paramount, Dante jumped straight into what he deemed a \u201csimpler movie\u201d than Gremlins<\/em> \u201cbecause it was just these kids who build a spaceship.\u201d However, a regime change at the studio (almost invariably bad news) and an accelerated production to make a summer release date meant the film that arrived in theaters on July 12, 1985, was unfinished \u2013 at least to Dante\u2019s eyes. \u201cThis was a very ambitious movie that we were finding in the editing room. I mean, there were a lot of aspects of the picture that just never made it into the movie because we literally froze where we were.\u201d While Dante did some tinkering for the home video release, though, both versions are fundamentally the same. (Quotes from Joe Dante<\/em>, published by FilmmuseumSynema Publications in 2013, the first and still the only critical volume on Dante\u2019s work in English.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dante\u2019s \u201csimpler movie\u201d is detectable in the first hour of Explorers<\/em>, as the boys \u2013 played by Ethan Hawke (in his screen debut), River Phoenix, and Jason Presson \u2013 figure out how to realize their common goal. This is also where Dante and screenwriter Eric Luke fill viewers in on their home lives. Ben\u2019s is the most stable, with a loving mother (whose most pressing concern is his diet of \u201950s science fiction) and unseen father and brother. Wolfgang\u2019s is pure chaos, with two eccentric parents who gifted him with a name that put a target on his back at school and a gaggle of siblings who run riot everywhere but the basement, his fiercely protected domain. Darren\u2019s is one of hardship, with a dead mother, an unemployed, alcoholic father (briefly heard, never seen), and the father\u2019s girlfriend (same), providing him with the most tangible reasons to escape. Darren\u2019s chance meeting with Ben, intervening with the school bully, not only gains him friends, but a purpose, and crucially, hope for the future. (It\u2019s a telling moment when he reveals he doesn\u2019t dream. Dreaming is a luxury he can\u2019t afford.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n If Explorers<\/em> seems like a different movie when it gets to space, that\u2019s essentially because it is. The spaceship sequence is even credited to a different editor than the rest of the film, which was cut by Tina Hirsch (who met Dante in the editing suite at New World). This sequence, the most Dante-esque in the film, is also where Rob Bottin\u2019s makeup effects come to the fore, continuing an association that went back to Piranha<\/em>. Also on board and doing stellar work are cinematographer John Hora, whose shooting style for the spaceship interiors is in stark contrast with the naturalistic Earth scenes, and composer Jerry Goldsmith, whose contributions were an integral part of Dante\u2019s films from Twilight Zone<\/em> on. Goldsmith\u2019s experiments with synthesizers (also heard in Gremlins<\/em>) reached their peak here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No appreciation of Explorers<\/em> would be complete without mention of the most oft-used members of Dante\u2019s repertory company: Dick Miller and Robert Picardo. Miller plays a helicopter pilot who witnesses the Thunder Road\u2019s maiden flight and seems poised to ground the boys, but he gives his character more shading than that, along with a wistful admiration for their achievement. Meanwhile, Picardo pulls triple duty as the lead in Starkiller<\/em>, the hilariously badly dubbed space opera they check out at the drive-in, and two of the aliens they meet at the end of their journey (who have clearly been watching the same movies as Ben). As the story\u2019s open ending shows, though, the adventure that brought Ben, Wolfgang, and Darren together was likely the first of many, even if the follow-ups never made it to movie screens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cExplorers\u201d is streaming on <\/em>Kanopy<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>Hoopla<\/em><\/a>. It is also available in both its theatrical cut and home video version from <\/em>Shout Select<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/explorers2-1024x632.jpg\")
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