8. Ben, Wolfgang & Darren - Explorers
This is another entry in the 80s kids' adventure genre, but only because I think it is an overlooked and underappreciated gem of a movie. Thus, it stands on its own next to Samwise, Short Round, and the one Frog brother from
Lost Boys. Before Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix became a hunk and died of a drug overdose (respectively), they appeared in the sci-fi family feature Explorers. After losing director Wolfgang Petersen to Enemy Mine, Paramount tapped Joe Dante, fresh off the success of Gremlins, to direct the movie. Then they insisted on rushing production to take advantage of the summer blockbuster market and everything went to shit: filming would start before paint on the sets was even dry, huge portions went unedited, subplots were dropped. All of that and they weren't even working with a finished script. To this day, Dante laments the movie as "unpolished." To make matters worse, the movie opened the same weekend as Live Aid. Long story short: it tanked. Despite a relatively strong showing in the rental and cable broadcast market, from Paramount's perspective the movie couldn't be saved, and whatever was left of the three hours of footage Dante had filmed has been lost forever. Let's all now take a moment of silence for the great sci-fi kids' movie could have been but never will be. Anyway, the badasses: sci-fi fanboy Ben has recurring dreams where he's flying above all kinds of alien circuitry. One night, he has the good idea to make a note of the complex designs and patterns so that his mega-nerd best friend, Wolfgang (played by none other than River Phoenix, no less), can whip something up. And whip up something he does: he manages to build a complex alien circuit in his basement. In a day. When this alien technology seems to be capable of inducing flight, Ben, Wolfgang, and Darren (resident Tough Kid With a Troubled Home) have no problem building and manning a spacecraft
literally from scraps. The movie gets a bit weird once they actually go into space and meet the aliens (the aliens, sad to say, have not aged well at all), but that's missing the point. These kids had the smarts to build alien technology and learn how to use it, the pluck and determination to build a flying machine, and the giant brass balls to take the untested aircraft out of the atmosphere. NASA? We don't need no stinkin' NASA!