Flight of the Navigator

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Flight of the Navigator
1986 theatrical release poster
Directed by	Randal Kleiser
Produced by	Dimitri Villard Robert Wald
Written by	Mark H. Baker Michael Burton Matt MacManus
Starring	Joey Cramer Paul Reubens Veronica Cartwright Cliff DeYoung Sarah Jessica Parker Matt Adler Howard Hesseman Albie Whitaker Iris Acker Brittney Vance Steve Ramos
Music by	John Farrar Alan Silvestri
Cinematography	James Glennon Eric McGraw
Editing by	Jeff Gourson
Studio	PSO Walt Disney Pictures[1]
Distributed by	Buena Vista Pictures
Release date(s)	30 July 1986[2]
Running time	90 minutes
Country	United States, Norway
Language	English

Flight of The Navigator is a 1986 Disney science fiction film directed by Randal Kleiser and was written by Mark H. Baker and Michael Burton, about a 12-year old boy, David, who is abducted by an alien space craft in 1978. Due to time dilation, David is gone for only a few hours, but when he is returned to Earth, it is eight years later in 1986. Everyone else on Earth has aged eight years, but David is still physically twelve years old.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Background information 4 Visual effects innovations 5 Soundtrack 6 Remake 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Plot

David Scott Freeman (Joey Cramer) is an average, twelve-year-old American boy living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1978. On the night of July 4, his parents (Veronica Cartwright and Cliff DeYoung) ask him to go retrieve his younger brother Jeff (Albie Whitaker) from a friend's house, which is located on the other side of the woods that are behind his house. While in the woods, David falls down an embankment into a ravine and is knocked unconscious. He awakes after what seems like a few moments, only to find that he is now in the year 1986 and that everything has changed but himself. His childhood home has been sold to a married couple, who believe David is a missing child and report him to the local police. The police do not understand why David, who has been declared legally dead after being missing for so long, still looks the same as when he was last sighted. They are further puzzled when they start asking David questions and when asked who is the current President of the United States, he answers with Jimmy Carter. The police take David to a house where he is reunited with his family, now aged by 8 years.

Meanwhile, an extraterrestrial spacecraft has crashed into some power lines. NASA agents convince the police that the craft is theirs and take it to their base, intending to study it. The NASA workers find the ship seamless and impenetrable.

David is taken to the hospital to determine where he has been for the last eight years and to discover the reason for which he has not aged. The scientists have begun performing tests on his brain and find it to contain accurate information pertinent to the alien spacecraft that is at the NASA base; further scans reveal that his brain contains alien data and star charts leading to the planet of "Phaelon", which is such a great distance away NASA had not charted it. This planet is described as being exactly 560 light-years away from Earth. The travel time used by the spacecraft to reach it is 2.2 solar hours, implying a speed of approximately 2.25 million times the speed of light. The concept of time dilation is therefore used to explain the fact that David has not aged and is unaware of more than a few hours' passage.

David befriends an intern named Carolyn McAdams (Sarah Jessica Parker), telling her to let his parents know that the institute plans to keep him longer than the promised 48 hours. David hears the ship calling to him telepathically. He escapes the room by hiding in a service robot called RALF. Ignored by security, this robot takes David to the hangar where the ship is stored. As if made of liquid metal, an opening and stairway appear on the underside of the hovering spacecraft and David climbs inside. Once inside the ship, he meets its robotic pilot, whom he subsequently nicknames Max (voiced by Paul Reubens). Referring to David as "Navigator", Max accepts David's command to escape the base and take him somewhere to think.

The ship takes off from the NASA facility and hides on the ocean floor of the Gulf of Mexico. To travel more quickly, Max causes the spaceship to morph into a streamlined, point-nosed form designed to penetrate thicker atmosphere than that of Phaelon. The craft has the ability to hover, accelerate at high G, travel at tremendous speeds (up to Mach 10, ten times the speed of sound), become transparent, travel underwater and to move in virtually any direction without any discernible engine or power source.

Max informs David that his mission was to travel the galaxy, collect biological specimens and take them back to his home planet of Phaelon for analysis before returning them to the place and time from which they were taken. Max's sensors had discovered that humans only use 10% of their brain and as an experiment, David's brain was filled with information. During this procedure, David's brain inexplicably "leaked". Max then returned David to Earth, but did not take him back to his proper time, fearing that humans were too delicate to survive time travel. When trying to leave Earth and return to Phaelon, Max accidentally crashed the ship into a power line, erasing all the star charts and data necessary for returning home from the ship's computer. Max needs the information placed in David's brain to complete his mission and return to Phaelon.

Max performs a painless scan of David's brain to extract the information. Max's personality and voice immediately change, becoming less robotic and more human and erratic (similar to Reubens' Pee-wee Herman persona), which Max says is a result of having extracted information irrelevant to his mission from David's brain.

David and Max bicker as to their next course of action, to which Max's response is to shut down and allow the ship to fall from its orbit, taunting David as to his inability to fly the ship. David finds the button that activates the manual controls for the ship and takes control. They travel the Earth trying to decide what to do next, tracked and chased by NASA all the way, from Tokyo, Japan, San Francisco, California, Texas and finally to Pensacola, Florida.

To find the way to his family, David uses a gas station payphone and calls home. David talks to his brother Jeff, asking him to find a way send a signal so that he can find his family's new house. Jeff successfully signals the flying saucer by lighting David's old bottle rockets and other fireworks. David is initially thrilled that he will soon return home, but becomes despondent upon realizing that he has lost 8 years of his life. Upon returning to his home and seeing the NASA people waiting for him, David decides that he does not belong in 1986 as a preteen and cannot stay, believing that the NASA scientists will treat him like a guinea pig for the rest of his life.

David bids his family goodbye and tells Max that he must return to his own time, regardless of the risks. After the return to July 4, 1978, he makes his way home and finds everything the way he left it before he was abducted. David discovers he has retained one memento from his experience: the Puckmaren, a peaceful extraterrestrial specimen collected by Max whose entire race has been destroyed by a comet's collision with his native planet. The film ends with Max flying back to Phaelon as fireworks are being lit to celebrate the 4th of July, while he sends a message to David "See you later, Navigator!"

[edit] Cast

• Joey Cramer as David Scott Freeman
• Paul Reubens as Trimaxion / Max (voice) (as Paul Mall)
• Veronica Cartwright as Helen Freeman
• Cliff DeYoung as Bill Freeman
• Sarah Jessica Parker as Carolyn McAdams
• Matt Adler as Jeff Freeman, 16 Years
• Howard Hesseman as Dr. Faraday
• Robert Small as Troy
• Albie Whitaker as Jeff Freeman, 8 Years
• Jonathan Sanger as Dr. Carr
• Iris Acker as Mrs. Howard
• Richard Liberty as Mr. Howard
• Raymond Forchion as Detective Banks
• Cynthia Caquelin as Woman Officer
• Ted Bartsch as Night Guard Brayton
• Thomas White as Darrel the Hockey Coach

[edit] Background information

When the film was initially released in the summer of 1986 it came and went at the box office, grossing only around $18 million; however, in later years it went on to become somewhat of a cult classic by Millennials, who remembered the film as kids in the 1980s. It has been a staple of The Wonderful World of Disney, where reception was much better. The film also marked the beginning of a renaissance for Disney's live action film branch, which had spent most of the decade in financial trouble. Many had seen in the movie trailer that a silver, acorn-shaped vessel would constitute the alien spacecraft, which is called a Trimaxion Drone Ship by Max (hence his nickname). The movie opens with the shot of such a vessel flying across the Miami skyline; however, a dog suddenly catches the object, revealing it to be a silver Frisbee. The dog that catches the silver frisbee in the opening sequence is the 1984 Frisbee Dog World Champion, Whirlin' Wizard, whereas the opening scene of it and other dogs catching Frisbees was filmed on the 79th Street Causeway, in a grass field alongside WSVN studios in Miami.

[edit] Visual effects innovations

Released at the dawn of 3D animation technology, Flight of the Navigator was the world's first 35 mm feature film to use environment mapping, creating the illusion of a chrome object occupying a live-action frame, considered by many to hold up to today's standards. The CG shots were produced by Omnibus Graphics, one of the first computer animation companies, responsible for most of the classic advertising 3D animation of the '80s.

Contrary to popular belief, CGI was not used to depict the suspended steps leading into the ship. The effect of the door liquefying to form the steps was achieved through stop-motion animation by creating a series of metallic sculptures for every frame of the animation. The suspended steps appeared to support David's weight with a simple optical illusion. The steps were mounted on thin beams which were angled in such a way that the steps themselves hid the beams from the camera's lens. This arrangement even allowed for slight camera movement as can be seen the first time David climbs the steps. Also note that when David presses on the middle step, all the steps move slightly.

The two full-scale spaceship hulls used in most of the shots throughout the film (one with an open entrance, the other sealed) were constructed out of thin, curved sheets of wood over a metal framework and finished with primer and reflective paint. One of these spaceship hulls can today be seen on the backlot tour at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Florida. The hull is now in a state of disrepair however, with extensive weathering and discoloration of the paintwork.^[3][4]

[edit] Soundtrack

The music score for the film was composed by Alan Silvestri. It is distinct from Silvestri's other scores in being entirely electronically generated, using the Synclavier, one of the first digital synthesisers and samplers.

1. Theme from "Flight of the Navigator"
2. "Main Title"
3. "The Ship Beckons"
4. "David In The Woods"
5. "Robot Romp"
6. "Transporting The Ship"
7. "Ship Drop"
8. "Have To Help a Friend"
9. "The Shadow Universe"
10. "Flight"
11. "Finale"

[edit] Remake

On May 25, 2009, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Disney was readying a remake of the movie. Brad Copeland is writing the script and Mandeville partners David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman will serve as producers.^[5]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Flight of the Navigator at the Internet Movie Database
• Flight of the Navigator at the TCM Movie Database
• Flight of the Navigator at Allmovie
• 4 Paws Miniature Aussies - Official website of Jessie's owner & trainer

v • d • e Films directed by Randal Kleiser 1970s Grease (1978) 1980s The Blue Lagoon (1980) · Summer Lovers (1982) · Grandview, U.S.A. (1984) · Flight of the Navigator (1986) · Big Top Pee-wee (1988) · Getting It Right (1989) 1990s White Fang (1991) · Honey, I Blew Up the Kid (1992) · It's My Party (1996) · Shadow of Doubt (1998) 2000s Red Riding Hood (2004) · Love Wrecked (2005)