Flight of the Navigator

Flight of the Navigator is a 1986 Disney science fiction film about a boy, David, who is somehow transported in time eight years into the future without aging.

Tagline: Take off on the ultimate fantasy adventure!

Story

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 ask him to go retrieve his younger brother Jeff from a friend's house on the other side of the woods that are behind his house. While in the woods he falls down an embankment into a ravine and is knocked unconscious. He awakes after what seems a few moments, and returns home, only to find that it is now inhabited by an elderly couple. The couple turns David over to the police who find an eight-year-old missing persons report on David. David's parents and brother are found to be now living in a different house in Ft. Lauderdale, and are eight years older. David quickly learns that the year is now in the year 1986 and everything has changed but him.

By this time a subplot has begun, involving an alien spacecraft that has crashed into some power lines. NASA agents convince the police that the craft is theirs and take it back to their base. The NASA workers find the ship seamless and impenetrable.

David has meanwhile been taken to hospital to try to determine where he has been for the last eight years, and, most importantly, why he has not aged. The scientists have begun performing tests on his brain and find it to be filled with information on the same spacecraft that is at the NASA base. David is uncomfortable about the tests, but is convinced by the scientists to allow them to take him to the same base as the strange ship and keep him for 48 hours to continue the tests. David is connected to a machine, whereupon further scans reveal that his brain is full of alien data and star charts. The scientists are also able to query David's brain directly, without requiring David's permission.

David hears the ship calling to him in his mind, but he does not know who it is. An intern named Carolyn McAdams (Sarah Jessica Parker), befriends him and he tells her to let his parents know that they plan to keep him longer than promised. The mysterious ship sends a service robot to David's room, and instructs David to climb into it. The robot is ubiquitous throughout the base so it is ignored by security. The 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, revealed to be a Trimaxion Drone Ship, and David climbs inside.

Once inside the ship, he meets its robotic pilot, whom he nicknames Max (voice by Paul Reubens who is credited as "Paul Mall"). Max is attached to the interior like a periscope and moves along tracks on the ceiling, walls and floors, and insists on referring to David as "Navigator." They escape the NASA base somewhat haphazardly, only to stop at a cow pasture, then hide in the Gulf of Mexico. Max informs David that his mission was to travel the galaxy, collect specimens, and take them back to his home planet of Phaelon for analysis. After this, he would return the specimens to the exact place and time from which they were taken.

Max's analysers had discovered that humans only use 10% of their brain. As an experiment they abducted David at random and filled his brain with information. The only problem that occurred with this procedure is that David's brain "leaked" inexplicably. Max then returned David to Earth, but did not take him back to his proper time, fearing that humans were too delicate for time travel. Upon trying to leave Earth and return to Phaelon, Max was distracted by some daisies, and accidentally crashed the ship into a power line. The crash erased all the star charts and data necessary for returning home from the ship's computer; hence, Max needs the information placed in David's brain to complete his mission and return to Phaelon.

Max performs a mind transfer of David's brain to extract the information. Max's personality and voice immediately change, becoming less robotlike and more human and erratic (similar to Reubens' Pee-wee Herman persona). Max explains that he appears to have extracted additional information out of David's brain besides the navigational data he needed. It is left to the viewer to assume that Max has acquired part of David's personality, and in fact, knows only what little of Earth that David knows, and he incidently, had received a "D" in Geography.

David and Max travel the Earth trying to decide what to do next, tracked and chased by NASA all the way, and get quite lost in the process. Upon returning to his home in Fort Lauderdale and seeing the NASA people waiting for him, David decides that he cannot stay in 1986 because they 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. David knows that there is a risk of being vaporized, but insists that Max take him back. After the trip through time to July 4, 1978, he awakens in the woods, makes his way home, and finds everything the way he left it before he was abducted – except for a small souvenir pet he brought along from his journey.

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 Generation Y who remembered the film as kids in the 1980s. 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, called a Trimaxion Drone Ship by Max. The movie opens with the shot of such a vessel flying across a cityscape (presumably Ft. Lauderdale) but a dog suddenly catches the object revealing it to be actually be a silver Frisbee. In the trailer, Max had a different voice than that of Paul Reubens as well. ^[1] Since 1989, the two ship shells that were used for filming have been located on the Backlot Tour at the Disney-MGM Studios theme park.

Visual Effects Innovations

Released at the dawn of 3D animation technology, Flight of the Navigator was the world's first 35mm feature film to use environment mapping, creating the illusion of a chrome object occupying a live-action frame, considered by many to still 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 80's, such as the Coca Cola commercial featuring robots moving through a factory assembly line.

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. Since production, both hulls are stored and periodically displayed alongside other movie vehicles at the Walt Disney World MGM Studios theme park (Orlando) where they have steadily dilapidated over the years.

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
12. Star Dancing

Trivia

• The Navigator is an alternate title in Norway.

• Puppeteer Tim Blaney, who provided the voice for the robot, Johnny 5 in the movie Short Circuit which was released earlier that same year, helped with puppeteer work on Max and the alien creatures.

• The music video that is briefly shown in David's room at the NASA facility is Blancmange's "Lose Your Love."

• Paul Reubens would later provide the voice of Captain Rex on the Star Wars ride Star Tours, extremely similar to his work as Max.

• Max, the ship computer speaks in Bulgarian. When David enters the ship and takes the pilot seat Max says "Vnimanie! Oblegni se! Chui me!" (Внимание! Облегни се! Чуй ме!) which means "Attention! Sit back! Listen to me!".

• The fictional planet Phaelon, Max's home planet, is exactly 560 light-years away from Earth. It takes Max 2.2 solar hours to return to Phaelon.

• There are a few references to other works by Randal Kleiser. "You're the One That I Want" from Grease plays on the car radio in the beginning of the film. Also, David later wonders why his favorite show Starsky and Hutch is no longer on TV.

• A gas station attendant says, "He just wanted to phone home," as the space ship takes off. This is an obvious reference to E.T.

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