MOVIE · 1985

Explorers

ActionAdventureComedyFamilyRomanceSci-Fi109 min

Ben Crandall, an alien-obsessed middle schooler, starts drawing an intricate circuit board from his dreams, and his prodigy friend Wolfgang turns it into a working spacecraft. Ethan Hawke is Ben, with River Phoenix’s Wolfgang helping him and their wisecracking buddy Darren take a backyard fantasy into orbit. Between comics, video games, and schoolyard hassles, the boys piece together a homemade ship and head into outer space, where their first contact with extraterrestrials gets filtered through the aliens’ strange, pop-culture-tinted ideas about Earth.