Flight of the Navigator
Encyclopedia : F : FL : FLI : Flight of the Navigator
- The Navigator is an alternate title in Norway
Tagline: Take off on the ultimate fantasy adventure!
Story
David Scott Freeman (Joey Cramer) is an average twelve-year-old American boy living in suburban Miami, Florida in 1978. One night 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 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. With little effort, NASA agents convince the police that the craft is theirs and take it back to their base.
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 a strange language. David is uncomfortable about the tests, but is somehow 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 doesn't know who it is. With the help of an intern named Carolyn (Sarah Jessica Parker), he manages to escape his room and make his way 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, letting him inside, even though no NASA technicians have been able to gain entry. Once inside the ship, he meets its robot pilot, whom he nicknames Max (voice by Paul Reubens who is credited as "Paul Mall"). Max is attached to the spacecraft and moves along tracks on the walls and floors, and he calls David "The Navigator." He escapes the NASA base somewhat haphazardly, only to stop at a cow pasture, than later on under the sea. Then Max informs David that his mission was to travel the galaxy, collect specimens, and take them back to his home planet, Phaelon, for study. After this, he would return the specimens to the exact time and place from which they were taken, and it would be as if they had never left.
Max's creators had discovered that humans only use 10% of their brain. (while it is conceivable that aliens would find a way to use the storage capacity of the human brain, the idea that humans only use 10% of their brain is in fact an urban legend.) 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", although this is never fully explained. 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 flowers, 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 in David's brain to complete his mission and return to Phaelon.
Max scans David's brain to extract the information. Max's personality and voice change, becoming less robotlike and more human and erratic. It is left to the viewer to assume that in addition to the navigation data, Max has acquired part of David's personality.
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. David finally decides that he cannot stay in 1986, and that he must return to his own time, despite the risk of being vaporized. After Max takes him and the space ship back 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
Many had seen in the movie trailer that a silver acorn-shaped vessel would constitute the Alien spacecraft. The movie opens with the shot of such a vessel flying across a cityscape (presumably Miami) but a dog suddenly catches the object revealing it to be actually be a silver Frisbee. Also in the trailer Max had a different voice than that of Paul Reubens.
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 which still holds up today. 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.
Tim Blaney, who provided the voice for the robot, Johnny 5 in the movie Short Circuit which was released earlier that same year, also helped with puppeteer work on Max and the alien creatures.
External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.