How Studio Executives Ruined Joe Dante's Vision of the 1985 Sci-Fi Adventure Film EXPLORERS

Joe Dante’s 1985 sci-fi adventure film Explorers was one of my favorite films as a kid! I loved that damn thing. When I revisited it as an adult, though, I could totally see that this movie had issues. I still like the film, and it’s managed to hold on to its charm, but there’s a lot of stuff I didn’t know about the movie, and it actually had a pretty troubled production. In fact, Dante does not like the film, what was released was not his vision. The studio pretty much tore the movie apart in editing and as a long-time fan, I sure would love to see the Dante cut of Explorers!

In the film, Young Ben Crandall (Ethan Hawke) spends his free time watching sci-fi films, playing video games and reading comic books. Surprisingly, his affinity for all things fantastical yields a real result -- when he has a vivid dream about technology, his science-loving friend Wolfgang Muller (River Phoenix) manages to create a working spacecraft. Joined by their buddy Darren Woods (Jason Presson), the boys take off into outer space and encounter some very odd extraterrestrial life.

For those of you who are also fans of the film, or just curious. I wanted to give you a little insight into what happened to Dante’s original cut over the course of production.

The original cut of the film that Dante and his team put together was 3 hours and 15 minutes long! Sure, they knew they had to cut it down, but that was the starting point. The movie was actually in a prolonged post-production editing phase when all of a sudden the studio decided to move up the release date.

With the release date being moved up the editing of the film has to go into rush mode and at one point the studio just told the director that he was finished, even though he wasn’t, and they decided that they were just going to go ahead and release what he had at that point.

The filmmaker recalled, “They ruined it by releasing it before it was finished, then didn’t support it with advertising — so it bombed and they lost a fortune.”

The film started shooting under the leadership of Paramount Studios president Michael Eisner and production head Jeffrey Katzenberg. Both of them ended up leaving the studio for Disney while Dante was making the film. At the time, he was asked to halt his work on Explorers by the new executives who took over so he could rush out Gremlins 2, which is a story for another day.

Dante explained that production on Explorers was moving so fast and the target relates date they initially had was so ambitious that, “When the kids came onto the spaceship set, it wasn’t even dry yet. Their feet were going in concrete!”

Under Parmaount’s new leadership, Dante was trying to cut a film together that would make sense of the unfinished film. The filmmaker talked about some of the subplots missing from the movie, saying, “There’s a whole subplot that’s cut out with the bullies. Our guys go back to school and there’s this magic something or other they got from the aliens and the kids’ clothes disappear. We shot all that stuff and we just never had a chance to put it in the movie.”

Dante ended up having to cut a party scene at the last minute which is where Ethan and Amanda have their first kiss. Dente recalled, “He gives her a hideous moon rock ring that he thinks looks great. At the end of the movie, when they’re flying, he looks at her hand as she looks at the ring — and of course, we had to cut that.”

There were other aspects of the film that were cut that would have explained a few things involving a cool and wild concept of how consciousness is part of one giant being. It’s a pretty deep subject for a kids movie and it would have been cool to see played with in the film. When talking about that Dante said, “Pierre Teilhard de Chardin had a philosophy [outlining] how all of consciousness is part of one giant being. That was in the movie at one time. It involved the [adult] Dick Miller character and how he has a psychic connection to the kids — because that’s how he felt when he was younger. All that stuff got muddled and didn’t really come through.”

No, no it did not. It’s a shame because it’s that kind of stuff that would have taken the film to a whole new level. It’s something that young fans would have grown to appreciate more over time as they revisit the movie. Now we just see remnants of grand ideas that could have been.

When it came to the marketing of the film, Dante was very disappointed. In fact, he hated the poster that was released. He shared, “Much to the detriment of my career was ‘From the director of Gremlins.’ The poster was black-on-black and featured a backyard fence with a light coming from behind. It just looked awful. When you put it up on billboards and it looked like tar paper.”

As you might imagine, Dante doesn’t revisit the film very much. It didn’t turn out to be the movie that he set out to make. He explained, It’s a tough movie for me to watch because it doesn’t represent what I was trying to do. It’s just an interim period that got frozen in stone. Though I’m very pleased that people would come up and say that they liked it — they show it to their kids and all that and I think that’s wonderful.”

He added, “It’s charming but it just isn’t what it could have been.”

While it would be nice for Dante to get to release his original cut because I would love to see his 3 hour and 15 minute version of the film, all of the footage that was cut from the film is lost. Dante says it’s gone for good, and that’s such a shame! He could never put together a director’s cut even if he wanted to.

Regardless, I still love and enjoy the film for what it is. It might not be the movie that Dante wanted to have released in theaters, but it definitely sparked my imagination when I was a kid and I appreciate that nostalgic connection that I have with the movie.

We talk about this movie on our Secret Level podcast in a lot more detail and share lots of additional insight. We talk about lots of other films too, so check it out if you haven’t already!

Some of the Information provided here comes from an interview with director Joe Dante conducted by The Wrap.