EXPLORERS

EXPLORERS. Joe Dante, dir. USA: Paramount, 1985. Industrial Light & Magic, SpFx.

"First Contact" film, combining CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND with "The Squire of Gothos" episode of Star Trek (plus bits from other genre films). Significant here for what Richard D. Erlich and Peter C. Hall have called "the funkification of the future" in the design of the three spacecraft in the film, and for use by a highly conscious director of a number of important motifs: the heroes' being "eaten alive" by a Great Mother alien ship (combining male and female aspects), the boys in the alien ship as "mice in a maze," and the dream sequences with the boys flying over and into a complex circuit board. Discussed by V. Sobchack in Screening Space[1] (see Sobchack's Index for Chapter 4).