Yes, Max, those are geeks.

Flight of the Navigator is an awesome movie.

It’s about a 12 year old boy, David, who is borrowed from his home time of 1978 for study by a being of superior intelligence. Part of the Trimaxium Droneship’s (Max) study is to fill David’s brain with star charts and observe what happens when the human mind is exerted to maximum processing power.

Afterwards, David is returned to the exact spot that he was abducted, but because of the complications of the special theory of relativity, he comes to learn that it is now eight years later – everything has changed, except David. Meanwhile, on its way out of earth’s atmosphere, Max is accidentally snagged in high voltage power lines, thus erasing its memory of the very same star charts that David currently and unknowingly has stored in his brain. Now they need each other: Max needs David’s star charts to return to its home planet, David needs Max to elude NASA scientists and government officials and return safely to his family.

Awesome. Good stuff, man. Good Stuff.

I enjoy this movie. Always have. In fact, I would be comfortable declaring that “I grew up with” Flight of the Navigator. I remember boogie boarding on Pacific Beach in ‘94, imagining that I was skimming along at incredible speeds like the navigator’s spaceship, all the while sounding out Silvestri’s theme music. I remember thinking I was all cute using the “Compliance!” response when Mrs. Eastman asked for my math homework.

This movie could have very well planted the seeds for my layman interest in the workings of the universe, as well as cultivated a deep, fantastic yearning to zip and zoom in a small, single passenger space pod while blasting and singing along to awesome music:

How envious I am to be in that very seat.

As time progresses it is easy identify how watching Flight of the Navigator as a youth has shaped who I’m becoming as an adult.

Good stuff, man. Good stuff.

Originally, this blog post was going to wrap itself up right about here. The initial intent was to simply rave about an awesome movie that continues to tug on my heart strings. However, during the course of composition I stumbled across a pertinent bit of information…

I went to Google to search for a relevant graphic to head this post and began to enter: “Flight of the Navi…” Google, doing what Google does, gave a drop down menu offering search suggestions based on what I had typed in thus far. Naturally, the first completed suggestion was what I had initially sought: “Flight of the Navigator.” The second suggestion read: “Flight of the Navigator remake.”

Flight of the Navigator REMAKE?!


A flurry of emotions came to me: Firstly, there was the obligatory knee-jerk reaction of “Hollywood is running out of ideas, so Disney is just gonna go and befoul a movie that I grew up with? Just leave it alone!”; Followed quickly by, “Well, given the cinematic advances of recent years perhaps a face-lift is actually a pretty cool idea!”; Followed quickly by disgust at myself, “How dare I think so shallowly about the ‘wow’ factor of CGI! The story runs deeper than that.” And so on.

Then I decided to actually go with the Google search and read and learn what is said about the remake. I know, right? Read and become informed before jumping to conclusions…

Now armed with what little information about the remake that is given, I’m going to expand on this Rave post about Flight of the Navigator, and discuss what would make its remake a legitimate effort. My goal is to be as level-headed as possible.

Part 2: A level-headed, sort-of-biased-but-not-biased examination of what would make Flight of the Navigator's remake legit COMING SOON