Flight Of The Navigator: 19 Interesting Facts

In case you did not know, Flight of the Navigator is a 1986 American science fiction adventure film directed by Randal Kleiser and written by Mark H. Baker, Michael Burton, and Matt MacManus.

This film is one of my favourite films from my childhood and I’ve probably watched it more than 10 times since it arrived on VHS in South Africa.

This Disney tells the story of 12-year-old David (Joey Cramer) who lives with his family in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1978. When he awakens from being accidentally knocked out in the forest near his home, he finds that eight years have passed.

His family is overjoyed to have him back, but just as perplexed as he is by the fact that he hasn’t aged. When a NASA scientist (Howard Hesseman) discovers a UFO nearby, David gets the chance to unravel the mystery and recover the life he lost.

There’s probably a lot that you don’t know about this film, but today my aim is to change chat.

Here are 19 Interestings Facts You Didn’t Know About Flight Of The Navigator 

1. The ship used in the film used to be in a boneyard at the Disney Studios Theme Park at Walt Disney World in Florida, where it was an exhibit on the “Backlot Tour”.

2. One of the prop hulls was refurbished, and is now the topper of a drink station in Tomorrowland at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom.

3. It was Paul Reubens’s idea to make the identity of the actor providing the voice of Max in Flight Of The Navigator a mystery and he was credited as “Paul Mall”.

4. Randall Kleiser brought in his brother Jeff as the visual effects supervisor, who oversaw the use of reflection mapping software to create the ship’s chrome-like appearance. The result was one of the first successful examples of what would later be known as CGI – a full 5 years before the groundbreaking T-1000 of Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).

5. The loud belch made by the garpuntle who devours David’s NASA hat is actually the dubbed-in sound of Joey Cramer belching, slowed down slightly to sound deeper and longer.

6. Flight Of The Navigator was the second film released under the Disney banner to contain profanity.

7. Younger audiences frequently mistook Joey Cramer, a relatively unknown actor, for Henry Thomas, due to Thomas’s immense popularity in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) which had premiered three and half years earlier.

8. In her “Random Roles” interview with the AV Club in 2018, Sarah Jessica Parker (Carolyn McAdams) had little recollection of or affection for the film.

According to her “What drew me to ‘Flight of the’… Are you seriously asking me what drew me to Flight Of The Navigator? It was a part. Like, literally, I just got a part. I went and did it. That’s what I did for most of my career. Nothing drew me to it. I can’t-it was a job. That’s exactly a paycheck. That’s exactly what drew me to it.” 

The film actually marked Sarah-Jessica Parker’s feature film debut.

9. David’s flight to Phaelon and back took “4.4 Solar Hours,” while 8 years have passed on Earth, indicating that time was slowed down for David by a factor of about 16,000, which corresponds to a speed of about 99.9999998% the speed of light.

10. When Max. the ship’s computer describes the animals on board, he says “That is a Feenastarus from the Pixar Elliptic”. Five years after this film came out, Disney teamed up with Pixar, a fledgling special-effects computer company.

11. The film had an estimated $9 million budget and raked in $18.5 million at the box office.

12. In September 2021, it was announced that a planned remake of Flight Of The Navigator was back in development with Bryce Dallas Howard set to direct and that the remake will feature a female protagonist. The remake will be released on Disney+. No release date has been announced yet.

13. Despite being released by Disney, Flight of the Navigator actually began life as an independent movie made by a Norwegian company called Viking Film. Unfortunately, Viking Film had to declare bankruptcy right in the middle of the shoot, and Disney eventually distributed the movie in the US.

14. Randal Kleiser has revealed that they used a Norwegian stunt double when filming Joey Cramer’s David steering the spaceship. Unfortunately, the young boy didn’t understand a word of English. One third of the film was actually shot in Norway.

15. The film’s soundtrack was composed by Alan Silvestri, and differs from his other movie scores. It’s completely electronically generated. The composer used the Synclavier (one of the world’s first digital synthesisers).

16. Joey Cramer was only 13 years old when he played David in Flight of the Navigator. Unfortunately, as with a lot of child stars, Cramer’s story did not turn out the happiest one.

Cramer walked away from acting in the 1990s, and by the 2000s his name was making headlines following run-ins with the law. The actor was arrested on multiple occasions for offences relating to drugs, firearms and forgery. In 2016 he was jailed for two years for bank robbery.

17. Flight of the Navigator has a number of connections to the classic 1978 musical Grease, chief among them being the fact that both movies are directed by Randal Kleiser. The movie is set in the year that Grease was made, and there’s a scene in the movie where “You’re The One That I Want” is playing on the radio.

18. The movie’s soundtrack features the popular song “E.T. (For Julie)” by Karen Allen and John Carpenter.

19. The spaceship is referred to as “Trimaxion Drone Ship,” which is an anagram for “no time like the present,” referencing the time travel element of the film.

Well, there you have it, 19 Interesting Facts about Flight Of The Navigator. If I’ve left out something important, feel free to comment below.

Check out the trailer for the film below:

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