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Ben Crandall (Ethan Hawke) keeps having a dream about traveling over a circuit board. He then draws it and shows it to his brainy friend Wolfgang, who builds the board which is able to create a force field bubble. The two boys, along with help from their new tough friend Darren, decide to build a spaceship out of old amusement park ride parts that when used with their new found technology gives them the ability to travel into space.

They create a spaceship and call it the "Thunder Road", and they fly into space. Not long afterwards, they explore an alien spacecraft that they get sucked into.

Tropes used in Explorers include:

Acting for Two: Well, five. The film is basically one huge showcase for Robert Picardo's comedic talents.
Ascended Fanboy: All three boys count.
- Well, Wolfgang and Ben are. Darren seems to be along mostly because he finds their activities preferable to staying home with his drunken, abusive father.
Author Filibuster: The movie jarringly shifts from goofy alien TV-talk antics to berating humanity for making so many movies about waging war on aliens. Making it worse is that it's not even clear whether the writer was bitching that Humans Are Bastards or just complaining that there wasn't more idealistic alien encounter fiction.
Bizarre Alien Biology: And how.
Child Prodigy: Wolfgang.
Cool Spaceship: The Thunder Road, sorta.
Crazy Cultural Comparison: The aliens can only talk human using televison quotes.
Dream Land: The technological landscape over which first Ben, then the other boys, and finally Lori Swenson in the last minutes of the film fly to see the device designs the aliens are sending.
The Eighties
Girl Next Door: Lori Swenson.
Green-Skinned Space Babe: Neek, kinda sorta.
Hands-Off Parenting: Wolfgang's parents.

Ben: So, what'd you tell them about the basement?
Wolfgang: I told them it was a rocketry experiment. I just mentioned Wernher von Braun, and everything was OK.

Humanoid Aliens: Two arms (unless you count the tiny ones where ears should be), two legs, one head... Ignore the difference in size...
Interspecies Friendship: The goal of the aliens, basically.
Interspecies Romance: What Neek seems to want with Wolfgang...
Jerkass: The father alien.
The Mothership
Popcultural Osmosis: Pretty much how the aliens pick up stuff about Earth.
Puppy Love: Ben is just a hair too old for his crush on Lori to be precocious.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech: Ben's reponse to the father alien's refusal to let the kids stay. And for being an all around jerk.
Shout-Out: Many many. The movie is littered with them, mostly as a result of the aliens' absorption of Earth culture, starting with Wolfgang's mouse Heinlein, and the Thunder Road.
Space Pirates: The explanation given by Wak for the aliens' father's ship engulfing theirs.
Talking in Your Dreams: The alien communications.
The Unintelligible: The alien father, mainly because he's speaking his native tongue. Wak and Neek get some unintelligble time in, too, arguing with him.
Younger Than They Look: The aliens. Despite being the size of human adults, they're actually kids about the same relative age as the boys.

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 * [[Acting for Two]]: Well, five. The film is basically one huge showcase for [[Robert Picardo]]'s comedic talents.
 * [[Ascended Fanboy]]: All three boys count.
+** Well, Wolfgang and Ben are. Darren seems to be along mostly because he finds their activities preferable to staying home with his drunken, abusive father.
+* [[Author Filibuster]]: The movie jarringly shifts from goofy alien TV-talk antics to berating humanity for making so many movies about waging war on aliens. Making it worse is that it's not even clear whether the writer was bitching that [[Humans Are Bastards]] or just complaining that there wasn't more idealistic alien encounter fiction.
 * [[Bizarre Alien Biology]]: And how.
 * [[Child Prodigy]]:  Wolfgang.