Reception and Home Video Release
The film did not do well at the box office, although it did better in video rentals and DVD sales and garnered positive reception from critics. Over time, it has gained a cult following among fans of Dante's work, as well as science fiction fans and those who feel it is an overall family friendly movie. It currently holds a 78% positive rank (out of 18 reviews) and a 6.1 rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
VHS and DVD releases would be recut to remove two scenes, where Wolfgang has an encounter with Steve Jackson's gang of bullies and a brief bit where the boys chase the Tilt-a-Whirl ride after they push it up a hill. However, it does restore a brief sequence at the end where Ben daydreams about the Thunder Road ship restored and in the classroom. Originally before the end credits, in the theatrical cut, the alien Wak "broke the fourth wall" and remarked how he knows people are still out there due to the popcorn smell. In the reedited home video version, he just tells another joke before it cuts to the closing credits.
Read more about this topic: Explorers (film)
Famous quotes containing the words reception, home, video and/or release:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Adolescents are travelers, far from home with no native land, neither children nor adults. They are jet-setters who fly from one country to another with amazing speed. Sometimes they are four years old, an hour later they are twenty-five. They don’t really fit anywhere. There’s a yearning for place, a search for solid ground.”
—Mary Pipher (20th century)
“It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today’s children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.”
—Marie Winn (20th century)
“The steel decks rock with the lightning shock, and shake with the
great recoil,
And the sea grows red with the blood of the dead and reaches for his spoil—
But not till the foe has gone below or turns his prow and runs,
Shall the voice of peace bring sweet release to the men behind the
guns!”
—John Jerome Rooney (1866–1934)