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)
“Working women today are trying to achieve in the work world what men have achieved all along—but men have always had the help of a woman at home who took care of all the other details of living! Today the working woman is also that woman at home, and without support services in the workplace and a respect for the work women do within and outside the home, the attempt to do both is taking its toll—on women, on men, and on our children.”
—Jeanne Elium (20th century)
“These people figured video was the Lord’s preferred means of communicating, the screen itself a kind of perpetually burning bush. “He’s in the de-tails,” Sublett had said once. “You gotta watch for Him close.””
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
—Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)