Tonight for movie night I'm watching Flight of the Navigator for the very first time.

This week I'm debuting a new feature on my blog called "Movie Night." Every Wednesday, my friend Geneva and her two children named David (age 13) and Moira (age 17) come over and watch a movie with me on my 4K television set. We cook popcorn, mix sodas, and eat ice cream. But being the nerd that I am, I explain the cultural significance/relevance of the movie (if any), explain why it may be considered "important", and then list any tidbits of information that might prove fun to know in the watching of the film. Last week we watched "E.T." in a stunning 4K cut and I explained to everyone that Steven Spielberg admitted ten years after E.T.'s release, that the story for the movie emerged from complex feelings that he'd internalized about his parent's divorce. Additionally, he wanted the adults to be very intrusive in Elliot's world, so for the first half of the film, the only adult face that we see is that of Elliot's mother. In other words, adults simply do not exist in Elliot's world.

Tonight's movie was chosen by my friend Jake, who has been joining us for the last few weeks. He found out that all of us had not seen a movie called, "Flight of the Navigator," so that's what we're watching. Jake stated that he doesn't do any kind of presentation before the movie, so I took it upon myself to look up things about the show that might prove interesting. Below are three facts that you might find interesting:

1) Flight of the Navigator comes from a time period where it was okay to scare the crap out of kids. In the 80's we had Goonies, Poltergeist, E.T., Neverending Story, Dark Crystal, and the Secret of Nimh. All of these movies (for various reasons) have scenes that are very scary to children. You don't see that so much in today's kid's movies.

2) There is no real villain. The drama comes from a situation. If there is anything that seems malevolent, it's the government entity of N.A.S.A., which kind of echoes Peter Coyote's role as "Keys" in E.T. He wasn't a villain, just a person interested in aliens. But he's seen as an unwelcome intruder in the fantastical world of childhood.

3) The main character, David, is not a special destiny kid. He's a boy with an average, loving family. That's kind of interesting considered how many stories involve "special destiny" and broken families. It's actually considered cliché these days to write a character into a story that has no parents (because it's been done so many times).

Next week's movie on Wednesday is going to be The Maltese Falcon as we start to go retro for a while. I've never seen it, but it's considered one of the great stories of movie history. A talk about The Maltese Falcon cannot possibly happen without a discussion about McGuffins. So I think (next Wednesday) that's where I'll start before launching into what's significant about the movie.