When “SpaceCamp” landed in theaters in June 1986, it should have been the ultimate wish-fulfillment movie, as if “The Goonies” had cashed in their hard-earned pirate treasure in return for a spin in an actual Space Shuttle.
It boasted a bigger budget than “Top Gun”, a cast of up-and-coming young stars — including a future Oscar-winner — and a score by Hollywood’s most famous composer. Twentieth Century Fox had bet big on a blockbuster hit, but a real-life tragedy four months earlier ensured the film was doomed to be an also-ran at the box office.
The real-life Space Camp at the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, was a dream destination for any kid with an interest in science, math, and space exploration — the ultimate trip for tweens and teens with a passion for science and technology.
The brainchild of original Space & Rocket Center director Edward O Buckbee and Apollo rocket engineer Wernher von Braun, the facility opened in 1982. It has since welcomed over a million wannabes through its doors, including Elon Musk, Chelsea Clinton, and several attendees who went on to become actual astronauts.
Patrick Bailey, who wrote the original “SpaceCamp” story, got the idea from his wife, who’d spotted a news story about the camp while working as a researcher on American variety show “That’s Incredible!”
He developed the idea alongside Buckbee, and the duo successfully pitched the project to producer Leonard Goldberg, who’d had a major hit with “WarGames” a few years earlier. (It’s easy to see why Goldberg saw the potential in SpaceCamp, seeing as WarGames was based on a similar scenario of ordinary kids being thrown into a dangerous and improbable situation.)
NASA also approved the script, and — rather surprisingly — wasn’t put off by the fact that the whole plot revolved around a colossal screw-up on the launchpad.
The film focuses on a quintet of bickering camp attendees as they try out various training simulators, and learn — repeatedly and exhaustingly — the value of teamwork. It’s all set to be a standard, barely postcard-worthy week away from home, until a totally implausible sequence of events sees them blasting off into orbit (with a single instructor to look after them) on the Space Shuttle Atlantis.
First, 12-year-old Max persuades management that he should be allowed into Big Kid camp, even though he’s too young. Then he befriends a sentient, but worryingly glitchy, robot janitor named Jinx, who wants to make “Star Wars”-obsessed Max’s dream of going into space a reality.
Jinx’s scheme gets a convenient helping hand when NASA — for the benefit of the plot — allows the kids to sit in an actual shuttle during an actual engine test. That questionable decision gives Jinx all the window he needs to initiate a “thermal curtain failure” in one of the solid rocket boosters, leaving mission control no choice but to blast the kids into space.
Once the initial excitement of weightlessness has worn off, the kids realize the true extent of their predicament. While instructor Andie is a qualified astronaut who’d been patiently waiting for her first mission, it turns out that the unprepared Shuttle wasn’t rigged for long-range radio communications. And — shock horror! — there isn’t enough oxygen to get them to their re-entry window for landing at Edwards Air Force Base.
Suddenly, these rookie kids are forced into roles real-life astronauts spend years training for, going on spacewalks and landing state-of-the-art spacecraft as if it’s as straightforward as playing a video game.
But as ridiculous as the premise is, it’s kept grounded by an extremely likable ensemble, one of Hollywood’s most impressive examples of pre-fame casting. While Lea Thompson (Kathryn) and Larry B Scott (Rudy) were familiar from “Back to the Future” and “Revenge of the Nerds”, respectively, Tate Donovan (Kevin), Kelly Preston (Tish), and — perhaps, most notably — future Oscar-winner Joaquin Phoenix (then known as Leaf) were all playing their first major movie roles.
And even though they broadly correspond to the jock/brain/princess archetypes you’d find in a John Hughes movie, the movie makes an effort to defy expectations of the era. Tish, for example, is — despite her valley girl persona — super-smart and has an eidetic memory.
More experienced heads were provided by Kate Capshaw (fresh off “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”) as astronaut Andie Bergstrom, and Tom Skerritt (“Alien”, “Top Gun”) as her moonwalking husband, Zach. “Lost” fans should also look out for a young Terry O’Quinn (John Locke) in mission control.
Both the cast and director Harry Winer have spoken of the camaraderie on set, which was probably a good thing given the unexpected length of the production.
“After the first day of filming, we were already 10 days behind schedule,” Thompson recalled in a 2012 interview with AV Club. “And it kind of kept on that way. It was supposed to be a three-month shoot, and it ended up taking six. We had t-shirts printed up that said, ‘”SpaceCamp“: It’s Not Just a Movie, It’s a Career’. Oh, actually, instead of ‘SpaceCamp’, it actually said ‘SpaceCramp!'”
The biggest name in the production, however, went unseen, as the legendary John Williams (who’s always had a soft spot for kids’ films; see also “Home Alone” and “Harry Potter”) composed the soundtrack. While he resisted the temptation to add in a few bars from a galaxy far, far away during “SpaceCamp”‘s many nods to “Star Wars”, the score is unmistakably one of his.
“There’s a reason why anyone who’s a legend is a legend,” Winer said in an interview with AL.com back in 2022.
“John Williams is the most gratifying and rewarding creative collaboration I’ve had in my entire career. He would analyze a story and consider when there was a need for silence. He understood your creative intentions and found a way in a very poetic medium of music to interpret and enhance your vision. It was literally remarkable.”
“SpaceCamp” was all set for a prime summer release slot when disaster struck in January 1986. After the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded during take off, killing all seven crewmembers on board, a lighthearted movie about five kids accidentally heading into orbit suddenly seemed rather less appealing.
Many questioned whether it should have been released at all, but Fox decided to press ahead. Winer even wondered if the public might even find the film cathartic, “because after such a tragedy, people would need to cling to the hope the film represented. And needless to say, I was totally wrong,” he said later. “They saw it as a source of jeopardy, of disappointment, of tragedy, rather than hope. No one went to see ‘SpaceCamp’, so then I felt like I had failed miserably.”
Not helped by scathing reviews — “Would anyone like this movie?” asked legendary critic Roger Ebert. “Juvenile space nuts, maybe. But they’d be too sophisticated.”
Forty years on, it remains a decent, if unspectacular, family movie, but “SpaceCamp” barely made back half of its production budget in theaters. It was the very definition of a Hollywood flop, but it still left its mark.
Interest in the film reportedly doubled attendance at the real-life Space Camp, and there’s anecdotal evidence that the movie encouraged kids to pursue careers in science. In more recent years, there’s even been talk of a remake, though its current status is unknown.
“I’ve had a lot of people come up to me and say that they became physicists or inventors, because of how much they loved [Space Camp] and how much it inspired them,” said Thompson. “That was really sweet and something I never really expected.”
“SpaceCamp” is currently unavailable to stream and download from any major service (though there is a disappointingly low-res version on YouTube). There is also a Blu-ray release, but it’s hard to find and expensive.
Augustine Pingree
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