In 2020, Disney+ announced that work was moving forward on a remake of the 1986 film SpaceCamp. The original told the story of a group of children and teenagers, all wannabe astronauts, who arrive at the actual Space Camp for space-themed fun and frolics, culminating in the chance to be aboard the space shuttle Atlantis during a static engine test at the launch pad. But a catastrophic malfunction results in the shuttle launching while they are aboard, with only rookie astronaut Andie Bergstrom (Kate Capshaw) with them to help them get home.
SpaceCamp famously suffered from bad timing. In January 1986, with just weeks to go before distributors placed the film in cinemas, the space shuttle Challenger exploded on liftoff, forever puncturing the atmosphere of adventure and confidence with which the shuttle program had been associated from its inception. When SpaceCamp finally debuted in the summer of 1986, sentiment about crewed spaceflight among the American public was still raw, and the movie died a death at the box office.
Nevertheless, any remake has the potential to outstrip the original’s modest performance and be one of the greatest children’s sci-fi productions of all time. Here’s why.
SpaceCamp’s Strengths Were Never Recognized
20th Century Fox
Given the furor that erupted over what, in the opinions of some, was an inappropriately early release following the Challenger disaster, SpaceCamp was unfairly maligned by critics, effectively masking the enormous dramatic opportunities the premise offered.
Placing astronauts in peril is, of course, a go-to gambit for any science fiction film, but the film’s mixture of personality clashes among the shuttle’s young crew, feats of derring-do outside the vehicle, and the need for crew member after crew member to perform complex tasks in the clutch made for compelling viewing. The formula still works and has the potential to be box office dynamite.
The Ambience Is Irresistible
At a time when regular access to space is closer than it has ever been – Elon Musk’s SpaceX is looking to send people to the moon next year and to Mars by 2029 – the sort of near-future, grounded science fiction (no pun intended) exemplified by SpaceCamp is in inexplicably short supply.
For pure escapism, SpaceCamp was hard to beat because, unlike Star Wars or Star Trek – whose fictional futures made it difficult for young viewers to envisage themselves in the action except in a fantastical way – it depicted real, down-to-earth characters in a contemporary, real-life situation that required a far smaller imaginative leap to insert oneself into. The sense of joy and enthusiasm was underscored by an exceptionally strong cast of young camp attendees, including Lea Thompson – now a respected director but then fresh from massive box office success in Back to the Future (1985) – as would-be pilot Kathryn, Kelly Preston as math whiz Tish, and an 11-year-old Joaquin Phoenix in his first Hollywood film role as Max.
A Chance to Remedy the Original’s Weak Plotting
However, and in spite of the wealth of acting talent on show in the original, SpaceCamp’s plot creaks at more than a few points, and a remake would benefit from taking a second look at these.
For one thing, the mechanism that results in Atlantis’s unscheduled liftoff is more than a little far-fetched, even for a children’s film. 1980s children’s TV and cinema had something of an obsession with sentient robots – Kitt, the talking car in Knight Rider, and the soon-to-be-rebooted Short Circuit franchise spring to mind – and SpaceCamp was no different.
A talking NASA robot named Jinx befriends Max. On hearing Max sulking that he wishes he were actually in space to get away from bullying, Max takes him at his word. When the kids are shown around Atlantis and given a chance to experience a static engine test, he engineers a technical malfunction in one of Atlantis’ solid rocket boosters. Faced with a rocket on the point of igniting on its own accord, flight director Zach (played superbly here by Alien alum Tom Skerritt) orders a snap launch to avoid an explosion on the launchpad.
Direction, editing, Kate Capshaw’s pitch-perfect portrayal of an astronaut switching from jovial tour guide to hard-as-nails shuttle pilot as she realizes the seriousness of the situation, and spectacular scoring by John Williams in one of his least well-known but most accomplished orchestral works, makes the launch scene an excellent example of cinematic tension-building. The problem is how far-fetched it all is. Any number of impending natural disasters or human errors could have been made to sound more believable than the hokey cliche of a cute robot going haywire.
In the same way, the need to replenish the shuttle’s oxygen supplies using tanks found on an orbiting space station smacked of the apparent plot contrivance it was. The producers of the remake will do well to steer clear of such transparent attempts to manufacture perilous situations for the crew.
