Goofs for
Flight of the Navigator (1986) More at IMDbPro »

• Crew or equipment visible: When Dave, Max and the Puckmarin are moving to the music, listening to the Beach Boys, the strings used to control the motions of the Puckmarin are visible.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the ship is first emerging from the holding facility, you can see the black mechanical arm attached to the back of the ship extending it out into the daylight.
  
  
• Continuity: The length and style of David's hair changes noticeably between shots on several occasions during the second half of the film.
  
  

• Factual errors: Toward the end of the movie, David's family is watching "The Price is Right" while waiting for David to return. While talking to his brother he says, "It will be dark soon". Bob Barker is shown as the host, but in 1985 and 1986, Tom Kennedy was the host of the evening addition of "The Price is Right.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the scene where David is watching Jennifer through a telescope, the song Lovefire is playing from the movie Roller Boogie. Flight Of The Navigator starts out in July of 1978, but Roller Boogie didn't come out until December of 1979.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): MAX says Humans only use 10% of their brain. This is an urban myth.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When David first sees the Puckmarin, the strings used to make it move are clearly visible (especially on the right).
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In the scene where David is outside the ship in the Florida cow field, the shadow of the framework holding up the ship is visible when the ship is viewed from the air.
  
  
• Continuity: While first looking at the road map on board the ship, David is shown chewing a piece of the Nestle Crunch bar that he bought at the gas station. The next shot shows the bar close-up, but in that shot a bite hasn't been taken out of it yet. When the camera cuts back to a wide shot, the bar once again has large bite missing from it.
  
  
• Errors in geography: At the beginning of the movie, David falls into a deep ravine. However, south Florida is totally flat - if you fall more than 2 feet below ground, you are in a canal in water. Also, the vegetation is not south Florida either, so this scene was not shot in south Florida.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When David is interviewed at the hospital, a lady asks him what happened to him at the woods after getting scared by his brother. David replies: "I chased him for a while, then I reached this cliff... I know I fell". Actually, he made only a couple of steps after his brother (hardly a "while"), then turned and walked toward the ravine, with no "cliffs" in sight. He does seem to be confused and distracted during the interview, which is hardly surprising under the circumstances.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the opening scene with the Frisbee that takes place in 1978, Miami's Southeast Financial Center Building is clearly visible which was not completed until 1984
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: It is often claimed that when the starship is falling out of control, it is over the Gulf of Mexico or the Florida coast, which is contradicted by the fact that it's falling into a region filled with snowy mountains. However, the radar map clearly shows that the ship is actually over the southern coast of Alaska (San Francisco and Seattle can be seen in the lower part of the radar map), where such mountains are abundant. The confusion is due to the fact that the ship has flown from Florida to Alaska in what appears to be just a couple of minutes. Later scenes confirm that it really can move that fast.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When David and Max are flying back to Ft. Lauderdale, supposedly following I-95, they pass a road sign that indicates Miami is 25 miles away, and Ft. Lauderdale is 58 miles away. Since Miami is south of Ft. Lauderdale, this means that they are flying north and located to the south of Miami, while I-95 exists only to the north of Miami. Subsequent scene confirms that they are indeed flying north, since they pass Miami Beach on the left. However, nothing indicates that they were ever flying along I-95, so it's more likely that they simply misread the map and reached that road sign by luck. Previous dialogs do indicate that both David and Max are very bad at navigation.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): During his "first class maneuver" Max says to David: "I can analyze species from civilizations light years beyond your own". Since a light year is simply a measure of distance, this statement has no logical meaning. Such an improper use of the term "light year" is quite common, however, and perhaps it might be justified as a figure of speech for humans, but not for a machine.
  
  

• Factual errors: SPOILER: David "says" that he had traveled for 4.4 hours, during which 8 years had passed on Earth. Dr. Faraday explains this by saying that David has "traveled beyond the speed of light" and also that "time slows down when you approach the speed of light", all, supposedly, according to the "Light Speed Theory". In reality, there is no scientific theory by that name, although it's sometimes used (wrongly) as a reference to the Special Theory of Relativity. However, no valid theory allows traveling "beyond the speed of light". It might be argued that the physical reality (and the scientific knowledge) in the movie is different from ours, but nothing else in the movie supports such a claim. The second of Dr. Faraday's statements is basically correct within the Special Relativity, but according to it David should have returned 1120 years later, not 8, given the distance of 560 light years to Phaelon. To generate an eight year time lag, Phaelon has to be about four light years away, not 560.
  
  

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