Entertainment
14 Years After ‘Superman,’ Its Director Made a Forgotten Tom Hanks Fantasy Worth Revisiting
Elijah Wood and Tom Hanks played younger and adult versions of the same character in the 1992 underrated fantasy drama, Radio Flyer. Directed by the late, great Richard Donner, Radio Flyer did not achieve great commercial or critical success when it hit theaters. However, over 30 years after its original release, the movie endures as a magical, bittersweet, and poignant classic, exploring the bond of two brothers living under the terror of an abusive father, and the older brother, Mike Marshall (Wood), seeking the means to save his little brother, Bobby (Joseph Mazzello), from its horrors. It’s time to explore why this is the perfect time to revisit Radio Flyer.
Why ‘Radio Flyer’ Blends Childhood Fantasy With Real-Life Trauma
Radio Flyer features Tom Hanks portraying the older version of Elijah Wood’s character, Mike Marshall, who, as an adult, recounts his childhood to his own young sons when they are quarreling. They move with their mother (Lorraine Bracco) to the California suburbs, where she falls in love with and marries a man the boys nickname, The King (Adam Baldwin), who turns out to be an abusive, alcoholic, and takes out his anger on Bobby. The boys keep the abuse a secret, believing they need to protect their mother’s happiness. After Mike receives advice from a dream about a magic buffalo, Mike and Bobby devise a plan for Bobby to escape The King by transforming their prized Radio Flyer toy wagon into an aircraft, so he can literally fly away from harm.
What’s important about Radio Flyer is the sadly realistic and tragic authenticity of the film’s premise. The movie’s subject matter is actually pretty dark and realistic, considering Bobby is subjected to horrendous physical abuse at the hands of his drunken stepfather, while simultaneously hiding the abuse from their more caring, yet sadly ignorant, mother. However, the plot adds a dreamlike, magical quality, empowering the children to discover a way to escape their predicament. Children connect with Radio Flyer because even though the subject matter is harsh and difficult, it still speaks to children’s imagination and seeks an uplifting message in the face of overwhelming strife. Many children see themselves in the place of Bobby, which provokes a strong emotional response. Children in Bobby’s place have likely experienced the same thoughts of a dream of escape, and Radio Flyer fully realizes that idea.
How ‘Radio Flyer’ Portrays One of the Most Powerful Brotherly Bonds in Film
The other strength of Radio Flyer is that few cinematic dramas, fantastical or otherwise, capture the authenticity of Mike and Bobby’s brotherly bond. Wood and Mazzello wonderfully portray that relationship with their performances, making the movie very grounded and believable, yet still whimsical in how they accomplish their plan to build an aircraft. Seeing Mike’s desperation to help and save his brother, inspired by a dream of a magical buffalo, becomes incredibly powerful. It’s a deeply emotional, poignant depiction of a brotherly relationship that few movies have ever achieved.
Wood superbly carries the weight as the emotional protagonist throughout the narrative, with Hanks serving primarily as the narrator of the story, recalling the movie’s past events to his own children. Hanks’ Mike clearly tells the story from his own mind’s eye, so it’s up to the viewer to determine if Mike’s version is the authentic one. It grants the movie a grander thematic depth decades after its release.
Why ‘Radio Flyer’ Is Worth Revisiting More Than 30 Years Later
A movie like Radio Flyer takes on a new context for adults, especially for its ending, where the adult Mike tells his own kids about “the importance of history being in the mind of the teller,” adding about his brother, “‘Cause that’s how I remember him.” It adds a bit of ambiguity over the ending and what really happened to Bobby, opening the final act to further interpretation and discussion. Did Bobby survive his flight, or did he perish in the process? Was Bobby even real, or was the whole event a dream-like fantasy that Mike created to deal with being subjected to abuse at the hands of The King? Or was all of it real, and did Bobby and Mike do something amazing, achieving the impossible?
Ultimately, every interpretation works, and that speaks to the power of Radio Flyer’s story. The saddest part about the movie lies in its truth to the movie’s premise, of children being subjected to physical abuse, and the strong possibility that they create fantasies in their heads about escaping that environment. The magic of Radio Flyer, which extends to various other movies as well, is that they bring those childhood fantasies to life. Stories like Radio Flyer are empowering because they do not talk down to children, but they speak to them with empathy on their level. Radio Flyer provides a genuine cinematic escapist experience with an authentically grounded premise. Children not only see the adventures of Mike and Bobby in Radio Flyer, but they also feel it on a sensory level. As they mature to adulthood, the story takes on a deeper context. For those reasons, Radio Flyer is easily worth a look.
Radio Flyer is available to stream for free right now on Tubi and Roku.
Radio Flyer
- Release Date
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February 21, 1992
- Runtime
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114 minutes
- Director
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Richard Donner
- Producers
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David Mickey Evans, Lauren Shuler Donner, Michael Douglas, Peter McAlevey, Richard Solomon
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