Movies Like Flight of the Navigator
If you loved Flight of the Navigator's Family and Science Fiction storytelling, these films deliver a similar experience — carefully selected for tone, themes, and emotional depth. Each pick includes where to watch it right now.
★ Top Picks
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
An alien is left behind on Earth and saved by the 10-year-old Elliott who decides to keep him hidden in his home. While a task force hunts for the extra-terrestrial, Elliott, his brother, and his little sister Gertie form an emotional bond with their new friend, and try to help him find his way home.
Jules
A flying saucer lands in the backyard of an elderly suburbanite with memory problems, who forms a bond with the scared alien inside.
Extinct
Op and Ed, two adorable donut-shaped animals - flummels - accidentally time-travel from 1835 to modern-day Shanghai. There they discover traffic, trans fats, and worst of all, that flummels are now extinct. It's up to this bumbling pair to save themselves and their species...and, just maybe, change the course of history.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
When an unidentified alien destroys three powerful Klingon cruisers, Captain James T. Kirk returns to the newly transformed U.S.S. Enterprise to take command.
Planet 51
When Earth astronaut Capt. Chuck Baker arrives on Planet 51 -- a world reminiscent of American suburbia circa 1950 -- he tries to avoid capture, recover his spaceship and make it home safely, all with the help of an empathetic little green being.
Interstellar
The adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.
Earth to Echo
After a construction project begins digging in their neighbourhood, best friends Tuck, Munch and Alex inexplicably begin to receive strange, encoded messages on their cell phones. Convinced something bigger is going on, they go to their parents and the authorities. The three embark on a secret adventure to crack the code and follow it to its source, and discover a mysterious being from another world who desperately needs their help. The journey that follows will change all their lives forever.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
David, a robotic boy—the first of his kind programmed to love—is adopted as a test case by a Cybertronics employee and his wife. Though he gradually becomes their child, a series of unexpected circumstances make this life impossible for David.
More Movies Like Flight of the Navigator
The Electric State
An orphaned teen hits the road with a mysterious robot to find her long-lost brother, teaming up with a smuggler and his wisecracking sidekick.
A-X-L
The life of a teenage boy is forever altered by a chance encounter with cutting edge military technology.
Crater
After the death of his father, a boy growing up on a lunar mining colony takes a trip to explore a legendary crater, along with his four best friends, prior to being permanently relocated to another planet.
Explorers
Middle schooler Ben spends his free time watching sci-fi films, playing video games and reading comic books. Surprisingly, his affinity for all things fantastical yields a real result – when he has a vivid dream about technology, his prodigy best friend Wolfgang manages to create a working spacecraft. Joined by their buddy Darren, the boys take off into outer space and encounter some very odd extraterrestrial life.
The Creator
Amid a future war between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence, a hardened ex-special forces agent grieving the disappearance of his wife, is recruited to hunt down and kill the Creator, the elusive architect of advanced AI who has developed a mysterious weapon with the power to end the war—and mankind itself.
WALL·E
After hundreds of years doing what he was built for, WALL•E— a robot designed to clean up the earth—discovers a new purpose in life when he meets a sleek search robot named EVE. EVE comes to realize that WALL•E has inadvertently stumbled upon the key to the planet's future, and races back to space to report to the humans. Meanwhile, WALL•E chases EVE across the galaxy and sets into motion one of the most imaginative adventures ever brought to the big screen.
Arrival
Taking place after alien crafts land around the world, an expert linguist is recruited by the military to determine whether they come in peace or are a threat.
The Cat from Outer Space
A UFO is stranded on earth and impounded by the US government. Its pilot, a cat with a collar that gives it special powers, including the ability to communicate with humans, has eluded the authorities and seeks the help of a scientist in order to reclaim and repair his ship and get back home.
The Adam Project
After accidentally crash-landing in 2022, time-traveling fighter pilot Adam Reed teams up with his 12-year-old self on a mission to save the future.
Dark Star
A group of scientists are sent on a mission to destroy unstable planets. Twenty years into their mission, they have to battle their alien mascot as well as a "sensitive" and intelligent bombing device that starts to question the meaning of its existence.
I Am Mother
A teenage girl is raised underground by a robot "Mother", designed to repopulate the earth following an extinction event. But their unique bond is threatened when an inexplicable stranger arrives with alarming news.
Scooby-Doo! and the Curse of the 13th Ghost
Mystery Inc. withdraws from solving crimes after botching a case. When Vincent Van Ghoul contacts the gang about an unfinished investigation from Daphne, Shaggy and Scooby's past, the gang springs into action to finish the job that involves catching the 13th Ghost that escaped from the Chest of Demons and is still at large.
Why These Movies Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Flight of the Navigator (1986): Family and Science Fiction themes, similar narrative structure, and comparable emotional depth. NoBadPicks uses a combination of TMDB collaborative filtering, genre matching, and AI analysis to surface films most likely to resonate with fans of Flight of the Navigator.
See full details for Flight of the Navigator (1986)