Forever Young (film)

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Forever Young
movie poster for Forever Young
Directed by	Steve Miner
Produced by	J.J. Abrams (executive) Bruce Davey
Written by	J.J. Abrams
Starring	Mel Gibson Jamie Lee Curtis Elijah Wood Isabel Glasser George Wendt Joe Morton
Music by	Jerry Goldsmith
Cinematography	Russell Boyd
Distributed by	Warner Bros
Release date(s)	December 11, 1992
Running time	102 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
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Forever Young is a 1992 film, directed by Steve Miner, starring Mel Gibson, Elijah Wood and Jamie Lee Curtis. The screenplay is written by J.J. Abrams. The original music score is composed by Jerry Goldsmith. The film is marketed with the tagline "Time waits for no man, but true love waits forever."

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Daniel McCormick, a 1939 test pilot, is as reckless as they come. He will fly anything with wings, dangerous or otherwise. After a successful run, Daniel is greeted by his longtime friend, Harry Finley, who confides that his latest experiment, "Project B", has succeeded in doing the impossible. The machine, built by Finley and his team of scientists, is a prototype chamber for cryonic freezing. When Daniel's fiance' Helen winds up in a coma from a car crash, and the doctors doubt she'll ever wake up, Daniel insists to be put in suspended animation.

53 years later, two boys playing around on the inside of a storage warehouse stumble onto the chamber (everyone has mistaken it for an old water heater). Twisting the dials, they accidentally activate the reversal process. During the confusion, Daniel's sleeping form reflexively grabs one of their coats. They flee in terror, and a short while later, Daniel wakes up... in 1992. After appropriating some shorts and a shirt from a clothesline, he first approaches the military about his experiences. When they dismiss him as a "wacko", Daniel becomes all the more determined to find out what happened to Harry, Helen, and the world that has seemingly evolved overnight around him.

His search leads him to the home of Nat Cooper, one of the two boys who opened the chamber. Initially scared, Daniel is able to calm both Nat and his friend with the truth of his story. This bond is made stranger yet when Nat's mother Claire offers Daniel a place to stay, until he can find out what to do with his search. But Daniel's time is running out, as his body starts to age rapidly, due to the years he spent in stasis.

When another "aging attack" practically cripples Daniel, Claire is told the amazing truth, and she unites him with Harry's daughter Susan, who informs him that her father died many years earlier (the government later specifies it was a warehouse fire in the early 40s, trying to save the frozen Daniel from the chaos). Susan also gives Daniel her father's journals, hoping he can use them to reverse his own condition. Before leaving, Susan gives Daniel one further revelation... Helen is alive!

Daniel's final part of his journey is to find Helen in the present day. Nat stows away on board an old plane, where he helps Daniel land when another attack nearly kills him. Finally his true age, the now-elderly Daniel asks the one woman he's ever loved to marry him.