Throwback Thursday: The Last Starfighter

Greetings, Starfighter…..

Way back in July of 1984, a science fiction yarn loaded with a newfangled form of special effects known as CGI (computer generated imagery) was released.  That film, The Last Starfighter, nearly doubled its production cost of around $15 million dollars in ticket sales, but to this day it gets very little respect from the film going community and genre fans in general.

The film stars Lance Guest as Alex Rogan.  He represented a large demographic of teens in the mid-1980’s.  He was full of big dreams and also loved playing video games.  In particular, he was a fan of Starfighter, a game at the trailer park where he, his mom, and brother were live.  He plays it to escape the norms of life such as not getting a scholarship to go to college, and soon gets the highest score on the game.

Not long after defeating the game, Alex is approached by Centauri (Robert Preston), who offers him a prize for winning the game.  He doesn’t get a prize, though.  Instead, he’s taken to the real world that the game is based on and is asked to become the gunner in one of the Gunstar ships from the game in order to defend Rylos and the Star League against the evil Ko-Dan Empire.

Alex refuses at first and asks to return home.  Centauri does as he wishes, but the Ko-Dan Empire attacks Rylos, wiping out all of the fighters except for one.  They also send an assassin to kill Alex, the last surviving gunner, back on Earth.  Luckily for Alex, an android copy of him named Beta was left on Earth to cover for his absence while fighting the Ko-Dan armada.  When he meets Beta, they are attacked by the assassin and Alex escapes to take the fight back to the stars in order to hopefully save the Star League.

Alex teams up with Grig (Dan O’Herlihy), a pilot who happened to be working on a new Gunstar prototype when the attack on Rylos occurred.  They team up and single-handedly face off against the Ko-Dan armada.  How does it end?  You need to watch the film in order to find out.

The Last Starfighter has always had a special place in my heart.  It’s one of those films that allows the viewer to live out a fantasy through the eyes of characters such as Alex.  Who hasn’t longed to go to space to fight aliens and save the galaxy?  It’s a classic hero’s tale set in a science fiction atmosphere.

For its time, the special effects were cutting edge.  Two years earlier, Tron used CGI and was received much better by general audiences than The Last Starfighter. Perhaps it was because Disney was backing that film, but I’ve always preferred The Last Starfighter.  It has gained a cult following over the years and there have been numerous rumors and hints at a possible sequel or reboot.  I’d love to see Lance Guest and Catherine Mary Stewart (who played Maggie, Alex’s girlfriend) reprise their roles in a new film.  It would be interesting to see how the movie would play out and who would be the next enemy.

Speaking of enemies, Norman Snow portrayed the primary villain in the film, Xur.  He was a traitor to the Rylans and planned to take over them with the help of the Ko-Dan Empire.  I won’t spoil what happens to him in the film, but know that he could definitely pop up again in a sequel.

The Last Starfighter is far from perfect, but for a kid like myself growing up in the 80’s, it was just one more in a long line of great films (in our little minds) featuring a hero that we all longed to become someday.  Be sure to check out this film if you’ve never seen it, and thanks for reading this post.