The Last Starfighter
| The Last Starfighter | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Nick Castle |
| Written by | Jonathan R. Betuel |
| Produced by | Gary Adelson Edward O. Denault |
| Starring | Lance Guest Robert Preston Catherine Mary Stewart Dan O'Herlihy Barbara Bosson Kay E. Kuter Norman Snow Peter Nelson Chris Hebert Wil Wheaton |
| Cinematography | King Baggot |
| Edited by | Carroll Timothy O'Meara |
| Music by | Craig Safan |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures Lorimar Productions (joint venture) |
Release dates | July 13, 1984 |
Running time | 101 min. |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $15,000,000 (estimated) |
The Last Starfighter is a 1984 science fiction movie, its subsequent novelization that year by Alan Dean Foster, and a video game based on the movie. In 2004, it was also adapted as an off-off-Broadway musical. The movie was directed by Nick Castle.
The movie was the first major movie to use extensive computer graphics to depict real objects in place of physical models.
The Last Starfighter was the last film role of character actor Robert Preston before his death. The character of "Centauri" was a 'lovable-con-man' nod to his most famous role as Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man.
Plot summary
Alex Rogan (Lance Guest) is a teenager living in a trailer park who becomes the best player ever at Starfighter, a stand-up arcade game that has him "defend the Frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada." But the game is actually a flight simulator used as a training device: the night after he gets best score ever in the game, an alien named Centauri recruits him as a pilot and gunner of a Gunstar, the warship from the Starfighter game against Xur and the Ko-Dan. What Alex soon discovers, however is that those enemies prove to be real. Centauri's spaceship is designed to look and drive like an ordinary car while it is on the ground on Earth in sight of humans. Centauri takes Alex to the Star League's base on the planet Rylos to get inducted while Centauri gets his recruitment fee. While serving as a starfighter, he is replaced on Earth by a synthetic android known as a Beta unit. While he is there, a transmission from the evil Xur (Norman Snow) comes through. Xur joined forces with the Ko-Dan and gave them the means to breach the Frontier, a planetary-scale force field that protects Rylos and the Star League base. He is also revealed to be the traitorous son of Enduran (Kay E. Kuter), the leader of the Rylans. He tortures one of Enduran's agents to death before the eyes of his father and the entire Star League, and proclaims that when Galon, the moon of Rylos is eclipsed, the Ko-Dan Armada will invade, and not even the Starfighters will be able to save them. Enduran defiantly answers with "We shall see, Xur. We shall see!"
After seeing this, Alex refuses the recruitment since he is a Terran whose world is not a member of the Star League. He feels no obligation to get involved in a war his planet apparently has no stake in. Reluctantly, Centauri brings him back home to Earth.
Soon after Alex and Centauri have departed the Frontier base, it is destroyed in a sneak attack by Xur and the Ko-Dan. After arriving home, Centauri gives Alex a pager to summon him if he changes his mind. Alex meets Beta--, who has been having trouble with his role on Earth. Beta tries to convince Alex to return to the base. Angered, Alex refuses and activates the pager to summon Centauri to remove the impostor. But a Xandoxan, an alien assassin sent by Xur appears and tries to kill Alex. During the resulting chase, Centauri arrives and kills the assassin, but is seriously wounded himself. Beta and Centauri warn Alex that more assassins are on the way, so Alex might as well become a Starfighter to at least have his ship's firepower at his disposal against the enemy.
With this new reality, Alex agrees to return only to find the base destroyed with only one experimental Gunstar left with one pilot, Grig (Dan O'Herlihy), to handle it. What's worse is that Centauri dies, leaving Alex alone on that world with Grig his only friend. They launch and encounter enemies, but Alex is having difficulty accepting the realities of actual combat and a disheartened Grig offers to take him home where he should live happily, until the Ko-dan inevitably attack his planet. Faced with this stark situation, Alex finds the gumption to fight. Meanwhile on Earth, Beta is destroyed as he successfully interrupts an assassin's transmitted warning that the last Starfighter is on duty. This lulls Xur and the Ko-Dan into a false sense of security. Alex and Grig use a nearby asteroid field for cover while the Xurian fleet passes, attacks it from behind, and destroys the Command Ship's communications turret to destroy the Xurian fighters' ability to act as one and thus impair their fighting ability. Alex pilots and Grig navigates the experimental Gunstar, destroys the armada with the Gunstar's secret weapon, the "Death Blossom" and cripples the Ko-Dan armada's flagship, sending it crashing into Galon. Xur, however escapes to fight another day.
At the victory celebration, Centauri reappears having come out of what was actually his dormant regenerative state. While Alex is being proclaimed Rylos' savior, Enduran informs him that the Frontier is still vulnerable and Xur is still at large. He then asks Alex to stay on Rylos and aid in rebuilding the Starfighter Legion.
Alex returns to Earth again, and lands in the trailer park openly in his Gunstar. He reveals to his family and friends that he has decide to return to Rylos to rebuild and defend the Frontier. With the blessing of her grandmother, Alex's girlfriend, Maggie Gordon (Catherine Mary Stewart) goes with him. The movie and the book end with Alex's younger brother Louis (Chris Hebert) preparing to play the Starfighter game hoping to join Alex one day in the Star League.
Tagline: He didn't find his dreams...his dreams found him.
Trivia
- The United States Army, echoing The Last Starfighter's video-game-as-recruiting-tool premise, released a free-share online game called "America's Army" in 2002. Players that register, and who agree to certain conditions, are allowed to have their play performance reviewed by real-life recruiters looking for potential enlistees. The game, however, was mainly designed to convince possible recruits to join the U.S. Army, not test them.
- The computer graphics for the movie were rendered by Digital Productions on a Cray X-MP supercomputer.
- A episode of South Park, Best Friends Forever, satirized the "recruitment through a game" theme of The Last Starfighter.
- The StarCar from this movie can be found parked on one of the streets in Back to the Future II.
- Wil Wheaton had a part in this movie, but his scenes were cut. However, his name still appears in the closing credits.
- In an episode of the ill-fated Clerks: The Animated Series, Randal Graves is recruited to build a pyramid after receiving the highest score in a fictional arcade game called "Pharaoh".
- In the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "Moon Master", Meatwad is recruited by the Mooninites in their battle against the monster Gorgotron following Meatwad's success at the fictional console "Moon Master" video game.
- The recruiting-through-a-video-game premise seen in this movie inspired how the main characters got their powers in the Super Sentai series Denji Sentai Megaranger.
- The theme Craig Safan composed for this film was used in promotional advertisments for the 1994 live-action/animation hybrid The Pagemaster.