The Last Starfighter – Teen plays vidya. He’s really good at said vidya. And it turns out that the arcade cabinet was more of a recruitment test to find someone who can become a starfighter to join a space war in a distant galaxy or solar system (far away from Earth simply put).
Altogether this movie didn’t come together for me. It’s a fun cheesy sci fi story that’s over the top, sure. Reminds of a theme park ride that has a story to go along with it. I guess that’s kind of the quality of the space portion of the movie. Back on Earth we get a good idea of what our main man Alex is all about. His motivations, dreams, who he is. We get how important he is to his community. He’s a good brother and son. He’s got a girlfriend and they have a plan for the future. All of that is set up nicely and because the movie keeps up with happenings on Earth throughout the movie we understand this from those other characters too.
Meanwhile all that happens in space. Well I found it to be woefully underwritten. Like a cheap knock off of a movie that wants to emulate Star Wars. The main bad guy is, well a joke frankly. The scale of the battle is pretty pitiful as well. We don’t really get to know these factions all that well. Or rather we just don’t get to know them at all. We only know Starfighter group = good. These other guys whose name I forget = bad. But in terms of caring for our good side or having hatred for the bad side, I’m not invested sadly.
I had to look after the completion of this movie when it was released. 1984. So this is post-OG Star Wars trilogy. The reason I looked was because of the CGI. It’s not good. Terrible disconnect from the CGI used in the space battles and exterior as opposed to the interior sets which are quite nice. Even thought the interiors weren’t as good as Star Wars ones they were still very well done. The CGI used for the battles (and the cave area), it’s no good. Yes I know that CGI gets dated over time. That’s not my issue. It’s that the implementation is not fitting here. The art style clashes with the non-CGI stuff. And I can understand that maybe that’s as good as things could have been back then. Still, if that was the result, it would have been better to make miniature models. And I don’t understand how the Star Wars OG trilogy space battles were shot and how much CGI was used in those. All I know is that in that movie it looked fantastic. The Last Starfighter is very poor.
Dialogue was sub standard at times. “I love you Alex Rogan” line is just, what? The acting is sometimes hampered by the dialogue I would say. I wasn’t always all that impressed with Alex Rogan’s acting. But I think some of that has to do with the script/dialogue. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s underwritten at times.
It’s a dorky fantasy come to life. Save the world, get the girl, everyone admires you. A true male teen’s wet dream. Simple enough. Just not that good though. 2 out of 5.
Interestingly enough, I looked at Wikipedia after watching the movie and found out that it has a rather decent consensus from critics and is considered a cult movie nowadays. Even people like Spielberg were interested in working on a sequel.
