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The Last Starfighter Customer Reviews (22 - 24 of 34 Reviews)

Entertaining adventure movie
In the tradition of Atari games, whiz kids and teen adventure and fantasy movies, there it comes. A boy, who used to play an arcade game in his trailer park, got to break the record and he passed the test to become a starfighter. That arcade was designed by aliens to find starfighters to defend the frontier against evil forces.

The environment is some mix between Star Wars, Buck Rogers and a Sci-Fi comic book of 80's. Computer animated sequences can be recognized due to lack of textures (What am I supposed to expect from a movie of 1984?). They looks like Tron. However, animation and direction makes you feel combat scenes are better than the Sci-Fi sequences of "The mind's eye".

The argument tells you how a common boy which had a girlfriend is about to become a starfighter and make his dreams come true. In this aspect the movie takes you through the fascination that reminds Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T.

The argument has two backdraws. First, the pilot of the ship (the recruited boy is not the pilot but the gunner and the star of the movie) does not take his role so seriously and that reduces the thrill level it could have. Second, the villain is not as siniester as he should be. From Darth Vader to The Joker, villains are an important part of the story. Villains should match or exceed hero capabilities so that their confrontation may result a challenge and some emotion may be added. This is not the case. However, a very very good soundtrack (it has the same quality of John Williams scores) and very good direction makes this "so so and easy to ruin argument" to be an entertaining space adventure movie despite of writer's lack of imagination for space culture design (he performs good when not in space). I should notice that the concept of this movie is interesting and entertaining but it required quite a bit more to be excellent rather than good. This is a non ambitious commercial movie of 1984 that tried to promote arcade games and animated computer wonders, so you may not expect deep feelings analisys like in "Enemy mine" (1985) or the thrill of "War games" (1983).

I should notice that this movie does not contain the violence level of today movies and in my opinion, despite of its simplicity, it is better than Babylon 5 which seems to be an expensive "Space station last starfighter" rerun. Just my opinion.

All in all, it is a very nice entertaining movie for teens and a good remembrance for those of us who lived in the Atari era.

A little Gem
The Last Starfighter is an excellent fantasy space adventure movie from the eighties. Director Nick Castle responsible for such works as The Boy who could fly and Dennis the Menace really brings out a wonderful little gem. A film that featured the best computer effects at the time over shadowing such films as Tron. Sure the actors in this film are not really well known today (you have to look carefully for Star Trek Next Gens Wil Weaton)except may be Robert Preston from the classic The Music Man. Actor Lance Guest is actually qiute good in the lead. This DVD features a short documentary hosted by Lance Guest himself, quite an informative doco for a small movie. No other big features on the disc.
The Last Starfighter is a great little film, its no masterpiece but well worth watching. Highlights from the film are the special effects and the excellent score by Craig Safan.

Love, the stars and computer graphics
The Last Starfighter a movie by director Nick Castle (Major Payne). It is a story about Alex Rogan (Lance Guest) who dreams of a better life outside the humble trailer park in which he lives. Breaking the record on an innocent looking video game, which take him on an adventure well outside the confines of the trailer park.

This movie should go down in history as being the first movie to start using complex computer generated graphics. Tron, which was the first movie to use computer animation, The Last Starfighter takes one step further by using more than simple vector animation.

The actors choosen for the role were superbly cast. Lance Guest as Alex Rogan, Dan O'Herlihy as Grig and Robert Preston as Centauri. Each actor cast stamped their style to the character. In Robert Preston's last feature presentation it was a intergalactic reprise of his character in the Music Man in which Preston stamps his style to his role and to the movie.

Nick Castle did a superb job in capturing the humble life of the trailer park and the complex war torn planet of Rylos. Along with Production Designer Ron Cobb the created not only an entertaining story about a boy and his dreams but showing detail well beyond what was available at the time.

The DVD version of this movie definitely does it justice, with a remixed soundtrack, now in Dolby™ Digital 5.1. The soundtrack isn't a complete remix as many of the scenes that used to use Dolby Surround still give this ambient quality to it, there is the superior clarity that the digital track offers and music wonderfully scored by Craig Safan also has been remixed nicely in Dolby™ Digital.

Picture Quality is possibly the best I have seen for this movie. But still contains many of the flaws that were possibly present in the source for remastering. With the DVD version the computer generated scenes have never looked better.

This is my favourite movie of all time, I enjoy all aspects of the movie and admire the work that Nick Castle and Ron Cobb put into this movie.

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