the Last Starfighter – Tripping Through Gateways

Alex Rogan is stuck in a dead end life. He, his mom and little brother live in a run down trailer park. He wants to take his girl friend Maggie and get out…but the options seem to be dwindling. His main outlet for his frustrations is a video game called Starfighter.

This leads to the most excitement the park has seen when Alex beats the game…but then it is back to real life. Until that night when Alex is visited by the video game maker. Calling himself Centauri, he invites Alex to join him on a short trip. Alex does not realize this will change his life forever.

The video game was actually a simulator that was meant to test potential pilots in an intergalactic war. Reluctant at first, Alex finds himself forced to put himself aside to help in something much larger than he.

The Last Starfighter is imaginative and fun, with a great cast of characters. Alex (Played by Lance Guest) is a likable dreamer, which is important as such characters can also come off as painfully whiny. Instead, you genuinely feel for him when his college goals seem crushed. Catherine Mary Stewart (Night of the Comet) is Maggie, who is more down to earth, not as worried about escaping the potential future of their small town life.

Centauri is one of those big idea pitchmen who is certain Alex is just what the Star League needs. He is brought to life by the great Robert Preston (Harold Hill in the 1962 version of the Music Man). Dan O’Herilihy is Grig, a jovial and kind reptilian co-pilot for Alex in their Gunstar.

Probably the biggest knock against the film is that it was made in the infancy of digital effects. Unlike Tron two years earlier, everything is not meant to look like a video game. Now, mind you, it looks like a late 90’s video game…so it was advanced for its time…but the purely digital spaceships look very low tech.

The Last Starfighter is certainly not the first story about a dreamer getting their wishes, but it is very successful at making it a fun ride. It is the humor and heart that allows it to overcome limitations such as severely outdated digital effects. The Last Starfighter is a minor science fiction classic.

1985 was a big year for Teen Science Nerd films. I will be reviewing the three films over the next three days. Today, we start with director John Betuel’s My Science Project. Betuel wrote the classic Sci-Fi film the Last Starfighter and he wrote this film, which would give one real hope.

The cast is a combination of well known (Dennis Hopper, Richard Masur and Barry Corbin) combined with “up and Comers” (Danielle Von Zerneck, John Stockwell and Fisher Stevens). The plot is simple. The film opens a few decades before the film actually takes place. An alien ship is shot down. The military opts to have everything destroyed. Jump ahead to 1985 and we meet high school student Michael Harlan (who has gone on to direct films such as Blue Crush, Into the Blue and Turistas) and his buddy Vince (Played by Fake Indian Fisher Stevens). His science teacher Bob, an aging hippie pining for the 60’s played appropriately by Dennis Hopper, is after him about his science project. He needs to pass science class. He is not scientifically inclined, rather more mechanical. He is a car guy. After his girlfriend and he break up over an article in Cosmo, he is asked out by nerd Ellie (Danielle von Zerneck). Begged, really.

Michael takes her on a date, but it is really a cover so he can go through a military junkyard for a makeshift science project. He finds a glowing orb that he takes with him. Long story short, it is a battery that bends time and space. It starts to suck power, reaching out for more and more powerful sources.

John, Ellie, Vince and additional nerd Sherman (Raphael Sbarge) try and stop the orb from ultimately destroying space and time as we know it. The film is pretty messy, and it does not make a whole lot of sense. Unlike the tightly scripted The Last Starfighter, My Science Project seems to be wandering around trying to figure out where it is going. Dennis Hopper’s Bob is fairly entertaining, but he gets removed from the story about a third of the way in and does not reappear until the end of the story.

The film has big ideas, but nothing solid really materializes, making the film largely average and forgettable.

Tag: the Last Starfighter

Over Achiever (the Last Starfighter, 1984)

Science Gone Mad Part 1 (My Science Project, 1985)