In the early 2000's, shortly after I graduated college but before I knew what,
exactly, I was gonna do with my life, I started playing the remake of the original Resident Evil.
"Resident Evil!"
My parents had the biggest television at the time, placed in a giant, isolated room they called their
"bonus room," so I would go over to their house at night and plug in my Nintendo Gamecube to play
for an hour or two at a time. At first, that was about as much as I could handle, given that I'd
be playing in a dark, open space by myself, but before long, friends and family members would
start to watch, and the group got progressively larger night after night. By the time I got to
the end of the game, I had about ten people in the room with me, all cheering me on excitedly.
I won't lie to you and tell you that that moment changed my life and turned me into
The Unapologetic Geek you now know, someone who embraces his nerdy passions and has accepted that
people might actually care about them, but it is a fond memory that helped set me on that path.
More relevant to the topic at hand, however, it proved to me that what I thought was the most
unbelievable moment of a space adventure movie I grew up with--a
scene in which a small community gathers around a teenage boy as he
achieves a high score on an arcade cabinet video game--isn't so ridiculous after all.
Alex Rogan is stuck in his trailer park existence, working odd jobs to keep his close-knit neighbors
happy while dreaming of getting away to bigger and better things. When his hopes are dashed,
he resorts to the only escape he knows, the epic battle between the Star League
and the evil Ko-Dan Armada, as it plays out in a video game called Starfighter.
After completing it and achieving a monumental high score, he soon learns that it was more than
just a video game, that it was, in fact, an aptitude test placed there to test his combat
abilities and recruit him to the real life Star League. However, when the Star League is brutally
attacked by the Ko-Dan Armada, killing all the starfighters, Alex Rogan becomes the
only hope for freedom in the galaxy and the only person capable of becoming the last starfighter.
Before we go any further, if you could please hit that like button, I won't have to worry about
being hunted by Zando-Zans anymore. If you really do like this video, please subscribe as well.
Thank you in advance. With that out of the way, let's get back to the subject at hand.
In the early eighties, Jonathan Betuel, a copy writer for an advertizing agency and
a part-time cab driver, walked into an arcade and was fascinated by how enamoured the young
people were with video games. He had just read T.H. White's The Once and Future King,
and it inspired him to come up with the idea of an arcade machine that acts like a sword in the
stone from Arthurian legend. In his off hours, he wrote a spec script for The Last Starfighter,
which was picked up by Gary Adelson, a producer from Lorimar Pictures.
Adelson was not only influenced by the successes of Star Wars and E.T.,
with which Betuel's script shared more than a few similarities, but he was also inspired by
the ground-breaking effects work done on 1982's Tron, anticipating that, despite the latter's
financial failure, computer graphics were still an integral part of the future of filmmaking.
With that in mind, he knew right away that The Last Starfighter would be the
first film to attempt photo-real CGI meant to replace real world objects.
He then hired Nick Castle to direct. Castle was a young filmmaker who had worked with John
Carpenter, famously portraying Michael Myers in several scenes of the original Halloween,
and who had just made his directorial debut with the goofy low budget slasher film Tag:
The Assassination Game. Castle knew nothing about big budget filmmaking and even less about cutting
edge visual effects, but given that nobody except Tron's Steven Lisberger had any experience with
extensive CGI in a Hollywood production, his inexperience was hardly disqualifying.
Nick Castle, who had aspirations toward making musicals, framed the story as a musical without
music, with exaggerated theatricality and deliberately stereotypical characters.
Castle, Adelson, and Betuel all worked together to create the final script, doing their best to
minimize the inevitable comparisons to George Lucas and Steven Spielberg by doing things like
adding a different romantic angle and changing the setting from suburbia to a trailer park.
Universal, which had a three-picture deal with Lorimar at the time,
agreed to greenlight the production on a total budget of about thirteen million dollars,
though the studio heads did express concerns over the planned use of computer graphics.
For the lead role of Alex Rogan, whose character got his name from Jonathan Betuel's son, Alex,
they wanted an all-American teenage boy with the charm of a young Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper.
When Castle was looking at rough edits from the then-in-post-production Halloween II,
he was struck by the actor Lance Guest. Guest was brought in to audition and quickly got the part.
A young actor who knew this could be his big break, Guest gave it his all,
taking things, by his own admission, a little too seriously, staying in character for long,
ten-hour days and pushing himself more than he'd ever been pushed before.
"What is all this?"
"I, uh, I've been to another planet, Ma."
After a few early test screenings, several more scenes were added involving the beta unit,
an android replacement for Alex in the trailer park.
"You're a robot?"
"I beg your pardon. I'm a state of the art, top of the line beta unit."
Castle thought these would do a lot to give the film more originality and charm, but they posed
a bit of a problem for Guest, who had already cut his hair for another part and who happened to be
suffering from a nasty cold during the reshoots. Serendipitously, though, the unconvincing wig,
pale look, and somewhat stilted acting help to sell the beta unit's otherworldy nature.
For his love interest Maggie, whose character likely got her name from Gary Adelson's wife,
Maggie, who cameos as this Rylan, they were looking for an all-American teenage girl with a
girl-next-door charm. They chose the exceptional Catherine Mary Stewart, who had starred in the
sci-fi musical cult classic The Apple as well as having a two-year stint on Days of Our Lives.
The character of Maggie has more dimension than the other characters in the film,
and as such, Stewart has more work to do than the rest of the cast.
To her credit, she makes it seem effortless and sells even the corniest moments of the script.
"I love you, Alex Rogan."
If I'm being perfectly honest, though, I grew up with a bit of a crush on her,
so perhaps my analysis isn't entirely objective.
No doubt the most memorable actor and character in the film has got to be Robert Preston's Centauri,
the slick salesman driven by money but who happens to be the genius
responsible for getting Alex Rogan to save the galaxy.
Despite Castle's intention to make a musical without music, it was actually Betuel's idea
to hire the Music Man in what would prove to be his final on-screen performance.
"So long, Alex. Have fun! May the luck of the Seven Pillars of Gulu be with you at all times."
Another acting veteran is the unrecognizable Dan O'Herlihy, a legendary character actor
known for classic films like 1954's Robinson Crusoe and 1964's Fail Safe,
though younger audiences would have recognized him at the time as Conal Cochran from Halloween III.
O'Herlihy plays Grig, the turtle-skinned alien that serves as Alex's trainer and navigator.
The actor was unafraid of the heavy prosthetics and proved to be adept at the exaggerated facial
movements required to make them look natural. While I won't say his performance is equal to
that of Louis Gossett, Jr.'s stellar work in Enemy Mine, O'Herlihy's Grig is still pretty great,
especially in this scene where he shows off his "wifeoid," which was also played by O'Herlihy.
Other notable actors include Norman Snow as the villainous Xur, a role that was offered to Robin
Williams, V's own Peter Nelson as Blake, and Nick Castle's wife, Charlene Nelson,
as this technician, alongside fellow Tag: The Assassination Game costar Bruce Abbott.
In addition, there are an unusual number of Star Trek alumni to be found hiding among the
cast, including but not limited to the Talosian Keeper, Meg Wylie, as Granny;
Gul Dukat himself, Marc Alaimo, as the Zando-Zan hitchhiker; the Cytherian that made Barclay
hyper-intelligent, Kay E. Kuter, as Enduran; and none other than Wesley Crusher, Wil Wheaton--
"Shut up, Wesley!"
--whose speaking lines wound up on the cutting room floor
but who can still be found in the background of a couple of scenes.
Filming began in May of 1983 and went for roughly 40 days, with location shooting
done in a real--albeit heavily redressed--trailer park somewhere in the Soledad Canyon area of Los
Angeles County. The practical special effects were designed with an eye for the CGI that
would be added in post-production, including Centauri's Starcar, which has a streamlined,
angular look that could be readily translated into a computer. It was put together by Gene Whitfield,
responsible for many famous futuristic transports including the original Star Trek shuttlecraft,
the Pirhana from The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the Catmobile from Batman '66, and most famously,
the spinners from Blade Runner, which he had designed with Syd Mead. For The Last Starfighter,
Whitfield built the Starcar from the ground up using sheet metal and a Volkswagon engine.
It was painfully slow and noisy, but with some simple tricks such as wire-pulleys and
undercranking the camera, it was given the illusion of incredibly fast, smooth motion.
Also notable is the Gunstar, one of the more iconic space vehicles of eighties
sci-fi. It was designed by Ron Cobb, who was responsible for nearly all of the film's designs,
and he was meticulous in ensuring that it was built in such a way that it would theoretically
work in physical space. He wanted it to have a full six degrees of three-dimensional movement,
something most sci-fi of the time--and indeed most sci-fi even today--ignored.
Cobb designed and storyboarded all of the spaceships and sequences to show the
three-dimensional freedom of space, and he even put a fully-functional aerotrim inside
the interior set, which was capable of spinning poor Lance Guest along all three axes at once.
To talk more about the Gunstar, I've called up my fellow unapologetic YouTube geek,
DeathStarKiller, who is also a huge fan of this movie.
"Death blossom mode!"
"What?"
Well, he's obviously busy at the moment, so I'll just tell you to check out this
video on his channel where he builds a mock Lego version of a Gunstar. It's pretty cool.
As for the computer-generated effects, they were handed over to Digital Productions,
which was founded by Gary Demos and John Whitney, Jr. in 1982
as an offshoot of Information International, Inc. Demos and Whitney had produced an early
CGI test for the original Star Wars that wowed even the effects wizards of ILM at the time,
and long before The Last Starfighter, they were telling anybody who would listen that
they were ready to make movies with the help of their new Cray X-MP supercomputer.
It still proved to be an unimaginably daunting task, however, requiring groundbreaking
innovations in particle effect algorithms and lighting systems, in addition to the wholesale
creation of rendering software that hadn't even been invented yet. As the months dragged on, the
studio became nervous and brought in notable film fixer Jeff Okun as the visual effects supervisor.
Okun used Digital Productions' own estimates of polygon counts, number of shots,
and rendering time to conclude that, even if they were rendering around the clock, there was
no conceivable way to finish the work on time. He went to Gary Adelson with this, arguing that
there was still time and money to fire Digital Productions and do the effects practically,
but Adelson was firm in his decision to not do this. Okun, knowing when he'd lost a fight, then
worked with Digital Productions to reduce polygon counts and finish the shots in time. Even though
the final film's effects were still astounding for the time and helped launch the CGI revolution,
the founders of Digital Productions were unhappy with certain shots,
which had to resort to what they called "melted ice cream" graphics in a few places.
Also worth noting is the video game itself, Starfighter. From a modern perspective, it looks
like a standard spaceflight simulator from the early nineties, but for 1984, there was nothing
even remotely as good-looking as that in arcades, at least not yet. 3-D video games were incredibly
rare throughout the eighties, usually relying on painfully simple wireframe vector graphics,
so Ron Cobb and his team, along with Digital Productions, had to predict what a fully 3-D
flight simulator might look like. It's a testament to their talents that they pretty much nailed it.
For the music, Nick Castle brought in Craig Safan, who had worked with him before on Tag:
The Assassination Game. Instead of trying to avoid the Star Wars parallels as Adelson,
Castle, and Betuel had tried to do, Safan decided to lean in as far as possible, deciding to create
a space opera soundtrack that would be "bigger than Star Wars." He utilized a one-hundred-piece
orchestra with a diverse array of instruments, some of which he would later put through audio
processing to give them a subtle synthetic feel. The Last Starfighter is, quite simply,
Safan's greatest achievement, and I don't think the movie would be nearly as effective without it.
The Last Starfighter released in July of 1984 to pretty good critical reviews
and a domestic box office total of just under thirty million dollars, making it
a modest hit. It continued doing relatively decent business in the video rental market,
and like most of the movies I cover, The Last Starfighter is now considered a cult classic,
with fans who grew up with it (like me) singing its praises to anyone who will listen.
It had a novelization by Alan Dean Foster as well as a Marvel comics adaptation, and it was
fittingly turned into an off-Broadway musical in 2004. Ironically, in 1984, Atari had been working
on video games for the movie, but they abandoned them after predicting that the film would be a
financial failure. Anyone interested in a faithful adaptation of the Starfighter video game, though,
can download a freeware version that was made in 2007 and was even translated into a working arcade
cabinet. I'll link it in the description, but be warned, the controls are a beast.
There has been talk of a sequel and/or reboot since 2008, with the most recent news being that
Betuel was going to work on a script with screenwriter Gary Whitta in October 2020.
Though I'd happily see a sequel, I'm not sure it's a property that needs to be mined
a second time. Tell me what you think in the comments.
The thing is, The Last Starfighter came out at the perfect time, riding the waves started by
Spielberg and Lucas and landing on new ground in the world of visual effects. For a kid in 1984,
it's practically a perfect movie, but looking back on it today, it definitely shows its age.
There's a whole lot of cheese that doesn't smell very fresh in the twenty-first century.
The CGI is cringey by modern standards--not having the benefit of the otherworldly
digital universe of the even more primitive TRON--and the plot is simple and saccharine,
a family-friendly fantasy that kids today will readily roll their eyes at.
However, there's still something timeless about the story, something that can still
resonate with younger audiences trying to find their place in a chaotic world.
This is a movie about how your destiny isn't necessarily what you expect or even hope for,
how you don't have to accept the path laid out by the accident of your birth.
"Listen, Centauri, I'm not any of those guys. I'm a kid from a trailer park."
"If that's what you think, then that's all you'll ever be."
It's about believing in yourself when your escape becomes real, and about finding someone who will
support and believe in you and taking them along for the ride. Sure, the characters and
situations are almost cartoonishly simple, but they nevertheless shine as archetypal
heroes and villains in a hero's journey with wholesome life lessons to teach to kids who feel
alienated and disappointed, which accounts for pretty much every teenager who has ever lived.
Anyone who has used video games as an escape can appreciate the fantasy of it turning out to be
real, and anyone who has found their fantasies coming true can appreciate the fear Alex feels
when he first steps onto a new planet and is told he has talents that could save the galaxy.
This is a movie that tries to tell you it's okay to be afraid, but that you have a responsibility
to yourself, even if your self turns out to be a beta unit being hunted by Zando-Zans.
And that's all for today, my fellow Earthlings. Have video games ever changed your life for the
better? Let me know in the comments, and while you're there, don't forget to like
and subscribe if you haven't already. If you'd like to support what I do even more,
consider joining my Patreon to get access to bonus content, vote on future topics,
and more. You can also check out my website at emagill.com, where you'll find written
reviews of plenty more sci-fi classics in both film and literature. Until next time,
though, when the Terminator will go up against a game show host, this is The Unapologetic Geek,
telling you to never be ashamed of what you love, as long as you're not hurting anybody.
"What's wrong? Should I put my tongue in your ear now?"