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The Last Starfighter (1984) The Last Starfighter (1984)

See also: _Index | Plot Structure (The Last Starfighter) | Backbeats (The Last Starfighter)

Quick Facts

  • Director: Nick Castle
  • Screenplay: Jonathan R. Betuel
  • Starring: Lance Guest (Alex Rogan / Beta Alex), Robert Preston (Centauri), Dan O'Herlihy (Grig), Catherine Mary Stewart (Maggie Gordon), Norman Snow (Xur), Barbara Bosson (Jane Rogan), Kay E. Kuter (Enduran), Dan Mason (Lord Kril)
  • Cinematography: King Baggot
  • Editor: C. Timothy O'Meara
  • Music: Craig Safan
  • Visual Effects: Digital Productions (CGI by Cray X-MP supercomputer)
  • Runtime: 101 minutes
  • Budget: approximately $14–15 million
  • US Box Office: approximately $28.7 million
  • Release Date: July 13, 1984 (US)
  • MPAA Rating: PG
  • Distributor: Universal Pictures

Overview

A trailer-park teenager who masters a stand-up arcade game called Starfighter turns out to have been recruited by the game itself: the cabinet was a Rylan Star League aptitude test placed on Earth by a fast-talking interstellar salesman named Centauri. After signing his real name into the high-score table, Alex Rogan is whisked off his porch to the planet Rylos to fly a Gunstar against the Ko-Dan armada commanded by the traitor Xur — while back at the Starlight Starbright trailer park his android double, the Beta Unit, fumbles its way through small-town life with his girlfriend Maggie. The film is an early-CGI landmark (Digital Productions rendered the spacecraft on a Cray X-MP supercomputer rather than building physical models) and one of the first films to literalize the Reagan-era arcade-as-recruiter fantasy: the kid who plays the game well enough is the hero the universe has been waiting for. Its post-midpoint pivot — Alex flies the Death Blossom maneuver after refusing the mission, returning, and being told the maneuver was always intended as a last resort — sets the film's quadrant: better tools, sufficient.