Of all of Hollywood’s attempts to cash in on the video game craze of the 1980s, The Last Starfighter trails only Tron as the decade’s most fondly nostalgized entry in the video game movie’s micro boom. Like Tron, Nick Castle’s film is a demonstration of then-new CGI technology, which means that inevitably its heavy reliance on wireframe animations and blocky, thickly pixelated objects has very much aged, though the fact that its visual effects are tethered to the game technology of the day further highlights it as a relic of its era. Perhaps the one area in which it’s ahead of its time is in its conceit of an arcade game being used as a military recruiting tool.
At the center of The Last Starfighter is a teenager named Alex Rogan (Lance Guest), who lives in a trailer park at the dusty outskirts of his hometown. Dreaming of escape but trapped by his family’s meager finances, Alex finds solace in the Starfighter arcade cabinet that’s parked outside a nearby convenience store. After one day achieving a high score, Alex finds himself abruptly greeted by the game’s creator, Centauri (Robert Preston), who reveals himself to be an alien of the race mentioned in Starfighter, and that Alex’s performance qualifies him to be the pilot of a real starfighter on the frontline of a brutal sectarian war.
What follows is a paint-by-numbers, nerd-centric extravaganza, and one that so heavily cribs from Star Wars that you may wonder why it didn’t draw the litigious ire of George Lucas. Alex is a Luke Skywalker-esque bumpkin thrust into the unlikely role of galactic savior, and looming holograms of Xur bear more than a passing resemblance to an Emperor Palpatine transmission. Even the production design brushes up against plagiarism: The good guys’ command center, for example, looks like a near replica of the interior of the rebel base in A New Hope.
Still, there’s a certain whimsical charm on display throughout that feels unique to the film. Alex is guided by an everyman impulse that never wanes, even when this Earthling proves to be preternaturally gifted at operating an alien spacecraft. Meanwhile, Preston’s performance is defined by its mix of gravity and levity as Centauri lays out the stakes of the war while also cajoling Alex into service like a used car salesman. As for Alex’s alien wingman, Grig (Dan O’Herlihy), his lighthearted affability is amusingly at odds with his craggy, rock-like skin.
Possibly the most entertaining aspect of The Last Starfighter is a goofy subplot involving Centauri covering for Alex’s time in space with a robot replica of the teenager, which leads to numerous scenes of miscommunication with Alex’s girlfriend (Catherine Mary Stewart). And it’s hard not to feel warmth for a film so nakedly optimistic that it features a scene where the mostly elderly, retired residents of Alex’s trailer park rush out in a frenzy to see him beat the high score of an arcade game as if they themselves were caught up in the video game frenzy of the decade.
Image/Sound
Using the same 4K master that Arrow Video used for its 2020 Blu-ray, this UHD disc gives the film’s image an extra boost in clarity. The old-school CGI still looks unavoidably unnatural and awkwardly integrated with the live-action footage, but everything else has a beautiful film-like quality to it, from the sand staining the sides of the desert trailer park’s RVs to the velvety textures of nighttime shots and the glow of the arcade cabinet screen.
The disc comes with three audio options: a 2.0 stereo track, a 5.1 surround remix, and a 4.1 track adapted from the sound mix of the film’s special 70mm presentations. All three are flawless, giving ample room to the roar of spaceship engines and the zaps of laser cannons amid Craig Safan’s boisterous, John Williams-esque score while never drowning out the dialogue.
Extras
Arrow ports over the impressive array of bonus features from their 2020 Blu-ray edition of The Last Starfighter, among them the multiple commentary tracks, including the archival one by director Nick Castle and production designer Ron Cobb and the Arrow-exclusive ones by Lance Guest and his son, Jackson, and the one with Projection Booth podcast host Mike White. Each track trades heavily on nostalgia, particularly the more recent recordings, what with Guest reminiscing about the film’s impact on his life and White offering up a geeky repository of notes on various details about The Last Starfighter and its cast and crew, but the tracks don’t lack for interesting tidbits about the making of the film. The old commentary with Castle and Cobb especially digs into how they managed to put together the movie so quickly.
There are also a host of interviews with various members of the crew detailing everything from the visual effects to the score, and the unifying takeaway from the subjects is just how quickly the film was shot and assembled, prompting situations such as composer Craig Safan having to conceive the soundtrack with no visuals for the then-as-yet unanimated action sequences. There are also two half-hour archival documentaries on the making and impact of the film.
Overall
Arrow improves upon their impressive 2020 Blu-ray of The Last Starfighter, a hallmark of the 1980s geek canon, with a gorgeous UHD upgrade.
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