The Last Starfighter Reviews
What is “The Last Starfighter”?
Alex Rogan is a good kid with no options. He wants nothing better than to escape the trailer park where he grew up, but he has no money, he missed his scholarship, and he can't even go out on a date without a minor disaster roping him back in to tend to a relative. The only escape Alex knows is the arcade games outside of the local bar. At least for a few minutes at a time he can be in control of his life, excelling at something of his own choosing.
And then, one evening, he gets the high score. Although his victory was as big event as things get around the trailer park, he doesn't much think of it again until Centauri (Robert Preston) arrives in a creepy sports car. Before he knows what's happening, Alex finds himself pilot of the final Gunstar and sole guardian of the galaxy against a treacherous invading force.
For all the movie's space opera shenanigans, its most memorable segments appear in cutaways to the life that Alex left behind, where an android duplicate does its best to maintain the status quo in Alex's absence.
Nick Castle's 1984 blockbuster is one of the first examples of computer-generated special effects, with all model work achieved from scratch on a Cray supercomputer.
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