The Last Starfighter (1984)

 

150 Best Science Fiction movies, Rolling Stone list

#145. The Last Starfighter (1984)

 

“Are you 11? Is the year 1984? If so, here’s a movie you’re going to want to see.”

n  -- Keith Phillips

 

The term “Space Opera” was an outgrowth of a habit calling any long-running Radio Serial an “Opera,” so in the 1920s people started calling the Westerns “Horse Operas,” and in 1938 Daytime Domestic Dramas started getting called “Soap Operas” because they were often sponsored by Soap-Powder Companies.

 

In 1941, SF Author Wilson Tucker coined "Space Opera" as a pejorative for any "hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn, spaceship yarn." But the term landed out evoking fonder feelings in the Audience than Wilson intended, and it was soon applied to all of the more ambitious (or at least wanabee ambitious) and tales of Interplanetary, Interstellar, or Intergalactic Conflict.

 

There are Serious-Minded Space Operas for sure, most notably Author Issac Asimov’s “Foundation” series (first story 1942, first collected into a fix-up novel in 1951) but the term more strongly evokes the more Escapist Yarns, the kind of tales that Author Robert William Cole invented with “The Struggle for Empire: A Story of the Year 2236” (1900).

 

The Space Opera more broadly entered the Public Imagination three decades after Cole, and a decade before Tucker, with the Artist Alex Raymond’s comic strip “Flash Gordon” (1934). It was created to compete with the already existent comic strip “Buck Rogers” (1929), but “Flash Gordon” was painted on a broader, more Swashbuckling, cavass, and soon “Buck Rogers” adapted itself to follow in the footsteps of the comic it had inspired.

 

For decades to come, the Romantic Baroqueness of “Flash Gordon” would remain unsurpassed. Most Authors trying to emulate it came off stale, thereby triggering Tucker’s ire, while the more talented ones, like Asimov, took on the subject but looked elsewhere for the texture. The forementioned “Foundation,” was boldly Imaginative, Intellectually compelling, and admirably Serious, but far from Swashbuckling.

 

In cinema, the Space Opera did better than in prose, thriving through the years 1937 through 1949 when SF cinema essentially died except for Childrens Serials like “Flash Gordon” (1936) and “Buck Rodgers” (1939). But then, after SF’s cinema revival in 1950, the Space Opera somehow lost its luster in the medium that had served it best. The Space Opera wouldn’t be redeemed in cinema until 1977 when “Star Wars” triggered a phenomenon.

 

With the Audience rediscovering their lust for this kind of Adventure, Filmmakers discovered just how hard it is to capture the Romantic Baroqueness. All very popular films create trends, and within those trends there are always many sadly executed, under-imagined, Rip-Offs; one of the things that made “Star Wars” distinctive was not only that so-so many followed in its footsteps but that so few of them were any good. Thankfully “The Last Starfighter” can proudly say it was one of the good ones.

 

The magic of “The Last Starfighter” is three-fold:

1.) It managed to create its own identity while telling a familiar tale.

2.) It tapped into an immediate trend and managed to speak to the trend better than others.

3.) It was later remembered with great fondness by those who saw it as children, akin to Writer/Director George Lucas regarding the relationship between the old “Buck Rogers” serials and his own “Star Wars” franchise. These kids never stopped longing to recapture that Sense of Wonder that seemed to speak to them more than anyone else they knew.

 

Critic Roger Ebert didn’t much like the movie and made his case against it with this synopsis underlining that “The Last Starfighter” leaned far-too-hard on the crutch of “Star Wars”:   

 

“Young boy dreams of intergalactic heroism instead of down-to-earth drudgery. After encountering an old man, he is provided with an opportunity to join an intergalactic war and become a starfighter pilot. The fate of the entire universe is ultimately dependent on the boy’s inner abilities in a last-ditch series of dogfights defending against an evil warlord who has launched his own fleet of fighters from a huge base ship.”

 

But then, “Star Wars” was derivative as well. Above-and-beyond “Flash Gordon,” Lucas was deeply impressed by “The Hero’s Journey” described by Joesph Cambell in his book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” (1949). I’m unaware of Screenwriter Jonathan R. Betuel being conscious of Campbell, but when he mined the Arthurian Mythos (the first tales of King Athur can be found in the “Historia Brittonum” circa 828 BCE), he ultimately landed up in the same place. The Hero here, the stand-in for soon-to-be King Arthur, is the Character Alex Rogan, played by Lance Guest, and Alex’s destiny is revealed in updated Arthurian terms, “I had written a trilogy. It started as “The Sword in the Stone” [Arthurian novel by T.H. White (1938)] … [you’d] follow the life of a young starfighter, where he awakens to a bigger world and bigger reality and learns it doesn’t come gift-wrapped.”

 

But even acknowledging that, I do appreciate the umbrage Critic Ebert took. Composer Craig Safan’s score rehashes John Williams’ work on “Star Wars.” Though the film avoids the already Clichéd Trope of an R2D2-like Robot, the incidental electronic sounds sometimes seem as if R2D2 is running around. The Starfighter Corps Command Base is almost identical to the “Star Wars” Rebel Base. The Dogfighter Space Ships, called Gunstars, were created by Ron Cobb, a Production Designer from on “Star Wars,” and I want to acknowledge that Cobb doesn’t repeat himself, the “Star Wars” X-Wings were seemingly designed more for atmospheric flight while the Gunstars were more convincingly Space Ships; but on the other hand, it mimicked “Star Wars” in making the Space Battles that were based on WWII assumptions. As Critic Richard Schelb complained, “The battle for the universe seems even smaller in scale than the Pacific Theatre of War during WWII – the universe is protected by a series of beacons placed in a line with each about 100 metres apart, while the evil warlord sets out to conquer the entire universe with a fleet of around 30 warships.”

 

The Filmmakers later spoke of the challenge of distinguishing themselves not only from Director Lucas but also his close friend Director Steven Spielberg (the two then-dominated all of SF,F&H cinema). They succeeded to the degree that this film isn’t forgotten decades later, but only to that degree. I’d argue that time was a redeemer here, the borrowings seemed more heavy-handed forty-years ago than they do now.

 

Derivativeness notwithstanding, “The Last Starfighter” is also a Landmark in Cinema History because of its extensive use of CGI and that was not the Filmmakers initial choice.

 

The very first commercial film to use of CGI was probably the title sequence in “Vertigo” (1958). The next big step forward was the manipulations of more conventional images to create the Android’s POV in “Westworld” (1973). But neither of those are what we think of CGI now. The real landmark was “Star Wars,” the first ever film to use three-dimensional “wire-frame” animations in cinema. Though the famous Space Battles used physical models that you could carry in your hands, during the War Room scene at the Rebel Base, the hologram of the Death Star was CGI, a mere 40 seconds of film that that required a huge cost of both money and manhours.

 

Then came 1979 which saw both “The Black Hole” and “Alien,” they used the same techniques only with the costs in both technology and time dropping, and the quality improving. These were what we now call CGI, though at its most basic.

 

In cinema, the 3-D wire-modeling that was “wrapped” with realistic surface textures appeared for the first time in 1981 with “Looker,” an innovation that didn’t receive its deserved credit because the rest of the movie kinda sucked. Meanwhile Lower-Budget productions with stories that called for CGI needed to fake it with conventional hand-drawn animation, live-action pretending to be animation, or some kind of video trickery, because even though the technology was existent, it was cripplingly expensive (examples: the film “Evilspeak,” the TV version of “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” (both 1981), and the TV movie, “Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future” (1985)).

 

1982’s “Tron,” came close on the heels of “Looker” and is recognized as landmark the “Looker” should’ve been. It had much improved 3D-modeling and used both more impressively and far more extensively. More than that, “Tron’s” story was actually about computer games, the popular medium driving the technology being used in the film.

 

And then comes this film, “Tron’s” closest cousin. When the production faced the challenge of the huge Space Battles, the part of this film that borrowed from “Star Wars” even more explicitly than the synopsis outlined by Critic Ebert above, the Filmmakers realized they didn’t have the money to realize it the way Lucas did. It’s a funny thing about film budgeting, sometimes things are cheaper when you spend more money because you have access to the technology that makes them cheaper.

 

“Star Wars,” “Looker,” and “The Last Starfighter” appeared in a time-frame shorter than a decade, with “Star Wars” made for $11 million, “Looker” about the same, and “The Last Starfighter” for $15 million -- but $15 million bought you a lot less in 1983 than it did in 1976, making top-quality physical models out-of-reach for “The Last Starfighter.” On the other hand, they could still do what “Max Headroom…” couldn’t (its alleged “CGI” was Actor Matt Frewer in a rubber mask) even though they couldn’t do what “Star Wars” did.

 

They had access to the brand-new Cray X-MP Super Computer, a technology still spoken of in whispers of awe among those old enough to remember it, it was the very fastest computer in the World during this film’s production. The work was done by Digital Productions, founded by Gary Demos and John Whitney Jr, who’d started their careers under Director Lucas and then founded their own company, Digital Productions (DP) when they created “Tron.” Another Lucas veteran, John Dykstra, also contributed FX. “The Last Starfighter’s” Space Ships/Battles were all CGI, the Filmmakers attempting to go far beyond “Tron” and achieve a “photorealistic” look, which they didn’t 100% pull off.

 

It came down to math: The animation was based on assembling polygons into 3D shapes, and each took time to render, time=money. The deadline was six-months. One could project how long it took to assemble those polygons, more of them than in any movie before, and if it could be done in the allotted time and if it would cost more, or less, than doing the same with physical models, Blue Screen, and using computer systems for the “accounting” (basically, guiding the cameras to make the illusion of motion because in “Star Wars” the models were actually stationary while we see them zip down the Death Star’s Trench).

 

Not everyone supported the bold move. Visual Effects Coordinator, Jeffery Okun, did the math and insisted that the CGI would take 17 months, not six, and pled with Producer Gary Adelson to fire DP and hire a more traditional modeling company, but Adelson trusted Demos and Whitney and forged ahead.

 

Creating the Gunstar Space Ship, by itself, required 750,000 polygons and three months’ work, and that was before wrapping it in its digital skin. Production Designer Cobb joked about putting the wire-frames in the Hangar Bay before the skin was added, "We had a few funny instances like that when we had ships passing through things or flying backwards."

 

Turns out, everyone was wrong. Six-months wasn’t enough, but 17 months was an exaggeration. Most of it looked great-for-its-day, but dated now, and some stuff didn’t look good even back then, because they did run out-of-time. Cobb complained asteroids looked "melted ice cream," but the Gunstars were terrific. Critic Jordan Zakarin nicely put it, “The result was a film filled with images the likes of which no one had ever seen before: massive spaceships that did not look quite real, but didn’t look cartoonish, either.”

 

It's worth brining up another movie that few remember, “A Sound of Thunder” (2005), which proved a Historically Embarrassing financial bomb, grossing only one-eighth of its gigantic budget. Its FX team was stymied in exactly the same way as “The Last Starfighter’s,” there just wasn’t enough time to adequately render complex and realistic 3D forms. There was a difference though, “The Last Starfighter” mostly worked on a $15 million budget, and “A Sound of …” blew-it-badly on an $80 million budget with the advantage of two-decades of more advanced technology. Actor Guest had nothing to do with the FX, but it was explained to him later, and he said in an interview that the FX Team was “white-knuckling” it all the way.

 

Meanwhile, the increasingly bigger budgets of the “Star Wars” franchise wouldn’t completely abandon physical models for its Space Ships/Battles until “Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace” (1999, and yes, that makes the first “Star Wars” film “Episode IV,” which is something I don’t want to get into right now).

 

Today, “The Last Starfighter’s” FX don’t hold up as well as the original “Star Wars,” but they are still attractive-looking. Also, there’s an internal progression that was wonderfully part of the Story Telling. The game Character Alex plays in the film was better-looking than the games the Audience were playing in the Real-World Arcades, and the Space Ship Alex gets to fly in the film was better looking than the one in the game.

 

The CGI takes up 27 minutes of the film’s 101-minute running time, a truly remarkable percentage, but the final product demonstrates the Filmmaker’s priorities were not monomaniacally focused on that. Though the Filmmakers were creating a New Thing, they were never seduced by it, the focus was on the Earth-bound scenes, with fewer FX. Critics of the day noted that the CGI was groundbreaking, but offered it less column-space to that than one might think; it really was a low-income community of the outskirts of a small town that made this Space Opera fly. The other 74 minutes were created on a luxurious 38-day-schedule, mostly night-shooting on location in Canyon Country, Santa Clarita, California and on top of that 38-day-scheduale, a few extra scenes shot after Test Audiences responded well to a sub-plot with Alex being replaced with an Android Double so know one would know he was missing and that Android didn’t know how to behave on a date with Alex’s girlfriend Maggie (Catherine Marie Stewart). The decision was made to shoot more footage of that, requiring Actor Guest to be fitted for a wig because by that point he’d already cut his hair for his next job.

 

So, the story doesn’t begin in “A Galaxy Far, Far, Away,” though it does get there eventually. It’s Launch Pad was run-down Trailer Park, though earlier versions of the script opened in the affluent Suburbs. That change was because Director Spielberg had already created the most powerful of all 1980s cinema clichés, the Suburbs as Heaven, with “E.T.: the Extraterrestrial” and “Poltergeist” (both 1982). The final script explored a different domestic setting and demonstrated one kind of shared-isolation creating extended families to an Audience already schooled that Suburban isolation shattered the same (a significant Theme in “E.T…”).

 

“The Last Starfighter” was far-more Character-driven than “Star Wars,” though not really interested in exploring those Characters in any great Psychological Depth. It gave us Types, but they were more strongly drawn than average, and then let the excellent Cast run with the ball.

 

It was latching onto the Video-Game Craze born in 1978 with “Space Invaders,” not the earliest video game by a long shot, but the First Monster Hit and more importantly the medium’s first successful Galactic Shoot-Em-Up, clearly riding on the coat-tails of “Star Wars.” By the time “The Last Starfighter” was released, that Quarter-Eating, Brain-Rotting, Electronic-Parasite had already Seduced Millions of Innocents into lives of Juvenile Delinquency, Lack of Marketable Skills, and Do-It-Till-You-Go-Blind Compulsive Disorders, far worse than pinball machines of old (well, not really, but that was what people were saying at the time). Strangely, despite the obvious Economic Boom and Cultural Tsunami, there was less-than a handful of films tapping into the games’ popularity and this film went one step farther, defending the honor of the Gamers.

 

Our Gamer, Alex is a smart kid, a good kid, not at all lazy, but he knows he has limited options. He’s the over-worked son of an over-worked single-mom, denied the pleasures of his teen-years because of responsibilities. He’s seeing his dreams slip through his fingers because those around him who go to Community College go nowhere and he’d just got turned down for a Scholarship to a better School that he was counting on. During the night-time scenes early in this film, almost every frame featured twinkling stars above, forever out of reach, just like almost everything else Alex wants from life.

 

The only time Alex has to himself is when the workday at the Trailer Park his mom manages slows down. It’s no surprise he plays the sole video game set up next to the tiny convenance store. Nobody begrudges this, in fact, the older residents form a crowd and cheer when he finally breaks the high-score. There is something wonderfully Capra-esque about the assortment of Eccentrics living on the Economic Margins, enriching the film greatly even though these people have less-than nominal baring on the plot. Alex’s supportive community is mostly older persons who have seen their dreams slip thorough their fingers, just as Alex sees happening now.

 

But there was hope for him, because the tagline of the movie promises, “He didn’t find his dreams, his dreams found him”

 

The Video Game Craze and the Arcades it spawned were, at the time, being dismissed as a passing fad. In retrospect, that was short-sighted; they were the obvious technological next-step in the evolution of the pinball machines, already popular for about eighty-years. The Video Game Craze wouldn’t fade until it was replaced by the obvious technological next-step represented by home-computer gaming systems (the First Monster Hit of that was 1992’s “Mortal Combat”). Still, the under-estimation of the lasting power of the Entertainment was understandable, the Craze less than a decade old, seemingly born full-grown from the fore-head of Zeus, so why would anyone think that something that appeared to come from nowhere would go anywhere?

 

Pity those poor people poo-pooing the Future, they simply didn’t understand that the games were brought to us by Aliens.

 

This brings us to the Character Harold Hill, oops, I meant Centauri. Both fictional Characters were played by the same Actor, Robert Preston. Harold was Preston’s most famous role, the Hero of the Musical, “The Musical Man” (live theater 1957, film 1962) and Preston chose to play this new Character, Centauri, identically. That’s not a criticism, the part was written with Preston in mind, and he proved the greatest joy of a film with many pleasures; Director Castle called it "one of the greatest castings of the 80s." Critic-after-Critic enthusiastically dropped the line, “We got trouble, right here in the galaxy,” to underline the link between the two stories. By all accounts, Preston had a grand-old-time during what would prove to be the final film of his long and successful career.

 

Centauri is the equivalent of the “Star Wars” Character Obi-Wan Kenobi, only more Directly and Army Recruiter and more-than-a-little-bit a Huckster. The video game was actually a Test and the High Scorers are Recruited by the Rylan Star League in their War against Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada. Basically, Centauri wants Alex to save the Universe.

 

Alex: “I’m just a kid from a trailer park.”

Centauri: “If that’s what you think, then that’s all you’ll ever be.”

 

Preston steals the show, but in a supporting role, Actor Dan O'Herlihy, playing Grig, Alex’s co-Pilot, is nearly as captivating, He’s got gentle voice and warm humor emanating out of heavy Lizard Alien Make-Up. O'Herlihy more often played sinister, or at least arrogant, Characters.

 

As for Actor Guest, at that point his TV resume was longer than his film one, but that TV work was prestigious. He brought great enthusiasm to Alex, painting over the fact that some of Alex’s decisions (you know, like getting into the car with Centauri) weren’t exactly responsible. And Guest offered high praise to Preston who, despite his exhalated reputation, was generous with rehearsal time for this new kid on the block.

 

Actress Stewart as Maggie was the perfect embodiment of the desires of a more responsible Teenage Boy. She’s pretty, smart, adoring, supportive, and a Good Girl slightly-touched by Vixen-ness (my girlfriend of the time learned a make-out trick for Maggie). Stewart’s film resume was longer than Guest’s, but her first notable role was the Lead in the legendarily terrible SF/Rock Musical “The Apple” (1980), followed bit parts. 1984 proved to be her year: On top of this film, she had a Lead Role in another SF Classic, “Night of the Comet,” and a small but visible part in Monster Hit “Footloose.” She told interviewers that Preston, whom she had no scenes with, had charmed her as much as he did Guest.

 

Hollywood is driven by two things, Talent Pools that are stirred to create a few Masterpieces, and a Nepotism-addiction that dooms most projects to Mediocrity or worse -- so, really, those two things are basically the same thing, or, to put it in “Star Wars” terms, it’s “The Force” and “The Dark Side.” Among the most important people to this Production is a name you won’t find on the Credits, because he had nothing to do with any of this, Legendary SF,F&H Writer/Director/Producer John Carpenter, but he did start the careers of many of those who are actually listed:

 

The film’s Director, Nick Castle, began his cinema career as an Assistant Cameraman on Carpenter’s “Dark Star” (1974), went on to player Character Michael Myers/the Shape in Capenter’s “Halloween” (1978), was involved in the Editing of that film’s sequel, “Halloween II” (1981),  and then co-Wrote with Carpenter on the script for “Escape from New York” (1981), before finally moving on to Directing the a non-Carpenter project, “TAG: The Assassination Game” (1982).

 

Production Designer Cobb, who was vital to both “Star Wars” and “Alien,” began his career with Carpenter and Castle on “Dark Star.”

 

Actor Guest’s first film was “Halloween II.”

 

Actor O'Herlihy was already as much a veteran by the 1980s, almost as honored as Preston, but at 65-years  suddenly enjoyed being in greater demand because of role in the Carpenter-Produced, “Halloween III: Season of the Witch” (same year as this film, shot somewhat earlier).

 

The film aggressively ignores its own Darker Themes. It never mentioned the causes for, or consequence of, the War, here the Good Guys are all Good and the Bad Guys are all Bad. It warns Armageddon is imminent but then avoids Tragedy. It blithely ignores that Centauri lied to Alex when signing him up for fight in a far-away Conflict. But then, the film’s Target Audience wasn’t the post-WWII Baby Boomers (born 1946 to 1964) but Gen-Xers (born 1965-1979), so young people with only dim memories of the much-loathed US Military Draft, which ended in 1973, and the USA’s short involvement in Vietnam’s multi-Generational Conflict, which ended for us at least in 1975. That Generation’s (my Generations) first really relevant President was Ronald Reagan, who’d was then taking steps to bring back the Draft and increasing the USA’s Foreign Adventurism, and mostly we didn’t seem to mind that too much.

 

Within the Story, the video game was a Recruiting Ploy, and over-all the film comes close to being a Recruiting Film, only for an Army that didn’t exist, the Starfighter Corps. When we are introduced to them, the film embraces the Melting Pot Ideal, Alex’s new Comrades are quite an array of weird-looking Aliens, but there’s plenty of Xenophobia too. It reminded me of Author E.E. “Doc” Smith’s “Lensman” series (first book 1937, and more than the above-mentioned Cole, Smith was called “the father of the Space Opera”). The Lensmen were closer to “Flash Gordon” than “Foundation” and until sometime after 1966, it was a close competitor to “Foundation” in popularity (neither, though, could touch the love “Flash Gordon” inspired). Smith’s Good Guys were a diverse Menagerie, but the Bad Guys were treated as irremeable and worthy only of Genocide. Entire Planets were casually destroyed by the Heroes’ Super Weapons and after the final Holocaust we are assured that no Human World was obliterated, only the women, children, and old people associated with the nefarious Boskone Allegiance (boo-hiss Boskones!).

 

This Sugar-Coating was essential as the primary accomplishment of “The Last Starfighter” was its sweetness which was not at all saccharine. It’s warm like old blanket, not warmed-over like that eras’ newly popular microwave meals. Its triumphs not because it elevated itself above its corniness, but it made it corniness sincere. The Filmmaker’s Craft is ambitious even though the content not. In retrospect its sentimentality has been referred to as “Amblin-esque” (referring to Spielberg’s company) and at the time the New York Time’s hailed it as “about as perfect an instance of teen-age wish-fulfillment as can be found in a movie this summer.”

 

Unfortunately, it didn’t do well in the box-office, bringing in only $29 million in North America against the $15 million dollar budget. Not a bomb, but not a success either. It seemed to have simply been crowed out; that years SF,F&H Monster Hits included “Ghostbusters,”  “Gremlins,”  “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” and “Red Dawn.” And then there was “Footloose,” “The Karate Kid,” and “Purple Rain,” which were also pure-Fantasy, they just didn’t publicly admit it. It likely would’ve done the year before, or the year after.

 

That same year as “The Last Starfighter,” was another, much-lower-budgeted, SF,F&H movie called, “The Terminator,” which proved only modestly successful until it was released on VHS, at which it became a Monster Hit. “The Last Starfighter” also found more success on VHS, and later cable, but not matching “The Terminator’s” phenomenon. So, another curse that befell this film was that the mid-1980s was still a little early for Hollywood to fully recognize that secondary and tertiary medias were where the money really was going to be coming from in the future. A few years later, when the industry understood the meaning of “The Terminator’s” success, “The Last Starfighter” would’ve gotten more respect and Betuel’s trilogy might’ve been realized.  

 

Actor Guest remembered, “It played in LA for two or three weeks. ‘The Karate Kid’ outdid it. That and ‘Purple Rain.’ Those were the two big [films], although we got good reviews saying that our movie was better then those other ones. But it just didn't have the initial box office. It wasn't a hot commodity.” And in another interview, “A crew member on the movie said to me that it was a slow burner, and I didn’t know what she meant [at the time] … she was right: It was one of those things that over the years people would see on tape, see on cable, and bring it home for their kids. I have friends who grew up watching it every day.”

 

Another thing “Star Wars” changed was that it radically expanded the role of Marketing-Tie-Ins for cinema, something always there, but rarely more than pocket change. Suddenly there was an explosion of the games, toys, costumes, bed sheets, comics, and every other imaginable kind of memorabilia associated “Star Wars.” This soon changed how films were made, with tie-ins being a consideration in what films did or didn’t get green-lit.

 

“The Last Starfighter” attempted to do all the same and was rather crass about it: The film’s closing credits even advertised an upcoming computer game, “The Last Starfighter.” But that game never materialized, or mostly never materialized.

 

What happened was that the game company Atari had contributed to the version of the game in the film, and was working on an Arcade version, but during the film’s post-production someone attached Atari decided the film wouldn’t make any money, pulled out of the tie-in; the work already completed was steered to unrelated products, the games “Star Raiders II” and “Solaris” (both 1986). This decision must’ve been made quite abruptly, but note that those two games came two years later, too much of a lag to have contributed to the film’s marketing. I suspect the decision was driven by Atari’s own production issues.

 

The tie-in game was finally realized by two different makers in 2007, so two-decades after-the-fact, a tribute to the fond memories this film holds for us Gen-Xers.

 

As the film became more successful in secondary and tertiary medias, the idea of a remake or sequel became common, but those ideas didn’t become notable until after the dawn of this new century. A clear problem is that the rights are held by three parties: Writer Betuel, Production Company Lorimar (eventually bought by Warner Bros), and Distributor Universal Studios. The various reports on this issue contradict each other about everything except that the three-way ownership confuses not only those who want in, but even those who a piece. One headline read, “Even Steven Spielberg Couldn't Get the Rights.” One article argued improbably that Betuel was unaware he owned the Rights for at least twenty-years. Others alternatively describe Betuel as the biggest obstacle to revival or the one pushing the hardest for it.

 

In 2004 there was a live show off-Broadway, “The Last Starfighter: A New Musical,” apparently made possible because Rights needed for an off-Broadway production were narrow enough to not step on any other toes. That show was successful enough to have been repeatedly revived.

 

In 2008 there were reports of a sequel reuniting Writer Betuel, Director Castle, and even Actor Guest, but that wasn’t realized.

 

In 2014 Comedian/Actor/Filmmaker Seth Rogan, who was two years old when the film came out, was quite public about wanting to make his own version, but never secured the Rights (presumably from Betuel).

 

In 2015 there was talk about a TV series that Betuel heavily involved in, “The Starfighter Chronicles.” It got far enough to have a production house attached to it, Surreal TV, and would’ve incorporate cutting-edge Virtual Reality technology into the Audience’s experience. I’m not sure how that was supposed to work, but it was never realized.

 

Around this time, Screenwriter Gary Whitta had joined forces with Betuel. Whitta is a hair-older than Rogen, he was ten-years-old when the film came out, and the “Star Wars” phenomena was formative for him. “I think [‘The Last Starfighter’] … had almost the same level of impact as ‘Star Wars,’ and I don’t say that lightly. It was speaking directly to me. It was earthbound, so I could imagine being that kid. And it tied in to something we were all into: video games.”

 

Whitta was raised in London and remembers looking for the promised video game in his local Arcades. He said that though, the film is “not generally part of the conversation when we talk about the great pop culture movies of the ’80s … once you bring it up, people perk up, and you realize there is this great undercurrent of fondness and admiration. There are a lot of things going on that will see the light of day.”

 

Whitta’s participation the project was the most promising news for fans; Betuel had disappeared from film production in the mid-1990s but Whitta is an emerging force, he’d Authored “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” (2016), perhaps the most favored of all “Star Wars” entries of the last forty-plus years. Even as years passed without the pair securing the necessary Financial Backing and/or securing the Rights, he seemed undeterred.

 

In 2021, those issues still unresolved, Betuel and Whitta released a teaser-trailer for the project, so they still hadn’t given up.

 

 

Drew Turney interviewed Betuel in 2020 about the project: “So it won’t be hard to recapture that innocent magic in a time of such cynicism?”

 

Betuel answered, “People still dream. People still long to be a hero in their own life and to those they love, whether their methodology is the same or different. The material everyone has in terms of wanting to do more in life and do more for others, I think is the story that fuels many movies. It has from the beginning.”

 

Trailer:

The Last Starfighter Original Trailer (Nick Castle, 1984) (youtube.com)