The Last Starfighter (1984) - 🤯📼First Time Film Club📼🤯 - First Time Watching/Movie Reaction & Review
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- Опубліковано 2 сер 2023
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The Gunstar is still one of the most popular and beautiful starfighter designs in any scifi genre.
Over at Lego Ideas they have a Gunstar set up for voting. I think if it gets 10k votes it’ll get produced. There’s a bootleg small version of the Gunstar on Mocpixel that’s decent. One of my favorite ships
@@jasonpratt3970Unfortunately it was back in 2018 and it expired so no Gunstar from Lego.
The design actually makes sense as to what a "space fighter" would be. Yet look at the cockpit lay out. Tandem with the Gunner up front, it's like an helicopter gunship that can fire 360. I think that is why it is called Gunstar inspired by attack helicopters. All other space fighters that only shoot straight forward don't make much sense. The Gunstar is both aesthetically pleasing to the eye and would be a practical tactical attack space gunship if real.
@@DoremiFasolatido1979
I couldn't agree with you more!
One point, though: the Starfury from _B5_ is designed to be a short-range, zero-gravity fighter (with a variant capable of atmospheric flight - though how well is anybody's guess) with a primary mission of support for capital ships, space stations 😁, bases, and planets - at least, according to various ancillary books and other media related to the show.
But yes, a Gunstar-type layout would be (as far as I can conceive, as a very old, very well-read, Sci-Fi fan 🙂) the optimal design for a intermediate-to-long-range fighter/bomber.
Throw in a Viper or three from the _Battlestar Galactica_ remake for stealth/reconnaissance, a few White Stars from _B5_ as Destroyers for fleet defense, a few _INS Infinity_ - class from the _Halo_ series for Intel/CnC/ECM, and the SDF-1 and SDF-3 from _Robotech_ for Supercariers, and _baby,_ have you got yourself a Space Fleet! 😊
*Starfury has entered the chat*
Death Blossom is still one of the most badass final attacks in cinema. 40 years later, I still believe that.
I mean Reaper from Overwatch seems to agree with you on it's efficacy 🤣
Technically the control ship was the last attack. I just don’t get why the Death Blossom attack was just a button push. It was about timing and also you can’t really fight an armada any other way given the situation.
"It'll be a slaughter!"
"That's the spirit!"
I used to watch the hell out of this as a kid! Nice and simple, good-natured adventure with a kickass theme, interesting designs/costumes and a good sense of humour.
Same here. This was one of several movies I loved to rewatch a lot when I was young. This, Goonies, Krull, The Beastmaster, Ladyhawke, Tron and The Princess Bride.
The thing I loved in movies like this, and Flight of the Navigator, was the conceit of "ordinary kid stumbles into larger world of adventure." It just felt like such a pull. Years later I would learn that it's called The Hero's Journey and that we like to bake it into our stories.
There are some 80s movies that are so 80s that they're living time capsules of the 1980s, and The Last Starfighter is one of them.
Karate Kid is def one also.
Daniel actually references “the 80s” as the reason Ali can drive the car home from the arcade.
Daniel also says that they can’t put up with Myagi’s house getting destroyed “because it’s the 80s” 😅
I share the same sentiment about Bullitt (1968). Everyone remembers the car chase scene and overlook the fact that its dedication to realism makes it a window into life in the late 60's.
"We Die." The most bad ass line in cinematic history.
This movie inspired an entire generation of kids to believe that if you get good at any video game you would become the next Alex Rogan.
This movie and The Black Hole were my childhood sci-fi favorites. Couldn't get enough of them.
Black Hole was more space horror than adventure.
@ And your point is? I just said they were my sci-fi childhood favorites. I didn't really care about their subgenres.
Same here.
I was 16 in 1984, male child of a single mom, who was obsessed with arcade games and sci-fi, and who lived in a mobile home park. Like, I could not have identified more with this movie. And to top it off, Robert Preston is one of my favorite actors of all time. This isn't an all-time cinema classic or anything, but for me, it's just a ton of fun and nostalgia, and I'm happy to watch this any time. 😀
🎼 Yessir, we got trouble...
Right here in the Galaxy... 🎶😄
@@goldenager59 Yeah, I heard the original name of his character was "Haroldhillius," but they decided that was just a *_little_* too on-the-nose. 😉
Yea i was 7y/o when this came out and i was an instant fan and saw myself as the kid, starting to play the game at the end in hopes of being recruited by the Star League with his brother.
For the best of Robert Preston, you really have to watch both The Music Man (with Shirley Jones) and Victor/Victoria (with Julie Andrews and James Garner). He is brilliant in both.
The Music Man is my #2 favorite musical, and I'm not a fan of many musicals.
Permit me to also recommend Blake Edwards's vastly underappreciated comedy *S.O.B.* from 1981, a savage satire of the Hollywood film industry in which Preston co-stars as a doctor of hilariously questionable ethics. He succeeds in stealing every single scene he's in. 😁
Absolutely spot on. Those are two great movies.
Blake and Julie's son is also in Victor Victoria. Try spot him.
This was the last big screen movie Robert Preston (Centauri) made, having been in films since the late 1930s. He is best known for the role of Professor Harold Hill in the film version of 'The Music Man' (1962), a role he played for 2 years on Broadway, winning the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical (1957). When he was cast as Centauri, the role had been written as "a Harold Hill as an alien", and they almost didn't approach Preston because of that...they didn't want him to feel he was being typecast. Especially since he had been nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar a couple of years previously for the Blake Edwards movie musical 'Victor/Victoria' with Julie Andrews, James Garner, Lesley Anne Warren, Alex Karras, and John Rhys Davies...I cannot recommend 'Victor/Victoria' enough!!!
The story was adapted as a stage musical in the early 2000s but has only been done regionally.
There was a video game in development to tie into the film, but when the film didn't perform as well as needed, the video game was scrapped. There are others made since an NES version in the 90s and another for PC. There was even a replica playable arcade-style one.
This is one of my absolute favorite movies. I call it the best Spielberg movie not directed or produced by Steven Spielberg.
Robert Preston to his last die defended appearing in this movie. Aren’t you worried blah blah blah? He said over and over again was that is was one the funniest movies he ever worked on.
@@Ramsiusthx Did he have to defend working on it? Why on earth?? 🤔
Ya Robert Preston as Prof Harold Hill was great. His whole demeanor as a travelling salesman in that musical was perfect as a recruiter. Perfect for the role in this movie.
Though being from theatre, I camt unsee him as PHH in this ready to burst out into a musical in this movie.
He practically took that character from The Music Man, and basically acted like "what if he were an alien?"
Funny thing about the directing - Director Nick Castle practically got his training while working with John Carpenter(he was The Shape from Halloween)
I would love love love them reacting to Victor/Victoria. Robert Preston always brings great exuberance to his characters.
Robert Preston's role as Centauri is just a natural continuation of his Harold Hill character from The Music Man
I was thinking that should be next.
What if Harold Hill was actually an alien?
@@RedHeadKevin LOL!
@@RedHeadKevinThat would explain how he lived so long from his time in River City.
I always think of this movie as a companion to “Dragonslayer.” Both were lightly marketed, found by accident movies; kind of Little Movies That Could. Love them both.
Dragonslayer is awesome, and deserves a lot more recognition.
My companion to this was "Flight of the Navigator"
@@vernonjones8304 and The Explorers. and Cloak & Dagger.
STILL patiently waiting for Matt and Emily to watch Dragonslayer! C'mon guys, it's *awesome*!
I saw this as a continuation of what Tron did, but a lot more fun.
The scene where a crowd of people gather around Alex to watch him play was not unusual for the 1980s. I remember similar scenes after Dragon's Lair came out in video arcades in 1984.
Hell I remember large groups watching PacMan.
I lost a few thousand dollars on dragons lair I think
@@bigsarge8795 So did we all. 🤣
@@renlessard Pac-Man, Zaxxon, Joust, Spy Hunter, you name it.
It was the only way to see what the higher levels looked like or what happened when you won a game. No UA-cam and they didn’t make tv shows about it.
Yeah, you’d watch.
What I always loved about this movie is that other stories similar to it where the main character has an amazing adventure in another world usually make the choice to go back to their old life and just be normal, so to see Alex make the choice to stay in the role of Starfighter made me so happy.
Alex staying on Rylos really fueled my imagination of what that must be like.
I know if I had the choice between going home, and space adventure, I'm not picking my boring old life.
@@BunBun299 I remember one book (had a sequel if I vaguely recall right) where the premise is all these children who went home after an adventure in a magical world and were so different after their experiences (not just from who they used to be but normal humans) they can no longer be a part of normal society. So they're all kept in a home for special children and someone is killing them off.
I was nine years old when I saw this in the theater. I loved it so much it's hard to even explain.
Several things about Centauri. They wrote the role as a near copy of his role from the movie "The Music Man". Where he plays that snake oil salesman type and sells musical instruments to a town. They didnt think they could get Preston and looked at other actors. Then someone I think suggested giving it a shot and they where able to get Preston to sign onto the film. The other bit is that this is Prestons last movie he made before he died. So he went out with a character that was inspired by his most iconic role he had ever played.
On the VFX they where INCREDIBLY ahead of their time. They where using a CRAY computer, pretty much the most advanced commercially available computer at the time, and the original systems and shots they had planned it would of taken the CRAY a total of a YEAR AND A HALF to complete all the VFX shots. So they had to simplify down the effects as they only had I think it was a 6 or 8 month time frame to get the VFXs done.
To be clear, Preston didn't drop dead after his final scene, he tottered on in a few TV projects for a few years after "Last Starfighter" came out. He died way too young. 🙁
@@karlmortoniv2951 I did say it was his last Movie
I think it literally took all the computer power available in the world to make this movie, or something like that.
It was the Cray XM-P, at the time, *THE* most advanced supercomputer in the industry…
…and now the computers/laptops/smartphones/game consoles far overpower it in raw number crunching
Fun Fact: This movie has a big connection to the Halloween films as Lance Guest (Alex Rogan) played Jimmy the young paramedic in Halloween 2 and as someone else pointed out, Dan O'Herlithy (Grig) played Conal Cochran in Halloween 3 and the movie was directed by Nick Castle who played Michael Myers in The first Halloween movie.
Erin Moran's (Joanie of Happy Days) brother, Tony Moran also played Michael Myers when Michael was his 20's in the 1st Halloween movie.
@@MrTech226 Yeah. Tony Moran was Michael unmasked.
I LOVED this film as a kid and still do. It's so good.
Because of this movie, every time someone says "What do we do?" my immediate answer is, "We die."
When you realize how way ahead of its time this movie was, your mind would blown.
If there was any justice in the world this would have become a film series. Alex and Grig rebuilding the Starfighters, Xur trying to convince the Ko-Dan emperor to give him a bigger fleet...endless possibilities
Actually, Gary Whitta, (from Rogue One) has been trying to do just that for several years now. Last news about the project dates back to september last year (2022), and stated that he was still working on trying to make it happen, either as a sequel movie, or series. There is even some artwork out there for it from the year before (2021). So, keep those fingers crossed !
Robert Preston who played Centari based the character on the role he played in the Music Man which propelled him to international recognition... Sadly this was his last role before he passed away
I grew up on this one. For any flaws it has in graphics, it has a soundtrack that hits way above its weight class. Few things make me 8 years old again faster than that soaring theme!
I have loved everything about this movie since it first came out when I was 13 years old. After all these years, I can confidently say that little brother Louis is one of the all-time great supporting characters in movies.
He's right up there with the little brother on Better Off Dead.
Go back to sleep, Louis, or I'll tell mom about your Playboys!
This was the first film to have fully Computer Generated scenes. It's graphics are not just "pretty good" for the time, they are literally groundbreaking, and had to be done on a Cray Super Computer.
"Things change. Always do. You'll get your chance! Important thing is, when it comes, you gotta grab it with both hands and hold on tight!" - Otis - The Last Starfighter
My favorite line of the film! And the way he delivered it! Top tier! ❤️
The Last Starfighter was the second film in Hollywood history after TRON to make extensive use of CGI effects for the space battle sequences.
I believe ‘Young Sherlock Holmes’ was the first to use any CGI…but not extensively.
@@jimhsfbay Young Sherlock Holmes came out in 1985, a year after The Last Starfighter and three years after TRON. The first use of CGI in a movie was Westworld in 1973, for the android's visual POV.
@@jimhsfbay No, "Young Sherlock Holmes" was the first film to feature a CGI character(The stain glass window knight). "Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan"(1982) was the first film to use CGI to do a complete simulated sequence(The demonstration video of the Genesis Device). "The Last Starfighter"(1984) was the first film to use CGI for 100% of its special effects using a Cray supercomputer to produce photo-realistic ships/sequences. "Tron" used CGI for vehicles the transfer from our world to the Grid and some of the backgrounds...but only about 30% of the film used CGI. The rest was done traditionally with matte backgrounds, animation, rotoscoping and bluescreen compositing.
@@jimhsfbay u believe wrong 🤦♀
@@flexydex8754 Glad it made you feel better about yourself to point that out.
Greetings Starfighters! So glad you two got to this one. An underrated classic.
This was a fun one to see back in the day, for all the obvious reasons. This movie made whiling away hours in arcades much more desirable than parents could possibly understand. LIVES were at stake, ya know?? I was what, 13 or 14 when it came out and I've decided that it's a mark of my developing maturity that I was equally invested in Beta figuring out what Catherine Mary Stewart's deal was as with all the Gunstar-ing shenanigans. Caught me right on the cusp, it did. 😃
Robert Preston was all kinds of fun in this. He was a demi-god on stage with "Music Man" and loads of other things but somehow he never really hit it big in movies. Very engaging, charismatic performer with a career that went back to the '30s. He's awesome in "Beau Geste" with Gary Cooper and Ray Milland (give that a look if you find yourselves in the mood for classic Hollywood adventuriness one of these days) and he did two movies with Blake Edwards, one of which is usually counted among his career highlights - "Victor/Victoria" with Julie Andrews is surprisingly ahead of its time, although it's anyone's guess whether or not they knew it when they were making it, and "S.O.B." which is a whole lot of fucked up fun with a super-stacked cast but holy hell did Blake exorcise a few demons with that movie!
Dan O'Herlihy doesn't get nearly enough credit now but his career lasted even longer than Preston's. They were about the same age, but Dan hailed from Ireland. He scored a damn' fine supporting part in a movie called "Odd Man Out" that everyone needs to see at some point in their lives and also played Macduff opposite Orson Welles in his "Macbeth" movie. His CV has some great stuff on it, but he never really broke out as a top tier movie star for no particular reason that I've been able to discover. Late in life, in addition to the "Robocop" movies he also had all kinds of fun in "Twin Peaks" for David Lynch. I've often wondered why he took "Last Starfighter" on. He clearly didn't have to do an unrecognizable part of this size at that point in his career and I'd say he gets the most out of his character through the mask and whatnot. His wildly varied career suggests an eagerness to try new things and I'd say he's up there with Ron Perlman and Andy Serkis and the handful of other performers who can effectively act through a fuckton of makeup while also being able to deliver with a naked face.
I always love that bit at the end when the little brother rushes to start practicing the game.
This is the very first movie I remember seeing with my dad when it came out. I was 5. Still one of my favorites. The main theme is my ringtone.
This sound track live is amazing. My dad took me to see a symphony of it when I was younger. So good. I will always love this film and all it's flaws. This and Flight of the Navigator are the best unknown movies from the 80s.
I love this movie!! We definitely need a Wraith reaction also!
Oh my god, yes! The Wraith would be so fun!
I still have this movie on VHS and I'm never giving it away!
Oh my God. Yes please
Sure, but we'd be watching it ironically, right? In a "let's laugh at it because it's so terrible!" sort of way, correct?
@@mikefish1124 correct
Fun movie. Dan O'Herlihy (Grig) and Robert Preston (Centauri) are the stars here... They are both fantastic! RIP both.
The actor who played Centauri was Robert Preston. He also played the lead in The Music Man.
I love that you did this movie! It has so much heart and it gets me every time. Plus, love the Craig Safran score. This was fun.
I've always loved Robert Preston (Centauri) in this film. I would like to recommend watching Victor/Victoria next. I feel it's his best film. He and Julie Andrews are perfect together. And I think you'll enjoy it greatly! Especially with your favorable viewings of Too Wong Foo and Priscilla Queen of the Desert. I believe the community here will back me completely. All my best to both of you and thank you...
"The Last Starfighter" was one of the first movies to extensively use CGI, which was still in its infancy.
Always scratched my head at why I liked this movie... full of all the cornball heroics and save the universe pratfalls and antics... I think it was the veterans Rob Preston and Dan O'Herlihy that pushed it over the top and into classic territory... they know "Raiders" type plots and how to deliver them .
Fun detail - the bit where they go faster-than-light you see a ribbon of red, then blue. It's apparently meant to represent redshift and blueshift, two phenomenon that are commonly used in physics and astronomy research.
This is a good companion film with a particular episode of the short-lived animated Clerks. :)
As an 80's kid, this was one of my favs!
One of the greatest films ever made. You two are the best! At the time I thought it was the best CGI I'd seen, and that's how I always see it.
My father grew up lower middle class, and loved this movie and wanted us to understand how you'd want to get out of it like this guy, and we never could understand it, really.
This is the movie that needs a series or a remake. Without question, endless possibilities, full stop.
Creators such as Nick Castle were in process of a sequel, but plans are pre-production development hell for years.
It seems like this is pretty much the plot of that Gran Turismo moving coming out.
Please no don't let them remake and destroy another classic
@@alphatrion4365As much as I want to see more of The Last Starfighter, I kinda agree with this sentiment. I do NOT want to see modern Hollywood ruin it.
Maybe if the right people got their hands on it, and did it right, like with Cobra Kai, but that's a crap shoot at best.
no thanks. Hollywood has been destroying classic franchises. Leave this alone.
Robert Preston(RIP) plays the perfect salesman as Centauri. He had a long career in show business and in musicals in particular. He is probably most famous for his film role in The Music Man.
I have always hoped for a sequel.
I have probably watched this in the neighborhood of 100 times.
I remember two scenes from this movie scaring me a lot when I saw this at age 11; the scene when Centauri takes his face off and the Beta reveal. Seeing you jump at those same scenes makes me feel better. Great video!
Last Starfighter has an interesting Star Trek TOS connection in that Meg Wylie, who played Maggie's grandma, also played the lead Talosian in Star Trek's first pilot, which featured Jeffrey Hunter as Christopher Pike...
I saw this in the theater when I was 10yo and as corny as it is, I loved it. It really does make me feel like a kid again watching this with y’all!
I saw it in the theater at age 10 as well! Huge and happy impact me all around! 😁
The “gung ho iguana” line is my favorite in the whole movie. 🤣
Still to me one of the best movies - just completely enjoyable all the way through. Incredible score too.
"GORDON'S ALIVE??!?" OMG this is my favorite reactor comment ever!
Love someone reacting to this. Childhood memories. *makes the little eye glass sound*….”we die”.
The story was straightforward and direct. Something difficult to find now. Thanks for the reaction. Brings back memories.
The Gunstar is probably the best starfighter in all of Sci-Fi series. Its fast, maneuverable, and has gun coverage all over. I can see why it could take out an entire squad of Xur fighters which are probably the equivalent of X-Wings.
Rough as it looks today, we were wowed by the CG effects. The fact they're going for space battles with it kind of felt like watching the future of video games. The game in movie was far more advanced than anything we actually had, but seeing that get an upgrade later and presented as "real" was amazing. Love the designs for the Kodan... would have loved toys.
Alex Rogan: "Listen, Centauri, I'm not any of those guys. I'm a kid from a trailer park."
Centauri: "If that's what you think, then that's all you'll ever be."
An important thing to remember. If you think yourself as a nobody, you will never be anybody. It doesn't matter what you could be. It starts with the belief you could become someone.
A quote from the brilliant late Sir Terry Pratchett -
"Million to one chances are successful nine times out of ten"
It it of utmost importance that whenever anyone states "It's a million to one chance...." That someone responds with "But it just might work"
The character of Grig, Alex's Gunstar navigator, was played by Irish actor Dan O'Herlihy, who also played the villain Conal Cochran in Halloween III: Season of the Witch, and the head of the OCP corporation in Robocop.
That's some nice shooting son. What's your name?
That guy????
@@wyrmshadow4374 Yes, that guy. He's also the Silver Shamrock mask maker from Halloween III.
“Happy, happy Hall-o-ween, Hall-o-ween, Hall-o-ween. Happy, happy Hall-o-ween, Sil-ver Shamrock."
This movie taught me the most important lesson I've ever learned. If a weird man pulls up and tells you to get into his car, you get in!
One of the Best Movies of My Childhood, and still one of My All-Time Favorites today...Thank Y'all for doing this one!!👍
Awesome! I just introduced my 10yo son to this Sunday evening. This is about the only movie I can think of that deserves a remake, though I don't think they could ever replace Robert Preston.
I seriously doubt it too...yet there is that about Centauri that puts me in mind of Mel Gibson's antic side in the *Lethal Weapon* movies... 😎
This was one of the cornerstones of my childhood.
Louis at the end "Time to Get Good. LET"S GO!!!"
This movie has the most iconic villian line.....We Die.
I've loved this movie ever since it first came out. Of course, as a kid, I loved the space battles and the (then) cutting edge FX. Now, I have more fun watching Robert Preston and Dan O'Herlihy, who easily stole the show. The lines, "It'll be a slaughter!" "THAT's the spirit!" still make me laugh.
"Don't worry, I'll have it all figured out by the time we reach the frontier." Alarm sounds. "What's that?" Grig frowns...."The frontier...."
I have fond memories of discovering this movie as a VHS movie rental gem.
That Starfighter Cockpit is so awesome..... I wish Video Game developers would design something like that!!!
This has long been my favorite movie. This movie was the first attempt at photo realistic CGI (as opposed to stylized CGI like Tron). In the mid 2000s there was even an off-Broadway music adaption done of the Last Starfighter. Here is a link to the cast recording: ua-cam.com/video/S7UZ7HB3vdg/v-deo.html
I always liked how the bad guy faced his death.
Centauri is being played by Robert Preston. He was also in "Victor / Victoria" with Julie Andrews, And the Musical "The Music Man" with Shirley Jones
As a kid, I always thought of Grig as a way-too-happy Louis Gossett Jr. I actually thought 'Did he get all the laughing out of the way in this movie?'
This is another one that would pop up on local cable a lot when I was a kid in the late 80s. Absolutely loved it. The death blossom was the coolest thing ever. Still enjoy the movie a lot as an adult. If memory serves, one of the things about the 'CGI' is that it wasn't CGI in the way we understand it now.. the animation wasn't all done in computer. They were still figuring things out, and computers weren't nearly powerful enough to do what they wanted, so all the 3D models were built and shaded in a PC, but then they used print outs of the CG images to animate them traditionally.
I was always under the impression that this movie was the first use of "true" CGI. If you watch the making of special ( I know it's kicking around somewhere on UA-cam) they spend a lot of time on how it took several Cray Supercomputers hundreds of hours to animate the 3 or so minutes of CGI in the film.
That's not true. This film was the first film to contain fully rendered and animated CGI scenes. Animated using a borrowed Cray Supercomputer. There's a documentary where they go in depth.
>>>I ❤ this MOVIE!!!
I was 7 years old playing baseball at my local playground and we had to get the game in fast, because we all had to get home because the The Last Starfighter was going to be on cable for the first time. I'll never forget that.
Thank you for watching this one! Still one of my favorite movies that I can watch anytime.
One of my favorite movies as a kid. I been waiting for this since the live stream it was mentioned.
Also, Enemy Mine and Alien Nation need to be watched.
Getting dropped off at the arcade with a pocket full of quarters was an amazing experience. Loved that time period. I have watched this movie over and over since I was a kid and will never tire of it. I've heard several times about a potential remake or sequel and I'd love to see it. It's hard to find movies of this "Goonies" adventure feeling now.
O'Herlihy did kinduva great job at imbuing Grig with just an impressive and hilarious amount of character for an alien.
An' yeah, this is one of the more memorable milestones in the history of CG in film effects, which I'd put at Tron, this, T2, Lawnmower Man, Toy Story, and Spider-Man.
The CG was really good in this one.
"We die!" is as bad ass a death line as any villain ever had or ever will.
Yay! Nobody ever reacts to this movie.
We actually were just talking about it the other day because there's going to be a movie about the true story of a guy who got to be a race car driver from winning the video game. So cool.
And it's the premise of this movie 😜
Loved this reaction! This was definitely going to be a s but with Emily and Pippin. Yep, this was a fundamental movie for me. Centauri's wisdom that if you confine yourself to your current situation, you'll be locked in there. Have to imagine before you can be.
Everything else is so much fun. Characters and dialogue stick with you, even the little traitor role has fun and texture. The infighting between Xur and the Ko-dan. It didn't make the edit but Alex's pump up speech to himself hits me and makes me all anxious.
I only learned this last year but Grigg is the same actor who is the head Executive at Omnicorp in Robocop. The one that asks Murphy what his name is at the end of the movie.
Another great underrated 80s sci-fi movie is The Ice Pirates.
“Don’t fight the chair!” I need that on a T-shirt.
Robert "Music Man" Preston and Dan "Robocop" O'Herlihey steal this movie. Robert is basically doing his Music Man character in Space, but it works... hes also great in Victor Victoria. Dan was a very old man here so it's kind of amazing he put up with all that makeup.
Grig was played by Dan O'Herlihy. He played the head of the OCN CORP. in Robocop.
The Last Starfighter's director, Nick Castle, played Michael Myers (aka The Shape) in the original, "The Classic" Halloween (1978). Nick Castle's name is also used as the main character's name in the original The FOG (1980) played by Tom Atkins. Also, Lance Guest's first film was Halloween 2 (1981), playing Jimmy, the young EMT who befriends Laurie Strode (Jaime Lee Curtis). Dan O'Herlihy played the toy maker/warlock Conal Cochran in Halloween 3: Season of the Witch (1982). So, LOTS of Halloween connections and alums in this amazing film!! Love you both for your awesome reactions!! See you next time!!
I loved how Robert Preston basically played the same character he played in The Music Man.
Battle Beyond the Stars is another fun movie in this timeframe and genre.
I saw this movie with a friend when I was 16 and we both loved it. My brother-in-law took me to my first real arcade, and I remember it because he gave me $10 in quarters. I spent the whole-time pumping quarters into Zaxxon. It was great!
I myself received $12 in quarters on my 12th birthday (3/11/82) and used it at the dear departed Bally's *Aladdin's Castle* arcade (mostly on Gorf; now _there_ was an enemy command ship worth striving to bring down).
Actually, it was so dark in that arcade that they might have done better to call it "Ali Baba's Cave". 😏 🕹️
Robert Preston (Centauri) was in a lot of films that were fun, but one that I remember from when I was a kid is "The Music Man" He plays a similar character to Centauri, at least the characters feel very similar! Obviously, they are very different stories, and The Music Man is a musical, but the general character feels the same as Centauri!!!
You start slingin’ warbird talk…you got me
This is definitely a guilty pleasure from my youth. One of the few Star Wars inspired movies that did a lot of its own thing, did a lot of unique ideas, the practical effects, and the pioneering CGI effects. Love this movie!
Haha! I love that you recognized the Most Important Device In The Universe! 🏆
We've got trouble. Right here in River City. With a capital "T", and that rhymes with "P" and that stands for "POOL"
A cool 80's movie
Remember seeing this in theaters when I was 9. Of course I loved it. Even own a blu-ray copy
The Last Starfighter is credited as being one of the earliest films to use CGI FX
There are so many great one-liners and reaction sound effects. I need a soundboard for work of just Grig’s laughs, sighs, and shrugs.
Fun facts : "Enduran" was played by Kay Kuter, who appeared in an episode of Star Trek (TNG "The Nth Degree"), and DS9 ("The Storyteller"). "Granny" was played by Meg Wyllie, who played "The Keeper" in the Star Trek (TOS) episode "The Cage". The "Hitchiker" was played by Marc Alaimo, who later played "Gul Dukat" on "Star Trek : DS9".