Premium Post: How I Would Have Done THE LAST STARFIGHTER (1984)
A love story appropriate for the upcoming Valentine's Day, but better military strategy and more practical effects
One of the movies we did in the film podcast Myopia Movies’ first year was the 1980s science fiction classic The Last Starfighter, which I saw at my grandmother’s house when I was a little kid and specifically wanted to re-watch. Unfortunately it didn’t hold up as well as I remembered, however cool the concept is and even though Catherine Mary Stewart is absolutely awesome as the female lead Maggie Gordon. This is one of the movies that should get a bigger-budgeted remake (and in fact one is in the works). In the meantime, check out how I would have done it.
In General
*The cast for the most part works. As I mentioned before, Stewart is awesome as Maggie, while Robert Preston is clearly having fun channeling his role in The Music Man as the alien envoy Centauri and Dan O’Herlihy is enjoying playing the alien navigator Grig. The only real problem I had with the casting was Lance Guest’s rather sleepy performance as the titular last starfigher Alex Rogan. If a more emotive performance could be wrung out of him, it would be a good idea to keep him as well.
*More practical effects. There’s a lot of really dubious 1980s computer-generated imagery in this one that really detracts from the film. Look at this sequence here, the Ko-Dan armada breaching the frontier. It looks like something from a Playstation One game. Even though it’s hard to blame them given the technological limitations of the time, practical effects age much better than CGI. Given the expense of advanced puppets and props CGI might’ve been the only way to go with some key parts, but I would have done my best to substitute practical effects when possible.
*Although the film could have been tightened up a bit, it was broadly light-hearted and fun and that needs to stay.
Act One
*The opening act of the film does a good job showing rather than telling the details of Alex’s life and establishing his character. He’s good and helpful to his neighbors in the trailer park, even giving up an afternoon of adventure with Maggie and his friends to do so. However, life in his small town is dull and it’s clear he wants more. One evening he finally beats the arcade game The Last Starfighter, triumphing so epically that everybody in the trailer park comes out to see him. Although a lot of people in that episode found this implausible, if life in the trailer park is so boring that a kid beating an arcade game is something that brings in people from all over the community to watch, well, that’s showing and not telling.
(Also, given how Alex is so helpful to the others, it shows how much they appreciate him that they’re willing to cheer him on even if this is something they’re not really interested in.)
*When the cheerful alien snake-oil salesman Centauri arrives to take Alex to Rylos, revealing that the arcade game is actually a training simulator for the Star League to recruit pilots, I would make sure Alex emotes a lot more. Alex should be frightened he’s being kidnapped, even more frightened when it turns out he’s being abducted by an alien, and then being in absolute awe upon seeing Saturn. Here’s the canonical scene where Centauri abducts him where he emotes a bit, but not much. And here’s the canonical scene where Centauri takes him past Saturn before they jump to Rylos. Given his poverty I doubt Alex has traveled on a plane before, and here he’s leaving Earth, sailing through the solar system, seeing Saturn (which can fit 764 Earths), and traveling to another star. Nic noted in the podcast that he seemed so calm, while the word that comes to mind in the re-watch for this article is “befuddled.”
*When the traitor Xur confronts his father Enduran via hologram at the Star League’s military base near the frontier with the Ko-Dan Empire, I’d have built Xur up to be a more threatening and complex villain. In the canonical film he hints at the basis for his actions, but it’s leavened with a lot of whining and daddy issues.
My version of the confrontation would have some elements of a recruitment speech intended to sow doubt among the Star League’s warriors and possibly tempt some to treason rather than just him being an annoying twit. Per some of the expanded-universe material like the novelization, the Star League has become so decadent and pacifistic that it can only find a few warriors willing to defend it. This is something Xur can emphasize (more than he does already) to show that the (to him) weak and pathetic Star League needs new leadership, something he and his movement can provide. Enduran retorts by pointing out that the Star League was not so weak that it could not exterminate his “cult” (in the vein of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s 1970 invocation of war powers to crush Quebecois separatists) and send him fleeing to the Ko-Dan. Xur just smirks at the idea his movement has been annihilated, hinting at what’s to come.
*While Alex is away, the “simuloid” creature Beta Alex is left in his place. That aspect of the plot generally worked, especially the part where Beta Alex’s head is carrying on a conversation with Alex’s younger brother Louis while separated from his body. That said, it would have been better if Beta Alex had something more age-appropriate to blackmail Louis with. Maybe that Alex had forged his mother’s signature on a report card and Louis had really done worse in school than he claimed, or perhaps Louis had accidentally broken a window with a baseball and Alex had done some chore to buy off the owner to keep Louis out of trouble? Instead Alex threatens to reveal to their mother that Louis has a stash of porn magazines. Louis looks to be around eight — would he even be interested in Playboy? When I was his age I would not have been.
*Per my description of the confrontation between Enduran and Xur, in the original clip, it’s clear Alex is present and watching. A scarier and smarter Xur might play a role in intimidating Alex into wanting to go home, even on top of torturing the captured Rylan spy in front of everybody. The Rylans, though reluctant to let such a talented pilot go (and Centauri who clearly wants to keep the recruitment bonus), agree to take him home, but Centauri makes sure to leave him with a means of contacting Rylos if he changes his mind.
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