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The Last Starfighter

Where does he get those wonderful toys?

Maybe it was the air, or something in the water but the 80′s managed to pump out film after film of escapist delight.  They all seem to run along the same basic arc, underrated bloke comes good and saves the universe.  It’s almost as if some guy wrote a book about how to make a film and every scriptwriter, producer and director followed the instructions precisely.

The hero in this case is a trailer park scruffian who is put upon by his neighbours so much so that he can’t go to the lake with his girlfriend and do things to her.  It’s not quite painted like that but thats the jist.  On top of all this teenage angst he gets turned down for college which was his only route out of the trailer park.  Instead of accepting the fact that he is and always will be living in a trailer park watching cops on t.v. he fly’s off and saves the universe from an evil geezer who is pissed off with his dad.

There are aliens involved, excellent special effects for the time and it inspired me to install death blossom on my car.  It also imbues the viewer with great tactical training, wait for the enemy to go past and jump out from behind!  The star of the show is lewis the younger brother who has a stash of playboy and an annoying charm that makes you want to kick him out the window onto some soft grass.

As a reflection of life in a trailer park The Last Starfighter doesn’t win any awards.  As a sci-fi epic it is drastically short of epicness.  As a good romp it is almost peerless apart from every other 80s sci-fi/fantasy movie.  I particularly love the bit where the starfighter has run out of power and Grig the alien co-pilot is re-routing life support and there is a 9v battery connector on the circuit board.  It turns out that the secret to interstellar travel are 9 volt batteries.

This is of course the first game to movie conversion.  The fact that the game was a fictional game in the movie makes it all Dr. Who in its level of self reference.  This is something to be admired as it is completely unintentional.  Game to movie conversions hadn’t even been considered then, it turns out the the Last Starfighter was the first pioneer in a list of completely underwhelming films currently topped off by Prince of Persia.