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The Last Starfighter

The film made early use of extensive computer graphics to depict real objects in place of physical models.

The Last Starfighter was the final film role actor Robert Preston made before his death. His character, a "lovable-con-man," was a nod to his most famous role as Harold Hill in The Music Man.

Alex Rogan (Lance Guest), a teenager living in a remote trailer park, becomes the top player of Starfighter, a stand-up arcade game. After achieving his best score, he is approached by the game's inventor Centauri (Robert Preston). Stepping into Centauri's vehicle, Alex is horrified to find that not only is the car a spaceship, but Centauri is a disguised alien who whisks him off to another planet.

Upon their arrival, Alex is given a flight suit and fitted with a translator to understand alien languages. He discovers that he has been recruited as a pilot, and that the images and territories in the Starfighter arcade game represent a conflict that actually exists. Alex is taken to the briefing area and meets fellow Starfighter Grig (Dan O'Herlihy), a jovial alien. When confronting Centauri, Alex learns that the Starfighter game is a test devised to find those "with the gift."

Furthermore, the game's story about defending the galaxy against enemies is real, with a full-blown Starfighter battle preparing to be launched. Alex is shocked by this new reality and refuses to participate, so Centauri brings him back to earth and gives him a high-tech pager to use if he should change his mind. Meanwhile, meteor projectiles launched from the Kodan Battleship are headed for the hidden starfighter base. Cannons at the base destroy the first few that appear. A Xurian spy places a bomb which detonates near the Cannon Controls, effectively disabling them. The base is impacted by the meteors and is left in unknown condition.

At home, Alex discovers that he was not missed because Centauri replaced him with a synthetic android known as a Beta unit, an exact replica of Alex. The android tries to convince Alex to return to space and serve as a Starfighter. Angered, Alex activates the pager so Centauri can remove the impostor. But an alien assassin appears and tries to kill both Alex and Beta. During the resulting chase, Centauri arrives and kills the assassin, but is seriously wounded. Centauri warns Alex that more assassins are on the way, so his only choice is to become a Starfighter.

Meanwhile on earth, Beta is having a difficult time replacing him, failing at Alex's job as a repairman, ruining Alex's relationship with his girlfriend Maggie Gordon (Catherine Mary Stewart) and nearly being discovered by Alex's younger brother Louis (Chris Hebert). An assassin discovers the existence of the android and rushes to his ship to alert the enemy. Beta is destroyed, but not before successfully interrupting the assassin's transmission. An enemy commander receives the incomplete message, assumes Alex is dead, and proceeds with the invasion.

Alex and Grig attack the enemy ship and destroy its communications. As the battle reaches a fevered pitch, Alex's weapons are depleted. In a desperate move, he triggers a secret weapon and destroys the fighters. Xur, the enemy's general, escapes in a pod and lives to fight another day. At the victory celebration, Centauri reappears, having come out of what was actually a dormant state. While Alex is being proclaimed the savior, he is informed that the galaxy is still vulnerable and Xur is at large. Alex is asked to stay and aid in rebuilding the Starfighter Legion.

Alex returns to Earth, dramatically landing in the trailer park in his spaceship. He explains to his family where he was and reveals that he has decided to return to space and serve as a Starfighter. With the blessing of her family, Alex's girlfriend decides to return with him. The story ends with Alex's brother preparing to play the Starfighter video game, dreaming of joining Alex in space.

The Last Starfighter is one of the earliest films to make extensive use of computer graphics for its special effects. In place of physical models, 3D rendered models were used to depict space ships and many other objects. The Gunstar and other spaceships were the design of artist Ron Cobb, who also worked on Alien, Star Wars and Conan the Barbarian.

The computer graphics for the movie were rendered by Digital Productions on a Cray X-MP supercomputer. The company was under a 4.5M, and ended up creating 27 minutes of effects for the movie. This was considered an enormous amount of computer generated imagery at the time. For the 300 scenes containing computer graphics in the film, each frame of the animation contained an average of 250,000 polygons, and had a resolution of 3000 x 5000 36-bit pixels. Digital Productions estimated that using computer animation required only half the time, and one half to one third the cost of traditional special effects. The result was a cost of $14 million for a film that made about 21 million at the box office.

Game

A real The Last Starfighter arcade game by Atari, Inc. is promised in the end credits, but was never released. However a video of the gameplay can be found on YouTube.

If released, the game would have been the first arcade game to use a Motorola 68000 as the CPU. Gameplay would have been taken from game scenes and space battle scenes in the movie and would have included the same controller that was used on the first Star Wars arcade game. Ultimately, it was not released because the arcade machine would have had a sale price of $10,000, which the vice president in Atari considered too high.

Home versions of the game for Atari 5200 and Atari 800 were also made, but never marketed. Ultimately, the game was renamed and, after removing the Last Starfighter references, sold under the name Star Raiders 2, a sequel to the very popular and ground-breaking game Star Raiders.

In 1989, a NES game titled "The Last Starfighter" was released, but it was actually a conversion of Uridium for Commodore 64, with modified sprites, title screen and soundtrack.

A freeware playable version of the game, based on what is seen in the movie, was released for PC in 2007.

• Craig Safan's score for the film calls for an unusually large orchestra, including six trumpets and six trombones, all of whom are called into use simultaneously to blare the main theme in twelve-part harmony.
• The StarCar from this movie can be found parked on one of the streets in Back to the Future II.
• Wil Wheaton, known for his portrayal of Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation, had a part in this movie, but his scenes were cut. However, his name still appears in the closing credits. He can be seen as the tallest child running through the trailer park in one of the earliest scenes.
• Sean Daley, aka Slug from the Minnesota based hip-hop group Atmosphere, often refers to himself as the Last Starfighter in his lyrics.
• In RZA as Bobby Digital in Stereo Bobby Digital also refers to himself as the Last Starfighter.
• The assassins sent to Earth to kill Alex Rogan by Xur, resemble strongly the Mon Calamari from Star Wars universe. Marc Alaimo has a cameo appearance as one of them in human disguise (before it is 'detected' and erased by a nearby Last Starfighter game).

1. Crossing the Frontier: Making "The Last Starfighter" (behind-the-scenes retrospective), Universal Studios Home Video, 1999.
2. Ohio State University CG history page

External links

• The Last Starfighter at the Internet Movie Database
• The Last Starfighter at All Movie Guide
• Animation Timeline from Brown University
• Reviews of the 2004 off-off-Broadway musical
• The Last Starfighter video game
• Arcade game specifications by Atari

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