The Last Starfighter...

[Samurai8472]

In 2008, the video game would be available for the PlayStation, Nintendo, Xbox and home computer, and they'd have about 500,000 qualified pilots... most of them under the age of 13.

and all of the pilots would be shouting obscenities and calling each other "N00bs!" before being killed

then we'd have jerks who feel the need to turn on each other or leave in the middle of a campaign


oh and since we're talking about TLS has anyone played the game made by some fans? its pretty cool
http://www.roguesynapse.com/games/last_starfighter.php

 

[Chindogu]

The Last Starfighter is an ispiration to many people.

 

[Outpost4]

I can't believe all the people who like The Last Starfighter. It is a complete piece of horse pitute. Lance Guest's acting isn't. He has one acting chop. It's a reaction shot where he goes, Huh? and he uses it again and again in the movie. Robert Preston is completely wasted in a minor role. He carried a whole movie, The Music Man, playing a flim-flam man, but in this movie, his is an extended cameo. Only Dan O'Herlihy is any good in this movie as the alien Grig, but then he was such a great actor, he could pull off the role while buried under makeup thicker than Norman Snow's overacting as Xur. The effects might have been groundbreaking in their day, with the first major use of computer animated effects, but today they look awful (on the other hand, I saw Tron on TV recently and it still looks decent). The plot is transparent and the suspense is non-existent. Otherwise, it's a great movie.

Somebody cue Lance Guest to go, Huh?

 

[TGTheodore]

Lance Guest's acting isn't. He has one acting chop. It's a reaction shot where he goes, Huh?

Somebody cue Lance Guest to go, Huh?

That would be the director, writer and editor's decisions, not Lance's.

He was terrific as a regular the last two seasons of Lou Grant.

--Ted

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Also starring Marc "Dukat" Alaimo as the hitchhiker.

 

[Gertch]

I love The Last Starfighter. It's a lot of fun and has so many quotable lines. And lets not forget Catherine Mary Stewart.

 

[Outpost4]

Lance Guest's acting isn't. He has one acting chop. It's a reaction shot where he goes, Huh?

Somebody cue Lance Guest to go, Huh?

That would be the director, writer and editor's decisions, not Lance's.

He was terrific as a regular the last two seasons of Lou Grant.

--Ted

My memory of him on Lou Grant is different than yours but unfortunately, Hulu only has the first two seasons so I can't say.

But assuming you are right, then you are saying that the director, writer and/or editor are so creatively bankrupt that all they can come up with for depth in their lead character is, Huh? That makes The Last Starfighter even more stupefying bad.

 

[Admiral2]

I can't believe all the people who like The Last Starfighter. It is a complete piece of horse pitute.

No it wasn't. It was a fun little escapist adventure based on one of the crazes of the Eighties, video games.

Lance Guest's acting isn't. He has one acting chop. It's a reaction shot where he goes, Huh? and he uses it again and again in the movie. Robert Preston is completely wasted in a minor role. He carried a whole movie, The Music Man, playing a flim-flam man, but in this movie, his is an extended cameo. Only Dan O'Herlihy is any good in this movie as the alien Grig, but then he was such a great actor, he could pull off the role while buried under makeup thicker than Norman Snow's overacting as Xur.

If you were watching it for the acting, you completely missed the point of the exercise.

The effects might have been groundbreaking in their day, with the first major use of computer animated effects, but today they look awful (on the other hand, I saw Tron on TV recently and it still looks decent).

Right, from the perspective of twenty plus years of hindsight, they look awful, but I'm guessing that most of us here praising the movie saw it when the effects were novel, and thus phenomenal! And enough with this Tron nonsense! As mentioned before, most of the viz effects in that movie were done with traditional methods, and what little actual CGI there was was nowhere near as fluid and detailed as in TLS.

The plot is transparent

Right. It's a "Hero saves the universe story". What's wrong with that?

and the suspense is non-existent.

Agreed. It ain't Hitchcock. Again, so what?

Otherwise, it's a great movie.

Exactly. Glad you've come around.

 

[FalTorPan]

Lance Guest's acting isn't. He has one acting chop. It's a reaction shot where he goes, Huh? and he uses it again and again in the movie.

Alex was a teenager who grew up in the Starlight, Starbright trailer park in Nowhere, USA. A kid from that environment wouldn't exactly be in his element in deep space.

I think Guest did fine playing both Alex and the beta unit. I love when the beta unit is tinkering with its own head, Alex's kid brother wakes up, and the beta unit tells him to go back to sleep or it'll tell Mom about the kid's Playboys.

 

[Aragorn]

At the 2009 Comic-Con... a surprise movie teaser trailer...

Two guys playing a video game... a spaceship flying game... fighting each other...

Cut to a shot of a fully-bearded Lance Guest watching the whole thing... he walks over to the screen barefooted...

"It's just a game!"

Beta 2: "Not anymore."

Starfighter 2

 

[Unicron]

It's an okay movie. I wouldn't consider it great, but not certainly not bad either. I hated the starfighter design, though.

 

[RandyS]

The Last Starfighter is perfect just the way it is! it doesn't need updating! It doesn't even need a sequel! I love that little movie in all it's eighties video game fantasy glory!

I like The Last Starfighter as-is. It's a fun movie.

Agreed.

 

[JuanBolio]

The Last Starfighter is an ispiration to many people.

Jesus Tittyfucking CHRIST - did anyone catch what Bush said in the article? Read:

"Just minutes into the film, I found myself relating deeply to Alex, the lead character played by Lance Guest," Bush said. "He lived in a trailer park and had little opportunity to advance himself."

This is the rich kid who's daddy got him out of Nam, into Yale, and as well as a hundred other things while he pissed it all away like a dumbass.

 

[TGTheodore]

Lance Guest's acting isn't. He has one acting chop. It's a reaction shot where he goes, Huh?

Somebody cue Lance Guest to go, Huh?

That would be the director, writer and editor's decisions, not Lance's.

He was terrific as a regular the last two seasons of Lou Grant.

--Ted

My memory of him on Lou Grant is different than yours but unfortunately, Hulu only has the first two seasons so I can't say.

But assuming you are right, then you are saying that the director, writer and/or editor are so creatively bankrupt that all they can come up with for depth in their lead character is, Huh? That makes The Last Starfighter even more stupefying bad.

Hello, Mc Fly! We're talking reaction shots, here. Remember?

--Ted

 

[CaptMurdock]

Robert Preston does make the film, though.

"I'm not here for cigarettes or bubble-gum, m'boy."

"That particular game was supposed to go to Las Vegas, not out in the middle of tumbleweeds and tarantulas!"

"You know the trouble I went to...to invent the game, to market it...to get it in the stores by Christmas?"

And, of course,

"and three...always trust Centauri!"

 

[Maurice]

To make it clear about the effects: other films features CG generated elements. Heck, the Death Star plans in Star Wars were computer generated. Tron features 9 or 10 minutes of computer graphics mixed in with a lot of burn-in animation effects. The Last Starfighter was the first film to use SOLELY CG to represent all the spaceships, spacescapes, planets, etc. The explosions were photographic effects, as were some of the beams fired on Earth, but mostly everything else visuall effects wise was CG, and THAT'S why it was revolutionary.

 

[Thespeckledkiwi]

I like The Last Starfighter. It's a favorite of mine...

 

[Outpost4]

Hello, Mc Fly! We're talking reaction shots, here. Remember?

I don't denigrate you with ad hominem remarks, Ted. I'd appreciate the same respect.

Yes, we are talking about reaction shots. I would recommend you re-watch the movie and see how they are used multiple times to express the naiveté of the character. As a writer, I'm sure you can come up with a dozen different ways to show one of your characters is in over his head. In this movie, there is one, and it is repeated again and again.

But as another poster rightly said upthread, if I was looking for a character study in The Last Starfighter, then I was watching the wrong movie.

 

[Norrin Radd]

I looovvvved this movie and would be eager to see a special release of it with updated FX.

 

[CaptJimboJones]

The Last Starfighter is an ispiration to many people.

Jesus Tittyfucking CHRIST - did anyone catch what Bush said in the article? Read:

"Just minutes into the film, I found myself relating deeply to Alex, the lead character played by Lance Guest," Bush said. "He lived in a trailer park and had little opportunity to advance himself."

This is the rich kid who's daddy got him out of Nam, into Yale, and as well as a hundred other things while he pissed it all away like a dumbass.

Pssst ... the article was from The Onion. Total fiction. Funny, though.