Continuing our look back on ‘84’s cult offerings, here’s one
that touched another facet of the culture then—videogames. Oh, sure, people
might assume the hordes playing Fortnite and COD and what have you are a recent
thing, as are the substantial prizes that came with the upper echelons of
gaming culture, but that isn’t true. Even in the early eighties, Atari was
offering amazing prizes for their sadly unfinished Swordquest contest, which
involved vast media promotion. It was these sorts of struggles and stakes that
inspired the digital contests of Tron, and arguably today’s focus, The Last
Starfighter.
Director Nick Castle brings us a fairly straightforward if
high-concept story—teenager Alex Rogan (Lance Guest) is stuck in a podunk town
where nobody takes him seriously, blah blah, typical eighties film setup. He
likes to whittle away his time on an arcade machine that by sheer happenstance
turns out to be a recruiting device for pilots to fight in an alien interstellar
war, and as you might expect he gets whisked along to join the fight against maniac
Xur and the rubber-faced Ko-Dan. There’s a lot of familiar story beats, like
the hero trying to run away from the fight only to get forced back, the moment
of desperation as the good guys lose their home base—you can tell it easily as
one of the many space adventure flicks to come in the wake of Star Wars.
But what makes Last Starfighter doubly interesting is that
it, like Tron, was one of the pioneers of CGI—all of the space scenes are rendered
this way, and for 1984, that was a hell of an undertaking. We’re talking an era
where DOS interfaces were the norm and where pixels mushed vaguely into the shape
of a human being was a stunning vision of a digital future to many people.
It holds up better than you might expect—oh sure, it’s still
dated, but rendering artificial objects is one of the strengths of CGI, as you
don’t spot a fake metal or plastic texture as readily as flesh. Likewise, this
allows for some interesting space fights where the ships aren’t limited by
dimensions—and one really cool moment where Rogan’s Gunstar fighter spins around
in every direction to discharge a ‘death blossom’ that obliterates everything
around him. For a technique that was so new, the filmmakers did a good job of
implementing it with the resources they had, and that deserves commendation.
As for the rest of the effects…the alien makeup isn’t super
convincing and the sets are all very eighties—they haven’t aged as well as many
of the interiors of the Star Wars trilogy or even Alien. Nevertheless, there’s
a charm and sincerity to it all—it’s a nerd wish fulfilment, to be sure, one
that was no doubt felt in some arcades and by some folks hunched over their
Commodores, but an innocent one. Videogame culture has expanded and changed
over the decades since, in ways good and bad, and I’m not sure if you could
pull off quite the same premise again now. Back then, videogames were for the
most part another hobby; now, in our connected world where any birds of a
feather can flock together, they seem to be an entire existence for some. That’s
why things like Ready Player One, in which humanity immerses itself into a
world of gaming than merely using that to jump to bigger things as in Last
Starfighter, resonate more, I guess.
The Last Starfighter isn’t a film with especially unique
writing or direction, but as a curiosity and for those like myself that enjoy a
bit of wide-eyed old school scifi, it’s definitely watchable. You can chortle
at the old CGI effects, but don’t forget the work it would’ve taken back then,
and you can certainly appreciate that this is where it all began. Plug in a
high score and give it a look-see.
Comments
Post a Comment