The Last Starfighter (1984)

The Last Starfighter (1984) is a science fiction adventure film directed by Nick Castle, starring Lance Guest, Catherine Mary Stewart, Dan O’Herlihy, and Robert Preston. The film is a beloved cult classic, notable for its pioneering use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) in its visual effects, which was groundbreaking for the time.

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If you were into spaceships and video games as a kid, this film was all your Christmas’s coming at once.

The Last Starfighter is a 1984 American space opera film directed by Nick Castle. The film tells the story of Alex Rogan (Lance Guest), a teenager recruited by an alien defense force to fight in an interstellar war and his recruiter Centauri in a great performance from Robert Preston who impresses despite being buried in make up. The Last Starfighter was Robert Preston’s final role in a theatrical film. The character of Centauri, a “lovable con-man”, was written with him in mind and was a nod to his most famous role as Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man.

It also features Dan O’Herlihy, Catherine Mary Stewart, Norman Snow, and Kay E. Kuter.The Last Starfighter, along with Disney’s Tron, has the distinction of being one of cinema’s earliest films to use extensive “real-life” computer-generated imagery (CGI) to depict its many starships, environments and battle scenes.

There was a subsequent novelization of the film by Alan Dean Foster, as well as a video game based on the production. In 2004, it was also adapted as an off-Broadway musical.