That's what some people might say about Last Starfighter, it was a campy ripoff trying to cash in on the success of Star Wars. No I personally don't say that about Last Starfighter, I think it was a terrific movie but that's what people who don't like the movie might say.
shareI saw this film as more of a video game themed than Sci-Fi themed movie fitting in more with "Wargames", "Tron" and "Cloak and Dagger". The horrible "Battle Beyond The Stars" with Richard Thomas as the obvious Luke Skywalker character to me was the blatant "Star Wars" ripoff along with "Krull".
shareThe horrible "Battle Beyond The Stars" with Richard Thomas as the obvious Luke Skywalker character to me was the blatant "Star Wars" ripoff along with "Krull".
No doubt there was some influence there but Last Starfighter is unique in more than one way.
shareThe idea of an Earth boy getting involved in interplanetary wars is pretty interesting. I've always thought that George Lucas should have used this idea for his Star Wars prequel trilogy. For instance, Anakin Skywalker could have been from Earth, or something like that. This idea was more recently, and very successfully, used in Guardians of the Galaxy.
shareLast Starfighter stands on its own. I don't see any Star Wars influence here. Okay, both movies are set in space. So was Forbidden Planet, circa, what?, 1956?
This is a very cool movie that has stood the test of time for anyone who values narrative over the technology du jour, exactly like Forbidden Planet.
And let us not forget movies like George Pal's "War of the Worlds" and "The Time Machine", both based on H.G. Wells novels. Those were made in 1953 and 1960, so I guess George Lucas didn't create the concept of alien beings or subterranean monsters either. LOL!
shareSeems that any Sci-Fi movie in space and came out in the 1980's was called a "Star Wars rip-off" by critics who didn't care for the genre to begin with and who were just kissing George Lucas's ass. I got so tired of hearing that line from them, like freaking Lucas created these types of movies. Such bullshit!
TLS was a fun movie with a good story and entertaining characters. It's still in my TOP 3 favorite Sci-Fi movies of all time and I have a copy of the 25th anniversary DVD.
I hope they never remake it as they would totally screw it up.
They're not critics. They're criticizers. A critic--a formally-trained and -educated critic--is one who knows and appreciates art. They are few in number. A criticizer is a butt-hurt scold whose dick size, in inches, exceeds his IQ. The Last Starfighter remains a fun movie to this day, is the progenitor of the notion of melding video games with in-the-flesh science-fiction, and will always be THE FIRST MOVIE to employ digital FX. The Crow was the second to do so.
shareAgreed R_Kane! Thank you for defending TLS from all the "Lucas is God" bots. You hit the nail on the head!
shareR_Kane... while I agree, whole-heartedly, with the nature of your post, there is a factual error in your post in the statement that "The Last Starfighter" was the first movie to employ digital FX.
The first completely CGI FX in a movie is actually the "Genesis sequence" in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan", which preceded "The Last Starfighter" by two years.
http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=3584
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/110312/were-the-project-genesis-summary-animations-computer-generated
Yes, the sequence in "Star Trek II" was only 60 seconds long, and the rest of the move was shot with traditional physical models and techniques, but it still has the honor of being the first recognized usage of a complete CGI scene in any movie. "The Last Starfighter" upped that ante by having around 27 minutes of CGI FX.
So, "The Last Starfighter" is one of the first movies to rely EXTENSIVELY on CGI FX, but is not the first movie to employ digital CGI FX.
Thank you for your correction. I taught myself how to do digital editing and FX creation years ago, and every source I read cited Starfighter as the first of its kind. No one knows everything. The truly stupid think that they do. Thank you again.
shareDon't you mean a critic--a media representative for hire, willing to positively campaign any form of art for the right price? Synonym: Shill.
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