Starfight
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Starfight |
| Original title | The Last Starfighter |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1984 |
| length | 101 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Nick Castle |
| script | Jonathan R. Betuel |
| production |
Gary Adelson Edward O. Denault |
| music | Craig Safan |
| camera | King Baggot |
| cut | Carroll Timothy O'Meara |
| occupation | |
| |
Starfight (Original title: The Last Starfighter ) is a science fiction film from 1984, a later novel edition, and a computer game based on the film . In 2004 it was also implemented as an off-Broadway musical . The film opened in German cinemas on April 19, 1985.
The film was the first major film in which computer graphics were used on a larger scale instead of physical models to represent real objects.
The Last Starfighter was the last film in which Robert Preston was seen in a supporting role. He played the lovable alien Centauri , a nod to his best-known role as Professor Harold Hill in the musical adaptation of The Music Man .
action
Alex Rogan is a teenager from a trailer park who is the best player of Starfighter, an arcade game on which he has "to defend the border against Xur and the co-Dan armada". But the game is really a training tool; the night after he broke the record, an alien named Centauri recruits him as a gunner against the enemy mentioned in the game. Centauri takes Alex to the alien base on a strange planet, where Alex attends an introductory event while the latter collects his recruiting fee. While Alex is supposed to fight as a starfighter, he is represented on Earth by a synthetic android, a so-called beta unit. However, Alex initially refuses to be recruited as Earth is not a member of the Star League. He feels no reason to be drawn into a war in which his planet is obviously not participating. Centauri reluctantly brings him home.
Shortly after Alex and Centauri left the border base, it was destroyed by a surprise attack by Xur and the Ko-Dans. When he gets home, Centauri gives Alex a pager so he can ring it if he changes his mind. Alex meets his doppelganger, who has difficulties with his role on Earth and tries to persuade him to return to base. Annoyed, Alex activates the pager to have Centauri appear and remove the interferer. Instead, an assassin sent by Xur appears and tries to kill Alex. After a game of cat and mouse, Centauri manages to kill the assassin, but he is seriously wounded in the process. The beta unit and Centauri warn Alex that more assassins are on the way, so that Alex could become a starfighter as well, and then at least have the firepower of his ship against the enemy.
In this changed situation, Alex agrees to return, but finds the base destroyed. There is only one experimental battleship left and only one pilot, Grig, to operate it. What's worse for him is that Centauri dies, leaving him alone in this world with Grig as his only friend. You start and face the enemy, but Alex has difficulty with the realities of real combat. Grig, disappointed, offers to fly him home, where he should live happily until the Ko-Dan attack his planet too. In view of the extreme situation, Alex finally finds the courage to fight and comes up with the idea of hiding in the asteroids while the Xurian fleet passes by, only to attack them from behind, destroy their communication tower and thus weaken the combat ships.
In the meantime, the beta unit is hunted down and finally sacrifices itself in order to successfully prevent an assassin from emitting a warning call that the last starfighter is on duty. Xur and the Ko-Dan believe, however, that Alex is dead and lull themselves into a false sense of security. Alex and Grig beat the surprised Ko-Dan armada, but Xur escapes to strike another time. At the victory celebration, Centauri reappears, having just awakened from what was a kind of regeneration state.
Alex returns to Earth, where he reveals to his family and friends that he has been enlisted to help rebuild and defend the border. While his girlfriend Maggie Gordon didn't want to leave the trailer park with him at the beginning of the film, she's going with him now. The movie and book end with Alex's younger brother Louis starting playing the Starfighter game in hopes of joining the armed forces as Alex does.
criticism
"Naive, at best technically remarkable science fiction film with questionable glorifications of computer games and destructiveness."
Trivia
In the credits of the film, an Atari video game is announced. This was completed, but due to license disputes, it was only released a few years later under the name "Star Raiders 2". The game The Last Starfighter was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990, which is essentially a conversion of the C64 game Uridium from 1986.
The United States Army has similar to the film in 2002. A freely online game called " America's Army issued". Players who register and follow certain rules are allowed to have their game results checked by real recruits who are on the lookout for potential enrollers. However, the game was designed primarily to convince potential recruits to join the US Army, not to test them.
Web links
- Starfight in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- AnimationTimeline Brown University ( English )
Individual evidence
- ^ Starfight in the Lexicon of International Films , accessed April 21, 2012