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The Last Starfighter--The Musical!

Posted by samzenpus on from the death-blossom-mode dept.

nomadic writes "Yes, seriously. Some people have decided to remake everyone's favorite obscure 1980's Star Wars ripoff into musical form. Definitely sounds like a Troy McClure role..."

11 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. Star Wars ripoff? by plasticquart · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yes, both movies are Scifi (space, aliens, etc)... but where exactly does The Last Starfight qualify as a ripoff of Star Wars?

    1. Re:Star Wars ripoff? by kundor · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Young nobody character suddenly injected into interstellar war, is only hope of good guys, single-handedly ends unstoppable bad guy offensive with mystical powers. Space fantasy that speaks to adolescent wish fulfillment (I don't belong here.)

      And a great movie.

    2. Re:Star Wars ripoff? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Wait a fucking minute here, bub...

      1) Xur is not Alex.

      2) Luke bought droids.

      3) Alex WAS IN FACT recruited for the academy. The video
      game scouted his talent and he was beamed up or whatever.

      4) Nevada is not anything like Tatooine. Okay, except for
      the desert... and the whores and the gangsters and the
      gambling and the shitty farms and the scavengers and the
      nearby spaceports and the breakfast cereal.

      Yeah, there's similarities, and you can write a nice long
      essay on them for a humanities elective or something, I
      don't think it's fair to call LS a ripoff.

  2. Obscure? by NMerriam · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I thought the Last Starfighter was a pretty groundbreaking film -- IIRC, it was the first film to have totally computer-generated space sequences.

    I can't help but think it would make a pretty kickass space sim, now that we have the GPU power to render in real-time even higher quality than they had originally. The one arcade game I remember didn't compare well to the classic Star Wars 3D polygon arcade game in terms of sheer fun (damn that game was fun).

    --
    Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
  3. First CG movie by lawpoop · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The Last Starfighter was the first move with CG special effects. The plot is that an arcade video game is a training simulator for starfighter pilots, and one was accidentally sent to earth. Very geeky ;)

    --
    Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
    -- Pablo Picasso
  4. Re:Come on... by 1u3hr · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I'm glad you liked it. But come on. You know it really was a ripoff of Star Wars.

    And how was Star Wars original in any way?

  5. Forget The Last Starfighter: The Musical by Matarick · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Shop smart, shop S-Mart.
    Only if there would be a run on off-Broadway. That would be worth my $40 in bus fare.

  6. I watched it 5 times in a month! :-P by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Still, the story differs a lot from Starwars. In starwars, Luke is the descendant of a race of supernatural warriors.

    In Last Starfighter, the guy is simply a good space pilot because he trained (read: videogame addict :-P )

    Some elements were kinda unrealistic, but I still liked the movie. Maybe because it portrays the fantasy of every teenager: You play videogames, and now you have the chance to save the universe.

    (somehow reminds me of typical teen fantasies in anime shows like Love Hina, Tenchi, Chobits etc - is that why these shows are favorites? fulfilling a secret fantasy?)

    1. Re:I watched it 5 times in a month! :-P by Comrade64 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What would Joseph Campbell say about the use of myth in these movies? I don't know, but similar to the parent post I would say that they all run a similar theme. SW, Matrix, and the Last Starfighter all show a young man in a coming of age moment trying to figure out the world and realizing, thankfully, that its a bigger place than he thought and that he has an inportant role to play. There is a learning phase, practise/mistake phase. Meet the bad guy phase, and then eventually defeat the bad guy phase. Within all of this you sprinkle in things that bring a human element to the character and let the audience identify with the character. That's what I think. Or maybe this is just a phase.

      --
      If you are reading this, then you are one of those people whom I just can't take seriously.
  7. Re:Troy! by ImaLamer · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Phil's death is still something I can't really believe. Someone who made us all laugh that much didn't deserve to go the way he did.

    But, on a lighter note... If you like Hartman, get his SNL "Best Of". Granted, it doesn't have classics such as him playing Clinton when he smashes the podium as he learns of 'Spock' endorsing Tsongas, but it has his audition. (BTW, if you have the script for this sketch, please submit it to this site. It's one of my all time favorites.)

    He told everyone that he could do, say 100, different dialects and accents but when they name easy ones he says; "Sorry, I can't do that one, next". And proceeds not to be able to do any.

    --
    Get your Unix fortune now!
  8. its awesome by waspleg · · Score: 2, Interesting

    i've watched it at least 3 times since its been on HBO this month

    death blossom = fucking awesome

    anyone know what kind of hardware they used to render those scenes?

    is there soem reason we can't play 3d arcade games using them now 15 years later with bad ass nvidia and ati cards?