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The Last Starfighter--The Musical!
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..."
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I liked that movie!
Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such other nature films as "Earwigs, Ew." and "Man Vs Nature... The Road To Victory".
Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such other medical films as "Mommy, What's On That Man's Face?" and "Alice Doesn't Live Anymore".
Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You might remember me from such self-help videos as "Smoke Yourself Thin", and "Get Confident, Stupid.".
Welcome to the Knowledgeum, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such automated information kiosks as "Welcome to Springfield Airport" and "Where's Nordstrom?" While you're enjoying our Hall of Wonders, your car unfortunately will be subject to repeated break-ins and... [Fades]
Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such educational films as "Two Minus Three Equals Negative Fun" and "Firecrackers: The Silent Killer".
I'm actor Troy McClure. You might remember me from such TV series as "Buck Henderson, Union Buster" and "Troy and Company's Summertime Smile Factory". Today I'm here to tell you about "Spiffy.", the 21st century stain remover. Let's meet the inventor, Dr. Nick Riviera.
etc...
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
This play won't go anywhere either.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
...just have my beta unit go watch it, and tell me about it later.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Let Phil Hartman live in peace, Jesus Christ. We can only ressurect him from the dead every so-often for obscure roles!!! He's still recovering from News Radio.
A truely classic movie.
Even by today's standards the CGI isn't too bad.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
...that there is no God.
Anonymous Cowards generally receive no replies because you're a coward and I'm a bitch
or here
or google
Oh and I need more characters per line
I smell a Tony...
I thought the Simpsons episode that had the Musical Planet of the Apes was just hyperbolic satire.
I guess I was wrong...
Yes, both movies are Scifi (space, aliens, etc)... but where exactly does The Last Starfight qualify as a ripoff of Star Wars?
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.
It's no star wars ripoff. WTF is the OP talking about? It had a decent plotline and was fun to watch, which is a lot more than you can say about star wars 1,2, and 6, and probably 3.
It has acting and writing at a level that George Lucas can only dream about.
Yeah, it's a genre film, but so was battlestar galactica.
Storm theatre serious artist #1: Damage report!
Storm theatre serious artist #2: Our credibility is shot! Our theatre is a laughing stock! What do we do now?
[dramatic pause]
Storm theatre serious artist #1: We die.
======================================
Writers get in shape by pumping irony.
spaceballs, the musical!
i can see it now, opening night, the helmets glistening under the lights. ahhh...
i predict it will come out the same year as history of the world, part II
Who knows; maybe it sounds like a Wil Wheaton role :)
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Me: "Oh no, we can't get tickets! What do we do?"
***Eye piece swings over friend's eye***
My Friend: "We die."
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
At least they didn't beat the Last Starfighter into a bloody, over-merchandized pulp with ever-increasingly mediocre sequels. As a result, the Last Starfighter is singularly better than all the Star Wars movies combined.
Centauri shoots first.
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-- INSERT --
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
In the 80's everything that was science fiction was considered to be a Star Wars ripoff.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
It doesn't bother me they're making a musical. A musical is more a homage to the original film than it is a ripoff or sequel or anything derivative. Unlike Star Wars, which has been driven into the ground and is now a mere shadow of the greatness it once was.
If you think about it, taking a sci-fi movie such as TLS to the stage will probably test the cutting edge in theatrical and lighting effects. This would be very challenging. I would love to see this just to see if they're capable of pulling it off convincingly.
As for TLS being a rip-off of Star Wars, that's BS. Star Wars is as derivative of dozens of other films that came before it. The two movies may have shared some plot similarities, but they both had their cheesy moments.
However, IMO, the cinematography in many scenes in The Last Starfighter is far better than Star Wars. The trailer park scenes were brilliantly shot. The acting and character development was superlative and nowhere near as pressured as Star Wars.
I think the two movies are really dramatically different in their approach. Star Wars whisked you off to a far-away place where you vicariously watched someone else save the world. Whereas The Last Starfighter brought the battle to Earth and make the viewer feel like it could really happen to him - it was much more realistic.
If you haven't seen The Last Starfighter in awhile, rent it and watch it again. It holds up better than the original Star Wars now.
And how was Star Wars original in any way?
Mostly I'm pissed the submitter pointed out it was a Star Wars ripoff, because I never caught on to that when I was a little kid, and now that he mentions it it's really blatant. :)
But I still think this is a fun movie to catch on TV. I mean, yeah, it's really cheesy, but does this deserve the Road House treatment? It probably has the best "lizard guy in human mask gives stirring speech to guy from trailer park that's secretly a great space pilot" scene I've seen, although the one in The Wedding Planner comes pretty close.
Oh, man. Now that I think about it... the second-in-command lizard guy whose eyepiece thing closes after every line he has? The scene with all the Gunstar pilots that's a direct, totally unapologetic ripoff of the Death Star briefing in Star Wars? That half-bald badguy leader that practically breaks a tooth chewing so much scenery? Aaaaugh! You're killing my childhood, Slashdot!
(As a sidenote, I always thought somebody should make a Last Starfighter videogame today, on the latest 3d hardware, that exactly mimcs the really stylized CGI from the movie. Say what you will, those scenes still look cool.)
I agree with the other guy. It's not a Star-Wars ripoff.
I don't know why EVERYTHING with a well-armed
space hotrod in it has to be considered a Star-Wars ripoff.
Geezus Christ.. Is STAR WARS all the SF you people know?
Get a life.. wait.. on second thought, maybe you HAVE a life
and that's why you don't know anything about SF.
Ok. GET RID of your life.. Cancel those party plans and
stay home reading E.E. "Doc" Smith "Lensman" novels. Then
play some "SpaceWar" and rethink the StarWars ripoff question.
Shop smart, shop S-Mart.
Only if there would be a run on off-Broadway. That would be worth my $40 in bus fare.
It wasn't a ripoff of Star Wars, any more than Star Wars is a ripoff of every mythic story that came before it. That's silly.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I thought I would take this moment to mention a play that was here in Toronto last year called Evil Dead: The Musical.
I am not one for musicals. But this was godamn funny. With such musical numbers as What The Fuck Was That? and (All Of The Men In My Life Keep Getting Killed By) Candarian Demons, you really can't go wrong.
I hope to see it again.
Just because you don't like rap, country, theatre, opera, or galleries doesn't mean the people that do fit into whatever typecast you want them to be in. I personally love to go to the theatre here in town, especially the small ones. Some of the best gut splitting humor is in plays, and it's a great way to support your local economy, and meet interesting people in other walks of life.
Typecasting people that enjoy certain arts is the same bs as people that typecast me as antisocial because I like technology. I assure you that most folks at plays aren't snooty, and like a raunchy bit of humor as much or more than the next. Most of the folks I've met at plays are pretty open minded, educated, and highly interested in freedom of speech issues.
Still, the story differs a lot from Starwars. In starwars, Luke is the descendant of a race of supernatural warriors.
:-P )
In Last Starfighter, the guy is simply a good space pilot because he trained (read: videogame addict
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?)
> If she had some Force juice in her blood, it was dormant and
> undetectable (as per the plan).
It's exactly that "force juice" in hre blood that is a BIG part of the problem.
Leia was in Vader's direct custody for quite some time in ANH. With hardly a doubt, she had to undergo a medical examination at some point during her time in custody; if only to determine just how far they could go in extracting the location of the rebel base from her. (After all, it wouldn't do if she turned out to have an allergy to the truth serum the torture droid uses, and dies from a histamine reaction.)
Even if Leia wasn't an active force user, it *IS* explicitly stated, in ROTJ, that she has the potential. And THAT means she has a high midichlorian count. And THAT shows up on a simple blood test.
Remember, Vader is taking a PERSONAL interest in this case. And he KNOWS that he has at least one long-lost child out there. (He expressed no surprise when Palpatine informed him that the "son of Skywalker" was out and about.) The guy's not stupid. Where there's one, there could easily be more. And he's always on the lookout for a new force-user to help him usurp the emperor... no reason a girl wouldn't do as well as a boy.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
.... was nothing more than a ripoff of Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress", Lucas and his fanboys have no business in the world complaining about "The Last Starfighter", or anything else, ripping off Star Wars.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
Wait a minute... Statue of Liberty... THAT WAS OUT PLANET! You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Damn you all to hell!
He woulda been perfect in a musical production of The Last Starfighter. Ah well, hopefully he's watching from somewhere up in the stars.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
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?
- Tattoine is a clone of Arrakis
- The Moisture Farm the Lars' run is right out of Dune.
- Luke is a dumb whiny kid at the beginning who grows up to be a leader in the rebellion and overthrows the evil emperor; Paul is a dumb whiny kid at the beginning who grows up to lead the Fremen and overthrow the evil emperor.
- Luke finds Obi-Wan in the desert and learns the ways of the Jedi from him; Paul finds Stilgar in the desert and learns the ways of the Fremen from him.
- Paul's Voice; Luke's Jedi Mind tricks. Paul's mental Sight; Luke's Jedi Vision. Paul's weirding ways, Luke's jedi fighting. Crysknife - a knife from a worm's tooth; Light Saber - like a saber-toothed tiger
- Do you really think the sandworm in RoJ isn't from Dune?
There is almost nothing in SW that isn't taken right out of Dune.The main computer used for TLS was a Cray XMP... one of the first (double headed) Cray machines outside a govt installation. There was a DEC VAX 782, a double headed VAX, that fed the Cray - there wasnt a really good way to work on the Cray directly. Digital Productions, the animation company,also used a farm of Evans and Southerland PS300s for digitizing/modeling and IMI 500s for motion. A couple RasterTech boxes were also used as frame buffers for test images. A specialized film printer was also used - one originally developed for Tron.
The same hardware was used on a number of other films from that era (2010, Ice Pirates, Labyrinth, etc) and numerous commercials.
The IMI 500 was a UNIX box and the VAX ran Interactive's Unix On VMS. The Cray had a small permanent on-site support staff to keep it alive.... along with some BIG AC units.
DP was bought by Omnibus Computer Graphics in 1986. Shortly afterwards Omnibus bought Robert Able Associates, thus merging 3 of the top 5 computer animation houses of the time.... and promptly went bankrupt. BofA had a 11mil loan on the Cray, and discovered that Cray had one in storage they couldnt unload for $3mil. They found out the landlords had taken the keys and the security company stopped sending guards 'cause of non-payment. This being the neighborhood where the LA Riots were several years later, BofA immeadiately sent a truck and crew to yank out the Cray.... Some of the animators pleaded with the workers to let it run just an hour more so they could complete some pieces...
Btw, Omnibus was the first commercial company not doing network development to have an Internet connection. Of course back then it wasnt called the Internet.
its a bit odd to have lots of 20-somethings tell me how much they loved that movie... i still remember creating the short proof-of-concept animation that got DP the job.
And Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is based on Wagner's ring cycle and the Norse myths before it.
That doesn't change the fact that execution of the idea was more important than the degree of originality. Some of the most original ideas are also the least accessible to mainstream audiences.
In the case of Star Wars, the execution was very well done indeed, at least for Ep. IV and V. IV is very rough around the edges technically, but in a very endearing homebrew way that has been lost in modern CGI filmmaking.