The armada will break through the frontier here and reach Ryloss in 20
clicks. Squadrons of deck fighters will precede the mothership.
Squadrons? How many squadrons? It isn't the number of squadrons that
concerns me. It's this communication turret that sends out the commands to the deck fighters,
which enables them to act as one during the fight. Wait a second.
We knock out the turret to get the fighters, but to get the turret,
we gotta get through the fighters. We're dead. I'll have it
all figured out by the time we reach the frontier.
What's that? The frontier.
It's two Dads. One Movie. It's the podcast where two middle aged
dads sit around and shoot the about the movies of the 80s and 90s.
Here are your hosts, Steve Paulo and Nick Brianna.
Hello, everybody. It's another episode of 2Dads. One movie.
I am Steve. And I'm Nick. And today we're Talking about the 1984 science fiction
film the Last Starfighter, which was a major part
of my childhood, but something, Nick, that you hadn't seen till now.
Not seen it until. Yeah, until I watched it recently. So I'm looking forward to
talking about this one. This will be interesting. This could be a good, good way
to look over at, you know, what is it like to look back at one
of these movies that clearly, you know, is dated, is very much a product of
its time in many, many different ways. But, you know, had an impact on me
and I know other people around our age who saw it when we were little.
I probably saw this for the first time when I was 6 years old or
so. And then, you know, to be, to look back on it with fresh eyes.
Does it hold up? Does it not? We will explore it and we will find
out. So yeah, that's pretty much. That's pretty. Usually we take some time
to talk about our. How, you know, our history with the film, but that's basically
it. Nick had never seen it and it was a major part of my childhood.
I probably watched it 20, 30 times, just in elementary school. So let's dive
into just the facts about the Last Starfighter. Rated PG.
It came out on July 13, 1984. Part of that amazing run
of 1984 summer films that really, you should look into it. There's ridiculous number
of movies that were amazing that year. Running time of 100 minutes.
Directed by Nick Castle and written by Jonathan R. Battwell, starring Lance
Guest and Hollywood mainstay for many years, Robert Preston.
Most people our age might not remember Robert Preston. Our parents probably more
Familiar with Robert Preston scores. Rotten tomatoes 76%.
This game, this had a significantly. This was a very well received sci fi movie
at the time. I think the world was a bit. On Star Wars Fever.
There was kind of a lot of Star Trek movies going on. I think Star
Trek 3 came out the same summer. So the, the world was prepped for sci
fi. Tron had been just a couple years before that. There was a lot of
kind of, you know, this was a good genre for mainstream
movies at the time and the critics, critics really enjoyed it. It does not fare
so well in IMDb with a 6.7, which isn't terrible, but it's definitely
kind of a mediocre score. It did not win any awards,
although Robert Preston was nominated for best Supporting Actor at the
Saturn Awards in 1985 on a budget of $15 million,
which for 19 kind of a lot of money, it pulled
in just 28.7 million at the box office. Therefore, you know, was,
if not not a flop, but not really a success either. Kind of a disappointing
box office take for the Last Starfighter.
So let's dive into the movie itself. And I gotta say, so I
have not seen this. It's probably been about five years or so since I watched
it last. And for some reason I hadn't even really thought about it until watching
it this time through. I think in my opinion, and I can't wait to hear
your opinion, Nick. The theme song, like the theme of this
movie has no business being as good as it is. It sounds like very triumphant
and it sounds like a mix between Star wars and Superman.
It's a very interesting sort of. Yeah, a lot of horns, a lot of fanfare,
a lot of bombast. And it's a really fantastic song and I think sets the
tone for the film very well. Yeah, I actually,
it's funny, I. I did. I normally don't look into who did the score,
but it was one that I thought, oh, this is good enough. It's worth seeing
if he did anything. And of course it's somebody who's worked a lot as a
composer, but not anything that I really recognize, but very effective. And as a
kid, I mean, that's the kind of thing that gets you. That's the. Yeah,
those are the tones that hit you that let you know there's a hero in
action. So when you looked into Craig Safen's background, you didn't
notice what he's most famous for as a composer. I. It might be something I'm
not. What was it he did he did the score, not the theme song,
but the score for every single episode of the sitcom Cheers.
Oh. It's actually the majority of his work.
Interesting. All right, well, hey, I mean,
that's. It's steady work, right? Exactly. I just want to
comment. I know the last movie we did, Point Break, had a budget
of $24 million, was made seven years later than this.
This movie had a budget of $15 million. Right.
I think we need to investigate money laundering because I have no idea
how they spent $15 million on this movie. There was a lot of, you know,
I think, I think any kind of computer animation just cost a ton in the
early to mid-80s. So, yeah, it was very much the.
It's funny, I actually have an opinion about the special effects we'll get into that
probably does not match yours, but I have a reasoning behind it. Let's just dive
into the concept here. So we open up on a trailer park in
California somewhere in sort of, I'm guessing Southern, but kind of rural Southern California.
It's got everything looks like tan suede, which. Which if you grew up in almost
anywhere in California, you know what the tan suede hills of summer look like.
And that's where we're at, a trailer park. We see all these kind of people,
a lot of, lot of older folks and, you know, there's this manner
of sort of passing information from one person where they just yell to the next
person next to her, hey, Edna, do this. Hey, you know, Otis, do that.
Like, whatever. So we're introduced to a few characters and they're all looking for Alex.
They keep calling, oh, Alex, I need Alex's help with this and Alex help with
that. Who is Alex? Alex is our hero. Where is he? He's playing a
video game and it's, you know, it's a stand up arcade cabinet, like was
common, you know, back in the 80s. This was before the NES came out.
So this wasn't something, you know, that would have been the home. You know,
the Atari existed, but the home video games hadn't really.
Weren't really a huge thing. Video games generally in this time in the 80s were
arcade games. And so there's this machine called Starfighter and he's, he's there
playing it. And the first thing I noticed was the voice coming from
the game was better than any voice I've
heard from any arcade game. Oh, sure. It was very clear. The digitized.
Oh my God. It's not like, you know, welcome to Drone.
Like, you know, it's, it's video Games back then sounded like RFK Jr.
Like, they didn't sound like, you know, this clear and crisp. So already
I'm sort of calling, you know, shenanigans on the. On the filmmakers, on that.
But he's basically playing this game and his
little brother runs up and is like literally pointing to stuff to shoot at.
Yeah, dude, shoot at that over there from below. And it's like.
So I don't know if you're a video game player, but that's my favorite thing
right when I'm playing is for someone to just be putting their finger on the
screen and telling me what to do. Absolutely. Like, literally he seems like he was
like touching the screen and it was just a very. A very appropriate sort of
encapsulation of what it's like to have a little brother as you're playing video games.
For sure, as two men with little brothers, we know this. But, you know,
I think too, this is an. This is a moment I want to stop and
go, Louis, the little brother, I think he's supposed to probably be about like 10
or 11. That's out of the ballpark. That I was guessing. Probably about right?
Yeah. And he looks it. I hope not younger based on other things.
Right? That's true. That's a good point. But he looks it. But the
actor they have playing Alex, Lance Guest, he's supposed to be like 17
or 18. Dude looks like he's 25, which I feel like was a standard thing
that happened in the 80s where all the teenage characters ended up being played by
like, adults. Yeah, and really like old looking adults. For sure. For sure.
The scenery of the trailer park where it's kind of made apparent early
on that Alex is kind of the guy that everyone asks when they need something
at the trailer park and they're looking for him. And not
a bad setup if you're a kid growing up in that trailer park and then
there's a sick convenience store right there with a big arcade game
outside. I mean, you spend your could be the worst time there, right? Yeah,
but he's supposed to be this, you know, we get this idea he. So he's
got this girl that he's. At least. We're not 100% sure what the relationship is
off the bat. Her name is Maggie, but, you know, it seems like they're together
in some sense right off the bat. And she is meeting up, you know,
some of their friends looks like or people they know. It's hard to say they're
friends with Alex, but they roll up in A pickup. And they're going to go
to the. To the. The lake. Silver Lake, to go picnic or whatever for the
day. And, you know, Alex can't go with them because
he has to stay and help maintenance around the trailer park. That's, like, his job.
It sounds like he's kind of like. The Mr. Miyagi, I guess, in a way.
Yeah, a little bit. But these people don't like him. Like, I don't know,
were these friends of his, because they're just ragging on him, making fun of him.
It's very odd. It's an odd relationship that these characters seem to have. Well,
I think we're. We're still living. College boy was a big insult.
So I think he's kind of a college boy to what? You're too good
for our. Our town. Yeah. Our small town that's 20 minutes from LA.
He talks about wanting to not go to City College and do whatever, and it's
like. Okay, we get that part. But if he's supposed to be this, like,
kind of. Yeah. Nerdy college boy thing, and he's playing a video game, which is.
God, what a nerdy thing to do. He's far too handsome to be nerdy,
and he's too tall and he's too athletic and his girlfriend's too pretty. Like,
it's. None of it really works, right. Exactly. You know when you watch, like,
Revenge of the Nerds, like, those guys were made up to look nerdy.
Like, they looked. This guy doesn't. This is. This is Rachel Lee Cook, and she's
all that. This is like. You know, if you just put him in a tank
top and a cowboy hat and all these girls would be fawning over him.
Right? Yeah. If you're a nerd, you don't have, like, a cool pickup truck full
of cool teenagers to hang out with. Right? Exactly. They were like, invite, like,
waiting for you to come and you can't go. Oh, man. Looked like such a
fun time. Yeah. So his friends take off. His friends.
He's like, I can't go. I gotta stay back here and whatever.
And then this was a very relatable part of the movie
to me when his girlfriend comes back and saying, like,
hey, you just missed this whole day and you said you had stuff to
do. It looks like you've just been playing this video game the whole time.
That is true. I mean, you know, we saw him walk up to it just
then. Yeah, but, you know, I could get. But he's kind of a dick to
her, like, right? Away like, oh, you got a ride from somebody. Well, she's supposed
to walk back. Like, would it have been better? Because he asked where'd everybody else
go? Oh, they went to a movie. Oh. But old Jack Blake goes ready to
take you home. And it's like, would you rather she was still at the movies?
It's a very weird thing. He really is quite rude to her. And I don't.
Yeah. And none of the surrounding roads that led to the trailer park looked safe
for pedestrians or bicycles. Sidewalks. Yeah. Like a little highways and stuff.
Yeah. Not, not good at all. But as they're sitting there talking,
he's sort of casually playing the game. Yeah. And then, and then, you know,
Maggie, she looks and she realized, oh, Alex, you're near the high score. Which,
like, kudos to Maggie for memorizing the high score table on that game and knowing
what the high score is. You're finally going to beat ass.
But it's like so, so, so she calls out and I
think it's Otis, this older black gentleman who clearly like runs maybe the coffee shop
convenience store thing. And one of the first person people to realize like,
like, oh, he's going for the record. He's going for that. And he starts calling
these people from the trailer park. Yeah. In to check it out. And Lewis,
who's asleep is apparently late enough that Lewis has gone to sleep. He gets up
and runs out. And everybody is so excited that this guy might
break a high score on this game.
These people were all born in the depression like this. These are 60,
70 and 80 year olds in 1984. What the hell do they care about
a video game? Nothing at all. No sense at all. Also,
video game high score. Maybe it's changed since then.
My experience with it is always frustration because whatever
establishment was running the arcade games would just power them down at the
end of every night so the scores reset the next day. So it's not keeping
all your high scores. But it was really funny with the. Everyone gathered around him
like, go, go, go. And they all know what's happening. It's as if everyone there
spends two hours a week just playing that game. They're all talking, the command ship
is coming and this like old woman is like, alex, look, the command ship.
It's like, like I can't get my dot. It's a bunch of dots.
I mean it's vector graphics. Wasn't.
This game wasn't representative of what games
exactly looked like at the time. Right. It was a.
Definitely a souped up version. More advanced. Yes. But it was still, you know,
basically, you know, shapes and. Right. Yeah, it's like Vector gravity.
Ever played the old Atari game Tempest? That was a common one in the arcades.
It was sort of like these little polygonal figures that moved around a wire
framed kind of, you know, level. And it kind of looked like that,
but. Yes, but it was much more advanced. Clearly these were just animations that were,
you know, created for the film. And that. That way. They look that way.
If this had been a game in 1984, this would have been like the most
advanced arcade game anywhere. Yeah. Which is maybe
kind of the point. Right. As we learn, you know, what the video game actually
was, maybe it makes sense if it's alien technology that it would be that advanced.
But yeah, these people are just so excited. The whole scene gets super intense about,
you know, can you do it? And the amount of screaming, hooting and hollering that
occurs. And even the says record breaker as like, you know, a title
it gives him after he breaks the record, which is like, did he beat the
last level? Like, what did he get the highest score? Like, it's all very kind.
It looks like he was approaching a million points, but then it never really.
Showed 1 million points, which seems like that sounds like maybe the point.
But. Yeah, anyway, so it's some old lady El's command ship.
And then Otis, who's one of my favorite characters from the. The trailer park,
as they're walking away, everybody's going home. He goes, that boy is going
to go places. It's like, you know,
little does Otis. Know, like the pride of the trailer park, the record breaker
on the arcade machine. Yeah, very funny.
Alex and his girlfriend are kissing, right? And the little brother
sees it out the window. And I think the little brother goes up
to the venetian blinds and is just so disrespectful to them. He separates them
by like a foot and a half, which makes me
cringe to see it. But his comment on watching his brother making out with his
girlfriend, his very younger brother, he goes, diarrhea. Just like.
I don't know, I never used that. Like puke, maybe. Would have been like
puke. Like, would have been more diarrhea. Sounded so strange.
But yeah. So his mom comes home from work and
she has mail for him and, you know, so and so brought this
to the diner because he knew you'd want to see it right away. It's like,
why didn't he deliver it to the trailer park? But whatever. And it is apparently
a denial of a student loan that's sort of the thing which it's like,
I didn't know they denied anyone for student loans. I got to be honest with
you. By the 90s, they were handing out student loans like cookies. I mean,
this is why we're in the student loan debt crunch. We're in as a country.
But apparently Alex does not qualify for a student loan.
And so he is going to be stuck either working at the trailer park or
going to City college. Quote from his mom with your friends. Yeah. Slogan.
These guys do not seem cool. No, not at all. So he's. He's feeling.
He's feeling like he doesn't have many places to go. He doesn't have a lot
of options in his life. So a car rolls
up to the trailer park. Yeah. The machine, the arcade machine
is kind of going nuts. Kind of glitches out. Yep. And yeah.
And then this car rolls up to the trailer park, which is a
DeLorean wagon. Yeah. It's either. I couldn't tell.
DeLorean hearse. It's either a station wagon from
DeLorean or it is just a cor. That's had a bunch of like cardboard
stapled to the. Glued to the sides of it. It's very odd looking vehicle.
It's not even clear initially whether Alex gets into the front seat or the back
seat or what. There seems to be. Maybe there's three rows of seats. It's really
quite hard to tell what's going on. But he starts speaking. He meets a man
named Centauri. This is Robert Preston's character. The way he enunciates
is very old Hollywood. Aha. My boy, you were here. Aha. I knew it.
I knew. They told me Centauri. They told Centaur he wouldn't find him, but I
found him. Aha. And it's just like very. God, I don't know. It just feels
like you were watching an old Bob Hope movie or something. And it's got that
feel to it. I like the way he's dressed is like kind of classic
newsman style. Like he should have a press thing sticking out of his
hat. And then. Yeah. Speaking in the third person, I mean, was kind of revolutionary
for this movie because we were very early in Ricky Henderson's career at that
time. That is true. And you know, so subtle tribute to Ricky Henderson. Must have
been. That must have been. The inspiration was 84. Was that the year he stole
130 bases or was it before then? Later.
Anyway. Yeah. I like that he's talking in third person. Does not.
I Would not peg him as a third person guy. Although if he's an alien,
he. I don't know how you humans do this. Right. That's true. He's, he's a,
a Rylon, I think is how they refer to their, their species
and, and, and impersonating a human to, to kind of
get what he needs from Alex. And, and so he lets Alex know.
Well, he doesn't really tell him a lot. He basically invites Alex into the car
and Alex gets in the car, which. Bad Alex.
He shakes the hand of someone shrouded in shadow and
it kind of shocks him. And that person then gets out of the car,
the doors close, and Centauri drives off at 300 miles
per hour, we're told, which. I don't care what kind of alien you are,
what kind of technology you have, you can't stay on roads that windy at 300
miles an hour. But whatever. Yeah, those tires aren't going to hold up. It's really.
Yeah, maybe if they're under inflated a bit. But. Yeah, but Centauri tells him basically
like, you know, that he's got this opportunity.
He wants it to be a surprise, but he's going to take him somewhere.
And they go through a tunnel and it looks like they're going to crash into
a barricade. It's a street blocking barricade. But of course that's when
the back bumper opens up very much like Eagle 5 and Spaceballs and the
thrusters appear at the back of the car and they shoot off into the sky
and suddenly Alex is obviously involved in what would be
the most terrifying kidnapping of all time. This is a very scary thing.
And, and pre. Back to the Future, I think people would be a little more
wary of deloreans and not think that it's something cool that
they need to walk back to. The future would. Yeah. Would take place the next
year. So, so it didn't, it didn't actually, it hadn't,
hadn't like regained into the cultural zeitgeist the way it does with, with, with that
film. Yeah, yeah. So alex. So the DeLorean turns into a spaceship
and then they're, they're cruising and they end up, you know, chosen by land
and going through those cool corridors and everything and parking. And Alex
is being spoken to by someone who's seemingly friendly. Right.
It's, it's like a female alien of this race where all their heads
kind of look like, like white Klingons, like, right. A little bit. They all kind
of have these bald, like a Little pointed, like. Yeah, they're almost like two.
Like, my brain is too big to. Yeah, they're like butts on their
heads. It's all like. Everybody on this planet is like, as John Lithgow's hair,
basically. Yeah, they're all John Lithgow. I will say, on the. On the
trip to. This is Rylos, by the way. We've taken. Alex has gone
to the planet Rylos. But, you know, on our way there, I. I made a
comment that, like, to myself, wrote a note down. I was like, I don't think
these special effects are terrible. I think they're okay because they lean
into the cartoonish video game sort of style.
And so if you are willing. And this is obviously definitely part of it,
where it's like, this hearkens back to this has been in my brain for so
long. But it's like, if I just accept that this movie's half a video game,
it works out fine. It's not. Trying to look real is kind of
my take now. Maybe it was trying to look real, in which case they
do a terrible job of that. But if they're trying to look kind of video
game ish, kind of cartoonish kind of thing, they actually look pretty cool. It's kind
of like Tron in that way, where it's like, I feel like they look pretty
decent. But I would love to hear your take on, because this is the first
scene where we get real special effects. This travel from Earth to Ryos. We get
a bunch of the special effects of the style that this film will give us
over and over again. Again. Yeah, I mean, like, the animated stuff, it doesn't look
really, like, pixelated or anything. It looks pretty clean. I think
they kept the designs simple so that they don't run into issues with
the, you know, having to render these detailed things.
But, yeah, I mean, it looked like the video game. I. The special effects,
it's from 1984. I'm not going to hold special effects against it.
I do love the models and the practical effects and things. And I feel like,
like, a lot of what made Star wars so cool was
the way they did that kind of stuff. I don't know,
you know, dollar for dollar, what do you get doing computer graphics versus what
you get doing practical effects at this time? Because it was probably very expensive to
do what they were doing. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean,
it looked fine to me. I wasn't like, whoa, I'm in a video
game. I was just kind of like, yeah, 1984. I feel like
it must have been a thing where this was probably just as expensive as
doing models and practical effects, but far faster. Right.
Because you're not actually having to build the models or set them up on sound
stages or do whatever. Right. You're able to do it all in. In. You know,
I'm sure it was computers, the size of rooms at that point. But like,
you know, it probably was about the same price, but it probably didn't take as
long. And that's, that's maybe where they, you know, to kind of put their money
was like, let's just make. We can do this faster. Yeah, you know, we can
get this. Because it's like this was a year after Return of the Jedi came
out. Like I said, Star Trek 3 came out the same year. There's a lot.
You know, Ghostbusters came out the same year. Obviously has much better special effects.
In this movie. Those special effects hold up much better. But we're intentionally
more based around, you know, there were some projections and stuff of that, but there
were a lot of practical effects in Ghostbusters. This movie had very few.
There were a couple. Most of the like really special effects part were like computer
generated though. Yeah, it's like they, they had really good makeup
effects. So I think one thing this movie does a good job
of is there's a good variety of different types of kind of alien heads
and faces that are, that are shown around and the makeup effects are, are pretty
good. But yeah, there aren't a lot of model type things. Stop motion,
none of that. No, everything that's like. Yeah. Machinery, you know, that isn't
stationary. Obviously, if it's something that is built on a soundstage on a set,
that's one thing. But anything that has to move around that is like a starship
or even like the base being approached or missiles or any of that.
So that is all purely computer generated. It all looks very clean, which is like
not. You know, that's one of the reasons Star wars works so well is that
everything looks aged, you know, and dirty and used. Right. That looks like a lived
in universe. Whereas here we fall into the more Star Trek trap of
everything looks way too clean and modern and sort of whatever. But yeah,
so this was the first kind of part where we really see that. So Alex
is now on this base. He's being spoken to in languages he doesn't understand.
Centauri is the only one who speaks English.
And so every once in a while he bumps into Centauri as he's being like
led through these you know, different quarters he's being given. He, Alex is given a
uniform and a helmet. And he kind of has to go all through this whatever.
And Centauri's only when he can talk to shows up and kind of leaves over
and over again. All these people are just barking totally nonsensical alien language at him
until he gets to a point where I think the same woman that sort of
beckoned him to come out of the star car, that is a term they use
for it, by the way. It is a star car pins a little
thing under his lapel and suddenly everything
sounds like it's in English. And so he even says, oh, you can speak English.
No, no, no. Like you're just hearing it. You're hearing it in whatever language you
need to because of this little translator that's important. We're going to come back to
that later in the film. But yeah, but that, that is what we're told.
So now everybody's speaking English. There's no, there's literally like no more alien
language. I think throughout the entire movie. We get, we get like a hand.
There's no Jabba the Hutt shows up a couple times and we hear him speak
Hatiz a couple times. But no, this is like, this is it.
Like there's no more alien speaking. Because now everything's being translated for Alex and
in proxy, therefore for the audience. It's an interesting
thing that a filmmaker has to do in this situation where you need to show
the audience why you can now understand all these non
understandable characters. One of my favorites examples
being in, I think it's the Hunt for Red October and there's one of the
sub commanders and he's speaking in Russian and the camera kind of zooms close in
on his face while he's speaking right on his mouth. And then as it zooms
away, he's speaking in English. Just to show you. Okay, we switched over. Yeah,
my all time favorite one. And they do it multiple times in this movie.
In Inglourious Basterds, there's always a reference of the
character as to why they're switching to speaking English.
I think at the beginning the Nazi guy who shows
up at the farm says something about my English is much better than my
French. Would you mind if I spoke to you in English? And they address it
directly, which I think is so clever because it's something that shows up in movies
so much over the years. And this way of doing it is actually a pretty
decent way of just like not disruptive. And now we know why he can understand,
but we know they're not actually speaking his language. Exactly.
And so he's able to meet and speak to not only these, these Lithgow headed,
you know, Rylons or whatever they are. He's able to speak to all these other
alien life forms that around because they're Lithgow headed. I think it's so good.
I love that. So he's able to speak to all these other alien life forms
and. And be able to understand them. So that. That way. Just the whole.
The communication part, we just can throw that aside now. Yeah, and do that.
So. Real quick. So what he finds out is he
has been recruited to. The Star League has recruited him to defend the frontier
against Zur and the code in Armada. This is the same plot as the game.
We learned that the game was actually a recruitment device
designed and planted by Centauri on Earth. Apparently multiple.
Because he mentions that this one was supposed to go to Vegas and instead ended
up at this trailer park in the middle of nowhere where he thought nothing would
ever come of it. But Logan, Alex of course shows this the most, the most
aptitude ever of a person doing this. And you know,
he, like, he wants him to stay and fight. There's an actual war going on.
He's being recruited into a military, you know, battle of these Starfighters. He has to
join these Starfighters and fight the Codan armada, whatever all that means. And he's like,
no, I'm a teenager and I want to go back to Earth and what the.
Like, this is not. I don't want to do this. This sounds dangerous. And he's
like, oh, of course it's not dangerous at all. At which point we get Zur
somehow tele. Not teleporting,
like, like holographically projecting his. Himself somehow
communicating with everyone by. By a tele. Yeah, holograph of his head floating
in the middle of this big room on the base. And he's able to.
To we find out that the leader of the Starfighters, it's his. He is Zur's
father. And so Zur is. Is a person who has abandoned his.
His planet, wants to come back in order to rule it. And so now
he's the big bad guy, but he's the former. He's formerly. You know,
he grew up the son of the leader of the good guys. Basically it's a
standard kind of, you know, sci fi story thing with a father and a son
who've. Who've had a split here. And so he. He tells him
that you know, I found your. Your master spy. And the first
of many scenes in this movie that were basically nightmare fuel for me as a
kid is that we see on the, on the, the telescreens there this another
lithgow headed freak getting his brain microwaved.
Basically. It's like this, like laser beam comes from above. He starts screaming
in obvious agony. And actually, if you notice the,
the, the makeup and everything on his head, it all starts melting. It's like they're
literally melting his head inside. Horrific. But that's Alex's
cue to be like, I'm out. This sucks. Well,
so, so before this and that, that scene I definitely made note of because that
was. That visual was pretty disturbing. Yeah. Back at home.
Because it kind of. When Alex is here and he's getting shown around and learning
the language back at home, his little brother Lewis. First of all, it shows
him pulling the Playboys out from under the mattress. Yeah,
it was at least if they. Were his or if they were Alex's. But I
think we later hear they were his. But it does seem at the beginning,
like, are these looking through Alex's? But. But they are his. They share a room.
The little brother who's like a little more grown than he.
Varsity Blues, how he has the little brother who's always doing those things.
It's kind of a funny character. But Alex's clone who was
in the DeLorean with him and got out was now kind of in his bed.
And I think the girlfriend went into that. Alex, you okay? Are you okay pretending
to sleep in. The bed, kind of moaning and. Yeah, so there's a lump that's
generally shaped like Alex, but when they pull it back or just he
pulls like. Everybody else leaves the room and the little brother does. No, no,
no, Nobody. Because none of the humans see this guy. He just sort of pulls
it to show a camera what he looks like now. And yeah, he's got this
pulsing. He's the see through skin that is pulsing with every breath.
It's like he's all lungs, right? Yes, yes, exactly.
He's like all lung. It's very, again, nightmare feel. Very terrifying to
see that. Yeah, that was tough to look at. I mean, kind of a cool,
like, conceptually, very cool idea.
Like you said. Get a good example of sort of the practical makeup type effects
and masking type effects they did in this movie. That was a really good effect.
That certainly still looks as kind of freaky and, and real as
it did back then. Still looked pretty impressive. Yeah. Yeah. So Alex, he's among
some other recruits, I guess. So there's just every variety
of alien head, plus him that are being talked to about their upcoming
mission. He ends up getting in kind of a shoving match with like a Zoidberg
looking guy. And,
and then they start, they're all pumped up and
they start this big victory or death, victory or death, victory or death chant.
No, thank you, Alex. He doesn't want to do this. Still no.
And he's come out. But this is when he meets Greg. Right. Is right
about this moment. He kind of bumps into somebody who looks like an iguana.
He's sort of a brown scaled lizard
man person. His name is Greg. He is a star navigator. See,
Alex has been recruited to be a star fighter. But the gun star ships also
have a star navigator. That way that's how they get around that. The video
game was on rails like a lot of games were back then. And your,
your controls were more about targeting your guns and less about moving your ship.
And this is how that's explained in the quote, real world of this universe is
that there is a second pilot that is actually moving the ship around.
And then the, the starfighters Alex's recruited position are
just controlling all of the weaponry targeting on board.
So more of a gunner than anything else. But he meets Greg and Greg is
super excited to meet him. And oh, I can't wait to go fight the code
in armada. And Alex is like, I don't want to do this. I want to
go home now. And they kind of do this thing too where they mention like,
hey, Earth's not part of the Star League. Centauri shouldn't have recruited him to begin
with. Yeah, I thought that was kind of funny and maybe a little prescient
for the current moment where it's like, we're not invited into the Star League,
dude. We're, we've, we've lost our Star League privileges. Everyone's seen what we do.
Greg literally says something like, Earth's not scheduled to be joining the Star League until
it matures. It's like, yeah, you're still waiting, pal. I love,
I do like Greg's turtle shell bowl cut that he has on top of his
head. That's a good look. Very interesting. Yeah. So I think that
Zor. So he had caught the master spy who tortures
and kills kind of on video there. Yeah. And then it seems
like he has another spy in the Star League area who
places an explosive right on. I don't know if it's their radar
system or what was that. Yeah. So basically, Zur and
the Kodan, who are another alien race from other planet. They are outside the
frontier. This is a shield of energy that surrounds all the systems in
the Star League. And they are outside of it. And he apparently knows some special
weapon that can cut a hole, basically, in the frontier and
allow people through. So they get to the point where they're trying to cut this
hole. It's taken them a long time. And they haven't done it big enough to
actually send their ship through their big control ship. But they can fire what they
call the meteor gun, which is literally like shooting these, like, massive asteroids.
Meteors, whatever. And they know the coordinates of the Starfighter base. That's something else Zoor
knows is like, I know the exact coordinates. I can aim this meteor gun directly
at Starfighter base, basically. So they do that and they
shoot five or six of these meteors. And if they. I don't know how many
light years they have to travel or whatever. But, you know, they get to.
They're approaching the base, at which point they turn on the automatic repulsor guns,
I think they say they call them. So it's like an automated turret to start
shooting down. You know, like a game. Asteroids. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And it's working fine
until. Yes. This mole inside the system, who we've seen a couple times,
ended up paying Centauri for recruiting Alex.
That was apparently their actual job. They place what literally just looks like a
plain old block of C4. Yeah. Kind of attached to. It's the gunnery control.
So it's these automated repulsor guns. That's what controls them. So when that
blows up. Up, they stop firing. And the last two or three asteroids actually
hit the Starfighter base and just frankly,
clean it. Like really a clean split. Really destroy
completely all the bunch of. Technology that they have. And they're
basically flinging rocks in their direction. That's what works, baby.
Hey, if it worked viable. If it worked for the bugs and starship troopers.
Yeah, it works for these guys. Yeah, that's right. But yeah. So basically,
yeah, there's Zur. We meet him briefly on the deck of
his command ship, which is a code in Commander. We meet the Codans. The.
This other race. They're a very wrinkly looking, scary group of
like alligator people or the hell they are. Cool makeup as well. They look pretty
cool. And the captain of the ship there is pretty cool dude. But Zur
is handed this. I forgot about this scepter that he has that he's
given. That really is a neat Looking like. I don't know if anybody listening
has played the video game Skyrim, but there is a weapon in it called the
Mace of Molog Bal. And it looks very much like this mace with the spikes
and then it's got a blade out the top and so very neat looking weapon.
And that's sort of his like, personal weapon. And also I think like, you know,
the, the mark of office, right, that he is going to be the emperor when
he comes back to take over Rylos. So he has this cool scepter. I'd forgotten
about it. It's very neat. But that's when they shoot the, the meteors as
they are continuing to cut into the frontier. The actual shield.
The scepter is funny because I think maybe one of the
codan was, was a little unimpressed by the scepter
and his big boom moment was, oh yeah,
there's like a five inch blade that comes out of the end of it.
It does not move. It doesn't do magic. I can't, I can't shoot. You know,
this is not the force like you or anything like that. It's just. Yeah,
well, there's a spiky part of. There's a big spiky, pretty spiky. It is a
very spiky mace. And then it has a little extra blade at the end,
but it's neat. This is not as cool as the Glaive from Kroll, but it's
still a pretty cool weapon of the era. I'll.
I'm guessing from lack of reaction from you, you haven't seen Crawl or haven't seen
Crawl. We'll get to that. Get that one on there. Holy smokes. Anyway,
so Alex has convinced Centauri to take him home. He doesn't want to do this.
He's going to go back. They land and apparently there's
car trouble. Like this shows Centauri having to do some
work on his star car. So Alex like, ah, it's only a couple more miles.
I'll walk. He starts heading off and Centauri says, here's a little,
little communicator if you, if you, if you change your mind, just tap the little
crystals and I'll come get you. And he's like, no, I don't want it.
Keep it, please. Just, you know, you're walking away from history here. Like just,
just hold on to it. He's like, okay. He does. At which point Centauri gets
in the car and drives off. So he could have absolutely driven. Alex walks home.
He gets to his room and he sees Lewis is asleep and he goes to
sit down on his bed because they have bunk beds. He's got the lower one
and of course the, the beta unit, the, the, the you know, person that is
been grown to look like him I guess. Right. Our all lung breathing
fellow. Yeah, he's there. And so they start chatting a bit and
in, in the meantime I think at this point this is when we've seen another
sort of gross looking alien has landed on the planet. And very
strange looking hammerhead shark,
piranha looking thing. It looks like a piranha with eyes kind of low on its
skull. Like it's very strange looking guy. We learned later they're called a Zando Zan
because nothing can have cool names in this movie. This is all like trying to
be stolen names of things. Cs and X's make things sound futuristic
for sure. Stick with that. Very, very, very much the case. But anyway,
Alex and the other unit both start talking to each other about you
know, Maggie like slapped Alex because the beta unit did something that she
didn't like or whatever. Anyway, it's, it's sort of a strange conversation. This is.
We've learned that they're out that they're Lewis's Playboys. By the way, he says Lewis,
go back to sleep or I'll tell mom about your Playboys. Yeah, yeah, right.
But yeah, so they're kind of go back forth and this is as Alex is
going to leave, he starts tapping the crys of context. Centauri is like come get
your buddy. Come get your beta unit. Get him out of here. I don't want
him here because I need to be here. Well, that's when the assassin attacks.
Yeah. And apparently they're very stinky. They make a lot of comments bad.
They smell that. You can smell them coming. I think this Xando Xan
looked a little bit like one of the pit monsters from army of Darkness.
It kind of had that vibe a little bit. Also a human now
I think about a human sized rancor actually kind of similar in the head.
Yeah, yeah. Which again that movie had just come out one year before so maybe
have very well influenced it. You only have so much in nature to draw from.
Okay. This guy already looks like a nautilus. This one already looks like a squid.
So. Exactly. So yeah. So Centauri arrives
and is able to, to dispatch this Xandoan.
Right, the assassin. Yeah, but he takes a shot. Doing. He takes a shot and
but. And he also lets him know like this isn't the last one. There's not
one of these guys like, this is. This is your life down here. I believe
he referred to them as an intergalactic hit beast. Not a hitman.
Not a hitman, a hit beast. See, they were, they were.
They were not misgendering the Xander back then. I like
it. Very progressive, this movie. So basically, Centauri and the Beta unit
convince Alex, you got to go back. Like, you're not safe here. If you go
defeat Zur or whatever, then this will all end. But until then,
they're going to keep coming and, you know, I'll be down, basically, I'll be down
here as bait and you'll be up there trying to, to fix this, right?
Yeah. And so, yeah, so they head back and when
they arrive, course Centauri's been gone, right. Since the attack, the meteor gun attack
on, on Starf fighter base or whatever. He had already been taking Alex
home. So the two of them have no idea what has happened. So as they
approach the base and Centauri is, you know,
bleeding out, basically, or whatever the alien version of that is. He's. He's hurt,
you know, from the shot he took in the assassin and he's trying to call
in. And now apparently part of the hangar still exists because he is able to
land his star car there. And, and, and he is met by
Grig, who again, kind of inexplicably, he survived. It seemed like
he was with all the other pilots who were told are all dead now.
All the other Gunstar ships are dead or, you know, destroyed. So there's
no other group of people to help fight, basically. But Grig
is there to, to, you know, greet Centauri and Alex as they show up up.
And it really looks like Centauri dies. Like he. He closes his eyes and sort
of slumps forward and it's like, oh, man, that's such a bummer. He's gone
now. Yeah. It's funny that when they arrive back at the kind of bombed out
space base and it looks like any normal Earth structure
that had been taken a heavy shelling and was still trying to operate where there's
like a hole in the wall and a pile of rubble, we're. We're ignoring the
fact that we need like 100%, like, like whole
integrity. Yeah. Like, you can't, you can't around be like, oh, there's a little leak
there. We got a breeze coming in from outside. I don't think they're in outer
space, though. I feel like they're on the planet. That was just the. Okay,
yeah, like, I feel like they're on the planet. It's just Zor knew exactly where
on Rylos that base existed and so how to shoot the rocks
or whatever to get them. So. But I think they are on the planet.
Whatever. Whatever the atmosphere of Rylos is made of. Apparently it's something humans can.
Can. Can breathe. Yeah, but. Yeah. So there's a funny
little moment in here, too. Somewhere in here, we flash back down to Earth to
where the Beta unit is starting to hear some funny things. And he's like,
you know, poking at his ear, whatever, and he goes to.
To take his own head off. We're not. No explanation
as to why or how this works, but he's able to take off his,
like, unscrew it. Basically. He puts it down on the desk, at which point it
becomes Lance Guest's head again. He's able to turn his head and talk. And Lewis
wakes up to see it and he's like, you know, Lewis, you're having a terrible
nightmare. Go back to sleep. Yeah, if he's having a nightmare, pal, like,
he would be asleep. Like, this is weird. That's a weird thing to say,
but that's. He looks out the window, his. His own hand turns
his head around to look out the window. He sees another ship land. Basically,
there's like a. Looks like a shooting star, but then it stops, right, and goes
90 degrees down. He's like. So he knows Anders and has come. And there's this
very funny moment after he turns his own head back around where he, with his
hand, grabs the bridge of his nose down on the desk and like, shakes his
head back and forth the way you would. Oh, this is just not another day
like this. Like, that's funny.
When Alex, now back in space,
is kind of being shown what his starfighter situation
will be by Greg, which is he's kind of sitting in like,
this gyroscope type chair which, you know, can turn in any
direction, which the guns turn along with it, while Greg, like you mentioned, is actually
navigating and he's. Like the pilot and Alex is there
to be the gunner, basically. Yeah. And I. And I think Greg is. Is established
at this point as just being a good ally, a good buddy, and he's.
I mean, he's kind of one of the only guys left. There's that. Yeah,
not a lot of options Greg makes.
He does the Don DeLuise laugh a lot in this movie where he's
like. Yeah, that's his standard. So a Little.
A little Spaceballs crossover. We get some deluise and happening
in this movie. Absolutely. I just wrote down terrible looking explosions,
so I'm not sure which of the explosions that was. So they do some like,
target practice with these little like drone type things that shoot out from
the ship itself to do targets. Oh, okay. Yeah. And then they're heading to the
frontier as Greg is explaining the situation to Alex. Finally,
it's like, yep, there's nobody left. We're it. You know, we got to do this
ourselves. And. And Alex's like, how are we gonna do that? He's like, well,
you know, we're just gonna do our best. You know, there's gonna be waves of
fighters and then we're gonna need to get to the capital ship, you know,
the command ship, and take it down. And he's like, well, how many fighters are
there? It doesn't even matter how many. The thing is, if they can all.
There's this turret. They keep calling it a turret, but it's more like an antenna
because it's a communications thing on the command ship. That's what worries me.
If we don't take that out, all of the fighter ships can work in unison.
They can all kind of work together. And that makes them that much harder to
defeat. Right. They'll be able to like, you know, really easily surround us. So we
need to take that out and knocks like, well, how do we go through the
ships to get to the turret without. We got to take the turret down to
get through the ships. Like, this is a, you know, we're lost here. And Craig
goes, ah, that's right. I'll figure it out. By the time we get to the
frontier and immediately an alarm starts sounding and Alex like, what's that? That's the frontier.
So they're there already. And there is a single ship that he
refers to as a Zurian ship, which I think means this is a
Rylon. So again, the John Lithgow headed freaks,
but who follow Zur. Okay, right. I think that's it is these are like the
separatists or whatever. Like these are like, you know, the rebels or whatever. We're following
the bad guy because they're not the Codan ships, which do look different. They're the
John Walker Lynns of the zur. Yeah, exactly. Right, exactly. This is.
This is the Ryloan Taliban. I can't do it
anyway, so they have to like, you know, basically they have to destroy it before
it can report back, you know, and tell everybody where they are. They chase it
into like an asteroid, you know, some caves or whatever. And Alex is pissed.
He ends up shooting it and destroying it. But he's mad. He didn't like want
to kill anybody. Like, I don't know that he cares about the life of this
alien, but he didn't like being put in the situation where now he's, he's.
He could die or he has to kill someone or whatever and it sucks.
And Greg is like, okay, well let's just go home. And basically he's
like saying, I'll fly you back to Earth in this thing and whatever, we'll give
up up. And it's sort of just a peek into sort
of the, the dilemma Alex has to deal with, I guess in a lot of
ways. But back home his friends are having a gay old time with Beta.
With Beta, his clone. And he's sitting in the back of the truck just with
a weird ass look on his face, just staring into nothing.
And. And then I think, I don't know if somebody implores him or asks
like, are you having a good time? Yeah, Maggie. Maggie's like, you know, what's going
on? Are you not having a good time? It's like, what should I be doing?
And in a very like, you know, Mitt Romney hot dog is my favorite meat
meat type moment, he's just like, ahaha.
Just the most unhinged laugh. Oh. Because she says, oh,
you know, you should be kicking back, having a good time, maybe laughing. And it's
like that, you know, clicks from. He goes, oh. Laughing like, yeah. As if,
like I've studied this much, like I understand this much about humans. So I'm gonna
go ahead and just be like. Yeah. And it's just
the most ridiculous thing. I know now why you laugh?
It's like, oh my God, so crazy. It's very
third rock from the sun. Speaking of lithgow. That's right.
There you go. Yeah. And then and. And Griggs
and Alex are kind of. There's like a kind of a tender
moment between the two of them talking about like, why. Oh yeah, why we're doing
this. Yeah. And they're explaining about their families back home.
And Griggs is kind of funny. Pulls out, you know, the first ever digital picture
frame to show the photos, which is just basically his face
like superimposed on like a woman dressed like a human Earth woman's
body swear like. A fur coat or something. And his kid,
and I think he mentioned some absurd amount of 6,000, 6,000 offspring or
something, so times $5,000 each. That's a
good. So, yeah, I thought that
was kind of funny. Just to show, like, this is. This is what I'm doing
instead of the guy taking out the wallet. Yeah, right down. Plus,
we got to humanize the iguana, man. You know, we got to make this matter,
you know, to Alex or whatever. So, basically, so now I think. I think
this one, we jump back to. To Alex in the. In. In space. And he's
agreed, yeah, let's stick it out. Let's do this. Because then what has happened is
the. The Codan have gotten a big enough hole in the frontier.
They're now able to take their command ship through, and they're actually able to enter
Star League space. And they say they tell the fighter squadrons,
you move forward with. With, I think, energy probes on, is what they say.
And so Greg realizes that this is what's happening, goes, we got to power everything
down. Power everything down. Very, very, very submarine sort of style, right? You shut everything
down, you kind of become invisible because they're still hidden in this cave in this
asteroid. And so we see the. The Codan ships going over,
and then the command ships are going over, and Alex goes, you know,
if. If we let them pass over us, we could
attack that turret from behind and take them by surprise. And Greg is
like, oh, that's. That would be a great idea, too, but there's no Starfighters left,
you know, to do that. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, think, pal. So he
agrees to, like, stick around. Okay, let's do this. And sure enough, it actually seems
like the easiest battle maybe ever in the history of science fiction. Like, they fly
out of the asteroid. They fly past a bunch of, like, you know, turrets shooting
at them. They blow up this one, they call it again, a turret, but more
like a communications array of some kind. And they fire
a couple more shots at the command ship, and it's done.
There is a great line where the two codan sort of guys running the
ship, the captain, whatever, you know, is like, give me a status update. Oh,
you know, like this down that town. Oh, no. Like, there's. Oh, sir,
it's all destroyed. What do we do? And his little. Like, he's got this little
visor over one eye, like a little monocle, and it clips down. He goes,
we die. It's just like. I don't know if that was trying to be
a Tears in the Rain Blade Runner kind of moment. Like that.
Serious. But Rutger Hauer pulled it off much better, so.
And back home, at the same time,
the alien assassin. The second one now the second alien
assassin. So I think the truck full of fun having
teenagers drives by the speed trap. Oh, that's right, right.
And then the alien basically T2 style takes
the identity of this police officer. Not a Power we knew, I and
I. And I don't know if the alien has kind of a human face and
then just put the cops clothes on or if they can just shapeshift into the
exact question. So then, you know,
they're going after. They're going after Beta.
Beta ends up getting shot. Well, he ends up like
admitting to Mags that he's not really. Oh, right, right, right. And it's.
And it's. So then the alien hears this and has ended when
shoots of them, but like starts running away because he's going to go. He has
to report back to Zur that like, hey, like, like the. The last star fighter
is up there fighting with you. But the Beta and Mags get into their
buddy Blake's red pickup and chase off after, you know, the alien
assassin, the Xand. Basically he gets to his little Moonlander
ship and starts sending a message back. And they are driving towards him
and he can. Beta convinces Maggie to jump out of the truck and he drives
it and rams into it. And so the message that gets sent back to Zur
and the codan are the last Starfighter is. And that's it.
And so now the code in guys who are actual, you know, appear to be
actual, like military type folks are going like, oh boy, this is not good.
What. What could he have been sending us that then got cut off? This seems
like a bad thing. To which Zur is like, no, no, he literally was obviously
going to tell us that he's dead. Obviously the last Starfighter is dead. Let's keep
going. It's like that's a pretty confident, incorrect assessment of the
situation. Yeah, yeah. But that ends the life of Beta.
Now the Beta person on Alex's doppelganger,
right? He's dead. He's died in this heroic moment of trying to
keep the Xander Zan from reporting back to Zor. Can't believe I'm saying all these
words, by the way. There's a lot, a lot of X sounds here. And Zor
is arrested by the.
The codan. Like they. Yeah, they are done with his
right. Because once, Once the last. Once Alex and Greg
start attacking the guns are. Starts attacking. They destroy the communications array and clearly the
code and know they're under attack. They realize Zor was like, he was wrong.
About it. He's not helping them. He's screwing it up. Like, he just needs to
go. So they rip the scepter away from him, take him to jail,
and then as the ship gets attacked, it's like the classic thing where, oh,
we're leading this prisoner down a hallway, but now they're. The whole place gets rocked
and we fall down, but the prisoner is able to, like, escape. And he gets
into. Basically jumps into an escape pod and flies off. We don't see from him
again. I'm sure they were trying to set up a sequel that. That was never
coming based on the box office, but they were trying to set that up.
So Zur has escaped the Codan command ship before it gets destroyed.
And the move. They kind of preview it.
They say this ability of the Starf fighter ship that they have is the
Death Blossom. Yeah, it's like a unique thing which. You have to be at a
close range for it to work. And it's kind of.
It uses up all your power. I don't know if they say that up front,
but afterwards they're like that. That. Yeah. Depleted all of our. Yeah. So basically they.
So basically what happened? They destroy the communications array. They're attacking the ship, but they
go and they want to attack the fighters, and that's when they're going to use
Death Blossom, which basically allows for the whole ship to like,
spin, you know, like a gyroscope in like every direction, shooting these
missiles basically everywhere. And it does. It works. They destroy all the ships,
but then, yeah, they're out of power and they're basically floating in space, whatever.
And the code in command ship, which is still, you know, extant, it's still there.
They decided to go ramming speed. And we're going to ram into the gunsar,
which, like. Like, if you know much about inertia and space or I'm not really
sure how good. What. What good ramming would necessarily do at that point,
but, you know, whatever. They're going to try it. And I love this part too,
because they're looking at. Greg is trying to get the power back on,
and he's got a little tiny, like, circuit board that he appears
to have, like, pulled out of the unit in front of him. And he says
something about needing a ram boost. And like, I thought it
was funny because, like, you know, ram is a thing and like computers, but also
they're about to be rammed by the bigger ship. I'm not sure what were trying
to reference here, but it basically something. But he ends up plugging something in the
little circuit board lights up and they get their power back and they're able to,
to fly away. And that's actually when, when the command ship is destroyed. Is that
it? It, it gets sucked into this nearby moon, right. And the gravity pole and
it go. And that's what, that's the whole, you know, like what do we do?
We die because they crash into this moon.
And so, yeah, that's, that's the end of the Codan command ship,
as far as we can tell. And, and it looks like, yeah,
so Alex has, has saved the day and
of course they want him to stick around. The remaining, you know,
Starfighter type allies. Up there,
they wanted to rebuild the Starfighter Legion. Basically, like you're going to be the new,
you know, General Patton. Basically you're going to help us build this all back
up and again, Zor escape. So there's, there's likely to be additional fighting
to happen. You know, we need you. And then at this point, I think the
filmmaker said we need to add like 10 minutes to this movie.
For what? For no reason.
Yeah, it really is a long sequence. But so what happens then is, right.
Alex and Grig return to the trailer park in the Gunstar.
They land the ship. At first it looks like they land on the ceiling on
the roof of that coffee shop. Like the way the angles were, I'm like,
well that's going to just destroy that. But no, they're just next to it.
They're, they're landed on the ground. But the whole, you know, trailer park
community is coming to see what's going on because there's this spaceship that's landed and
the one I love is Granny Mags. Maggie's grandmother, who we just know is Granny,
has got a double barrel shotgun. She's just ready to blow away some,
you know, reminds me of the in Back to the Future, you know, my pie.
And you know, the guy who like goes after, he thinks Marty McFly is an
alien. But yeah, so she's got this Looney Tunes double barrel shotgun that she's walking
around with. And, and you know, Alex is there to try
to convince Maggie to come with him. Yeah. You know, what do you have to
live for here? You live at a trailer park with your grandmother. Yeah. I mean,
this movie is very anti community. Right.
It's trying to get people to be like, hey, I know where you live is
not perfectly ideal right now, other than being, you know, full of all
the people that you love and have known your whole life. So why don't you
come up to the space where everything looks shitty and spend
your life with me. A couple things about the scene. One, does Greg speak
English? Because not everybody else is wearing that little lapel pin.
And that was the thing. I was like, we got to come back to that.
Because nobody else is wearing the lapel pin, but they're all speaking to Greg and
he's speaking to them now. It did seem maybe at times it was slightly broken
English, so maybe he was like learning it on the way to Earth or
something. I don't know. It was very strange that everybody could communicate with this iguana
man alien. But he's a different race than the lithgow headed people. That's true.
So maybe he's just one of those like international space travelers who knows
17 different languages because he has to. But I mean, I suppose,
but even though the fact that, I mean, you think about it, even though he
knew where, he knew about Earth because he's the one who told us, oh,
Earth's not scheduled to join the Star League public. So he like, is aware of
Earth. He would then also be aware of the number of languages spoken on Earth.
Yeah. If he had to pick one, it wouldn't be English. Right. It would be
Spanish or Mandarin speaking Earthling. Yeah, exactly right. Like,
and then, and then what's Maggie gonna do? Is she gonna go get a job
on Rylos? Like, what, is she just gonna be Alex's wife? Life? There's no seat
for her. Well, apparently there is. They say there's. They say there's room for Greg
and Alex. And one more, they do say specifically. I don't know where it is,
but they specifically call out that there is room for her on the ship.
But it's like, what do you, what life is that? That you're gonna go live
on this alien planet? Yeah. Just because you like this boy.
Like, this is like the worst version of like, I followed a guy here.
Right, Right. Oh,
man. And you know, Alex ultimately is able to convince
Maggie to join him. Yeah.
Knowing that he's never gonna see her ever again. When he goes up
to his mom, he says, bye, take it easy.
Which killed me. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. The mom character does seem to get a little short shrift there quite
a bit. She's like, how Alex, what is going on? Barely explains anything
to her. But you know, is, is, is just, she's just gotta trust that he's
gonna be okay. Heading off to, to space. Again, accurate teenager does not wanna give
details to his mom. That is true. That is True, but. But willing to do
literally anything for the girl that. That, you know, she lets him touch her boobs
or whatever. Right. Yeah, exactly. The girl, early in the movie,
it did not seem like that serious of a relationship. Right. Which is why he
was like, yeah, okay, I guess I'll go in the space DeLorean. It is a
little funky to understand. And, yeah. Him and Maggie's relationship. And, And. And because
the way when, you know, when she thinks the beta unit obviously is Alex and
they're at the lake together and they're sort of snuggling and they're, you know,
they're even covered up completely in these sleeping bags. It's like. Are they banging?
Like what? Like, this is obviously. They're obviously very close. But then it was kind
of tough to. To really pinpoint just how Maggie and Alex
felt for each other until the end, where they're clearly making it clear they are
obviously in love or she wouldn't considering going with him, you know, but it.
I don't know that that was necessarily set up appropriately through the whole film.
Yeah, yeah. But, you know, Maggie goes with Alex
and now they're in space awaiting the sequel. That will never
come. That will never come. And that was the end. You know, we didn't
get the wedding sequence epilogue. We just dragged this ending out for 20 minutes.
And really they did. They took too long back at the trailer park. There really
should have been a much faster thing if they needed to end it that way.
And it would be one thing if the movie was 92 minutes. Minutes long.
But I think the movie ended up being like 100 minutes. 102. About 100.
Okay. You could have cut. I think you could trim to 90 for something
like that. I understand the incentive to push it over 90, but. Yeah,
I don't know. Yeah. So that. That is the.
That is the Last Starfighter. Last Starfighter. And. Yeah. So time for some
final thoughts on the Last Starfighter. And I think it only fitting, as the person
who saw it for the first time yesterday, I believe. Yeah, go ahead. And Nick,
what'd you think? Yeah, so. So about this era of movies. I just want
to give a little background because I think it might help the listeners as well.
When I was a kid, we did not have a vcr.
We did not have any movie channels until probably until I was,
I don't know, 15 to like mid-90s, early 90s. And what
we would do is if we were going to rent a movie, we'd have to
rent a vcr and the movie. So we did it very rare because
it was expensive to do that. And really the only things I ever watched were
Three Amigos, Strange Brew and the Blues Brothers. Those are the
only movies that my dad choices. So I missed out a lot of this
stuff, which I might have loved this, like a lot of sci fi
stuff, especially because I only ever saw the original three Star Wars. I never saw
like any Star Trek. I know a lot of things that have come up in
conversation I've never seen. I'm not against it, but it just was not a part
of my childhood. Right. So for me, coming in as a
mid-40s person in 2025, watching this for
the first time, this was rough. This was a very, very rough
watch for me. This was a fun conversation and I think,
you know, the plot points and everything, it makes sense. But I
didn't. I. The way I put it is I don't think this movie had anything
for me. I'm not nostalgic about it. So that's out. Yeah,
the characters, none of the characters really did it for me. We didn't
have the fun of recognizing the actors from this movie. In other movies, which we
talked about a little off the pod, which is always great with some of these
other ones to be like, oh, that's the guy from this. That's the guy from
this. This one. They were like, you're all fucking fired. This is. You're the 1918
Chicago White Sox. You're not allowed to make a movie. It's a career ender.
The effects, it was tough. I see what
they were doing. But there also was not a lot of action per
se. It was a lot of shots of the guy sitting in his seat.
So I don't know. This movie just did not do it for me.
I like the makeup effects. I think that's a positive of it.
Didn't have enough really funny dialogue. It was
serious, but then not good enough to justify that in my mind.
And this is my lowest score so far. I'm giving this a one and a
half. Okay, that's. I think that's fair. I think that's fair. So for. For me,
like, I don't think you made any, you know, comments or accusations,
whatever against film that aren't warranted. I really think that that's all makes a lot
of sense. But I'll tell you, like in a purely like nostalgia fueled
haze, like, this is still one of my favorite movies. I watched it yesterday and
it had been at least five, maybe even closer to 10 years since I'd seen
it all the way through. And if it weren't for the totally terrifying
aliens in many of the scenes, this is something I'd be showing my son right
about now. But I'm gonna wait a few more years because there are some really
quite kind of scary, probably three or four. Visuals that are very,
like, legitimately upsetting. It wasn't until the guy was getting the. The microwaved
brain screaming, whatever that went. I really can't. That this is too far. That's the
part where I was like, I'm not gonna show this to my son just yet,
but I will at some point and. And we'll see, you know, how. How he
takes it. But yeah, for me, this is such a nostalgia fest.
I loved this movie as a kid. I still really enjoyed it. It's a
four out of five for me, but I totally. Massive asterisk on that that if
you don't have nostalgia for this movie, you're going to need to listen to Nick's
version of this because it really is more probably accurate for the average person,
but. But again, for me, for the nostalgia factor, I'm giving it a four.
That makes our collective score five and a half, which is definitely one of the
lowest we've done. And maybe Pacific Heights was about there, but it's like right around
there and it's probably accurate. You know, that would make it rotten if we were
Rotten Tomatoes. And that's. And that's appropriate, but, you know, so, yeah, five and a
half overall for the Last Starfighter. So that
was my pick. And Nick, it's your turn to tell us what we're going to
watch next. Yeah, yeah. So I was looking back at the movies
I picked, and I picked a lot of kind of thriller action type
movies, so I want to get out of that genre a bit. And I've also
been way 90s and not 80s enough, you know, which we've
talked about kind of mixing it up a little bit. So from my pick,
I think it's one that you would be familiar with, I think our listeners would
be familiar with and really like something I definitely consider to
be a classic and I could watch multiple times. Very great
concept, good acting, you know, good settings and everything.
1988, we're gonna hang out with
Eddie Murphy, Arsenio hall and James Earl Jones and we're
gonna watch a little Coming to America. Oh, that's awesome.
Such a wonderful movie. Cannot wait to watch that and talk about that with you.
Yeah, that's a movie. That's one I've seen numerous times. It's an absolute classic.
You too. Like, I mean this is absolutely. That movie is so
great. Cool. Love it. Yeah. Coming to America. Wonderful. And of
course we're talking about coming to America, not coming to the number two America,
not the sequel, the original. Once again, this podcast does not recognize certain sequels.
That never happens. Right? Exactly. Okay. Well,
ladies and gentlemen, thanks for listening. If you, you know, want to go on Spotify,
you want to go on Apple podcasts, give us a rating, a five star rating,
that'd be fantastic. It helps people find the show. You can also send us an
email at the show@2dads1movie.com. That's the number two and the number one.
This has been the last starfighter. Next week will be back. Back to talk about
coming to America. I'm Steve. And I'm Nick. Thank you all
so much for listening. Thanks everyone. Take care.