SCIENCE FICTION LIBRARY
REVIEWS
Anton van Beek casts a critical eye over the very latest in cinema, 4K UHD, Blu-ray and streaming releases, and checks out home video extras too!
Review Ratings
★★★★★ = Excellent
★★★★ = Good
★★★ = Average
★★ = Below Average
★ = Abysmal
THE LAST STARFIGHTER:
Limited Edition (1984)
4K UHD, Out Now. Arrow Video, Cert: 12
One of the more interesting Star Wars knock-offs to hit cinemas in the early 1980s, The Last Starfighter mashes together elements of George Lucas’ space opera and Disney’s video game-inspired dud Tron to enjoyable effect.
Inspired by T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, the film stars Lance Guest as Alex Rogan, a teenage handyman whose only escape from the trailer park where his family lives comes from trying to beat the highest score on the Starfighter arcade cabinet outside a nearby convenience store. After finally doing just that, Alex is approached by the game’s creator, the alien Centauri (Robert Preston), who whisks the dumbstruck teen away in his fancy flying car and reveals that he created the game to find potential new Starfighter pilots to fight on the front-line of a real intergalactic war!
Of course, the film’s major selling point on its release in 1984 were the for-the-time cutting edge CG visual effects used to realise its space battles. While the computergenerated 3D models undoubtedly show their age today (never moreso than with Arrow’s striking 4K restoration), those scenes are generally lit and edited well smartly enough to partially disguise the lack of textures and help imbue them with some semblance of realism.
While the digital effects look a little hokey, other aspects of The Last Starfighter have held up much better. The cast are on particularly fine form. Guest makes for a likeable hero and also gets to goof around a bit as Beta, the robot double left on Earth in Alex’s place - the latter aspect of the plot giving Catherine Mary Stewart a little more to do than your typical ‘girlfriend’ role. Excellent support is provided by the impishly mischevious Preston and Dan O’Herlihy as Alex’s reptilian co-pilot Grig. It’s just a shame the film didn’t do better at the box office, removing any chance of future big screen adventures for us to enjoy.
One final piece of trivia before we go: The Last Starfighter has several links to the Halloween franchise. Not only did Lance Guest make his big screen debut as Laurie Strode’s love interest, Jimmy, in Halloween II (1981) and Dan O’Herlihy play villainous factory owner Conal Cochran in Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), but The Last Starfighter was directed by Nick Castle, the man behind the mask in John Carpenter’s 1978 slasher classic.
Extras: ★★★
Having originally debuted in the US in 2023, Arrow’s 4K UHD release of The Last Starfighter has finally made the leap across the Atlantic, but appears to have shed a few extras along the way. Missing from the UK release (presumably for licensing reasons) are several archival features that originated on Universal’s ‘25th Anniversary’ US DVD from 2009, namely a commentary featuring director Nick Castle and production designer Ron Cobb, the Heroes of the Screen and Crossing the Frontier: The Making of The Last Starfighter documentaries, and nine image galleries. While not getting everything featured on the US release is disappointing, the good news is that this still leaves UK fans with a fair array of goodies. There’s a commentary featuring Lance Guest and his son Jackson; a second commentary from film historian Mike White (of The Projection Booth podcast); interviews with actress Catherine Mary Stewart (nine minutes), composer Craig Safan (12 minutes), writer Jonathan Betuel (nine minutes), special effects supervisor Kevin Pike (10 minutes), science-fiction author Greg Bear (eight minutes) and arcade game collector Estil Vance (seven minutes); and two trailers. Arrow’s Limited Edition 4K release also comes with an illustrated collector’s booklet. AvB
STAR TREK: DISCOVERY - ` THE FINAL SEASON (2024)
Blu-ray. Out now. Paramount. Cert: 12
★★★★
Star Trek: Discovery
was a series of firsts. It was the first Star Trek show of the streaming era (hitting TV screens 12 years after the plug was pulled on Star Trek: Enterprise), the first to put a woman of colour in the captain’s chair, and it marked the first time anybody in the franchise dropped an ‘f-bomb’. All of which ensures that … Discovery has carved a place in the Star Trek history books.