Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind. Production of my
Speaker 1: heart radio. Hey, welcome to weird house cinema. This is
Speaker 1: rob lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and today we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about the nine space adventure saga, the
Speaker 1: last starfighter, a movie that I myself had on an
Speaker 1: unofficial VHS tape as a child. I think it could
Speaker 1: have been taped off TV or maybe it was one
Speaker 1: of those analog pirated movies we had where, like you know,
Speaker 1: you do the double VCR methods. Somebody, somebody must have
Speaker 1: had a double VCR in my parents neighborhood because we
Speaker 1: had a number of those that I think had originally
Speaker 1: been rentals from turtles video and somebody did what they
Speaker 1: were not supposed to and made a copy. But anyway, so,
Speaker 1: wherever it came from, I had this vhs tape. So
Speaker 1: I watched this movie uh, several times when I was
Speaker 1: a kid and I had not seen it since I
Speaker 1: was probably ten years old and I just recently started
Speaker 1: thinking about it for some reason, looking at all of
Speaker 1: the great monsters in it. It's got some very gross
Speaker 1: and slimy alien designs, including one species of alien that
Speaker 1: I realized I had always thought of its head looking
Speaker 1: like a VW beetle. Do you know that the hit
Speaker 1: beasts that I'm talking about Rob yes, oh goodness, what
Speaker 1: are they called? Um Zan Zan's, UH ZAN DOS as
Speaker 1: have San Dosans, San Do Zans, that's it right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Zano Zans. It sounds like a a fun European Candy,
Speaker 1: you know, that you wouldn't find out about until you
Speaker 1: you'd go on a school trip or something. or it's
Speaker 1: like a local restaurant that has that has like low
Speaker 1: hanging lights over the tables with like fringe around them. Yeah, Um, but, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know the one you're talking about. Very very weird,
Speaker 1: very very very cool, practical alien makeup in that. But
Speaker 1: the head is shaped like a VW beetle. It's like
Speaker 1: the Dome on top, and then the eyes are down
Speaker 1: on the sides where the headlights are on the car. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a bunch of great aliens in this, this one, and
Speaker 1: I think that's that's the main thing I remembered from
Speaker 1: this film. Um, I don't remember where or how I
Speaker 1: saw this film as a child, but I probably hadn't
Speaker 1: seen it since I was around ten either, and I
Speaker 1: remember digging the video Gamer gets alien abducted in a
Speaker 1: good way plot. I remember liking that. You know, this's
Speaker 1: just sort of your basic magical it's call to adventure,
Speaker 1: uh sort of vibe, and I remember liking that and
Speaker 1: I remember digging the creatures, digging some of the creatures
Speaker 1: in a few dramatic moments. Yeah, so this movie has
Speaker 1: its ups and downs, but overall, I'd say, on rewatching,
Speaker 1: I think it holds up pretty well. It is clearly derivative,
Speaker 1: as many critics pointed out it. There are like you
Speaker 1: can see the pre existing elements from other movies that
Speaker 1: fed into this. It's kind of like, okay, what if
Speaker 1: you had star wars? But Luke Skywalker wasn't on tattooing,
Speaker 1: he was on earth and he wasn't on a moisture
Speaker 1: farm in the desert. He was in a trailer park,
Speaker 1: in fact a cozy Spielbergie in trailer park full of
Speaker 1: down home spielbergie and whimsy and and and and cute,
Speaker 1: funny characters and like kind of mischievous kids with an attitude.
Speaker 1: But much like Luke Skywalker, he still gazed off into
Speaker 1: the distance, yearning for so much more in life, yearning
Speaker 1: to get away and see the world. And what if,
Speaker 1: instead of Obi Wan Kenobi, he met up with Harold Hill,
Speaker 1: from the music man, but from space, literally, a lovable
Speaker 1: con artist alien with a rocket car? And what if,
Speaker 1: instead of the force, there was a sentient video game?
Speaker 1: And what if, instead of the other companions, you know,
Speaker 1: the droids and Han Solo and Princess Lea and all that,
Speaker 1: you had Dan o'herla hey in a lizard costume? I
Speaker 1: can imagine it going down just like that, and then
Speaker 1: producers saying yeah, yeah, Harold Hill is great. Do you
Speaker 1: think we could get him for this? And they're like yeah,
Speaker 1: we can totally get him. I know a guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know what, I think it actually makes for
Speaker 1: a really fun Movieh I think you and I might
Speaker 1: differ on this next point. I would say, actually, if
Speaker 1: I had to make up one major criticism of this
Speaker 1: movie that stands out more than any other, I don't
Speaker 1: really love a lot of the special effects used in
Speaker 1: the space battles. This is. This was one of those
Speaker 1: movies in the class of Tron and other films that
Speaker 1: were experimenting with what you could do with computer generated
Speaker 1: effects in the early mid eighties, when you know this
Speaker 1: stuff was very new. It was very primitive by modern standards. Uh,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately, I think for me, I don't think the
Speaker 1: computer animated space battles are super compelling and I imagine
Speaker 1: how much better they could have been with, you know,
Speaker 1: some of the Star Wars original trilogy style model work
Speaker 1: and and little, you know, practical effects and space backgrounds
Speaker 1: and all that. But of course, at the same time
Speaker 1: I have to really respect that, despite the limitations of
Speaker 1: what computer generated effects could do at the time, these
Speaker 1: were the cutting edge. Like they look great for what
Speaker 1: you could do with that. I think I agree with
Speaker 1: all that I've I found this to be the weakest
Speaker 1: aspect of the film. rewatching it today. Certainly you look
Speaker 1: back on this and I think most of the space
Speaker 1: some of the earlier space sequences where spaceships aren't doing much,
Speaker 1: maybe they're just flying like those, those aren't as bothers them. Uh.
Speaker 1: The effects are clean, they're you know, they're crisp. They
Speaker 1: don't completely throw me out of the movie viewing experience,
Speaker 1: but I kept finding myself thinking that, okay, these effects
Speaker 1: are clearly, you know, pushing the boundaries of what's possible.
Speaker 1: They're better than bad practical space effects, but they're nowhere
Speaker 1: near as good as good practical space effects, you know.
Speaker 1: So I would agree with all of that. I was
Speaker 1: reading about this one and in one of Michael Weldon's
Speaker 1: sycatronic books, which this one wouldn't have this wouldn't have
Speaker 1: come out more than, I think, a few years after
Speaker 1: after this movie, and like he mentions the computer for
Speaker 1: animated effects, but does so without any judgment, which he
Speaker 1: does a lot in these very short reviews. But I
Speaker 1: wonder if that was telling. It's kind of like at
Speaker 1: the time, if you're viewing these effects, maybe you're more
Speaker 1: inclined to just lean into just how amazing they are.
Speaker 1: It's like if you were to go to the old
Speaker 1: world's fair and See Walt Disney's robot Abraham Lincoln up
Speaker 1: there on the stage, it's like wow, this is amazing,
Speaker 1: I've never seen anything like this before, whereas today we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of a creepy uh, you know, semi
Speaker 1: robotic a Lincoln up there. That's actually I think that's
Speaker 1: a very good comparison. I've noticed that when you read reviews,
Speaker 1: older reviews from critics of movies that use a lot
Speaker 1: of C G I. I'd say before like the you know,
Speaker 1: mid two thousands or so, critics very often seem to
Speaker 1: rave about the quality of C G I. That is
Speaker 1: abysmal by modern standards. Like you look at it today
Speaker 1: and it is the ugliest thing you've ever seen. But
Speaker 1: if you go back and read what people were saying
Speaker 1: at the time, it's almost universal praise for those kind
Speaker 1: of things. And then I think something changed in the
Speaker 1: two thousands where critics started kind of souring on on
Speaker 1: a lot of computer generated effects, and now it's just
Speaker 1: now it's just everywhere. So you don't even like really
Speaker 1: say anything about it anymore. It's just what effects are.
Speaker 1: But there's a long period where, for some reason it
Speaker 1: seemed like people were, yeah, they were just impressed with them,
Speaker 1: even though, like in retrospect, I think they don't look
Speaker 1: very good. Yeah, I mean that the the individuals who
Speaker 1: tended to do the best with those effects where those
Speaker 1: who were really pushing the boundaries and trying to do
Speaker 1: things that weren't weren't even completely possible at the time,
Speaker 1: and had two resources to pursue that. That ideal. You know,
Speaker 1: you're thinking about people like like like the camerons, and
Speaker 1: the Lucas is and even then, sometimes, even then, sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know they're going to be moments in those films
Speaker 1: even where, like clearly they were, they were, they were
Speaker 1: chasing after something, some detail that was just a little
Speaker 1: too difficult to grasp. Yeah, yeah, but from everything I read,
Speaker 1: the last fighter was genuinely boundary pushing in a technological sense,
Speaker 1: like the apparently the amount of supercomputer power that went
Speaker 1: into the polygons that make up these spaceships was tremendous
Speaker 1: for the time. Yeah, yeah, and that at the same time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: looking at it today as a modern viewer, it's weird
Speaker 1: because you have these primitive computer effects side by side
Speaker 1: with breathtaking, practical, Um, you know, monster costumes that that
Speaker 1: looked terrific today, like you'd you'd be so lucky to
Speaker 1: have a movie with monsters like this in it today. Agree,
Speaker 1: Um and, and it's interesting, I think, to think beyond
Speaker 1: just the fact that they were both early uh uses
Speaker 1: of extensive C G I in movies, to compare this
Speaker 1: movie with Tron. Yeah, yeah, there, there, this is a
Speaker 1: film is very tron like in many respects. I think
Speaker 1: I would, I would loosely uh rope this one in
Speaker 1: to a category of, I guess, Arcade Exploit and cinema. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm thinking of films like Tron from a
Speaker 1: d two nightmares from I'm not sure if you've seen
Speaker 1: this one. They used to show it on on a
Speaker 1: any on cable like in the middle of a Sunday
Speaker 1: back in the day, but it's a horror anthology series,
Speaker 1: or more like just sort of a weird stories kind
Speaker 1: of anthology series, and there's one segment called the Bishop
Speaker 1: of battle and it has a Melia west of Z
Speaker 1: in it and basically it's some sort of strange arcade
Speaker 1: machine sucks him into a world of a supernatural intrigue.
Speaker 1: I like the title. I might have to look that up.
Speaker 1: There's also a Charles Band picture of the Dungeon Master
Speaker 1: which which which has a from a d four that
Speaker 1: also has a bit of this vibe to it. So
Speaker 1: it's something that was very much in the public mindset
Speaker 1: of the day. You know, arcades were big, video games
Speaker 1: were big and there were people coming up with new
Speaker 1: stories about them, like what if we were actually everybody's
Speaker 1: being sucked in by a video game? What if you
Speaker 1: were actually sucked in by that video game? What have
Speaker 1: you got Rond? What if you got last starfighters? What
Speaker 1: would that be like? And of course we we continue
Speaker 1: to find video games interesting and speculative fiction we have.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm thinking about the likes of ready player one,
Speaker 1: Cronenberg's existence band or snatch Um. And then, of course
Speaker 1: I can't help but think of the novel and Subsequent
Speaker 1: Film Adaptation of Enders Game, which has a bit of
Speaker 1: this in it as well, like what is simulation, what
Speaker 1: is real? I was making exactly the same connection to
Speaker 1: enders game. In fact, I was like, wait, which came first,
Speaker 1: last starfighter or enders game, because there are some parallels
Speaker 1: and I think they came out. came out like within
Speaker 1: a year of each other. Yeah, based on just some
Speaker 1: some quick research I was doing, it looks like eighty
Speaker 1: five was the publication of enders game, but the the
Speaker 1: original story was published in the late Seventies. I don't
Speaker 1: know enough about like the original short story. Upon that
Speaker 1: it was expanded into enders game. So I don't know
Speaker 1: how much of inders game as we know it was
Speaker 1: present in the late seventies, but I guess I'm willing
Speaker 1: to give the author the benefit of the dot on this.
Speaker 1: Oh Yeah, yeah, and I would say that while they
Speaker 1: share a kind of central premise or mechanic, the everything
Speaker 1: around is very different. Um, okay, so maybe I should
Speaker 1: do the basic elevator pitch on the plot. It goes
Speaker 1: something like this. You've got Alex Rogan. He's just a
Speaker 1: regular teenager with big dreams. He lives in a dusty
Speaker 1: trailer park by a lake with his mom, his little brother,
Speaker 1: a large cast of Zany neighbors and his girlfriend, Maggie,
Speaker 1: where the only real excitement in life comes from the
Speaker 1: local video arcade cabinet outside the general store, which is
Speaker 1: a space based shoot him up game called starfighter, and
Speaker 1: Alex plays this game obsessively. He really wants to get
Speaker 1: out of dodge. He wants to go to go to
Speaker 1: some college somewhere. They don't they don't say where, but
Speaker 1: it's assumed to be far away. He wants to see
Speaker 1: the world, but his application for a student loan is denied.
Speaker 1: Is He ever going to escape and see the world,
Speaker 1: and will that escape involve a covert pilot recruitment plan
Speaker 1: for an ongoing interstellar war? That's what we're gonna find
Speaker 1: out now. Actually, I thought this movie is mostly you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's kind of it's a space adventure.
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of simple in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: in terms of plot. It's it relies a lot on
Speaker 1: kind of that spirit and the heart and all that,
Speaker 1: which comes through pretty well. But the actual central premise
Speaker 1: of the movie, I thought was extremely clever, so clever
Speaker 1: in fact, that I wondered if it was lifted from
Speaker 1: somewhere else like this, was inspired by a pre existing
Speaker 1: movie or piece of Sci Fi literature. So the idea
Speaker 1: is that this video game that Alex plays all the
Speaker 1: time is actually, unbeknownst to him, a secret training and
Speaker 1: recruitment module for Star pilots. So there's an alien who, uh,
Speaker 1: he's like an alien space force recruiter who seeds the
Speaker 1: galaxy with these video games and once a player who
Speaker 1: just is playing it for fun happens to reach certain
Speaker 1: performance benchmarks, the alien shows up to take him away
Speaker 1: for duty, and I think that that is a fantastic hook.
Speaker 1: Did that come from somewhere else, I wonder? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Um, of course. The interesting thing about
Speaker 1: this is you could, you could apply this to any
Speaker 1: kind of game in general. You could have some sort
Speaker 1: of like you could you could have a version of
Speaker 1: this in the ancient world, where some sort of new
Speaker 1: board game is introduced, something like chess. Uh, and Oh,
Speaker 1: it turns out it's aliens trying to see which of
Speaker 1: which of these humans as the best strategic minds so
Speaker 1: they may be taken up and placed in an in
Speaker 1: the midst of an interplanetary war. Yeah, and it's exactly
Speaker 1: this mechanic we were talking about that is in I
Speaker 1: mean in a somewhat different way, but in many ways
Speaker 1: replicated in an Inter's game. Yeah, like there's some blurring
Speaker 1: of the like what's a game? What's the simulation and
Speaker 1: what's the real thing? All right, well, let's go ahead
Speaker 1: in here. The trailer audio for this one. This is
Speaker 1: a pretty good, pretty good trailer. The narration is by
Speaker 1: John Leader. I believe Alex Rogan lives in a small
Speaker 1: trailer park in the California Mountains. He has a dream
Speaker 1: to go to college. I think I'M gonna hang out here.
Speaker 1: Why don't you shine your pickup? Forget it, man, I'm
Speaker 1: doing something with my life, start a career. You really
Speaker 1: are leaving here, aren't you? Of course I'm going away.
Speaker 1: We're both going away, both of us. Alex and most
Speaker 1: of all, to get out chains. The auton thing is,
Speaker 1: when it comes, you gotta grab it with both hands. Then,
Speaker 1: one night, a mysterious stranger offers Alex an opportunity he
Speaker 1: never dreamed of. Who Are you? I'm Centauri, and you
Speaker 1: may know you must trust me implicitly. Get nothing Alex
Speaker 1: Rogan has ever imagined could prepare him for what he
Speaker 1: is about to experience. Hey, why was Alex chosen? And
Speaker 1: really ever return? Are we going to trust me? God,
Speaker 1: the last starfighter. His adventure in space is about to begin.
Speaker 1: Pretty solid. I have to say I did not remember
Speaker 1: the trailer, so I wasn't sure if this was going
Speaker 1: to be a trailer where you had the goofy narrator
Speaker 1: or the serious narrator, because this is the sort of
Speaker 1: film that could go either way depending on how the
Speaker 1: studio was maybe feeling about promoting it. Right, right. Alex
Speaker 1: never thought this would happen to him. Yeah, Oh, before
Speaker 1: we forget, I wanted to mention another reason that I
Speaker 1: ended up thinking we should do the last starfighter on
Speaker 1: this show. It has a surprising number of Halloween franchise connections.
Speaker 1: It has connections to all three of the first three
Speaker 1: Halloween movies. So this movie was directed by Nick Castle,
Speaker 1: who plays Michael Myers, who plays the shape in the
Speaker 1: first Halloween. It's stars Lance guest, who is a one
Speaker 1: of the main actors in Halloween two, and it also
Speaker 1: stars Dan o'hurley, he who is the villain in Halloween three,
Speaker 1: season of the witch. Yeah, yeah, that's it's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: UH So. Yeah, let's go through some of these individuals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: starting with Nick Castle, the director, born seven, American director
Speaker 1: who directed an array of kids movies and miscellaneous films,
Speaker 1: including Dennis the menace, major pain in the nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: Gregory Hinds dance movie tap. But when it comes to weird,
Speaker 1: psychotronic and SCI FI films, he's probably best known for
Speaker 1: the last starfighter and his work with John Carpenter on
Speaker 1: the screenplay for ones escape from New York. I just
Speaker 1: had an idea recently. Hey, nobody who's listening, but don't
Speaker 1: steal this. Uh. My idea was somebody should create escape
Speaker 1: from New York the musical. Doesn't that just seem it
Speaker 1: seemed like that would work. We already have a musical
Speaker 1: number in the picture, right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's good. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not a huge musical guy,
Speaker 1: but I think I would watch that one. Oh, I
Speaker 1: totally would. I would, I would star in that one
Speaker 1: if they would have let me in. All right, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the screenwriter. Here's Jonathan R Batool, born nine.
Speaker 1: This was the tool's first screenplay to make it to
Speaker 1: the screen, which he followed up with another keenes break
Speaker 1: Sci fi movie, my science project, which I don't remember
Speaker 1: every seeing, but I remember the VHS box art for it.
Speaker 1: Um that that one had a cast that featured Fisher Stevens,
Speaker 1: Richard Maser, who was of course, in John Carpenter is
Speaker 1: the thing, and Dennis Hopper. Um, yeah, he also wrote
Speaker 1: and directed, Um, some episodes of the anthology series Freddie's nightmare,
Speaker 1: and he also wrote and directed Theodore Rex Mat sure
Speaker 1: we talked about recently on the show, but he is
Speaker 1: also the CO founder of the Visual Effects Studio looma pictures,
Speaker 1: which has been involved in a ton of especially twenty
Speaker 1: first century films, ranging from no country for old men
Speaker 1: to underworld three and a ton of the M C
Speaker 1: U films. Huh, okay, if you could only keep one
Speaker 1: no country for old men or underworld three? Which one? Oh,
Speaker 1: don't make me choose these. These are two films I
Speaker 1: I legitimately enjoy. Um, I mean no, I guess you
Speaker 1: have to keep no country for old men. But but
Speaker 1: underworld three is the best of the underworld movie. So
Speaker 1: I don't know. I remember your advice one time was
Speaker 1: to skip the first one, skip the second one and
Speaker 1: go straight for three. Yeah, three is the prequel film.
Speaker 1: It has all the best actors from the first film
Speaker 1: in it. Uh, and I thought did a pretty good job.
Speaker 1: Like it. When it comes to doing a prequel movie where, okay, well,
Speaker 1: we can't kill the main villain. There are certain things
Speaker 1: we have to do and certain things we can't do,
Speaker 1: I felt like that movie did a pretty good job
Speaker 1: of navigating those limitations. I suppose it will have to
Speaker 1: be my entree to the underworld series. All right, let's
Speaker 1: get into the cast. So we've we've mentioned Alex Rogan,
Speaker 1: our our our hero, our our teenage dreamer turned starfighter.
Speaker 1: He's played by the actor Lance guest. Born in nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: he was Michael Brody in seven's jaws the revenge. He
Speaker 1: was Jimmy in nineteen eight ones, Halloween two who, as
Speaker 1: you mentioned already, remains active today. He starred on Broadway
Speaker 1: as Johnny cash in the musical million dollar quartet in
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten. He I think he's a good
Speaker 1: casting choice for this role. He has a natural kind
Speaker 1: of sweetness to him. He just seems like a like
Speaker 1: even when he's not, you know, when his character is
Speaker 1: not at his best, he's you know he's being kind
Speaker 1: of petulant or something, you sense a good natured core
Speaker 1: to him always. Yeah, he's really saw it in this.
Speaker 1: He's a solid lead. He's he's a he's able to
Speaker 1: do like the serious teenager dreamer stuff as well as
Speaker 1: the funny stuff. And Uh, he kind of has a
Speaker 1: dual role in this as well. All right. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: if you have a teenage dreamer he's got to have
Speaker 1: a love interest. Uh. The love interest is Maggie Gordon,
Speaker 1: played by Katherine Mary Stewart, born Nineteen fifty nine, American actor,
Speaker 1: probably best known for this picture, but she was also
Speaker 1: in eighty nine weekend at Bernie's, she was the night
Speaker 1: of the comment and she was in the stupendous nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eighty Adam and eve musical spectacular. The apple so
Speaker 1: she's still got to see that stuff. Oh, it's it's tremendous. No,
Speaker 1: I know, but she's also she's great in this too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's really good. I mean this is exactly the sort
Speaker 1: of actor you want playing this role. Um, she's she's
Speaker 1: still active today and she's been in a load of
Speaker 1: other cool stuff. She was in the Weird Nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: seven adaptation of George rr Martin's night flyers, and she
Speaker 1: was on two different episodes of the nineties outer limits,
Speaker 1: family values and unnatural selection. But I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: I've seen either of those. One of those has Tom
Speaker 1: Arnold in it, which is not the reason I haven't
Speaker 1: seen I just I looked him up and it's like,
Speaker 1: have I seen this one? No, I don't think I've
Speaker 1: seen one with Tom Arnold night yet. I would say
Speaker 1: in general, the human cast of this movie, like the earthlings,
Speaker 1: are they're well selected for having a kind of down
Speaker 1: home good nature to them. They really make you care
Speaker 1: about earth. When later on that you find out that,
Speaker 1: when you later on find out that Earth itself will
Speaker 1: eventually be in the crosshairs of Zoor and the code
Speaker 1: in Armada. Yeah, that's true. Um, that now Jane, who
Speaker 1: is Alex's mom, is played by Barbara Boson. I just
Speaker 1: gonna mention her real quick because she she is an
Speaker 1: actor who started off as an uncredited nurse in bullet
Speaker 1: and she was a TV cop in both Hill Street
Speaker 1: Blues and Cop Rocks Rock. Yeah, so I guess she's
Speaker 1: a singer and an actor. I don't know. I haven't
Speaker 1: seen COP ROCK BUT UM, I'm familiar with it by reputation.
Speaker 1: Now there is an actor in this movie who is
Speaker 1: not only great in the movie it I feel like
Speaker 1: he must have somehow been part of the pitch for
Speaker 1: the movie, because the role, it's not just like he's
Speaker 1: good for the role, it feels clearly like it was
Speaker 1: written specifically for him, and that is Robert Preston as
Speaker 1: the space con artist Centauri. Yeah, it really does feel
Speaker 1: like a situation where they wrote it for him and
Speaker 1: they're like do you think we can get him? And
Speaker 1: they're like yeah, we can actually get him for this
Speaker 1: and they're like that's perfect. And it is a pretty
Speaker 1: perfect performance. Like you enjoy him every time he's on
Speaker 1: the screen. Totally. Robert Preston, N Eighteen through nine, eight, seven,
Speaker 1: American actor of stage screen and TV, best known for
Speaker 1: his role as the con man Harold Hill in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two's the music man. I believe he originated that
Speaker 1: role on Broadway as well. Other films of note include
Speaker 1: eight Twos, Victor, Victoria, Sidney Looms, Ninety two film child's play.
Speaker 1: This is not the one with the killer doll on
Speaker 1: a different film. Um. Last starfighter was one of his
Speaker 1: final films, but his credits extend all the way back
Speaker 1: to the late nineteen thirties. He's marvelous in this and yeah,
Speaker 1: the role clearly plays off of his music man role
Speaker 1: as well. He he talks exactly like the Harold Hill
Speaker 1: character in the music man, like some of the same
Speaker 1: sentence structures and metaphors. Uh. You know, Harold Hill, a
Speaker 1: lot of what his character is is giving out out landish,
Speaker 1: uh sort of vivid examples of things to conjure fears
Speaker 1: or evoke emotions in the mind of his marks, and
Speaker 1: he does the exact same thing in this movie. He's like,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, he's like you know when when Alex
Speaker 1: is like Hey, where are you taking me in this space?
Speaker 1: Car Uh Centauri says say, are you the kind of
Speaker 1: kid who reads the last page of a mystery. First, no,
Speaker 1: that's not you. It's just wonderful. Yeah, he's so good. Alright,
Speaker 1: and moving on to some of the other actors here. Um,
Speaker 1: some of these may not be in order of importance. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll discuss here. But, uh, we have enduring. Is Am
Speaker 1: I saying that correctly? Enduring, he's the don't he's the
Speaker 1: King of the Rylands. He's the main Rylands, the right. Okay,
Speaker 1: the RYLANDS. To back up. The rylands are an alien
Speaker 1: species in the Greater Universe of this film. That looks
Speaker 1: like Alien Larry David's. That all, even the females look
Speaker 1: like Larry David's. Then all got the heads. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: imagine Larry David was like a like a slightly swollen
Speaker 1: outer limitsy Um head. And that's that's the Rylands. They
Speaker 1: look like a cross between Larry David and a little
Speaker 1: bit of Exeter from this islander Earth. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: a little bit of Tom Noonan as well, maybe in
Speaker 1: there one fourth Tom noon. Anyway, that this this this character,
Speaker 1: that the king of the Rylands. We meet the bearded
Speaker 1: Ryland played by K E cooter, two thousand and three
Speaker 1: TV actor and a later voice actor who is just
Speaker 1: in tons of stuff. So titles like green acres, Petticoat junction, uh,
Speaker 1: the x files, Baywatch Nights, a movie called friend or
Speaker 1: I think this is a movie, Frankenstein, General Hospital, a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff, a lot of voice acting. Later on
Speaker 1: he's the Ryland leader, but he's also the father of
Speaker 1: our enemy Emperor Zour. So it basically turns out that interplanetary,
Speaker 1: interstellar politics, it's also one big family drama that Alex
Speaker 1: is being sucked into here, and there's a lot we
Speaker 1: never find out about the the alien politics. We just
Speaker 1: know that, uh, yeah, he's he's the head of the
Speaker 1: Rylands and his son's Zur, is a Ryland but has
Speaker 1: betrayed the rylands and is stealing imperial secrets of the
Speaker 1: Rylands to go work with the code in Armada to
Speaker 1: destroy the Rylands. Is that right? That's right. And the
Speaker 1: code ends in this are. They're essentially like the Klingons
Speaker 1: of this world. They're the warlike, you know, space arc species,
Speaker 1: and they look really cool. They have this they're kind
Speaker 1: of like barky space orcs that have really cool like
Speaker 1: red and silver and black uniforms, and the main one
Speaker 1: is this character named Lord Krill and it's played by
Speaker 1: this character is played by Dan Mason, and this is
Speaker 1: the one that has a space monocle. This is the
Speaker 1: thing that that's stuck in my memory the most, that
Speaker 1: I remember most from my childhood and watching, watching this,
Speaker 1: is that he tends to punctuate things that he says
Speaker 1: by having his monocle like Servo into place over his eye, which,
Speaker 1: as a child, I thought that was the coolest thing ever.
Speaker 1: This is like, like this made the film memorable, this
Speaker 1: one space monocle. Yeah, I know exactly the moment you've
Speaker 1: got in mind. We can talk about that later. Yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: but okay. So we got some aliens with with the skulls.
Speaker 1: Those are the Rylands. You've got the other aliens. You
Speaker 1: want to go destroy the Rylands. They look kind of
Speaker 1: like human trees. And then you've got Grigg, who is
Speaker 1: griggs kind of the heart and soul of the movie,
Speaker 1: and he's he's a lovable space lizard who just wants
Speaker 1: to fight for righteousness in space. Yes, and this is,
Speaker 1: of course, is Dan o'horley, who lived nineteen anything through
Speaker 1: two thousand and five. Probably not going to go into
Speaker 1: as much detail here about him. We talked about him
Speaker 1: a good debt in our Halloween three season of the
Speaker 1: witch episode last year, so I guess go back and
Speaker 1: listen to that if you want a deeper dive on
Speaker 1: Dano early. But this is the old man himself. Um,
Speaker 1: you know he had a robust acting career prior to
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. But he's he's, I think, best remembered
Speaker 1: by many of yours today as playing these villainous white
Speaker 1: haired men, uh in suits, often so connal cochrane and
Speaker 1: Halloween three season of the witch, the old man in
Speaker 1: the first two robocop films, Andrew Packard on twin peaks
Speaker 1: just really great at playing those kind of villainous roles.
Speaker 1: So and to a certain extent it feels weird, it
Speaker 1: feels maybe wrong that in this film we cover him
Speaker 1: up with turtle makeup, basically put him in a turtle
Speaker 1: costume and make him a space turtle and Um and
Speaker 1: and yet he's really good in this role, like he's funny,
Speaker 1: he's he's Um and the suit does look good on.
Speaker 1: And one thing I kept noticing is that his eyes
Speaker 1: are very kind of kind of almost kind of bloodshot
Speaker 1: looked to them, which kind of adds to the effect,
Speaker 1: like it feels. It makes the suit feel more organic somehow. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm not not really sure why, but I know, I
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about. You can kind of see
Speaker 1: like the red around his yeah, he's also got a
Speaker 1: vibe that I recognized from other especially movies aimed at
Speaker 1: kids from the eighties, where there's a character who's kind
Speaker 1: of Oh in some sense, kind of almost stuffy, kind
Speaker 1: of high Falutin like he you know, he's about space
Speaker 1: and we must fight for the for the Rylands and
Speaker 1: all that, but then also he will crack a joke
Speaker 1: and go oh, and I don't know if I'm articulating
Speaker 1: this right, but there's like a thing like that. There
Speaker 1: are characters like that. It's the kind of role that
Speaker 1: led me to expect a final scene back on earth where,
Speaker 1: you know, after they've defeated the bad guys, Grig is
Speaker 1: hanging out with all of Alex's friends by the Ake
Speaker 1: and he's wearing sunglasses, dancing to Kenny loggins and maybe
Speaker 1: drinking a miller genuine draft, and then he looks into
Speaker 1: the camera and says surfs up. It would totally be
Speaker 1: in keeping with the film. I mean, because we do
Speaker 1: get some a scene that implies that he might date
Speaker 1: some grandma's later on, and and we do. And we
Speaker 1: also have the scenery shows his family photos to Alex,
Speaker 1: which is just which is that, which is intentionally hilarious,
Speaker 1: like there's no other way. Um. So yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a fun role, I think. I think the the
Speaker 1: the only thing that might, in retrospect, take away from
Speaker 1: it at all would be the fact that the following year,
Speaker 1: in the film enemy mine, you have Louis Gossa Jr
Speaker 1: giving a stellar performance in another sort of reptilian human
Speaker 1: cost him. I made the same connection. These are two
Speaker 1: big movies in a row with the human hero acting
Speaker 1: opposite a great character actor who has been put into
Speaker 1: scaly lizard makeup. Ultimately, you know, they're different performances and different,
Speaker 1: different vibes. But Um yeah, when when you think of
Speaker 1: great performances and a lizard man costume that has no
Speaker 1: hair and so forth, uh, yeah, you're gonna think of
Speaker 1: enemy mine, or I do anyway. I don't know what
Speaker 1: the public the public is larger public opinion is on
Speaker 1: this sort of thing, but for my money, Lewis CASS
Speaker 1: JR Great Lizard name performance. Okay, so that's our that's
Speaker 1: our heroic friend, our our sort of, uh buddy cop character.
Speaker 1: Almost too well, they're not cops. I don't know why.
Speaker 1: So that just the buddy, you know. He's the sidekick to, uh,
Speaker 1: to Alex, though I don't know if he's the side kick.
Speaker 1: Maybe Alex is the sidekick because he's much more experienced
Speaker 1: than Alex. I don't know. Anyway, they're gonna fight zoor
Speaker 1: and the code and or motor together. So we got
Speaker 1: to meet our bad guys. Who who is zoor? Zoor
Speaker 1: is just, I would say, not only chewing the scenery,
Speaker 1: as Zour is like, oh, much like the brundle fly,
Speaker 1: in Um, in the fly. He is vomiting up digestive
Speaker 1: enzymes on the scenery and then slurping them up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is like acting Um to to the limits of
Speaker 1: of the our threshold, to take it U Um. And
Speaker 1: I mean this is a very intentional choice and I
Speaker 1: think probably this is the right choice. You have a
Speaker 1: villain of a space movie like this. Yeah, let them
Speaker 1: tear it out light like this. Um So zero is
Speaker 1: played by Norman snowborn nineteen fifty. Hey Juilliard train, Arkansas
Speaker 1: born character actor, probably best known for this role, but
Speaker 1: he's been a ton of other stuff as well. He's
Speaker 1: actually in Michael Mann's six adaptation of Richard Harris's Red Dragon,
Speaker 1: man hunter. He plays FBI agent Springfield, who I do
Speaker 1: not remember, Um, but I included a picture here for you, Joe,
Speaker 1: in case you've seen man hunter more recently than I have.
Speaker 1: I have. I mean I've seen manhunter, it's been a
Speaker 1: long time. I don't remember who this character is. I
Speaker 1: remember liking it, as I generally like Michael Mann. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it also has the the Atlantic connection of
Speaker 1: the insane asylum being the High Museum of art. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's where that's where Brian Cox, as Hannibal Lecter,
Speaker 1: is stored. Yeah, Snow was in some other pictures as well.
Speaker 1: He was in the nineteen seventy nine British period piece
Speaker 1: titled The Europeans, and he appeared as the Klingon touring
Speaker 1: in Star Trek the next generation, an episode called Rightful Air.
Speaker 1: From I can imagine he would be typecast as villains.
Speaker 1: He is just the most sniveling, sneering. Yeah, I will
Speaker 1: be evil. Yeah, yeah, and even like the IT looks
Speaker 1: like even in Manhunter, like he's perfect as just like
Speaker 1: a suited FBI kind of dude, you know, just kind
Speaker 1: of coldly standing in the background, like even if he's
Speaker 1: not turning up the notch on the the acting there
Speaker 1: now just a few more acting notes because it's just
Speaker 1: there's also some just people with very small rolls worth noting.
Speaker 1: Will Wheaton is apparently in this film, though I don't
Speaker 1: think I noticed him. He plays Lewis's friend. Lewis is
Speaker 1: what Alex's brother, a child who is obsessed with with
Speaker 1: playboy magazines. Oh yeah, he has a whole stash of them.
Speaker 1: He has his strategic reserve of playboys under his bed. Yep,
Speaker 1: but that's not will wheaton. That will wheaton is supposed
Speaker 1: to be his friend, but I don't think I saw
Speaker 1: him in the movie. I don't like say maybe he's
Speaker 1: just barely in it. We also have a hit shaker
Speaker 1: character that shows up. That spoiler turns out to be
Speaker 1: a Zando Zan bownty hunter played by Marc Alamo. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is gold ducket from Star Trek Deep Space Nine.
Speaker 1: This is Everett from total recall and, of course, Roger
Speaker 1: from arena, which one. I forget who roguar was. Rogar
Speaker 1: is the like the main evil dude who's Um, who's
Speaker 1: running the prize fights between the aliens. I see, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: and UH, yeah, he's got he's got kind of a
Speaker 1: long neck. Thus he has the UH on deep space nine.
Speaker 1: They really accentuated this well as he is what a Cardassian?
Speaker 1: Is it Cardassian or Kardassian? Anyway? And this he's a
Speaker 1: Zando Zan bownty hunter. He initially shows up with a mustache, right,
Speaker 1: so he looks human at first, but then he this
Speaker 1: scene didn't make a lot of sense to me. He
Speaker 1: looks human. He's, you know, on the hunt for for
Speaker 1: Alex on earth and he walks past the starfighter video
Speaker 1: game cabinet and it like blasts energy out into his
Speaker 1: face that hides his human disguise and uncovers him as
Speaker 1: a Xando Zan bounty hunter with the with the V
Speaker 1: W beatlehead. Yeah, yeah, that feature of the video game
Speaker 1: cabinet was not covered earlier in the film. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: a few few others. These are both uncredited roles, but
Speaker 1: Bruce Abbott is in this, I guess, playing one of
Speaker 1: those teenagers. Bruce Abbott was born Dr Dan Kine from
Speaker 1: the re animator movies. Oh, he's one of Alex's really
Speaker 1: mean friends. Okay, that makes sense. Okay. Also, Suzanne Snyder
Speaker 1: is in she plays it cheerly. No, wait, after I
Speaker 1: said that, I saw that you included a note about
Speaker 1: him and it says he's a Ryland sergeant. So I
Speaker 1: gotta be totally wrong about that. Oh, you know, I
Speaker 1: read my own note here and I thought that was
Speaker 1: his name. Ryland sergeant was clearly one of the teenagers,
Speaker 1: that he would be one of. He would have the
Speaker 1: he would be one of the, uh, the aliens with
Speaker 1: the hair on the sides of their heads. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: We also have Suzanne Snyder in this, playing an uncredited
Speaker 1: cheerleader role. UH, born nineteen sixty two. She also appeared
Speaker 1: in weird science night of the creeps, Remo Williams. The
Speaker 1: adventure begins return of the living dead to two and
Speaker 1: much more so, kind of a genre staple of the
Speaker 1: time period. The music is from Craig Saffen. Other scores
Speaker 1: include the nineteen eight horror film fate to black, the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three anthology film nightmares, which I referenced earlier,
Speaker 1: which features an arcade story ELM street, for the dream
Speaker 1: master in n seven time stalkers. Uh So, Rob I
Speaker 1: know this is not your favorite kind of score because
Speaker 1: it's a traditional orchestral score doesn't have electronic elements, but
Speaker 1: you know what I actually I thought it was really solid.
Speaker 1: I found it I found it rousing. It had that
Speaker 1: heroic character to it. Yeah, I did everything it needed
Speaker 1: to do. I have no complaints about it. This is
Speaker 1: not one of those films where I'm gonna say the
Speaker 1: electronic score would have elevated it, especially given those Spielbergie
Speaker 1: in tones like this was exactly the music it needed.
Speaker 1: Now I know you're gonna love this, Joe, because our
Speaker 1: production designer is none other than Ron Cobb. No, the
Speaker 1: other Ron Cobb this time, not Ronald Cobb, but not
Speaker 1: the the cabaret costume designer that we talked about in
Speaker 1: Um a devil girl from Mars. No, this is the
Speaker 1: legendary American Australian artist Ron Cobb, who lived ninety seven
Speaker 1: through twenty. Production designer who worked on many iconic films,
Speaker 1: the the designs and looks of tons of movies you
Speaker 1: know and love from the seventies and eighties, that's Ron Cobb. Yeah,
Speaker 1: movies like Dark Star, seventy four, so another John Carpenter connection.
Speaker 1: Star Wars from seventy seven, alien from seventy nine, raiders
Speaker 1: of the lost arc from eight. One, come in, the
Speaker 1: barbarian from a D two, back to the future, five,
Speaker 1: the abyss from eight nine. Also Leviathan from eighty nine.
Speaker 1: So double dipping into the underwater. UH, SCI FI terror,
Speaker 1: total recall from nineteen ninety. UH, he's credited with having
Speaker 1: designed the hammerhead alien, which we later call on an authority.
Speaker 1: And I believe in Star Wars he was a conceptual
Speaker 1: designer on robot jocks. He only directed one film in
Speaker 1: this nine is Um Garbo, which I believe it's just
Speaker 1: like an Australian drama that I don't think even has
Speaker 1: any monsters in it. But UH, yeah, he contributed to
Speaker 1: back to the future and real genius. Basically he just
Speaker 1: had his hand in the design elements of so many
Speaker 1: defining films of the late seventies and the nineteen eighties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta Love Run cobby and we'll come back to
Speaker 1: some of the designs that he did for this film
Speaker 1: because they're they're pretty great. Yeah, Jim Bessel is was
Speaker 1: also involved in this. He was the art director, born
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one. Uh, maybe not as legendary name as
Speaker 1: Ron Cob, but still this is the guy that we're
Speaker 1: going to become a big deal in production design, working
Speaker 1: on films like Harry and the Henderson's the rocketeer, Jumanji,
Speaker 1: which is another game based fantasy picture, three hundred, I think,
Speaker 1: two different blockbuster mission impossible films, and much more. Now
Speaker 1: one name that caught my eye when we were looking
Speaker 1: at the credits was the cinematography by King Baggott. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's that's the name that captivates you, even if
Speaker 1: you're not familiar with their early days of cinema. This
Speaker 1: King Baggett, born night, was born ninety three. UH, full
Speaker 1: name Stephen King Baggett, a k a king bag at
Speaker 1: the third, the grandson of legendary film director King Baggott,
Speaker 1: who lived eighteen seventy nine through Um. This King Baggett,
Speaker 1: the one who worked on this film, also worked on
Speaker 1: such films as the hand from one and revenge of
Speaker 1: the NERDS Odh. The hand from eight one, I believe,
Speaker 1: is Oliver Stone's remake or I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: officially a remake, basically adaptation of the same material as
Speaker 1: the beast with five fingers, which we covered on the show. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know how much it's uh, it
Speaker 1: really has anything to do with the plot of that,
Speaker 1: but it is very much a detached hand movie and
Speaker 1: I remember, I remember watching at ages ago, has Michael
Speaker 1: Caine in and uh, I remember it as being good,
Speaker 1: but I haven't seen it in a very long time.
Speaker 1: All right, you ready to talk some plot? Let's do it.
Speaker 1: Classic Space Adventure Opening. How many movies have we done
Speaker 1: now in a row where the opening was was looking
Speaker 1: at space? We just keep doing looking at space beginnings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that this one I rather liked because of course it's
Speaker 1: a universal picture. So we start with that universal studios
Speaker 1: Um a logo that has a spinning earth and then
Speaker 1: we cut two uh to a very similarly Um uh
Speaker 1: sized world, except it's clearly an alien world because it's
Speaker 1: got all these brilliant, like pink or purple colors to it,
Speaker 1: and I kind of like that. It's like Whoa, here
Speaker 1: we are. What world is this? I'm not sure. Do
Speaker 1: we find out? Is this the Ryland homeworld? I would
Speaker 1: guess it's Rylos. Yeah, but it's a classic space adventure
Speaker 1: opening either way. So you know, planet suspended in the
Speaker 1: void and then rushing through a field of stars while
Speaker 1: the horns are blasting out the opening fanfare. It's a
Speaker 1: kind of John Williams style open opening theme. Uh, kind
Speaker 1: of a rousing traditional score. But then the music turns
Speaker 1: gentle and Homie as as the credits fade away and
Speaker 1: we pan down over earth. At first we see some
Speaker 1: mountains in the desert. Looks like we're in southern California probably,
Speaker 1: and then we go to our home base, which is
Speaker 1: the starlight star bright trailer park. This is the home
Speaker 1: setting of the movie and it's it's very much that
Speaker 1: there were a lot of eighties movies like this that
Speaker 1: would start with the the survey of the lived in setting.
Speaker 1: You know the habits, the Quirky neighbors. You see a
Speaker 1: dog snoozing on the front doorstep of a trailer Um.
Speaker 1: You see the characters walking around. There's a guy saying
Speaker 1: it's going to be a sparkling day and then a
Speaker 1: strange old lady pokes her head out of out of
Speaker 1: her trailer and says my electricity is out. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: Miss My soaps. And she's got the hair net on
Speaker 1: and you just kind of zoom around meeting the different characters.
Speaker 1: We meet Maggie. She's got a towel like she's ready
Speaker 1: to go out to the lake. UH, she she says
Speaker 1: hi to some guy who's going off fishing. Oh, she
Speaker 1: checks in with her granny who's gardening and uh, this
Speaker 1: is a rock and grandma this. She's like Vanessa Redgrave
Speaker 1: and the simpsons, you know, ever do the backseat Mombo craggy? Yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone is delightful in this place. It has um, it
Speaker 1: has that kind of like small town California charm that
Speaker 1: that also reminds me of the town from sons of anarchy,
Speaker 1: where good for the motorcycle gang space, you know, but
Speaker 1: like far less evil. Yeah, yeah, well, less with less evil,
Speaker 1: but you have I mean the thing about sons of
Speaker 1: anarchy is that there's it's it's evil but wholesome at
Speaker 1: the same time. Right, yeah, but but, yeah, there's no
Speaker 1: biker gangs here. No biker gang could ever come here.
Speaker 1: Like this place is basically Arcadia, uh, which I found
Speaker 1: rather interesting because, you know, a lot of this is
Speaker 1: the plot initially is going to have to deal with
Speaker 1: Alex wishing he could escape, wanting to be somewhere else,
Speaker 1: not wanting to spend the rest of his life here,
Speaker 1: and kind of trash talking people who might think that
Speaker 1: staying here is a good idea. And yet everything looks
Speaker 1: pretty pleasant here, and I don't think that was the
Speaker 1: wrong choice. I think that it would have been kind
Speaker 1: of a bummer if they tried to portray like a
Speaker 1: depressing trailer park in the opening of this film, but
Speaker 1: it is it does seem kind of at odds with
Speaker 1: the way Alex feels about everything. I think you make
Speaker 1: an excellent point. The trailer park has the feeling of
Speaker 1: a totally loving and support of community full of Quirky,
Speaker 1: bighearted characters. It is it's classic Spielberg Movie Home Turf,
Speaker 1: you know. So you've got a PG rated movie of
Speaker 1: the eighties. You're gonna have a kind of like a
Speaker 1: Dolly shot around the neighborhood where it's a little Zany
Speaker 1: here and people are Oh, they're all stuck in their ways,
Speaker 1: but all isn't it cozy and isn't it sweet? And
Speaker 1: it really is, like, you know, we go around seeing
Speaker 1: all these characters doing their things we see Alex's girlfriend, Maggie,
Speaker 1: who's you know, she's smart and funny and takes good
Speaker 1: care of her granny. You see Alex's mom working hard
Speaker 1: to take care of her family. You see Alex's little brother,
Speaker 1: who's the he's the space of injury. He's like wearing
Speaker 1: a space helmet, running around with a little ZAP gun. UH,
Speaker 1: he's he's up to no good, but in a in
Speaker 1: a cute way. There's a cat that crawls out of
Speaker 1: a mailbox and then, I think later we get cat
Speaker 1: reaction shots. Second movie in a row on Weird House
Speaker 1: where we have cat reaction shots Um, which I think
Speaker 1: in general I love pet reaction shots and films because,
Speaker 1: you know, it implies that the animal is not only
Speaker 1: reacting to what's happening in the scene but also thinking
Speaker 1: about what's happening in the scene. Yes, yes, but anyway,
Speaker 1: I think you're you're exactly right to point this out,
Speaker 1: and it is a kind of strange tension in the movie.
Speaker 1: It sometimes makes Alex seem like an ungrateful jerk for
Speaker 1: talking so much about how like he has to escape
Speaker 1: this place because, you know, obviously traveling and seeing the world,
Speaker 1: that's great, that's a good thing to do. But like
Speaker 1: his family and his neighbors are so nice, like would
Speaker 1: it really be so bad to live here with them?
Speaker 1: But anyway, way, so we're we're going around meeting everybody,
Speaker 1: and then we finally meet Alex himself. And where is he,
Speaker 1: they say, where else? He is standing at the arcade
Speaker 1: cabinet for the starfighter video game. Uh, and this is
Speaker 1: the first of many times we will hear the opening
Speaker 1: narration of this video game. It says, greeting, starfighter, you
Speaker 1: have been recruited by the Star League to defend the
Speaker 1: frontier against Zuur, and the code and Armada prepare for
Speaker 1: blast off. And I started thinking, wait a second. Did
Speaker 1: Video Arcade cabinets in four playback real recorded audio, such
Speaker 1: as like an extended voice message? I don't remember anything
Speaker 1: like that. I just remember bleeps and bloops. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: may be right, and they certainly talked later, but I
Speaker 1: don't know about ones from the cabinets from this era.
Speaker 1: Rob You had a note about this when you pointed
Speaker 1: out how the trailer park is is so idyllic. It's
Speaker 1: like Arcadia, but it's uh, surely they weren't doing this
Speaker 1: on purpose, but it is interesting that Alex is trying
Speaker 1: to escape Arcadia, as you said, via an arcade game. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that was their cleverness or or
Speaker 1: my attempt at cleverness, but at any rate, yeah, here's
Speaker 1: the cabinet just in the middle of everything, and it's
Speaker 1: a splendid looking cabinet. Uh, it's, it's it's making sounds
Speaker 1: like you say that that may be more advanced than
Speaker 1: other arcade cabinets. At the time we see some gameplay
Speaker 1: footage and it also looks really slight. But of course
Speaker 1: all of this will make sense as we progress to
Speaker 1: the plot, because this is no normal arcade cabinet. Right.
Speaker 1: So when we first meet Alex, he and Maggie, they're
Speaker 1: supposed to go up to the lake hang out with
Speaker 1: their friends. Alex's friends are all making fun of him.
Speaker 1: There's the guy driving the red pickup truck. He's like, Oh,
Speaker 1: here's Alex, on the last leg of his worldwide tour
Speaker 1: done nowhere, and they all laugh. And then Alex is
Speaker 1: is gonna. He gives them his like I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: somebody's speech, you know. He's uh, he's like you think
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna hang out with you guys the rest
Speaker 1: of my life. I'm gonna go do something, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go places. Yeah, he kind of tears into him a
Speaker 1: little bit, like he kind of gives back more than
Speaker 1: he received in this scene that everyone's kind, everyone's good
Speaker 1: natured enough. They're just like, oh well, that's Alex. Oh,
Speaker 1: but then Alex can't go to the lake with them
Speaker 1: because he has to stay behind and help fix the
Speaker 1: old ladies electricity in her trailer so she doesn't miss
Speaker 1: her soaps. So Maggie and the gang go to the
Speaker 1: lake without him, while he stays behind to do the
Speaker 1: grunt work. And you get the feeling this just happens
Speaker 1: all the time. Alex is, you know, he's always gotta
Speaker 1: be the handyman around the trailer park instead of going
Speaker 1: off to do what he wants to do. But it
Speaker 1: does score him some extra video game time, and I
Speaker 1: guess he has quarters to spare, because he ends up
Speaker 1: spending some more time, uh, playing the arcade cabinet and
Speaker 1: we end up with a pretty great, great scene here
Speaker 1: because he's he's progressing enough in the game that he
Speaker 1: starts making a real run at beating the game like
Speaker 1: a real boss run here and the community takes notice
Speaker 1: and they start calling each other over. They gather around
Speaker 1: the arcade cabinet to cheer him on and Watch. Even
Speaker 1: the pets are present. And you know this is of
Speaker 1: course an exaggeration, but I think it does kind of
Speaker 1: capture that sent that performative aspect of public arcade machines
Speaker 1: of old. You know that you would have be at
Speaker 1: something of the supermarket or at an actual arcade where
Speaker 1: somebody was doing really well at a game, people might
Speaker 1: gather around to watch and even cheer them on, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I might never beat this game, but here's
Speaker 1: somebody who can. Hopefully they can. Maybe I'll get to
Speaker 1: see the ending, I'll get to see what happens. And
Speaker 1: you want to see them succeed and you want to
Speaker 1: see what it looks like. Yeah, you want to see
Speaker 1: what the ending is. I love the scene. Is Really Cute.
Speaker 1: It's like the old grannies are gathering around, you know,
Speaker 1: Vanessa Redgrave here the Rock and grandma, uh, they're they're talking.
Speaker 1: It's the I think the game says approaching command ship
Speaker 1: and then they're like, oh, command ship, what's a command ship?
Speaker 1: But it's very cute. So and and Alex. he like
Speaker 1: beats the High Score, he beats the game. He uh,
Speaker 1: he goes for the record and UH. And then later
Speaker 1: after the starfighter victory, you know, there's kind of a
Speaker 1: wind down and Alex and Maggie are talking about their
Speaker 1: future and there's one part I totally like burned into
Speaker 1: my memory from when I was a kid watching this.
Speaker 1: Alex and Maggie are standing outside and they kiss and
Speaker 1: Alex's little brother Lewis is looking through the window at
Speaker 1: them as they kiss and when they kiss he says
Speaker 1: diarrhea like he's using it as a as a curse
Speaker 1: word or something. I think he means like that's gross. Right, though,
Speaker 1: I have a very weird memory of not knowing what
Speaker 1: to make that line when I was a kid, and
Speaker 1: this is literally where my brain went. I was like, Huh,
Speaker 1: why did he say that? Well, maybe it's because diarrhea
Speaker 1: could potentially be spread by germs and when you kiss
Speaker 1: you exchange germs, so maybe he's suggesting that by kissing,
Speaker 1: one of them is catching diarrhea from the other one.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I would put together that hypothesis
Speaker 1: but Um, yeah, I don't think that's what it meant.
Speaker 1: I think he's. or You could just be like, he's
Speaker 1: just a kid who says stuff like this all the time,
Speaker 1: like he just learned this word and what it means,
Speaker 1: so he's going to say it a lot. Maybe he
Speaker 1: read about it and one of his mini playboys. Oh, yes, yes, well, anyway, so, uh,
Speaker 1: Alex comes back to talk to his mom and uh,
Speaker 1: and he's all, he's all, you know, pumped up because
Speaker 1: he beat the record on starfighter, and he approaches his
Speaker 1: mom in the kitchen he says someday they're gonna say
Speaker 1: this is where it all began. And she's like what
Speaker 1: is it? And he goes mom, I finally broke the
Speaker 1: starfighter record. And Alex, I mean I'm glad you had
Speaker 1: fun with your video game, but that you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to accept that people aren't going to care very much. Well,
Speaker 1: games were really hard back in those days. That's true.
Speaker 1: Nowadays he beat a video game, it's just like all right, well,
Speaker 1: that that's a that's a Tuesday. But back in the
Speaker 1: day these were hard. This was an accomplishment, not in
Speaker 1: just anyone could do it. That's true. It's like mom
Speaker 1: might beat battle toads and she's like oh in that case.
Speaker 1: But no, she's actually she's got some bad news for him.
Speaker 1: That's why she's kind of down. A letter came in
Speaker 1: the mail. It's his application for a student loan and
Speaker 1: it's been denied. So he's not headed off to wherever
Speaker 1: it was he wanted to go. They never say exactly.
Speaker 1: Now this was already in the mail, so it could
Speaker 1: not possibly be connected. His rejection for financial aid. Could
Speaker 1: not be connected to the alien conspiracy, could it? I
Speaker 1: doubt it. Well, I don't know. Maybe the aliens can
Speaker 1: intercept the mail. I'm not sure. What is it. What
Speaker 1: is the alien document archery technique? What? What? What's their
Speaker 1: level of skill at that? I don't know. They probably
Speaker 1: have a shape shifting alien who doesn't manulate your mailbox,
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah. So, anyway, Alex has really bummed out
Speaker 1: about this and he goes off wandering by himself in
Speaker 1: the in the front parking lot of the motor court,
Speaker 1: and it seems like he's just really dejected. But what's
Speaker 1: this there? There's kind of a worrying sound from behind
Speaker 1: him and then out and then out pops this very
Speaker 1: strange looking car and somebody starts speaking to him from
Speaker 1: inside the strange car and it almost sounds like the
Speaker 1: voice of Harold Hill, the music man, asking can you
Speaker 1: tell me the name of the person who beat that
Speaker 1: video game right over there? And Alex says, well, it's me.
Speaker 1: Who Are you? Who? Who is this guy? This guy
Speaker 1: is Centauri. Of course it's Centauri. Yes, and the Centauri
Speaker 1: Mobile here is awesome. It it looks, I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: there are notes of delore into it, but it also looks,
Speaker 1: quite fittingly, like a spaceship car. It looks like it
Speaker 1: just rolled off of an epcot attraction, and I mean
Speaker 1: that in the best possible sense. They're they're also sets
Speaker 1: in this that really strongly made me think of Epcot.
Speaker 1: I was just at Epcot. That may have something to
Speaker 1: do with it. But but it has that kind of
Speaker 1: like slick design but also seems like kind of functional,
Speaker 1: but not not in an authentic way, but in a
Speaker 1: ride attraction way. So, yeah, strong epcot vibes here. I
Speaker 1: see what you're saying. So, so we find out some
Speaker 1: things in this conversation. Uh, we find out Centauri invented starfighter,
Speaker 1: the game. Uh, to find talented people like Alex. Alex
Speaker 1: kind of he hesitates a little bit, but I don't know,
Speaker 1: he seems interested, like he does want to get away
Speaker 1: from the trailer park. So he gets into the car.
Speaker 1: He shakes hands with a humanoid figure who is shrouded
Speaker 1: in shadow and this gives him an electrical shock, and
Speaker 1: then the humanoid gets out of the Centauri mobile and
Speaker 1: then Centauri speeds away and we get a lot of
Speaker 1: flavor of Centauri. He's driving three miles per hour and
Speaker 1: just adding at at Alex and I don't know what's
Speaker 1: the Centauri Vibe? It's very Herald Hill. I wonder. I
Speaker 1: was just thinking of this. So Centauri obviously a reference
Speaker 1: to cosmology here in astronomy, but also Centaur makes me
Speaker 1: think of Chiron, the Centaur tutor to Achilles, the wise
Speaker 1: uh individual who trains the great warrior. I didn't make
Speaker 1: that connection. That's interesting. It might be reaching. I might
Speaker 1: be reaching on that one, but I don't know if
Speaker 1: Centauri Trains Alex. well, he does via the video game
Speaker 1: he created. Yeah, he recruits him, definitely. Yeah. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Centauri is like I've got something in store for you.
Speaker 1: You know, you've proved yourself on this video game. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take you somewhere. So the car is speeding along
Speaker 1: and it looks like it's going to crash into a
Speaker 1: wall at three miles an hour and then it starts flying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Alex almost says the s word, but luckily this is
Speaker 1: a PG family film, so so he doesn't actually get
Speaker 1: the s word out. I think he could have at
Speaker 1: it once. They might say it once somewhere else in
Speaker 1: the movie. Okay, I can't remember if they did it,
Speaker 1: but I was struck. For the most part this film
Speaker 1: is very PG, with a couple of moments where you're like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Ron Cobb and company, you're kind of
Speaker 1: pushing the envelope on what the kids would surely have
Speaker 1: been able to handle. I don't know, the man the
Speaker 1: kids in the eighties who were exposed to too much
Speaker 1: worse on the screen. I guess. Yeah, this is at
Speaker 1: the edge of PG. There are a couple of scenes
Speaker 1: that are pretty grizzly. I guess here I'm gonna start
Speaker 1: getting a little more cursory and describing what happens so
Speaker 1: we can more talk about the broader like themes and movements.
Speaker 1: But basically, so Alex is riding with Centauri here with
Speaker 1: Robert Preston up to the space base on Rilos and uh,
Speaker 1: rob how would you describe the intake procedure at the
Speaker 1: space base? It's straight up feels like an epcot ride,
Speaker 1: if it feels if you're about to begin an epcot ride,
Speaker 1: and it's great, like there's a little bit too much space,
Speaker 1: as if it were designed to accommodate large groups of
Speaker 1: people that are about to border ride, like it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be that if it gets crowded there's still enough
Speaker 1: room for a fire exit. So they're very responsible, very
Speaker 1: responsible to sign yes exactly. And so when he gets
Speaker 1: out of Centauri's car in the space base on Rilos,
Speaker 1: he meets some Rylands. They are again. They all look
Speaker 1: like Larry David, just like you say. They've got the
Speaker 1: horseshoe of white hair and then they're bald on top.
Speaker 1: They speak to him in an alien language. He doesn't
Speaker 1: understand them until somebody pins a translator device onto his
Speaker 1: collar and then he understands everything. But I love all
Speaker 1: the costumes and everything. The aliens are very weird looking.
Speaker 1: A lot of this is played for comedy and it
Speaker 1: is pretty funny. There's one kind of rylan old lady
Speaker 1: who looks kind of like, kind of like a cat,
Speaker 1: and she makes a purring noise at him. Oh, and
Speaker 1: then meanwhile it was so while he's doing all the
Speaker 1: intake at the space base, uh, there is some weird
Speaker 1: stuff going on back on earth. We see, uh, we
Speaker 1: see some of the earth characters like Maggie and Louis,
Speaker 1: the little brother, doing stuff and uh, at one point
Speaker 1: Maggie comes to try to talk to Alex and in
Speaker 1: fact there is somebody in Alex's bed. That's strange. He's
Speaker 1: up in space. So who's in his bed, like totally
Speaker 1: covered in blankets? And Maggie tries to talk to him
Speaker 1: but he just sort of lays their moaning and she's
Speaker 1: like well, okay, and she leaves. And as soon as
Speaker 1: she leaves we get a moment of absolute horror. This
Speaker 1: is one of the grossest looking things I can remember
Speaker 1: seeing on screen as a child. The figure under the
Speaker 1: blanket folds the blanket back and reveals I guess that.
Speaker 1: I guess we're supposed to know at this point that
Speaker 1: this was the Beta module, the other creature in the
Speaker 1: car with Centauri when when Alex left. Except, and it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be turning itself into a perfect copy of Alex,
Speaker 1: but it's not done yet. So it is just a
Speaker 1: kind of slimy looking, Pale humanoid figure with these disgusting
Speaker 1: like shriveled eyes. It's horrifying. Yeah, it's quite grotesque looking. UH,
Speaker 1: solid effects, maybe a little too solid for this. Essentially
Speaker 1: a half baked clone that's still still cooking there under
Speaker 1: the covers. But Anyway, the point is that this is
Speaker 1: going to be a robot that makes itself into a
Speaker 1: copy of Alex so that, you know, so that nobody
Speaker 1: misses Alex while he's gone. A solid B plot that
Speaker 1: they spend some good time with. Oh yeah, I agree,
Speaker 1: this is a very good b plot. But so back
Speaker 1: in space, Alex is getting brief with some other recruits.
Speaker 1: We see the other starfighters and there are various types
Speaker 1: of aliens. One has tentacles for a mouth, one has
Speaker 1: a kind of insect face, one just doesn't have a
Speaker 1: face at all. It's just like its face is kind
Speaker 1: of like a like a umpire's mask or something. And
Speaker 1: they're all sitting around getting getting a briefing by induring
Speaker 1: or induring the the head of the Rylands, who has again.
Speaker 1: He's got the Larry David Head, but then he's got
Speaker 1: two big like sort of skull lobes on either side
Speaker 1: of his forehead. I don't know if that's like a
Speaker 1: sign of seniority among them. Yeah, yeah, he that. He
Speaker 1: he starts giving a speech and this is where he learns.
Speaker 1: He's like hey, we have an interstellar war going on
Speaker 1: because basically me and my son can't get along with
Speaker 1: each other. And and Alex learns, you know what what
Speaker 1: he's what he's in for here, right. So he's talking
Speaker 1: to one of the other recruits there and and Alex
Speaker 1: has been very confused up to this point, but the
Speaker 1: other recruit tells him you were recruited by the Star League.
Speaker 1: And then Alex like completes his sentence because he knows
Speaker 1: this from the video game, to defend the frontier against
Speaker 1: Zora and the code in Armada. So this is where
Speaker 1: everything starts coming together. Everything from the video game was real.
Speaker 1: It was actually training him for this war. The ship
Speaker 1: from the game is the actual ship that he will fly.
Speaker 1: He is actually on rilos. That was a real place,
Speaker 1: not one made up for the game. He actually has
Speaker 1: to defend the frontier against Zora and the code in Armada.
Speaker 1: So who is zoor and the code in Armada? We
Speaker 1: we will find out in a few moments. But we
Speaker 1: also learned that the frontier is basically an invisible energy
Speaker 1: shield that's in space and it protects the peaceful systems
Speaker 1: from conquest by by the code and empire. And we
Speaker 1: find out that, due to a dark betrayal, the frontier
Speaker 1: will soon collapse. Oh, why could that be? Anyway, the
Speaker 1: starfighters are the only hope that rilos has left and
Speaker 1: they all start chanting victory or death. And this is
Speaker 1: a little too much for Alex and he's trying to
Speaker 1: he's trying to find a way to get out of
Speaker 1: this mess. And here's where he bumps into Dan o'hurley,
Speaker 1: he as Grig. How would you describe their first meeting here? Um,
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, mostly comedic. Again, we give
Speaker 1: the sort of clash of personalities where I mean essentially
Speaker 1: a lot of their their interaction is kind of like
Speaker 1: grig is very much Um, you know, of the warrior
Speaker 1: mindset and duty and honor and and so forth, but
Speaker 1: not in a what, not in like a harsh way,
Speaker 1: but in a very practical and an honor bound way.
Speaker 1: And Uh, and then meanwhile Alex is like what war? What?
Speaker 1: This is real, and he's like Oh, yes, it's very
Speaker 1: really actually I'm the last starfighter. And he's like well, yeah, yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: it's actually yeah, uh so, yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 1: So Greg is very much greg is kind of disappointed
Speaker 1: in Alex for wanting to escape the situation. He's like really,
Speaker 1: you're going to walk away from the chance to be
Speaker 1: a starfighter? That's that's extraordinary. I can't believe you would
Speaker 1: do that. But okay. And then he, especially Grigg, is
Speaker 1: upset when he finds out that that Centauri got Alex
Speaker 1: here by trickery and he he knows who Centauri is.
Speaker 1: So they go chase him down and Griggs like don't
Speaker 1: you know it's illegal to recruit from worlds outside the
Speaker 1: Star League, and and Centauri is like, Oh, you know,
Speaker 1: they'll be in the star League soon. UH So. So
Speaker 1: I think it's sort of a star trek, like pre
Speaker 1: contact by the federation thing. But Centauri is trying to
Speaker 1: talk Alex into staying here because it's clear Centauri has
Speaker 1: been paid a bounty for recruiting a starfighter. He's been
Speaker 1: given a big sum of money and if Alex quits,
Speaker 1: he's gonna have to give that money back and Centauri
Speaker 1: doesn't want that. So He's like, oh, it'll be fine,
Speaker 1: this is not actually dangerous. Uh. And then suddenly, right
Speaker 1: after he says that, we get a big head incoming,
Speaker 1: there's a giant Hologram of another Larry David Head, but
Speaker 1: this time it's zoor baby. This is zoor he's it's
Speaker 1: what's his name? John Snow, not John Snow, it's Norman Snow,
Speaker 1: as Zure in Hologram form, as big as a as
Speaker 1: big as and I don't know what, an elephant floating
Speaker 1: in the middle of space in this room arguing with
Speaker 1: his dad, and he's like, Father, I am here to
Speaker 1: do even and uh, induring is like, do not call
Speaker 1: me father, and they argue and you know, he's like
Speaker 1: you have betrayed Rylos. And then Zour says there are
Speaker 1: some Rylands who would welcome me, father, and the father says,
Speaker 1: Star League, put down your Zurian cult. Your followers are
Speaker 1: few and scattered. And Zura says, Star League, a refuge
Speaker 1: for weak world's not worthy to be our equals. Uh,
Speaker 1: so the yeah, we never get much back backstory about this,
Speaker 1: like what is the Zurian cult? How did all this
Speaker 1: break down? Like, why is the son of this guy
Speaker 1: operating a cult and now trying to attack the planet
Speaker 1: he comes from? It's not clear. Yeah, and the only
Speaker 1: thing is clear that maybe they should have put aside
Speaker 1: Um rule by monarchy. You know, yeah, exactly. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so he calls his father, calls him a an evil child,
Speaker 1: and zoo doesn't like that, he says. And yet it
Speaker 1: is this child who caught your master spy. And here's,
Speaker 1: here's where we get another I would say, if this
Speaker 1: is supposed to be a kid's adventure movie, this is
Speaker 1: a kind of age inappropriate scene. We get the master
Speaker 1: spy on vid screen here and he is killed in
Speaker 1: a horrible way by this like laser pulse to the
Speaker 1: head that kind of melts his brain as he screams. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very well done and again a little too well done. It's, it's,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of horrific. It melts the top of
Speaker 1: his head. Yeah, and then fortunately that cuts away before
Speaker 1: we see anything else. Right, and this is right after
Speaker 1: Centauri is like, Oh, this is not dangerous. So Alex
Speaker 1: is out of here and he he leaves. He wants
Speaker 1: to go back to Earth. So he's refusing the call now.
Speaker 1: And UH, meanwhile, we're gonna see what's going on with
Speaker 1: Zor and his buddies. So we see the frontier. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like all these green little do dad's floating
Speaker 1: in space and I guess they're they're marking an invisible barrier.
Speaker 1: And zoor and the code and Armada are sitting in
Speaker 1: the command ship right next to the frontier and they're
Speaker 1: they're going to get ready to attack rilos. So we
Speaker 1: see Zoor massaging accepter that he receives from somebody. He goes,
Speaker 1: you know, he's like looking at the scepter and he goes,
Speaker 1: just like your code and emperors, isn't it, commander Krill?
Speaker 1: and Commander Krill standing nearby, says it takes more than
Speaker 1: a scepter too rules or even on rilos. So you
Speaker 1: can tell there's some tension between them. Like commander Krill's
Speaker 1: working for Zoor, but he doesn't necessarily like it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I thought this is interesting. Instead of just presenting
Speaker 1: our our evil space emperor or or evil space usurper,
Speaker 1: which wouldn't really require a lot of leg work there
Speaker 1: you can just basically say this is what it is.
Speaker 1: That's what most Uh Star Wars knockoffs did and you
Speaker 1: don't you don't really question it. But here were we
Speaker 1: do have a slightly more nuance situation where, Um, where
Speaker 1: we have the cast off son who's aligned himself with
Speaker 1: the enemy and they're not super happy to have him around,
Speaker 1: like they seem to recognize that he's dangerous and full
Speaker 1: of himself. But he does have important information that's going
Speaker 1: to be pivotal for this particular campaign. So He's been
Speaker 1: given this title, he's been given this authority, uh, within
Speaker 1: the code and the military. But it's a tenuous relationship,
Speaker 1: even if he does not realize that's the case. Right,
Speaker 1: and you can tell Zure just takes everyone else's submission
Speaker 1: for granted. You know, he's like he's not gonna he
Speaker 1: doesn't care. He's entitled to this. But anyway, they're gonna
Speaker 1: use Zuur's knowledge about how to get through the frontier
Speaker 1: to launch a meteor attack on the base on rilos.
Speaker 1: It's a brutal attack. They like shoot space rocks at
Speaker 1: the base. Um, they blow it up. This is made
Speaker 1: extra possible by a double agent who sets off a
Speaker 1: bomb within the base to disable the like the turrets
Speaker 1: that are supposed to shoot down the meteors. and WHO's
Speaker 1: the double agent? Turns out it's the cat. It's the
Speaker 1: purring lady from before. Oh Man. But at the end
Speaker 1: of this whole thing, zooer finds out he gets intelligence
Speaker 1: that one of the starfighters has escaped. Oh No, so
Speaker 1: what's he gonna do about that? Well, we check in
Speaker 1: back on earth and one thing that's funny is when
Speaker 1: so Centauri Takes Alex back to the trailer park, though
Speaker 1: it takes him a while to get there because his
Speaker 1: his Centauri mobile breaks down and he has to fix it.
Speaker 1: So Alex sort of wanders back to the trailer Park
Speaker 1: by himself and when he first meets Maggie he's like hey, Maggie,
Speaker 1: and she's really mad at him and he doesn't understand why.
Speaker 1: But it's because he doesn't realize there has been another
Speaker 1: copy of him here and the other copy of him
Speaker 1: is not very good at dealing with people. That's right.
Speaker 1: It it genetically copied and I guess absorbs certain memories,
Speaker 1: but it's having to figure out a lot of the
Speaker 1: other stuff, uh, in real time, with the with some
Speaker 1: kind of a comedic scenes here and there, I mean
Speaker 1: they're supposed to be comedic anyway, where he's like trying
Speaker 1: to figure out, Um, like how romance works by by
Speaker 1: turning up his robot hearing and trying to hear what
Speaker 1: other couples are saying in the Makeout Park. I thought
Speaker 1: that seven was funny. Yeah, yeah, no, it was. It
Speaker 1: was fun. It was good, like I said, as far
Speaker 1: as B plots go, you know, the the earth plot
Speaker 1: in your space opera. All of this is really, really
Speaker 1: well done. And this is where we get the double
Speaker 1: with the double roll, because we end up having interaction
Speaker 1: between Alex and his Beta copy right exactly. So Alex
Speaker 1: he he talks to Maggie. She's mad. He doesn't know why,
Speaker 1: and then it's clear like somehow he's been there doing
Speaker 1: things that made her mad, even though he wasn't there.
Speaker 1: So he goes back to his room and he meets
Speaker 1: the copy of him, the Beta module, and they argue.
Speaker 1: You know, Beta module is like Hey, I'm I'm here
Speaker 1: taking your place. Aren't you supposed to be saving the universe?
Speaker 1: And Uh, you know, Alex is like, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to do that. It's a war, you know. It's dangerous.
Speaker 1: And then, uh, commenting on a poster that Alex has
Speaker 1: in his bedroom. Uh, the copy says, Oh, save the
Speaker 1: whales and not the universe. Huh, and I was like
Speaker 1: good point. I guess the whales are in Act at
Speaker 1: risk from zoor in the codin Armada. But Anyway, Alex
Speaker 1: is like, well, I'm back here now, so you know,
Speaker 1: you hit the bricks. Hit the bricks right. So, uh.
Speaker 1: So you think maybe, well, what's is he's just gonna
Speaker 1: Chill here on Earth. No, because here comes an alien
Speaker 1: hit beast. UH, there's it's like a hitchhiker who gets
Speaker 1: out of a car at the at the trailer park
Speaker 1: and he's walking around. He walks in front of the
Speaker 1: video arcade game and it it shines a light on
Speaker 1: him that like removes his human disguise and reveals him
Speaker 1: to be this grotesque alien creature. And then the creature
Speaker 1: tries to kill Alex. there's this big fight. Centauri shows
Speaker 1: back up and and blasts the alien with a with
Speaker 1: a laser, but the alien also gets one hit in
Speaker 1: on Centauri, kind of shoots him in the in the
Speaker 1: hip or something, and they talk about it and it's
Speaker 1: like well, you know these hit beasts. Uh What? What?
Speaker 1: What are they called? Against Zando Zans or something? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Zandoz and, yeah, they're gonna keep coming. Right, Alex, he's like,
Speaker 1: as long as you're a live here, zoor is going
Speaker 1: to be sending these things after you. Uh So, really,
Speaker 1: you've got no choice but to go back and fight
Speaker 1: and leave the Beta module here to absorb the attacks
Speaker 1: by these hit beasts. And I think this does it.
Speaker 1: Alex is like well, yeah, and no choice. Basically got
Speaker 1: to go back and fight the code in Armada. So
Speaker 1: he goes back. Uh. There there's a reunion with Grig.
Speaker 1: We get we get an apparent death of Centauri scene
Speaker 1: where he's like Oh my wounds and he collapses in
Speaker 1: his car. He has a great last line before he
Speaker 1: apparently dies, talking about collecting the money for bringing Alex back.
Speaker 1: And Oh God, what, what? What is it he says?
Speaker 1: He's like, you know, it's great to he gives some
Speaker 1: kind of lofty thing about like what's really what really
Speaker 1: matters in life, but then again, it never hurts to
Speaker 1: be rich. And then he dies. And and Greg. Greg
Speaker 1: has a nice moment here. He's like like well, he's
Speaker 1: passed on for this dimension anywhere, or something to that effect.
Speaker 1: You know, noble and brief, but but very accepting of
Speaker 1: death and the reality of death. And Alex, though, is
Speaker 1: just incomplete, UH denial. He's like, he's like Centauri, Centauri.
Speaker 1: So it's it's a nice juxtaposition there. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: Grigg says death is a primitive concept. Gregg is very
Speaker 1: vulcan into new respects, I guess. Yes, yes, he is
Speaker 1: um I mean not in the sense of not having emotions.
Speaker 1: He does have emotions, but there there's some other kind
Speaker 1: of vulcany dynamics, that kind of uh, this makes him
Speaker 1: sound me a kind of friendly, well meaning alien condescension
Speaker 1: on the human perspective. Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean.
Speaker 1: But Anyway, here we sort of transition to the third
Speaker 1: act right like there there's ongoing conflict with there are
Speaker 1: some hit beasts that will continue to to plague Beta
Speaker 1: and Maggie back back on earth, and meanwhile Grig and
Speaker 1: uh an Alex are off to to fight the code
Speaker 1: in Armada, and we're gonna get a lot of space
Speaker 1: battles after this. Yeah, and that's that's that's kind of
Speaker 1: the downside to the last third of the picture is
Speaker 1: that you're gonna get a lot of these computer or effects.
Speaker 1: You'RE gonna get a lot of opportunities to see all
Speaker 1: the ways that they fall a little bit short of
Speaker 1: of of what they attempted to achieve. And again, for
Speaker 1: for a modern film viewer, if you're coming into this
Speaker 1: after having watched, I mean really, if you're coming into
Speaker 1: this having watched even the original star wars, you're going
Speaker 1: to find this a little bit disappointing. Definitely agree about
Speaker 1: the space battles. Actually, though, I thought that the the
Speaker 1: big showdown on earth is fantastic, where there's like a
Speaker 1: hit yeah, there's like a hit beast coming after Beta
Speaker 1: and Maggie, but it happens to overhear Beta revealing the
Speaker 1: fact that he's not really Alex and that Alex is
Speaker 1: up in space, and then it's like, oh, okay, I
Speaker 1: better run off and message zoor with this information. So
Speaker 1: they have a big showdown about that. The hit beast
Speaker 1: almost gets the message off and almost reveals but then
Speaker 1: the robot sacrifices itself by Ramming into the alien spaceship
Speaker 1: with a pickup truck. Yes, so I think the only
Speaker 1: thing can get uh, the only part of the message
Speaker 1: he gets sent out is Um, like the last star
Speaker 1: fighter is and then we don't know. But when Zoor
Speaker 1: hears this, he's like, Oh, the last starfighter is dead.
Speaker 1: Clearly that's it. Don't worry, Codin's, let's continue on with
Speaker 1: the assault. And they're like, okay, do you have the
Speaker 1: shields down? Oh, this is another critique I have about
Speaker 1: the space battles. I think the last starfighter's vessel, what
Speaker 1: is it? What is it called? The Gun Star? A
Speaker 1: Gun Star? The Gun Star looks pretty cool the but
Speaker 1: the villain's warship just feels it doesn't feel threatening enough.
Speaker 1: I don't know it. For me anyway, my personal taste,
Speaker 1: the Star destroyer of this picture did not have enough
Speaker 1: of a star destroyer vibe. I think the bosses in
Speaker 1: Star Fox look better. Yeah, it's just kind of a
Speaker 1: big V it's like there's nothing that looks all that
Speaker 1: villainous or interesting about it. Yeah, it looks more industrial
Speaker 1: than at least when we compare it to other sci
Speaker 1: fi spaceship does signs there is a great thing that
Speaker 1: they build up to, which is they mentioned it several times.
Speaker 1: There's one last weapon we have on the gun story
Speaker 1: is the death blossom and they build it up real
Speaker 1: big and then when they actually do it, it kind
Speaker 1: of doesn't look that cool and it's like, okay, it
Speaker 1: just made me think of blooming onion. That so that
Speaker 1: can I threw me, threw me out of picture there.
Speaker 1: But death blossom. But eventually, of course. How's this movie
Speaker 1: gonna End? You know what's gonna Happen. Alex and Griggs
Speaker 1: saved the day. They defeat the command ship, they defeat
Speaker 1: the code in Armada. UH, they blast up the command
Speaker 1: ship good and then it is sent like barreling toward
Speaker 1: a moon. I think, yeah, we have some some fun
Speaker 1: drama aboard the vessel, though, leading up to this moment
Speaker 1: and at this moment, because first of all, when the
Speaker 1: codons realize that the last starfighter is alive, they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: enough of this Zur nonsense, and they haven't thrown taken
Speaker 1: away to be thrown in the brig they're like that's it,
Speaker 1: he's out of here. This is totally a code on
Speaker 1: Um Enterprise. At this point, he's he's out at the
Speaker 1: chain of command. We don't need him anymore. So they
Speaker 1: so he's dragging they drag him away some or one
Speaker 1: of the codon guards drags him away, but Zure overpowers
Speaker 1: the guard and escapes in the escape pod. Okay and UH.
Speaker 1: And that leaves just the codens on board as their
Speaker 1: ship begins to crash into the moon, and we get
Speaker 1: this last moment between the two code and commanders. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, they're trying all these different things, defense methods,
Speaker 1: and then they realized they're going to crash into the
Speaker 1: moon and one says, what do we do? And then
Speaker 1: the other one looks up at him, space monocle moves
Speaker 1: into place and he says we die. And then, sure enough,
Speaker 1: they crashed into the moon and die. Cool moment. I
Speaker 1: knew that was the one you were thinking of earlier.
Speaker 1: I don't even know why it's so cool, but for
Speaker 1: some reason when I was a kid, like this was
Speaker 1: like really cool. Like why aren't all dramatic moments punctuated
Speaker 1: with a space monocle moving into place? But of course,
Speaker 1: as as you pointed out, Zor survives. He takes the
Speaker 1: escape pod. Yeah, it lives on in the no sequel
Speaker 1: limbo with the likes of Jaredson villains that they were like, well,
Speaker 1: we gotta save this villain don't. We don't want to
Speaker 1: get rid of this villain, have them escape so they
Speaker 1: can come back in the sequel. And then, of course
Speaker 1: the film does not end up getting sequel. So who knows?
Speaker 1: How is it that there are seven transfers movies but
Speaker 1: there is no sequel to the destruction of Jaredson or
Speaker 1: the last starfighter? Can you imagine a marvel style universe
Speaker 1: crossover event in which Zoor and Jaredson team up, just
Speaker 1: the glorious, sneering wickedness of it? That would be great.
Speaker 1: I wonder who else you could throw in there, because
Speaker 1: I know this. This is not the only case we
Speaker 1: have a film that that decided to set up as
Speaker 1: sequel but never got to do it. Um, I guess
Speaker 1: that you have some like matches the universe, but that's skeletor.
Speaker 1: I mean obviously skeletor is going to survive, but but
Speaker 1: films like this and Jaredson are especially noteworthy because they're
Speaker 1: establishing that villain. They're like no, this is our skeletor.
Speaker 1: Of course skeletor survives and we'll be back in the
Speaker 1: next picture. You probably next year, maybe the year after. Now.
Speaker 1: Spoiler for the end of the movie after Alex and
Speaker 1: Grigg Defeat, defeat all the bad guys, they come down
Speaker 1: to Rilos, they're greeted by injuring. There are just like
Speaker 1: it appears to be tens of thousands of Rylands, all
Speaker 1: all cheering for them and ready to make them code
Speaker 1: dictators of Rilos. And Uh, and spoiler, spoiler coming here.
Speaker 1: But there's a big twist. What's the twist? What's the twist?
Speaker 1: It's Centauri still alive. Here's Robert Preston. He sort of
Speaker 1: wipes off an alien face and there he is again
Speaker 1: and he's like, Oh, I wasn't dead, my body just
Speaker 1: went into hibernation to heal its wounds. It's pretty great.
Speaker 1: I mean, on one level it feels kind of forced,
Speaker 1: but it also just feels good to have him back.
Speaker 1: I mean, he didn't need this character to die. It's great.
Speaker 1: It's great that he came back, came back as Centauri,
Speaker 1: the white exactly, and you can tell he's like he's
Speaker 1: like getting behind Alex, like kind of whispering in his ear.
Speaker 1: He's like, let me tell you what to do now, son. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like now he's he's Alex's agent, which I like. Uh,
Speaker 1: and there's also a very sweet ending. It kind of
Speaker 1: goes on a little long, but there's a sweet ending
Speaker 1: where Alex and Grig go back to the to the
Speaker 1: trailer park on Earth, and they see all of Alex's
Speaker 1: friends and all the neighbors there figure out, Oh wow,
Speaker 1: it's all real, it's from another planet. And and Alex
Speaker 1: Gets Maggie to come with him on the spaceship back
Speaker 1: to rilos so they can recruit more starfighters to defend
Speaker 1: the galaxy. And Uh, and it's very heartwarming. Yeah, Gregg
Speaker 1: gets to meet all the grandma's. Though it's it is
Speaker 1: unfortunate we don't get like the Grig with the sunglasses
Speaker 1: saying surfs up, but I'll take yeah, in the longer
Speaker 1: cut of the film, perhaps we could have had that.
Speaker 1: Now I don't know any of the details, but I
Speaker 1: think there is some sort of a reboot or return
Speaker 1: to the last starfighter world in the works. I don't
Speaker 1: know what it's going to consist of, if we're talking
Speaker 1: about a film or a series or what Um it's.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting idea because there's a lot of depending
Speaker 1: on where they go with it. I mean they could
Speaker 1: just kind of throw everything out the window. I guess
Speaker 1: they could go really hardcore and just pick up and
Speaker 1: just try and honor everything that's in this film. But
Speaker 1: even if they end up going for that, somewhere in
Speaker 1: between there's there are a lot of interesting pieces that
Speaker 1: are put on the table here but are not completely explored,
Speaker 1: that are introduced but but could be fleshed out more.
Speaker 1: And if you were to do a pretty long like
Speaker 1: a longer form thing, like, there's a lot of cool
Speaker 1: shenanigans you could have with the Beta Alex on earth. Yeah, there,
Speaker 1: there's there's for room to expand this. I'm not completely
Speaker 1: opposed to the idea of a of a reboot here.
Speaker 1: I would be I would be open minded about it.
Speaker 1: who had they cast as Centauri? Now, Jeff Goldbloom. Maybe
Speaker 1: with Jeff Gold Bloom? UH, Jeff Goldbloom make a good Centari.
Speaker 1: What about Jeff Bridges? Oh, there you go, get into
Speaker 1: some of that tron action. Now, he could do it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he would be good. Now I neglected to say where
Speaker 1: you can get this movie. Uh, you can. You should
Speaker 1: be able to rent or buy it digitally, where you
Speaker 1: get your pictures these days. It's also been you know,
Speaker 1: it's it was a major release. So it's been available
Speaker 1: on various formats at home. I believe there was a
Speaker 1: anniversary edition that came out on BLU ray a few
Speaker 1: years back and I'm not sure if they remastered it
Speaker 1: or what, but I feel like the film quality that
Speaker 1: I watched it in was very clear, very, very pristine
Speaker 1: and it looked. Looked really good. Yeah, me too. So yeah, again,
Speaker 1: aside from the computer effects, everything standing in pretty pretty
Speaker 1: pretty stands up pretty well to modern viewing here. So
Speaker 1: this is a fun one. I'd be interested to hear
Speaker 1: from other folks out there who fondly remember it or
Speaker 1: just remember it from their childhood and what it's been
Speaker 1: like to watch it again all these years later, or
Speaker 1: what's it like to watch it for the first time?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I would be interested in that as well,
Speaker 1: because it's it's a film that for many people it's
Speaker 1: very much a product of its time. You know, it
Speaker 1: speaks to that time and you think about having launched
Speaker 1: it as a kid. I don't know how it reads necessarily. Uh,
Speaker 1: if it's consumed fresh today, all right, well, we'll go
Speaker 1: and close it out here, but we would love to
Speaker 1: hear from everyone out there. So right in Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 1: will remind you, is our our Friday episode in the
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind podcast feed. Were primarily a
Speaker 1: science podcast and we do our core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 1: and Thursdays on Monday's we do listener mail. So if
Speaker 1: if you have thoughts about this or other films, well,
Speaker 1: that's where we we read them, along with feedback. Regarding
Speaker 1: our other episodes, we have short form monster fact or
Speaker 1: artifact episodes on Wednesdays and on the weekends we do
Speaker 1: vault episodes. Those are reruns of past episodes, uh, from
Speaker 1: from stuff to blow your mind. Oh and one more thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: So ME TO MUSIC DOT com. That's a blog where
Speaker 1: I include blog post about the movies we cover on
Speaker 1: Weird House and if you use letterboxed, that's L E
Speaker 1: T T E R B O x d. we're on there.
Speaker 1: Our user name is Weird House. You can look us up.
Speaker 1: We have a list on there that has all the
Speaker 1: films that we've watched on weird how cinema. So if
Speaker 1: you want a quick, easy to reference, visual, easy to
Speaker 1: sort through, a guide to what we've covered on the
Speaker 1: show before, that's a really great place to go. Huge thanks.
Speaker 1: As always to our excellent audio producer, Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to blow
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