Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!cbosgd!ihnp4!drutx!houxe!hogpc!houti!ariel!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!hplabs!sri-unix!Shiffman%SWW-WHITE@MIT-MC.ARPA From: Shiffman%SWW-WHITE@MIT-MC.ARPA@sri-unix.UUCP Newsgroups: net.movies.sw Subject: The Last Starfighter Message-ID: <157@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Thu, 19-Jul-84 11:10:00 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.157 Posted: Thu Jul 19 11:10:00 1984 Date-Received: Sun, 22-Jul-84 02:34:01 EDT Lines: 35 From: Hank Shiffman Personally, I found TLS to be more than a little bit disappointing. As with the first time I saw Star Trek I, I walked in expecting to like the film and spent the next couple of hours trying my damnedest to do so. It was a losing battle. The parallels to Star Wars are obvious, at least to me. Young boy in insignificant backwater town (world) desperately wants to get away and do something significant. He encounters wise old character (Robert Preston) who tries to talk him into getting involved in saving the universe from an ultimate evil which hangs around in a super warship. At first he balks, but changes his mind when his family and friends are threatened (yeah, I know they were killed in Star Wars; so it's not a PERFECT clone). Wise friend is killed by representative of ultimate evil. Then he goes out and saves the free world from a fate worse than death. All to some music which could have come out of John Williams after a particularly sloppy lobotomy. Some complaints: everybody is just so cute you want to scream. No personality anywhere; nothing but white bread as far as the eye could see. No real, believable threats anywhere. It all had to be done using surprise, with creatures jumping from behind buildings. (Want to see a good, evil scene? Remember the scene in Star Wars where Vader prepares to interrogate the Princess with that nasty little machine floating into the cell behind him? Crash of cell door and soldiers boots crunching by.) The final space battle was pretty sad, especially the Ultimate Weapon. Bringing Robert Preston back at the end was a cheap shot, especially considering the fact that his death was the real motivation for our hero's deciding to get involved. As a friend of mine pointed out upon leaving the theatre, it looked more like a television pilot than a feature film. Hank Shiffman Symbolics, Inc.