Bad Movie Thursday

Date Watched: 2/26/15

Starring: Lance Guest, Robert Preston

Plot: A video-gaming boy, seemingly doomed to stay at his trailer park home all his life, finds himself recruited as a gunner for an alien defense force.  Every video gaming boy’s secret hope.

Rules

• “Starfighter”
• Iconic 80’s images
• “Ko-Dan”
• Centauri speaks in the third person.
• That thing closing over the alien’s eye

Quotes

• “Shifting into star drive at Columba Zeta.  Hold tight.”
• “Not even your mighty starfighters will be able to save you.”
• “What if the Wright brothers thought that only birds should fly?  And did Galoka think that the Utils were too ugly to save?”
• “An exact duplicate of you only not as loud.”
• “Where’d it go?”  –  “It’s still there.  Suspended in the Xenon mist.  It’s only visible when you look dead ahead.”
• “Terrific.  I’m about to get killed a million miles from nowhere with a gung ho iguana.”
• “I’ve locked it’s beamer frequency so it can’t report back to the armada.”
• “A mobile cave that never went anywhere?  Fascinating.”
• “We’re locked into the moon’s gravitational pull.  What do we do?”  –  “We die.”
• “Alex, what is all this?”  –  “I’ve been to another planet, Ma.”

Viewer Quotes

• “You think all these old people give a shit about this video game?”
• “This is the best thing you can hope for your son, that something like this will happen in his lifetime.”
• “Now he just needs to drill this chick, then come out and get high fives from everyone.”
• “In typical 80’s fashion, the one hot chick has no boobs.”
• “Wow, that looks terrible.  Is this still the video game graphics we’re watching?  I think the original playstation has better graphics than this.”
• “Is that Will Ferrell?”
• “Wouldn’t you have wanted to move the base, knowing that there’s someone that wants to kill you all and knows exactly where the base is?”
• “You can’t stay on Rylos with Centauri and Grigg.”
• “So anybody could have been a Starfighter.  It took no skill.”

What We Learned

• People are all white balding men on Rylos.  Even the women.
• All aliens are humanoid, with arms, legs and heads.  But of course Star Trek taught us that.
• Earth isn’t at war with anyone except themselves.
• Don’t bother learning to be a good starfighter.  It all comes down to the death blossom in the end.
• Aliens don’t die.
• Betas make terrible stand-ins.  At the first sign of trouble they’ll fold and admit they’re a beta.

Final Take:  Nothing like a little nostalgia.  This movie is supposed to be a grand epic, but it’s really pretty simple.  It’s fun if you have fond memories of it from watching it as a child like I do, but it’s definitely not an instant classic.  I don’t think any of those actors went on to anything else after that movie, so that might tell you something.  It’s fine. You’ll like it.  Just don’t expect to remember it a week from now.