Talk:The Last Starfighter

message: Alex does not destroy the mothership. During his attack, the navigation and other systems on the mothership are disable and is captured by the gravitational pull of a moon causing it to crash and explode.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.104.73.235 (talk) 04:58, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Destruction of Ko-Dan mothership

message: If I recall correctly, Alex does not "beat" TLS; he "beats" the posted high score.  I think it was 1,000,000.
:Both. In the film it doesn't show what his final score is, only that it is in excess of 960,000. (The one million figure comes from Alan Dean Foster's novelisation.) Alex does end up destroying the Ko-Dan command ship in the training game, which is the ultimate goal IIRC. thefamouseccles 00:37, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Beat

message: Atari wrote a "Last Starfighter" videogame for their Atari 5200 but it was never released. The game was complete except for the Gunstar having no shields so a single hit destroys it.
: There definitely was a version for the Atari 800, and it was really cool. -- 213.39.198.56 (talk) 04:24, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Exactly, there was a game under this name, I had it on Atari 65 XE  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.233.197.138 (talk) 11:16, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Video game

message: I changed the line saying it was the first major movie to use CGI extensively. Tron pre-dates it by 2 years, and I am sure there were other films before it.99DBSIMLR 15:22, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The first film to use real computer graphics for SFX was Westworld.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bizzybody (talk • contribs) 23:00, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  First to use CGI 

message: I don't see how the following are related to this article except by merely containing the same elements:
* In an episode of the ill-fated Clerks: The Animated Series, Randal Graves is recruited to build a pyramid after receiving the highest score in a fictional arcade game called "Pharaoh."
* In the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "Moon Master," Meatwad is recruited by the Mooninites in their battle against the monster Gorgotron following Meatwad's success at the fictional console "Moon Master" video game.
* In "Sentries of the Last Cosmos," an episode of Batman Beyond, an arcade game (from which the episode gets its title), is used as a recruiting tool for a criminal. 
Ok, but so what?  You're going to list each and every time something uses video game recruiting in its story?  I don't see how this is trivia for The Last Starfighter.  Then this one tries to tie it to the movie, but doesn't have a citation:
*The recruiting-through-a-video-game premise seen in this movie inspired how the main characters got their powers in the Super Sentai series Denji Sentai Megaranger.
I'm calling original work on this one.  I think it's more likely that someone is assuming that this movie was an influence.
Remember:  recruiting through a video game itself was an urban myth (stated in the article) that the movie drew its premise from.
If these trivia items are apropos to the movie somehow that I'm missing, they need to be reworded.
The "death blossom" references get a little spurious as well.  Unless there's evidence or a citation that indicates that the term "death blossom" was in fact inspired by this movie, you can't always claim it.  I would buy the US military reference, but not necessarily the anime reference.  It's quite possible that they just came up with term separately.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Angelo (talk • contribs) 16:20, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed.  Removing some of the trivia indicated above.  The US military use of "death blossom" has a citation that seems legit indicating the term was inspired by The Last Starfighter so that one stays.  Sbacle 17:54, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trivia items 

message: Okay, admittedly I haven't seen the movie in a while, but having seen it enough (AND owning the DVD), I'm quite sure that the "Rylan senior officers" (or whatever it says) didn't order Centauri to take Alex back to Earth - Grig confronts Centauri about what happened, but it's Alex who insists that Centauri take him home. I'll be making this change to the main article here very shortly. umrguy42 02:45, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll be rewatching before I redo the plot.  It's on this weekend's agenda. I'll look out specifically for both issues above, although I tend to do plot summaries not scene by scene breakdowns so neither incident may get that specific when I work it up.  Millahnna (mouse)talk 21:26, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

text: My new favorite IP editor handled this nicely.  I'll be taking it off my to-do list shortly.  I will be keeping it on my watchlist for detail creep though.  Seriously dude, great work.  Millahnna (mouse)talk 15:13, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  :D - 207.181.235.214 (talk) 21:30, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plot Issue 

message: there are two posted costs to this film - $14m and $15m. any definitive number available? which source is more reliable?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aptpupil79 (talk • contribs) 00:37, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: an approximate number in any case.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.158.61.141 (talk) 14:18, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  cost of film 

message: I was looking for a reliable source for that Nintendo game and found a few other links that might be useful throughout the article.  As I usually do, I'm dumping them here for someone else to play with, in case I don't get to it.  Some of these are from sites I'm not sure we can actually use.  Refs aren't my strong suit.  
Through this I found an audio interview with Craig Safan, the composer of the score. He also discusses the sequel a little, the 25th anniversary special edition DVD, other TV film work he's done (in case someone can use it in another article).  
Info about the possible sequel.
I found more than a few references to the Nintendo game but I couldn't confirm it was a clone of the Commodore game we have mentioned in the "Adaptations" section at the moment.  A site I found that I'm certain we can't use has enough info on it that it may be a decent jumping off point for anyone researching any of this stuff.  Similarly, this trivia list is almost completely unsourced but buried in the comments are some interesting claims (about the games and the film) that might be good for any research efforts.  And in case I'm not being clear, I mean "note the interesting factoid that isn't completely trivial and go search for verifiable sources that discuss said issue" not "hey lets start one of those frown-upon trivia lists".  
It wasn't really a thorough search on my part but some passing links I turned up.  Hopefully someone can use them for something.  Cheers.   Millahnna (mouse)talk 22:51, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Various sources for misc. stuff 

message: I've trimmed the plot several times now, and a few others keep adding enormous amounts of detail back in. The plot is supposed to summarize the story, not act as a scene by scene reenactment of the film. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 06:00, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plot too long 

message: Below information was tagged for needing sources long-term. Feel free to reinsert with appropriate references. DonIago (talk) 16:43, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unsourced material 

message: The problem is figuring out who owns the rights to do a remake of the original and new sequels https://www.yahoo.com/movies/the-last-starfighter-sequel-118964499732.html Bizzybody (talk) 22:36, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jonathan R. Betuel wants another Starfighter film. 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Chaheel Riens reverted a correction I made to the article, claiming "Making almost double the budget is indeed a success." I do not believe that is an objective standard for an encyclopedia. Producing any product which does not turn a profit is flat out NOT a "financial success". For WHOM was it a success?  Probably not the studio. Perhaps the distributors?  I suggest this is a CITATION NEEDED situation.MrNeutronSF (talk) 22:56, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a little pretentious to assume that your edit was a "correction" rather than just a change, but hey ho.  As it turns out, (and you can see from the article history,) I was reverted again by Milhanna pointing to a discussion over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film here.  I'm still not convinced and agree that the best way if included would be to have source that states a film was a "financial success" - given Hollywood accounting a film can make millions over budget and still be declared a loss - but in the meantime it's a moot point. Chaheel Riens (talk) 13:15, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  What Constitutes "Financial Success"? 

message: "It is one of the first films to use CGI to represent "real-life" objects instead of digital graphics." CGI *is* digital (it's even referenced as such in the credits). I assume who wrote this had meant to say "optical"? Kumagoro-42 (talk) 22:28, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this is referring to the slightly earlier Tron, which was the first(?) movie with 3D-CGI, but its objects were still supposed to be part of a digital world within a computer. The CGI in The Last Starfighter on the other hand was used for what was supposed to be actual physical objects. I am not sure how significant this distinction really is, though one could argue that The Last Starfighter was a bit more ambitious in its use of CGI - i.e. for Tron it was easier to get away with things looking like unreal computer objects, because that is what they were supposed to be, while The Last Starfighter wanted its ships to look like real ships. Elanguescence (talk) 05:36, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Digital graphics