Trivia / The Last Starfighter

• Acting for Two: Lance Guest plays both Alex and Beta, who show up together on screen a few times.
  Beta: Wait a minute, what are you doing back?!
  Alex: Are you kidding? It's war up there!
• Channel Hop: The film was produced by Lorimar (more known for their TV shows than films) and originally distributed by Universal. Lorimar was purchased by Warner Bros. in 1989, and they now have TV and international rights, while Universal still has theatrical and home media rights.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: The British TV guide, TV Quick synopsis of this movie says that Alex gets contacted by an alien from the future even though the movie doesn't feature Time Travel.
• The Danza: If you listen real carefully, there is exactly one scene in the entire movie where Mrs. Boone is referred to by her first name, Bunny, which is the same first name as the actress who plays her, Bunny Summers.^note Pee-Wee Herman fans will know her as the costume lady in Big Top Pee-Wee. Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans: Zurella from Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders.
• Deleted Role: Although Wil Wheaton's speaking scenes were cut, he can be seen in two scenes, running around the trailer park early in the film (wearing a red football jersey), and in the final scene, where he is obscured, standing behind Louis (wearing a blue jacket, possibly over the red jersey).
• Follow the Leader: Star Wars, which director Nick Castle admits in the DVD Commentary, and that there was some work to try to distance the movie from both that franchise and anything from Steven Spielberg.
• He Also Did:
  • Composer Craig Safan was also doing the music for Cheers, and some of the more wistful music in the film was incidental music from the sitcom.
  • Scott Dunlop, the man behind the Bodati mask (credited as "Tentacle Alien") later conceived and created The Real Housewives.
  • Veteran actor Kay E. Kuter had a small role as Enduran, Xur's father.
  • Director Nick Castle was also Michael Myers in the original Halloween!
• Inspiration for the Work: According to Screenwriter Jonathan Beutel, the idea for this movie came about because he wandered into a video arcade and saw a young boy playing a video game, and also at that time, he read The Once and Future King by T.H White, and it occurred to him, that what if a video game had been a sword in a stone, and a boy had scored an incredible number in the video game, which sent out a ripple effect across the universe.
• Prop Recycling: Soon after Alex meets Grig for the first time, we see Grig adjusting a device with rotating red beams. This prop is a mainstay of engineering sets, most notably seen in Airplane II: The Sequel.
• Referenced by...:
  • The Pkunk Fury from Star Control can spin very fast, and has three short-range weapons firing three different directions. A popular move with this ship is to spin wildly while emptying the weapons battery.
  • Universe at War makes "Death Blossom" the special of the Novus Dervish fighter. It spins around wildly while firing its Anti Matter cannon everywhere.
  • An episode of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command has the crew tipped off that something's wrong because Buzz trips over the "foot" of an octopus-man who's not supposed to be there, parrallelling a scene where Alex trips over a Ko-Dan spy, who's also an octopus-man.
  • Armada is a Whole-Plot Reference. In fact, Zack lampshades the similarity. This is actually his first clue that all is not what it seems.
  • Reaper's Ultimate move in Overwatch is called "Death Blossom" which involves him spinning while firing his dual shotguns in a 360° arc.
  • In the South Park episode "Best Friends Forever", Kenny gets a high score on a PSP game, meaning he's worthy to lead the armies of heaven to stave off an invasion from hell.
  • Similar to the South Park version, in an episode of Clerks: The Animated Series, Randal plays a game about being a slave building pyramids, and then is recruited to do the same. Unfortunately for Randal, pushing bricks on screen and IRL are vastly different things.
  • The ReBoot episode "The Episode with No Name" has Matrix get into a bar fight with numerous enemies in which he instructs his Smart Gun to enter "Death Blossom Mode." This causes it to tag every enemy in the room with a targeting marker and then spin like the titular maneuver in the film.
  • Even if called with another name (RIP Star, if memory serves right), a power-up in the videogame Blasteroids when used causes your ship to spin wildly while shooting in all directions. It can be seen being used in the game's attract mode
  • Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko has a similar premise of gamers teleported elsewhere in order to fly starships.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: There have been talks of remaking, rebooting, or making a sequel to The Last Starfighter for years, but legal red tape has caused setbacks, as Universal, Warner Bros., and screenwriter Jonathan Beutel all claim to hold rights to the property. Seth Rogen tried to secure those rights but ended up doing a homage series, Future Man, instead.
• Vindicated by Cable: While the film did make a decent profit in theaters ($29 million gross against a $15 million budget), it was a hit on video and HBO.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Atari did develop a full The Last Starfighter video game and cabinet, but it was never released to the public. Star Raiders programmer Doug Neubauer was developing an Atari 2600 game based on the movie, but that project was also canceled after Atari's takeover by former Commodore head Jack Tramiel. It was eventually Retooled into a game called Solaris.
    • There was a licensed game for the Nintendo Entertainment System, but it was nothing like the game in the movie.
  • Robin Williams was offered the role of Xur, but passed.
  • An earlier draft of the script took place in the suburbs.
  • The producers wanted a song over the end credits, presumably eyeing a Breakaway Pop Hit. When composer Craig Safan and lyricist Mark Mueller had complied with Melissa Manchester singing the ballad "Just One Star Beyond". But when it was laid against the film, both Safan and director Castle felt it was exactly the wrong way to end the film. It's heard as source music in the film, and wasn't included on the soundtrack album. But you can find it on the Melissa Manchester compilation Mathematics: The MCA Years.
    Safan: We didn't want people walking out of the theater to this song. We wanted them marching out of the theater, excited about what they had seen!
  • Much higher quality CGI effects were planned, up to photorealistic landscapes, but the rendering would have taken 17 months. Redesigns to make some models less complicated and scaling back the resolution on others was done so the effects could be ready in a reasonable timeframe.

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