I’m going to start off by saying that I have always loved The Last Starfighter. The film came out when I was one and a half, so I literally can’t remember a pre-Last Starfighter world. I wouldn’t be able to tell you the first time I saw it, whether it was on TV or when my folks brought home a copy on VHS. What I can tell you was that on the Christmas of 1997, the family got our first DVD player and with it the first two movies we owned on the medium: the old Jason and the Argonauts and The Last Starfighter.

It was also one of the first movies I made sure to acquire for my laserdisc collection (along with Jason). When there was a chance to review Arrow Video’s remastering of The Last Starfighter on Blu-ray, my hand flew up faster than a gunstar mid Death Blossom.

For those who have never seen The Last Starfighter, average teenager Alex Rogan (Lance Guest) touches greatness when he, get this, beats an arcade game. Unbeknownst to him, it was actually a test to find new recruits to join an intergalactic war. It’s hard for Alex to turn down the opportunity; he just received a college scholarship rejection letter and his day-to-day consists of fixing faulty wiring so the old folks with whom he shares a trailer park can watch their stories.

The only real good thing in his life seems to be his girlfriend, Maggie (Catherine Mary Stewart). The offer to go into space is made by space swindler Centauri – played by the always perfect Robert Preston in a role that seemed to be designed just for him – who tells Alex he’ll fly the spaceship from the arcade game but for real.

After initially rejecting the offer (as every true hero must), Rogan changes his mind when the intergalactic war spills over into his home and returns to pilot the last gunstar with his alien partner Grig (Dan O’Herlihy) to become (wait for it) the last starfighter.

Alex Rogan kicking Xurian butt

In an era before video games were really taken seriously outside of a certain age range, The Last Starfighter has a place in the beloved film pantheon for video game nerds alongside Tron and WarGames. It isn’t a perfect film, and it falls into some casual misogynistic tropes. For example, Maggie doesn’t really have much of a personality or role other than to motivate Alex, and Alex’s little brother, Louis (Chris Hebert), has a Playboy collection that is just played off for a joke despite being maybe 8 or 9.

The portions with computer graphics are also really difficult to take seriously if you’re coming to it fresh with a 2020 mindset. With all that in mind, though, this is a wonderful bit of science fiction that is honestly worth it if just for Robert Preston’s performance.

I love this art so much

When I received the new Blu-ray release in the mail, I was immediately in love. Just take a look at that new art for the exterior box! Sure, it’s just box art, but it’s something fresh to an old movie I have loved all my life. More than that, it was an early indicator that this wasn’t just taking something old and stuffing it on a new format.

Inside, the extra goodies were literally pouring out of it. As well as a double-sided poster (one of the new art and one of the classic promotional art), there’s a 40-page insert that consists of an original essay on The Last Starfighter and how snuggly it fits into 1980s America and a previously unpublished article from 1984 on the amazing technologies used for the movie. (I was blown away at the revelation that the graphics were programmed in Fortran on a pair of Cray supercomputers.)

Left to right: the double-sided poster, Blu-ray with reversible sleeve, insert

The special edition Blu-Ray is also overflowing with content I could spend hours watching. There are six new interviews, including Catherine Mary Stewart (Maggie), composer Craig Safan, screenwriter Jonathan Betuel, and more. They dug up some archival features and a documentary that reveals more on the world in which the movie was created and how it was created.

There’s an archived audio commentary with director Nick Castle and the legendary Ron Cobb as well as a brand-new audio commentary with Lance Guest and his son. I only checked out a little of Catherine Mary Stewart’s interview and Lance Guest’s audio commentary, but I’m excited to go and explore the rest of what’s available.

But the real question I had was how well did Arrow restore the film? My excitement and love for the film established high hopes, even expectations. Yet even that high bar was absolutely obliterated by what I saw. The Blu-ray has a 4K scan from the original 35mm camera negative, giving it a crisper feel than I’ve ever seen.

I had to pause the movie halfway through when they got to the first space scene. The CGI didn’t look modern, but it looked so clean that I thought they had to have redone the graphics on a modern engine. But no! It’s precisely the same footage, just cleaned up to a level of fidelity not previously available. The audio is also a 4.1 mix originally created for the film’s 70mm release, which is advertised as never having been included on previous home video formats.

Put together, this was an experience unto itself. This is, without a doubt, the definitive version of the film to add to the collection of any fan of The Last Starfighter.

Laserdisc for scale

You can feel the absolute love that Arrow Video put into making this special edition for a mainstay of the science-fiction genre. It’s easy to feel that they put the same amount of love into it that I’ve felt about the film all my life. It’s definitely made me want to go back to see what else they’ve remastered in case there’s something else I should add to my collection. In an era that’s increasingly digital, it truly is relieving to feel that someone else in working on the side of physical media collecting.

Make sure to pick up your copy of Arrow Video’s remaster of The Last Starfighter.