I targeted 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes specifically in that blog as it came off to me as being a terribly unnecessary effort seeing as how there had already been one attempt to relaunch the Planet of the Apes mythology ten years earlier with Tim Burton leading Mark Wahlberg into a film that some thought was okay but most felt was rather iffy at best. Burton's incarnation was strong, visually speaking, however the plot was convoluted as it involved concepts of religion versus science and the conclusion was an absolutely ridiculous try at recapturing the twist ending of the original film.
Here again I ask did the world really need either of these movies? No, it didn't, quite frankly, although I will admit that Andy Serkis' work in Rise is quite worthy of praise. There is a film from my childhood that could greatly benefit from a remake, though, as it is one that made significant use of computer generated imagery when that sort of technology was in its infancy. (Much like TRON, but the film I'm talking about believe it or not was released prior to Disney's tech-driven masterpiece.) With the kind of magic that modern artists can create using digital techniques, a director with enough passion to treat the project seriously, and a cast that's believable in their roles I feel like this could be an opportunity to create a true epic.
Hollywood, I humbly request that you remake - The Last Starfighter!
If you've never seen The Last Starfighter and you're in your late 20s to early 30s, I immediately want to question the quality of your childhood. I might go so far as to encourage you to call your parents and tell them they failed you, as a matter of fact.
For me, The Last Starfighter is a movie that is remarkable in that it represents the era of film making from which it came (meaning that it's still watchable even though the special effects aren't that fantastic compared to what's possible today) and because of the fact that it has all the makings of a great piece of science fiction. There were a handful of movies that came out around the same time as TLS in the mid-1980s that I, to this day, can sit down and watch with glee because they're just that awesome. TLS, Flight of the Navigator, Space Camp, Explorers - put me in front of a television with those films playing back to back and you can forget about me doing anything productive for the rest of the day.
The plot of The Last Starfighter revolves around a young man named Alex Rogan played by actor Lance Guest, who you may also know from such films as Halloween 2 and JAWS: The Revenge (I'm somewhat ashamed that I used to really like JAWS: The Revenge - I blame Michael Caine's small but poignant role in the movie for that). Alex is a small town teenager who lives in a trailer park with his Mom, Jane (Barbara Bosson) and younger brother, Louis (Chris Hebert). Alex is a handyman at the trailer park and because of his responsibilities to the tenants thereof he doesn't have the most superlative social life. When he's not working or at home with his family, he spends most of his free time either with his girlfriend Maggie (Catherine Mary Stewart) or playing an arcade game called Starfighter. Alex has become tremendously skilled at the game - his abilities have not gone unnoticed by the population of the trailer park, and a few other folks who aren't exactly locals have taken note as well.
As it turns out, Starfighter is actually a testing platform deployed by an alliance of alien races known as the Rylan Star League whose base of operations exists on their home world of Rylos. It's purpose is to identify any nearby players who may be qualified to pilot Gunstars - think an F-14 Tomcat fighter jet but intended for use in outer space. The Rylans are engaged in war with the Ko-Dan Empire; they've heretofore relied upon a defensive array of satellites which they refer to as the Frontier in order to protect themselves from the Ko-Dan armada. The Ko-Dan are being aided by Xur, a Rylan traitor who has given the Ko-Dan a means to circumvent the Frontier thereby endangering all of Rylos and its inhabitants.
Having displayed great aptitude while playing Starfighter, Alex is recruited by the Star League. At first Alex is reluctant to accept the great burden that's been put upon him - it isn't until his family are attacked by a shape-shifting Ko-Dan assassin that he realizes if these evil forces aren't stopped now it will only be a matter of time before they make their way to Earth.
There were two major problems with The Last Starfighter, as I see it: 1) Filmmaking technology of the time didn't allow for a fully realized interpretation of the story, and 2) there wasn't enough effort put into making the audience care about the Rylans. The former is something that can easily be remedied these days seeing as how I think most Art Institute students are required to do a project involving spaceships and various planetoids during the first semester of their freshman year. This is the sort of thing that's old bag by now, is what I mean to say, and what's more I don't think there's a whole lot that needs to be done in the way of re-imagining the Gunstar or the Ko-Dan armada. The designs themselves are unique enough to still be workable, but that's not to say that they couldn't use a little "beefing up" in order to take advantage of the kind of graphical rendering engines in use by Hollywood now.
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| An updated interpretation of a Gunstar |
Casting this remake is the real challenge as there are several roles within this mythology that require younger players and quite frankly I'm not all that up on the who's who amongst the youth of Hollywood. That said, here's my ideal cast for a remake of The Last Starfighter.
Alex Rogan - Josh Hutcherson
He's an ideal choice for the part. He's the right age and he has that classic, all-American look about him in that he's handsome but without the overbearingly good looks of a model.
The issue that I can see erupting from attempting to cast Josh as Alex is the notion that he may not, as an artist, want to dedicate himself to the realm of science fiction by getting involved with another project that could potentially grow into two or three pictures. He may want to delve into more dramatic waters and I can certainly understand that. It doesn't seem like he's quite to that point yet, though, seeing as how he's been willingly attached to the Journey to the Center of the Earth series for the better part of a decade. Getting on board with this production of The Last Starfighter would be a big step up from that and a great shot for him to show his range as a potential leading man.
Maggie Gordon - Anna Kendrick
The role of Maggie isn't a terribly involved one, or at least it wasn't in the original version of TLS. She was more or less an area of concern for Beta Alex, which was a robotic clone of Alex left behind by the Rylans that was intended to keep his family and friends from realizing the real Alex was gone.
If you ask me (and you inadvertently did by starting to read this blog), Kendrick is ideal for this role as it would get her out of the realm of musicals and into something with a greater scope. In this version of TLS, I'd like to see her part highlighted by increased involvement in some way. The trick is getting around a premise of the plot which really leads into the potentiality for there to be more than just one film here seeing as how the original version of TLS ends (*SPOILER ALERT*) with Alex and Maggie flying off into the twilight in a Gunstar bound for Rylos, which is still in need of defending.
Lord Kril - Ron Perlman
In the original version of TLS, Lord Kril doesn't do much other than stand around at a command module and look imposing. That's kind of the Ko-Dan as a whole, to be frank - you never see them doing much other than laboring away at their individual stations (although I guess that makes sense since they're a fleet instead of ground-based). That would change in my version of TLS as the Ko-Dan should be a genuinely frightening example of what an intergalactic alien military force could be, and Kril should be the absolute worst of them. Not in a sense that he's a slimy, misshapen creature, rather that he's an ugly, intense, intelligent, and driven being whose black heart (assuming the Ko-Dan have hearts, that is) is filled with the need to lay waste to those who would refuse to bow down to his might.
Perlman has the perfect combination of an already imposing look with the added bonus of being able to rattle the windows with his one-of-a-kind voice. Get him into some updated make-up for Kril (I prefer practical make-up as opposed to trying to do the character with CGI) and he'll be ready to go to the set.
Centauri - Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Regardless of my cognitive issues, Morgan is my pick for Centauri because of the fact that I would want to reconfigure the character so that he's more of a covert agent of Rylos, for lack of a better descriptor. I can see him getting involved in some grittier action with K-Dan assassins than his predecessor Robert Preston did (who was 66 years old when TLS was released; sadly, he would pass away a mere 3 years later after having developed lung cancer), and being able to pull off the physical aspects of the role thanks to his size and physique. While Centauri isn't necessarily the leader of the Rylans, in my mind for the sake of the story he's Lord Kril's foil in terms of being the Batman to his Joker, if you catch my meaning.
Morgan has established himself as being able to handle this kind of work thanks to his being involved with The Losers, a movie I got a real kick out of and have always thought was under-appreciated. People know him from Grey's Anatomy and various other TV projects, but in the realm of geek-dom he's most loved for having brought life to the Comedian, an essential character in The Watchmen.
Grig - Simon Pegg
Grig is the kind of character that most studios would likely want to produce using CGI. I feel like a broken record here, but I think CGI would be a real waste of talent in regard to Pegg seeing as how his capability to breathe life into the character would be removed by way of not physically being involved. I don't want him for his voice, I want him because I want him to be Grig.
I have to take a moment to mention actor Dan O'Herlihy, who played Grig in the original TLS. O'Herlihy isn't a household name but he's been in a handful of movies that count among some of my favorites, those being The Last Starfighter and RoboCop 1 & 2. He also has the distinction of having been in Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, a movie that gets brought up all the time as being one of the worst horror films ever made. It had nothing to do with Michael Myers, so in the realm of that franchise you've got 1, 2, 3 which is completely irrelevant to everything else Halloween, 4, 5, and what have you. It made no sense whatsoever, other than to try and take advantage of the Halloween name.
Xur - Benedict Cumberbatch
Much like Heath Ledger did with his brilliant work as the Joker in The Dark Knight, Cumberbatch made moviegoers be at times more interested in the charismatic villain than they were in the heroes of the cast. Having said that, I don't want him to do that with Xur - quite the contrary, as a matter of fact. Xur is the kind of guy who is desperate for power and he's willing to do anything up to and including exterminating his own home world to get it. He's a slimy, backstabbing curse upon those who would've otherwise been his friends and family, all because of the fact that in his mind he should be the one running the show.
Much like the praise I gave to Ron Perlman earlier in this piece, Cumberbatch is worthy of recognition for his vocal abilities. His voice has a lot in common with that of Jeremy Irons, to my ears. This is the sort of God-given talent that you just can't develop and it adds so much to his repertoire as a performer.
An aspect of The Last Starfighter that I have always adored is the score. TLS was made at a point in time where composers like John Williams were crafting iconic themes for movies such as Star Wars and Indiana Jones. In that same vein is the work of Craig Safan who has the distinction, in my eyes, of having been essentially a one-hit wonder when it comes to his career of making music for movies. He turned in a real masterpiece for TLS in delivering as classic a theme as any and has more or less done nothing else all that worthy of note since then. With that in mind, I do not think there's much that could be done in trying to improve what he's already assembled other than to refresh the arrangement. No, that doesn't mean translating it over to dub step - that would be the antithesis of what I'm trying to accomplish here. All I'm looking for is a modern take on the theme.
It goes without saying that I think this has the makings of a real hit. (Of course, I'm biased, but if ever there was an arena where cheering on the home team is to be expected it's here within the confines of my own blog!) To me, The Last Starfighter deserves a second chance - not to say that the original film is bad, rather that it could be better than it is without necessarily disposing of what's come before. There's a certain amount of hero worship in this, you see, because people like me care enough about the source material to want new eyes to see it just with a clearer sense of vision and a renewed purpose.
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