History Film / TheLastStarfighter

* OrganAutonomy:[[spoiler: Demonstrated by the first Zando-Zan after its arm was shot off by Centauri.]]

** OrganAutonomy:[[spoiler: Demonstrated by the first Zando-Zan after its arm was shot off by Centauri.]]

* BeamSpam: The Death Blossom attack fires both beams and missiles in all directions to take out the enemy fleet. Unfortunately, it uses all available energy to do so, and Alex and Grig have to wait a few, tense minutes for the batteries to recharge.

* BeamSpam: The Death Blossom attack fires both beams and missiles in all directions to take out the enemy fleet.

* WaveMotionGun: Subverted. The Death Blossom drains all the ships power for a powerful attack, granted. However, instead of a single, powerful shot, it fires [[BeamSpam a storm of laser bolts]] [[DeathInAllDirections while spinning wildly]].

* CoversAlwaysLie: The Japanese poster shows the principal Ko-Dan bad guy, Kril, red-lensed techno-monocle and all, in a Starfighter uniform. For some reason.

* DecompositeCharacter: In the {{Novelization}}, Kril's lieutenant is split into multiple Ko-Dan officers performing different functions on the command ship's bridge.

* CoversAlwaysLie: The Japanese poster shows the principal Ko-Dan bad guy, Kril, red-lenses techno-monocle and all, in a Starfighter uniform. For some reason.

* CripplingOverspecialization: The Ko-Dan Armada's pilots are lost without a HiveMind communication array. Taking it out makes them easy pickings for a single Gunstar.

* KeystoneArmy: The Ko-Dan mothership coordinates all of its fighter craft via a single communication turret. This allows them to act with unparalleled efficiency and coordination, but if taken out, greatly reduces their cohesion and effectiveness (a slight subversion for this trope, the "army" is still active and dangerous, just not as effective as it was).

* KeystoneArmy: The Ko-Dan mothership coordinates all of its fighter craft via a single communication turret. This allows them to act with unparalleled efficiency and coordination, but if taken out, greatly reduces their cohesion and effectiveness.

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/last-starfighter.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300:[[AndYouThoughtItWasAGame So all this time it was really a recruiting tool?]]]]

''The Last Starfighter'' created all of its spaceship effects shots using only computer-generated images (one of the first films to do so), but since it did so during the very early days of CGI, [[ConspicuousCG said effects stand out as such]]. A Cray X-MP rendered all of the film's CGI; as a bit of perspective, the 800 [=MHz=] Pentium III processor available to consumers fifteen years later -- or the average smartphone of 2012 -- matches the processor power of what was then the most powerful supercomputer in the world.

!!Tropes:

* LikeADuckTakesToWater:
** Alex manages to be an exceptional Starfighter, despite having grown up in a trailer park on Earth.
** This is justified as Alex has been playing the game at-home repeatedly (to the point of defeating the game and making the high score), and since the gunner controls are actually near-identical to the game's, so long as Alex is good at one, he'll theoretically be good at the other too.
** The game was also used to recruit on Earth for this exact purpose. While the skill and reflexes needed are just as rare on Earth as everywhere else, more advanced worlds have very few people with the stomach for even simulated fighting.

* FictionalVideoGame[=/=]LicensedGame: Atari Inc. was originally slated to develop arcade and home video games based on the movie (the game(s) were even mention in the closing credits). They were cancelled for various reasons, including the sale/division of Atari Inc. into Atari Games and Atari Corp. The home computer game was eventually released (with minor changes) as ''VideoGame/StarRaiders II''.

* FaceDeathWithDignity / FacingTheBulletsOneLiner: By one of the villains.

* CastingGag: In either this or a very weird case of timing, Catherine Mary Stewart played a video game-obsessed girl in ''Film/NightOfTheComet'', which was made and released around the same time.

* UnfinishedUntestedUsedAnyway: The Death Blossom device in Alex's Gunstar has never been tested. Grig tells Alex that using it might overload the systems and blow up the ship. Alex convinces him to use it anyway, and it destroys all of the Ko-Dan fighters.

* WaveMotionGun: Inverted, rather than using all available energy to fire one huge shot, the Death Blossom uses all available energy to fire a [[BeamSpam storm of little ones.]] [[EverythingsBetterWithSpinning And spin like a top.]]

* WhooshingCredits