Line #1 YMMV/TheLastStarfighter


1	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic:
2	** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaDY7DPe2LM score]] composed by Craig Safan. Especially if you bought the '90s CD expansion - no songs and the complete "Into The Starscape" (for the final scene of the film and continuing over the end credits), criminally missing from the LP that came out in 1984 (the LP version cuts out after the point in the film where Louis whoops). Taken up to eleven with the 2015 further expansion, which has the ''entire'' score!
3	** Safan also did the incidental music for ''Series/{{Cheers}}'', and riffs from the show can be heard in the more incidental music.
4	* CultClassic: Despite the build up to a sequel, it didn't get one. However, it still has a following.
5	* GutPunch: [[spoiler: Centauri's supposed death. Up to that point, the film had been a lighthearted space flick.]]
6	* HarsherInHindsight: This was Robert Preston's last theatrical role, so Grig's farewell of "Until the next dimension, old friend", seems like Preston's epitaph, even though the character resurrects at the end of the film.
7	* HilariousInHindsight:
8	** Grig says he prefers to think of death as going to another dimension. One wonders if the team behind the infamously Bowdlerized first English dub of ''Anime/DragonBallZ'' took inspiration from this.
9	** The Xandoxan is a Franchise/{{Terminator}}, with the first film coming out the same year. Centauri describes it in the same terms, though as a bounty hunter, not cyborg, and it ''still manages to shoot Centauri with its disembodied arm''.
10	* IAmNotShazam:
11	** The spacecraft are called Gunstars. The Starfighters are the elite recruits manning their gunnery chairs.
12	** Similarly, the game featured in the film is simply called "Starfighter".
13	* NightmareFuel:
14	** TheReveal of Beta, midway through his transformation into a duplicate of Alex.
15	** Also when the drifter is revealed as a Xandoxan by the "malfunctioning" video game stripping away the disguised. The almost seizure-inducing malfunction of the video game screen didn't help.
16	*** After the Xandoxan has been unmasked, the video game starts saying, "Ko-Dan... Ko-Dan... Ko-Dan..." over and over again. Later, when Alex is trying to signal Centauri, the video game "glitches" again, repeating "Xur... Xur... Xur..." The video game is clearly trying to ''warn'' anyone around what's going on. While Alex doesn't quite grasp it, he's able to figure out something's wrong.
17	** The Xandoxan's severed arm reaching up, raygun clutched in its hand, to fire at Alex (the bolt that "killed" Centauri). Burning off it's ''arm'' with a raygun won't stop it, ''what the hell will?!''
18	** When Xur broadcasts the execution of the spy he's captured to the Star League.
19	*** The novelization has a helmet placed over the spy's head, which then contracts, slowly crushing his skull. At the end, all that's left of his head is a pointed nub of bone.
20	** Centauri peeling off his "face" and polishing his eyeballs, then turning to show Alex a black reptilian face with glowing eyes.
21	* ParanoiaFuel: Of a sort, though probably of a more hope-inducing than fear-inducing sort. Admit it, if you saw this movie when you were a kid, every time you start doing particularly well at a video game, part of you wonders if someone's about to show up and recruit you to save the world.
22	* TearJerker:
23	** The death of [[spoiler:Centauri]].
24	--->[[spoiler:'''Centauri:''' ''(dying)'' Alex, I want you to know that it was for the greatest good that I brought you back. Of course... it never hurts to be rich.\
25	'''Grig:''' Until the next dimension, old friend.]]
26	** When the Star League base is attacked.
27	* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome:
28	** While the effects were noticeable even at the time (the CG effects were done with the equivalent of a smartphone's processor), the Death Blossom and Star Car sequences still hold up.
29	** There's some good make-up work as well. There are over half a dozen distinct alien species, and only the Rylans are simple RubberForeheadAliens. Grig's makeup, most notably, would have been ambitious for a main character on the highest of ''Star Trek'' or ''Wars'' budgets of the [=20th=] century, and he was done in ''1984'' with no digital assistance!
30	** Even if the CG ships are very primitive by today's standards, they arguably paved the way for a whole new way to look at ships moving in space, a tradition carried on by their {{Spiritual Successor}}s in ''Series/Babylon5''. And much like ''Babylon 5'', even if the CGI effects are a bit dated, they allowed awesome things that would be difficult or impossible to achieve otherwise, and supported a story that carried the effects sequences even if the effects themselves are out of date.

Context YMMV / TheLastStarfighter