Alex Rogan (Lance Guest) lives in a trailer park with his mother Jane and little brother Louis. They manage the park. He’s great at the video arcade game Starfighter and he beats the record. He has big dreams to go somewhere else. His girlfriend Maggie Gordon (Catherine Mary Stewart) is scared to leave her granny. His college loan gets turned down. Centauri (Robert Preston) is the inventor of Starfighter and arrives with a futuristic car. Centauri takes him to outer space while leaving behind Beta which takes on Alex’s form. Centauri is recruiting for Starfighters but Earth is not really a member of the Star League. Xur has betrayed his people to lead the Ko-Dan warships past the Frontier. He wants to take over Rylan from his father and destroy the Star League. Alex refuses to fight and returns home. He is attacked by an alien bounty hunter and Centauri is mortally wounded. He returns to find the base heavily damaged and navigator Grig with the last Gunstar. Without any training and only one ship, the last Starfighter Alex must destroy an armada and rescue the galaxy.
This is fun sci-fi action adventure with some of the earliest CGI. It’s blocky and ancient but workable nevertheless. The story is just great. It taps into every child’s dream of living their video games for real. It is a really fun timeless story that would work great as a remake with modern CG.
