The Last Starfighter: (Craig Safan) The early
1980's represented the pinnacle of popularity for corny science-fiction
movies, with one of the more typical stories to streak into space at the
time being
The Last Starfighter. It's hard to imagine now that in
1984,
The Last Starfighter was a rather innovative and
serviceable entry in the genre, featuring cutting edge digital special
effects technology that served as the origin of the next decade's
computer-generated animation. You can laugh at it now, of course, with
its silly effects betraying the modest budget of the film, but the
unsophisticated visuals were a match for the subject matter of the film:
video games. The story of
The Last Starfighter is quite
intriguing, especially for video game aficionados, basically entailing
that aliens seed certain video games on Earth as an experiment to
determine which humans would make the best pilots in a real-life
representation of the game. For all humanity of the 21st Century knows,
the American government could be engaged in such plots to find the next
drone pilots in real life. In the more virtuous case of
The Last
Starfighter, that real-life version of the arcade meant a battle
between advanced space-faring races. One particular everyday kind of guy
of trailer court origin is recruited from the arcade to the stars and
thus begins his fantastic journey. The choice of composer for the
assignment was not completely unexpected given his relationship with the
director, but it was still a risk given his primarily television and
electronics background; along with a music director to supervise the
licensing of songs for the film, Craig Safan was hired for the project.
At the time of this score, Safan was best known for supplementing the
long-standing piano theme for the hit TV show "Cheers," and science
fiction with a large orchestra for the big screen proved to be a new
journey for him as well. The producers of the film, like any with high
hopes of transcending the usual trash of the era, desired a large space
opera score, with Gustav Holst and John Williams obviously in mind, and
offered Safan five days with an orchestra as immense as he needed to
achieve the right sound. As you might expect, it was a once in a
lifetime opportunity. He greeted it with enthusiasm that he later
recalls as the best moment of his career. He wanted to produce the space
opera sound without allowing it to fall into the well of existing, cheap
Star Wars imitation scores. His theory was to have everything
revolve around strong melodies, which was often lost in that era to
experimental sounds and sheer weight of typically overwrought orchestral
sound.
The resulting title theme for
The Last
Starfighter endures as one of the most noble, heroic, and expansive
of the era. Its intelligently layered brass and yearning strings were
performed against a backdrop of an oversized woodwind section and a
militaristic snare drum. Most remarkable about Safan's theme is its
versatility; its highly melodic construct allows for it to serve in
romantic and dreamy situations as well as the expected battle sequences.
The weaker moments of the score are those in which Safan succumbed to
the use of cheesy early-80's electronics to make ray gun sounds and
insert them into the active cues with the full orchestra. In those
sections, the score tends to sound badly dated and, as such, suffers the
same fate as the movie. In the end, however, the depth of the layered
brass is what elevates the score
The Last Starfighter above most
of its contemporary peers. The music has been released three times on
CD, with the early Southern Cross album of 1987 falling out of print and
somewhat of a collectible within five years. That album featured less
score material but also offered two early 80's-style rock songs written
by Safan and sung by Cliff Magness for the film's source music (the
first is reasonable, but who can really listen to that style of music
anymore?). In 1995, Intrada Records obtained the rights to Safan's work
and released a score-only album including about twice the number of
Safan cues. Despite the much longer running time, the 1996 album didn't
offer substantially better material than the previous product, but score
purists did not waste their time sitting on the old Southern Cross album
when comparing the two. Both, unfortunately, became completely out of
print, with even Intrada's album having fetched prices well over $100.
The label returned to the score in 2015 for an even fuller presentation,
this time mastered from better original sources. This complete
arrangement offers a few nice additions over the 1996 product ("Record
Breaker" and "Alex Decides"), but the sound quality is really the reason
to upgrade to the 2015 offering. No matter which album you manage to
obtain,
The Last Starfighter is a worthy listening experience. If
you decide not to open your wallet for the original recording, then keep
an eye out for several good re-recordings of the title theme on
science-fiction score compilations, including a stunning performance by
the Cincinnati Pops under the direction of Erich Kunzel in the
mid-1980's. None of these evolving arrangements over the years
(including a 2014 version by Safan himself) exist on the score's actual
albums. Still, the title theme is a show-stopper and should be included
in any serious science-fiction film score enthusiast's collection.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
The inserts of all the albums contain notes about the score and film.
