Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #617
Written 9/24/96, Revised 6/28/22
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Buy it... if you gravitate towards the best of the noble and heroic
themes for bold brass that seemed to be everywhere in 1980's science
fiction movies.
Avoid it... if cheesy 1980's ray gun sounds and other obnoxious
electronic accents in the rest of the underscore are simply too much
vintage arcade ambience for your evolved ears to handle nowadays.
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 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 multi-track 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. For those who prefer the previous
sources with arguably brighter vibrance, Intrada re-issued the same
contents in 2022 from those tapes instead. (The product is otherwise the
same.) No matter which album you decide to obtain,
The Last
Starfighter is a worthy listening experience. Also consult several
good re-recordings of the main theme on science-fiction film 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 main theme is a
show-stopper and should be included in any serious science-fiction music
enthusiast's collection.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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