Haven’t found a picture yet, but I did find someone selling the press photos on Ebay but they only show one of 11 photos. I asked if they had one of Xur and the scepter.
I must confess, The Last Starfighter contains my favorite movie exchange of all time.
Alex: How many starfighters do we have left?
Grig: Counting yourself?
Alex: Yes.
Grig: One.
My favorite exchange:
Grig: [Happy and confident] Don’t worry, Alex, I’ll have it all figured out by the time we reach the Frontier. [alarm sounds and Grig’s face falls]
Alex : What’s that?
Grig: [Grimly] The Frontier.
IMO this is a movie that should be re-released with a new enhanced edition. Oh, and I noticed that right now one can see it in the favorite streaming internet video site.
Not counting Tron. 
I was gonna throw in to the mix Young Sherlock Holmes. But, it’s a tad too late.
YSH: 1985
TLSF: 1984
Tron: 1982
But, which one was the first completely CGI for special effects? I can’t find a definite cite. In the trivia page for Tron, IMDb says:
The trivia page for **The Last Starfighter ** on imdb (I know–not always accurate) says:
“The first movie to do all special effects (except makeup and explosions) on a computer. All shots of spacecraft, space, etc were generated on a Cray X-MP computer.”
IMDb trivia page for Young Sherlock Holmes:
I’m wondering if we will find a definitive answer not based on Wiki or IMDb. Perhaps it will end up depending on how specific we make the question.
My mistake; Tron was the first movie to use CGI but most of the effects were optical.
Well, even that above quoted trivia tidbit for TLSF says that the explosions were not CGI. So, it wasn’t (according to that cite) the first all CGI FX movie. So, perhaps we’re all missing something.
So, what was the first movie to use only CGI for all of its special effects? (We all seem to keep hitting on partials in our findings)
Toy Story
Has there been one yet? Even The Matrixes and Star Wars use some small practical effects still, don’t they? Maybe that craptacular one with the skyships from a few years ago with all CG sets? I’m blanking on the name.
*slaps **Tangent *with a CG trout
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
I liked The Last Starfighter – it took an idea that was an Urban Legend at the time (the idea that the military or somebody was using video games to test potential fighters) and ran with it, threw in Robert Preston’s “Music Man” con man character, and added CGI effects that were pretty good for the time.
A few notes:
1.) Tron may have been created with the help of computers, but so were the Hamnna-Barbera cartoons of the late 1950s and early 1960s. All of those computer scenes in Tron were drawn over and colored by hand, if memory serves – that’s what all those people at “Cuckoo Nest Studios”, with their names written only in oriental characters in the closing credits were doing. I think that the Last Starfighter really was the first majhor movie with all CGI effects, therefore.
2.) The guys who made TLS tried to interest Lucas in doing the spacecraft effects for Return of the Jedi using their CGI, and went so far as to do some demos. Lucas judged them not as good as the models they were using, and passed. The guys were just a bit early, of course – CGI hadn’t matured enough and looked too cartoony. But lucas did eventually use CGI starships ijn the retrofit on his original trilogy.
3.) When you looked at the still figures of the ships in TLS, they looked great (So did their still renders of the X-wings from Star Wars). For some reason they looked cartoony and unconvincing in motion. I’m still not clear on why.
4.) Despite what Christpopher remembers, the black guy wasn’t the janitor at the trailer park – Alex took care od cleanup, as is made abundantly clear in the dialogue. The black guy was just another resident, and there was no racial put-down in the film. The past is still good.
I dunno, reluctant kid with special ability gets recruited by a wizened codger, who dies but not really, and he hits the big alien vessel in the one vulnerable spot yet the main bad guy escapes…
If there’d been a sequel, would we learn Alex and Maggie were siblings?
Either that or you like reading the
[quotes from IMDB]
(The Last Starfighter (1984) - Quotes - IMDb)
The objects had no textures. They just had digital surfaces, which looks nice and sharp and clean in a still image, but look digital and harsh and artificial in motion.
Loved The Last Starfighter. The only part that ever bothered me was the clone Alex forming in the bunk bed. His girlfriend was played by Catherine Mary Stewart who was also a main character in my other favorite movie from that time…Night of the Comet.
I have watched both of those films more times than I can count. I was ten years old and they were awesome.
But the stills that were published in magazines had plenty of texture – that’s why they looked so realistic! I don’t know if they dispensed with textures for the moving scenes (hard to believe), or if some feature of moving ships made them look unrealistic. But the still shots of the Starfighters and the X-wings they did looked photorealistic.
I could’ve sworn he was the janitor. I could be wrong. Nevertheless, something felt a little off about that character. Perhaps I was being a bit sensitive at the time.
“Centauri! I thought you were dead!”
“Who, me? Die? And miss all the excitement?”
“Well, yeah. I saw you die.”
“But then I would’ve missed all the excitement. We can’t have that.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. What are you, a Jedi or something?”
“A what?”
“You know, a Jedi. An old fart who pulled an unsuspecting kid out of his boring life, led him on to something greater, only to die and yet continue to lead him somehow.”
“You play too many video games, kid. Now run along back to Earth and pick up that hot piece of ass girlfriend of yours.”
Dialogue changed just for kicks.