This movie is etched in my mind. It was HBO as far as I was concerned, being that it was on all the time.
The general plot given here is a little anemic, so I'll expand a little here. Alex is recruited, yes, but he is done so by the...
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This movie is etched in my mind. It was HBO as far as I was concerned, being that it was on all the time.
The general plot given here is a little anemic, so I'll expand a little here. Alex is recruited, yes, but he is done so by the perfect 1980's vehicle: by a video game. That's right the aliens secretly plant video games around the galaxy looking for people with the proper motor skills to become inter-galactic marksmen. Silly premise, but hey it's 1984. Especially since the movie is really just a flimsy rip off of the Star Wars movies. You can almost replace Alex with Luke and you'd get the same ending. Alex even lives in the dusty doomed world of modern Americana: A trailer park. If that's not the equivalent of the deserts of Tatoonine I don't know what is.
This movie touched me for some reason when I was a kid, and it still does. It doesn't have anything completely original in it, but the underlying theme of discovering your purpose is always refreshing.
I think the interplay between Alex and his piloting alien friend, who's character name eludes me, was some of the best of the movie. It was funny, and I think secretly was making fun of human social interplay.
Most of the boy in space stuff is computers and we're talking 1984 computers, so the special effects are starting to show around the edges. But the action is good. The fight scenes interesting, and the there is still that special something that I can't put my finger on exactly. It is a good kids movie, a way to help explore our own purpose and refresh our hope that we can all make some change to the world that will help us all.