Comment by Magic Marmalade:
Player one was
born ready!
I finally gave in, and ordered this DVD from Amazon, as it never turns up on telly, and for some reason, is really rare on DVD here in UK...
(A recent Blu-ray / 4k seems to be available, but the DVD editions are pretty hard to come by, and are slightly elevated in price)
...And it's odd, as it seems to be one of those movies who's impression that it made on memory is much greater than how good the movie actually is, watching all these years later.
This is mostly I think, due to a couple of factors: Firstly, being of it's time, and like near contemporary movie: Tron, was way ahead in terms of visual effects for that era, and like Tron, tapped into the early arcade game culture which would massively appealed to us kids at the time. Secondly, the sweeping, majestic, and truly memorable score, which complements the aesthetic presentation, is very reminiscent of a kind of John Williams / Indiana Jones (possibly Superman too) adventure style, giving it a real sense of grandeur and scale.
But... strip away these factors, this tale of a kind of Superman in reverse - where Alex Rogan, a normal smalltown kid from a trailer park at the ass end of nowhere, is recruited via an arcade machine which tests his abilities to pilot a Stargun starfighter, and is whisked off to fight an alien scourge an save the universe in the depths of the Galaxy - is actually a lot thinner than I remember, with only a couple real space combat scenes, and the alien scourge is not so numerous or intimidating as all that. Switching back and forth between his recruitment and engagement with the good aliens, and his trailer park family and friends, where a robot body double has been left to cover for him, this isn't as epic as the music etc. would suggest.
Not that it isn't great fun, and is still a very good film, worthy of the cult-classic status it has attained in the intervening years... I just see now how the presentation does a lot to cover it's short-comings, and leave a bigger footprint that the foot alone can make.
The effects, as viewed form this distance of time, are oddly, and paradoxically, simultaneously painfully dated and stunningly impressive, even now... the computer generated modelling: The shapes and geometry of the images are still incredible, on occasion, making even newer CGI look a little shonky in this regard, not to mention the tracking and movement through space, as the virtual camera see these objects, is truly astounding... but the surface rendering - absence of textures, reflections, and other window dressing is sorely lacking, and shows the severe limitations of the time (There's only e few such rendered objects on screen at any one time too)...
...But, fortunately, using my pre-millennial upbringing, I am able to use that estimable faculty of the "Imagination", so that mind can envision what the eye can't necessarily, literally see, by what is merely suggested by what is actually shown, so I can forgive these dated effects.
Still great fun though.
