Movies like The Last Starfighter

Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One is a visual spectacle that takes The Last Starfighter's premise of a gamer entering into a high-stakes game to the next level. Set in a dystopian future where humanity escapes reality through a VR game, Ready Player One resonates with the original film's blend of gaming culture and action.

WarGames shares with The Last Starfighter the theme of video games intersecting with real-world high stakes. In this tense thriller, a young computer whiz accidentally hacks into a U.S. military supercomputer and nearly starts World War III, believing it to be just a game. The blend of teenage gaming with life-or-death consequences makes it a kindred spirit to The Last Starfighter.

Like The Last Starfighter, Tron is an early '80s sci-fi flick that dives deep into the then-novel world of computer technology and video games. Its story of a software engineer who gets transported into the digital world of a computer and must navigate through games and beyond has that same mix of adventure and cutting-edge effects that fans loved in The Last Starfighter.

Like The Last Starfighter, Ender's Game centers on a youth who excels at video games, only to be recruited to fight in an actual intergalactic war. The serious tone and the theme of training young minds for space battles make it an interesting modern counterpart to the 1984 classic.

In Flight of the Navigator, a young boy embarks on an extraordinary adventure when he is abducted by an alien craft. With its child protagonist and a story that combines sci-fi with heart and wonder, viewers who appreciate the fantastical journey in The Last Starfighter will likely be taken by this '80s gem.

For a family-friendly variant, Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over shares the concept of young characters sucked into a video game world, echoing The Last Starfighter's fusion of youthful protagonists and sci-fi thrills. It's a fun romp through a digital landscape with espionage flair.

Explorers taps into the youthful spirit of high adventure and the dream of space travel. When a group of kids builds their own spacecraft, they embark on a fantastical journey, echoing The Last Starfighter’s theme of ordinary individuals catapulted into extraordinary sci-fi scenarios.