One of my favorite movies from the 80s is The Last Starfighter, which starred Lance Guest as Alex Logan, the intrepid video gamer who gets a chance to save the universe.
Alex is a young man who is living in a trailer park with his mother and youger brother. He has a girlfriend, played by Catherine Mary Stewart, but life seems to be pretty boring for him. When he isn't fullfulling his duties as the handyman for the residents, he spends his time playing Starfighter.
What Alex doesn't know is that the game is actually a testing device created to find those worthy of becoming Starfighters, the universes best chance of defeating the evil Ko-Dan empire which is trying to wipe out the Rylan Star League. When Alex beats the highest score, he is recruited by the game inventor and brought out to space were he is enlisted and trained as a starfighter. Needless to say he helps win the day and defeat the incursion, but some of the bad guys escape and Alex is face with a pretty tough choice. Does he go back home and forget this ever happened or does he stay and help train a new generation of Starfighters to defend against future hostilitites? He does what any true hero would do, he returns home, tells his family what happened, and takes his girlfriend back to outerspace to keep us all safe.
What I enjoy about Alex, and other heroes like him, is that he is just a regular guy who finds himself in a situation where he can make a difference and save the day. What makes these heroes special, is that they don't run away, even when the are scared out of their minds. They stick around and fight. They do their best, hoping that in the end, it's enough.
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