The Weekly Planet - The Last Starfighter - Caravan Of Garbage

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

Video game movies are bigger than ever! But do you know what used to be bigger than video game movies? Movies about video games that aren't based on a real video game. We're taking a look at four starting with 1984's The Last Starfighter, on the surface a blatent Star Wars knock off (which it is) but a cut above all the other Star Wars crossovers. Thanks for watching our Caravan Of Garbage reviewSUBSCRIBE HERE ►► http://goo.gl/pQ39jNHelp support the show and get early episodes ► https://bigsandwich.co/Patreon ► https://patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesJames' Twitter ► http://twitter.com/mrsundaymoviesMaso's Twitter ► http://twitter.com/wikipediabrownPatreon ► https://patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesT-Shirts/Merch ► https://www.teepublic.com/stores/mr-sunday-movies The Weekly Planet iTunes ► https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weekly-planet/id718158767?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D4 The Weekly Planet Direct Download ► https://play.acast.com/s/theweeklyplanetAmazon Affiliate Link ► https://amzn.to/2nc12P4 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back everybody to another episode of Caravanagh Garbage where we're taking a look at movies that are loosely based around video games, but they're not based on particular video games. Whoa, you're blowing my mind. Can you explain that at another different way? We'll cover Gamer at some point. Does that help? The movie Gamer? That helps. Because we've all seen that. That's a cultural touchstone. We can all relate to an extrapolate out to this movie, which is the last Starfighter. That's right. From 1980 something. Four, that's right. Oh. One year after the return of the Jedi,

which is not the sweet spot for Star Wars content. Everybody knows that's five years after Return of the Jedi. Correct, 1989. Eight? Yep. So please leave a like for The Last Starfighter. Interesting movie. Go on.

I think also interesting in the sense that this was in the wake of Star Wars fever. And there were a bunch of knockoffs. There was like Battle Beyond the Stars, Flash Gordon, He-Man, Turkish Star Wars, all of these different things. Which people called a Turkish Star Wars. delight. Did they? Yeah. I thought they said it was bad. It wasn't a delight at all. That's what they meant. Oh, okay. Cultural... Racism. Cultural racism. Cultural racism. I don't like it. I don't like it. There's none in this video. I agree. I agree. Did you see this movie at the time?

No, Mason, I didn't because I was one years old. One years old. Unless my parents dragged me into the cinema. They might have. Crying. They love Last Starfighters. They don't know Last Starfighter. They love arcade machines. They love unrealistic arcade machines that couldn't have possibly existed at the time. It's alien stuff, James. That shit makes me angry, though. Why, but it's aliens? No, no, no. I hate, and I had a real problem with this as a kid,

and Tron does the same thing. Oh, so you did see this as a kid, though? Yeah, I saw it as a kid because it was on TV or whatever. Because I saw it today. Okay, right. For the first time. It's when you see a video game in a movie, and it looks incredible, but it's not a real video game.

Sure, okay. Because as a kid, you're like, wow, I'm going to go play this video game, and then you look at the adaptation video games of Tron. It's nothing like playing Tron games. So when you saw like Iron Man, you were like, I'm going to go out and purchase my own Iron Man suit. Oh, they don't make them. This is unrealistic. I'm mad.

This is different. I'm a grown adult and I'm mad at this. People know what I'm talking about. I'm so stupid little mad having a little tantrum. This is different. No, it's not. It's very distinctly different. I'll tell you this.

It's false advertising. No, no, look. It's so they can sell Atari cartridges that play like shit. Yes, it was. There was an adaptation of this which they cancelled. There was a big video game crash or whatever in or before around this. Is that why? It's not related.

I don't know. But at the point. They use this to, they trick kids to buy shit. They do, and that's why it happened. I think they trick kids. James, this movie was to trick kids to have dreams is what it was all about. In my opinion, having seen it today, and having had maybe an hour to ruminate on it, I think. It was about kids having dreams. Well, what I would say is the video game in this, it does look pretty janky because obviously it's not a playable game.

Yeah. It's just computer graphics. Someone has made it sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think it looked like it could pretty. probably be a game. Like not from that era, obviously. Yeah.

But, I mean, it's supposed to be... So the plot of this movie is... Yes. There's a teenager named Alex. And he lives at the Starlight, Star Bright, trailer park. Yeah. And he's Luke Skywalker.

He's Luke Skywalker in a trailer park. And he can't go to the Toshi Station or whatever. But it's not the Toshi Station, because he has to stay home and fix moisture evaporators, but it's not. It's just like people's toilets. He's just Luke Skywalker. He is, it's true. Which is...

There's even an over... be one guy who shoots a guy's arm off. He does a death star. Are you saying that Luke Skywalker shouldn't have had dreams to go down the shops? Which he never got to do, but then he became a hero. Yeah, that's fine. Anyway, he lives at the trailer park and he wants to go to college,

but he doesn't have any money and he's, you know, everybody in the trailer park's like, help us with a toilet or whatever. Yeah. My turlots broken. Help me with the turlet. And his friends are like, hang out with this. And he's like, I can't. Also, I have dreams and I'm going to college and you guys can't go to college.

You suck. You guys suck. You're always hanging around and getting drunk and polishing your pickup truck. It's a sweet pickup truck, by the way. I would be polishing that pickup truck, and that's not a metaphor. But then, but his only solace in the world is there's one arcade machine that was accidentally delivered to the trailer park. It was supposed to go to Las Vegas. And it's called Starfighter, and it's a cool, very realistic star fighting game.

And one day he gets the high score, but that's actually a signal because it was built by aliens to find the best star pilot in the universe of the galaxy. or the solar system or whatever. Any kid from today could do that. Oh, 100%. Also, what I was going to say is that, again, I was... He's not special. He's only era-specific special. No, I would say, like, generally speaking,

I quite like this as a first-time watch. I thought it was pretty fun. It's a nice movie. It's kind of quaint and fun. There's a Spielberg kind of magic to it. I don't have any kids, but I imagine you could probably show this to your kids now, and they'd be like, this is pretty fun.

I got something to say about that, right? All right, here we go. What I would say upon the... My first watch of this is that they would never have a kid at this age, be the main protagonist now, because it would be too like, oh, this guy's a teenager and he should be doing cool stuff, but actually he's a hero. The protagonist would be a much younger kid.

So in this movie, it would be his young brother who loves mischief and pornoes. He would be the 80s. He would be the protagonist because it's like, well, that's when kids of that age have this imagination that they would be special. Like in the modern era, this character who's like a late teenager, the idea that he would dream of being a space pilot would be embarrassing. Embarrassing to kid, you know, teenagers now. Yeah, you're talking about the movie Tomorrowland.

Embarrassing behavior. Oh, my God, embarrassing behavior. I'm walking through a field, but I'm imagining it's a motor rail. Shut up. Hey, shut up. Shut up, idiot. But anyway, the aliens come to visit him. And they're like, you can be a big starfighter.

And he's like, not. Because I don't know anything about this intergalactic war you've dragged me into. I'm pretty sure there's a little bit of a difference between playing an arcade game in the middle of a... In the middle of a trailer park in the Midwest. No pressure. And flying through space. On your own. Yeah.

Because you are the last starfighter. That's right. Yeah. What's funny about this is director Nick Castle. He has bemoaned his attempts to do something different than Spielberg and George Lucas. He said, you're basically back into George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg at every corner. You see all these moments come up and you realize. boy, George really knew what he was doing.

Yeah. Yeah. But guess what he didn't? His wife did? And a lot of other people who helped. Yeah. And the idea of this movie, according to what screenwriter, this movie actually came about because he was wandering around a video arcade machine.

He saw a young boy playing a game and he thought, I'll stop you there, James. He wandered around, he was wandering an out. He was wandering around an arcade game. He saw, he was wandering around a video game arcade and he saw a little boy. Yeah, yeah. And then he thought, what? And then he very careful.

with your next words James. He thought that he was, about a book he was also reading about King Arthur, the once and future king. And he was like, what happened if a video game was a metaphorical sword in a stone? Well, there's a moment in this movie where the music man. He says, yeah, we didn't do the Excalibur test. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's fun. That's fun.

Exactly. So, yeah, so a dude shows up. He's called Centauri and he's like, I made this video game. Let's go do war together. That is, I'll say you, James. Oh, and his final performance, yeah. That's Robert Press. It is Robert Preston.

Who famously, of course, is The Music Man, the musical upon which The Simpsons Monorail episode was based. Is it really? That's fun and good. He is fun and good in this. I agree, yeah. I like that a lot. He also solves a problem for our protagonist. If he's gone for a day, he replaces him with a robot.

Unnecessary. Completely unnecessary. And also miracle technology. Yeah, he's got a guy with him called Beta and he touches Alex and then he turns into a copy of him. He's also way more charismatic. He is. Great dual performance in this, by the way. I agree, yeah. Lance Guest, who...

Really good. Didn't have a lot of lead roles after this, but, you know, did a lot of theatre, I think, some TV stuff. He's famously in that episode of The X-Files, where there's an invisible elephant. Oh, my God. Was he the elephant? Yeah. Oh, my God.

No, sorry, he's famously in the episode where aliens start stealing animals from the zoo. Oh. What's he got to do with that? He's like an environmental activist. He's like, stop it. Don't bother. It's over. Yeah, don't worry about it.

If aliens are involved, just leave it. Yeah, just let it go, man. Just leave it. Brother, let it go. He's going to be away for a day. Yeah, that's great. Exactly. I remember seeing this as a kid, but I have distinct memories.

Not me. Yeah, I know you don't. Also, you don't remember your childhood at all, except like Robocop comics that you bought or whatever. That's weird, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. But there's scary stuff that I do remember.

There's like a guy whose head melts. There's a moment where Centari takes his face off. The beta unit growing and morphine and the, and it's got that pulsing skin. Yeah. I have a very distinct memory of that as a kid and just being horrified and also not understanding that, like, that was okay.

Do you know what I mean? To be horrified. No, that it was like part of the story and it grew into a robot. You thought this was happening accidentally on set. Yeah, I'm like, who's doing this? Who's doing this and what's going on? I think also, to compare it to also to Star Wars,

there is a bit of the kind of... Star Wars is lightning in a bottle three times. trilogy. We talked about them earlier this year. And this doesn't really have that. And I think you look at it in terms of like alien design. Like why are the aliens all have this like receding hairline Margaret Thatcher do? Like what, what, what is that? Why are you choosing that? Probably because it was easier to apply. Oh, actually, I do have an answer here. I wrote it down. That wasn't a question for me to then tell you. I'd forgotten that I researched this. Production designer Ron Cobb's idea was that that's because it had made them look

wise. And stressed. And it made them also vaguely cat-like with the hair on the side of the head. And in the end, Cobb simply said, apparently, we were stuck with it. So it's just like, this is it. Absolutely. We manufactured a dozen of them. And yeah, it's too late. The alien environment, though, it feels sterile and earth-like. You're great, yeah. It's lit really brightly. Yeah, it is. You're right. Yeah. And just that idea that, like, they bring them all into the war room and they're all chanting victory or death and he's just like against who for what?

That's true. You don't know what side you're on really. Why? Yeah. Oh, there's a big hologram head. That's bad. I know it's got, it brings wind with it somehow. Explain that to me, Mason. I don't get it. The wind of victory. The wind of a hologram victory. And he's the emperor or something sort of, but he works for other guys. Yeah, yeah.

It's too vague. That's right. Fix that up, man. There's probably a deleted scene where they went, hey kid, you've seen Star Wars, right? See how the language of cinema is saying these are the bad guys? Yeah. Well, they are? Just believe us.

Yeah, and they'll probably come to work at some point, I reckon or whatever. Yeah. He's your freak show friend. It's Dan O'Hurley here from Robocop. Speaking of Robocop. Yeah, so... It's the old man from Robocon.

He is. They should have merged him in Centauri. Well, they didn't. That should be one character because Centari... Well, thanks for telling us now. Yeah. Thanks for telling us now,

42 years later. I had this idea when I was one. Nobody was listening. I was screaming, Mason. Yeah? You insisted your parents fly you to the set while they were filming it

and you were like, goo, go, go, gaga. But it actually meant... They were like, this is adorable, but it wasn't being adorable, Mason. No, you're being insistent.

Combine these into two characters. One character. Combine these two characters to one character. No, no, you said to. I didn't. So, yeah, so he goes back to Earth,

understandably, and it's like, I don't want to fly a starship because I've never done that. I've played a standing arcade cabinet. Yeah, yeah. Can he maybe put a standing desk in a starship.

I'll do it then. And so Santari gets shot by an assassin, weird fish guy. Horrible thing to run around in that mask as well. It doesn't look like you can see anything. And so he teams up with Grigg, who's the old man from Robocop. And again, just make those one guy. Or two guys. Yeah, I guess all two separate guys.

It would be easier at this point to just keep them as two guys. I guess it would because they've already done it. They've already made the film, yeah, yeah. Good makeup, though. Good, like, lizard kind of turtle shellhead makeup on that guy. Now, a big part of this movie, and it can't be overlooked, is the early computer graphics. Yes. And sure, you look at it now.

I guess you could overlook it now and be like, yeah, there's something very primitive about this. This is the same people who worked on Tron. So it's a lot further along than Tron, which is a couple of years earlier. It's much further along than Tron. Thank you. It was apparently going to take 18 months to render initially. So they were like, maybe we just do model work. We can do that in less time.

Same as Star Wars. It looks better. But then somebody said, let's push the turbo button on the computer. That's right. And we can do it in half the time. Let's do extra fans. Right? And then we'll make it happen.

But no, so they simplified shots. They reassessed how they were going to do it. They retrained everybody who worked on it. And it ended up being 27 minutes of visual effects in this, which cost $14 million in total. That's a lot. It's primitive, but it's good. It's interesting, right? It's better than Tron.

It is better than Tron. But the other thing is, like Tron, there is a disconnect from him sitting inside that ship. To cut away to being the outside of the ship. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, it is what it is. And what's interesting about this is, the team that worked on this showed an early CGI concept

of an X-wing to George Lucas and had them doing maneuvers. And George Lucas was like, this was mine now. Well, no. He said these aren't what my starships look like. They're kind of beat up and scuffed. Oh, I see, Ryan.

They're so clean in this. So the technology in this was incredibly influential. It was just early. But yeah, and like, the, idea of like a computer model of a ship and then you give it a scuffed texture. Yeah. Beyond them in this point, surely. Absolutely, yeah.

Anyway, so they have to do a big final space battle. Yeah, while the, um... A spattel. The spattle. While the beta units run around Earth trying to do kissing and having fun or whatever. That's right. I don't need to be here at all. I'm getting drunk.

Oh, yes. He's also on Earth so that the Emperor thinks that the last Starfighter is dead. And then they kill him and then immediately realize, oh, he's not actually dead. and the emperor gets usurped by whoever he's working with. Yeah, yeah. Probably a bigger hologram head. Yeah, I don't know. And it's just like, who's running this?

Chopping him up like Pac-Man. Yeah, it's too complicated. Make one guy. This movie should be one guy. The entire movie should be one guy. One guy. And he's just sitting in a room. Yeah.

And he's explaining the plot of the last Starfighter. Standing desk. Yeah. Standing desk, he's doing reports. Yep. He's doing a spreadsheet. And he doesn't explain to you what the spreadsheet is. He's just clearly having a satisfying time filling in those cells.

That's right. And it pulls back at the end and you're like, oh, maybe he's in space or whatever. He's not. He's at his house. Oh, he's working from home. He's working from home. Not bad. Not bad.

So, yeah, the final space battle comes down to two guys in a ship. Grigg, I don't understand why Grig couldn't also be the last Starfighter because he seemed to know what he was doing, but he's the guy who sits at the back, I guess. Yeah, you need a guy sits in the back. And they spin around and spinning is a good trick. We know that. Classic move. Yeah.

Unbeatable move. And then they just. destroy the Death Star or whatever the space station is. That scale, that shot of it like crashing into the moon, it's very funny because it explodes before you think it's going to hit it. The scale's like way off. It's great stuff. And then he's a champion and he gets to rebuild the Legion or whatever's supposed to be happening.

There's going to be more starfighters because they all got exploded because of sabotage earlier. Probably would I prefer to go to college. Yeah, that's true. Oh, and Satari's, he's back. He's like, I'm actually alive and that's amazing. That's right. It's amazing, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.

Is that because you were still on set on the last day And they just went, yeah, put you in? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess. That's what happened. And so they go back home. Yes. Oh, he has a girlfriend called Maggie. Yes.

And at the end, he's like... He's a classic girl next door kind of. Totally. 90s, girl next door. Yeah. She's got the hair. She's got the face. All of that.

It's what you need. And he's like, come to space with me, Maggie. And I'm thinking like, Maggie, you shouldn't give up on your dreams, whatever they are. They didn't write you any. That's right. But don't do this. Be in a truck.

Yeah. Be in a truck and go to the beach and the shops. They didn't write you any character development or anything. You just got to follow this guy around. And I just, I don't know, man. I don't think it was a good idea. Which part? The going to the space part.

Or him doing it and coming along. I think him doing it was pretty good. Yeah, I guess. Because he saved that galactic civilization or something. Yeah. Or killed an innocent galactic civilization. It's impossible to say. That would have been a fun twist, though.

It would have been. Like, we're the bad guys actually. Yeah, that's End his game maybe or something. Actually, we were just, we were on the verge of crushing this innocent civilization. We figured let's get a rookie in and do it. It'd be funny. It'd be funny. It would be funny.

So you mentioned up top, like, as a kid, you know, maybe that's a fun thing to show. Oh, yeah. My son came in on the last half an hour. Okay, so you didn't show him the opening sequence. No, man, he was busy. Also, famously for people who listen to our podcast, The Weekly Planet, you've showed your son the MCU, but just in random order. We started at Civil War

I'm pretty sure it's a crime What you've done there No man it's all it's all fine It's like picking up a random comic book He's figured it out He's on Disney Plus He's making his way through Don't worry about it

He's watched Falcon and the Winter Soldier Don't you worry about what I'm doing No he's got a weird look in his eyes I don't like it But yeah him looking at this At that final space battle Pure disgust Hated it

And I'm like this is actually pretty revolutionary And he was just not having it Okay, all right. Yeah. So, you know, make it up what you will. What can you do? I would love, try this experiment at home. Show your kids the last half an hour of the last half.

You know what? If you've got two kids, show one kid the last half, the other kid the first half. And then if the kid's like, if the kid that watches the first half, it's like, I really like this, this is a nice movie. Don't show on the second half. See what happens. Also, name one of your kids winner and one of your kids loser and see what happens later in life. Yeah, see what happens later in life.

Exactly. I thought there's a nice moment I think right at the start of the movie where like the whole population of the trailer park gets together while he like while he breaks the record and they clearly don't know what's happening but they're like yay they're like a small thing happening it's the kid who fixes the turlets yeah you got a million points or whatever yeah exactly anyways anyways it's time for the trivia fighter this is the trivia section of the show the star car that centari drives star car is based on a delorean obviously yeah we know mate yeah we can tell Can its wheels fold up and then it can fly? Yeah, it was, and it did it before the Deloria did it in the movie. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, I know.

Could the DeLoreans, wheels fall up and they could fly? We're on the same page. Robert Zemeckis, uh. So a number of scenes in this were added with a beta unit after they did some test screenings and people were like, we love this. And so you notice the reshoots, Lance Guest, is wearing a wig and he's got a lot of makeup on because he was sick. So he'd already cut his hair. And you can...

Which is what happens when you're sick. You're like, God, I can't handle this. Better shave my head. Absolutely. You can see it in scenes like... I've got so much vomit in my hair. I've got to shave my head. There's a moment where he's in the bait unit's in the back of a pickup

and you can really see that it's like not. Yeah. It's not the same. A young Will Whiten makes an appearance in this movie, but he did have his lines cut. He's early on in the movie. He's running around the trailer park in a red football jersey. and he was Star Trek or whatever

He was Star Trek Or whatever He was a westerly crusher I was a Wesley Crusher One day I'm gotta be in a Star Trek We're gonna cut this You just keep saying I'm gonna be in a Star Trek

Is he in the time force At the end of Picard or something Is he turned up? No, he's a traveller I'm a traveller What does that mean? He's a guy It's got special powers

We've all been on airplanes Yeah but you have special powers I have the power to be like That's a bullshit character Damn What do you think of that Wow If this was 15 years ago

We'll wait and we'd blog about you about how mean you are. Yeah? Yeah. Well, it's not. Well, right then. Galube actually created prototype action figures for this movie, but they were never produced because retailers didn't believe this movie would be successful.

Or that it was real. Yeah. And correct. Oh no. On a budget of... That can't be right. $15 million. That cannot be right.

Wasn't it 14 million on special effects alone? That's what I'm saying. It says it's on a budget of $15 million, but that doesn't make sense. Because you just said that it was $14 million for special effects. Something's gone wrong here. Maybe the rest of the movies were a million bucks. Maybe it was a million bucks. Maybe they already had the trailer park.

Yeah, yeah. You know, 500 bucks to kick all the actual occupants out for the day. Yeah. You know? Makes sense to me. It made, its box office was 28.7 million. Okay, so it probably made its money back, mate. I mean, it had a good run on cable.

It's had multiple releases, you know, at home and whatever. It would have done okay over time. And the reason also we know that is because there's been talk of a sequel for years. Of course. It was supposed to be, the idea was initially there was going to be a trilogy. That didn't happen in. 2008. What the extra last Starfighter?

Yeah, exactly. Two more starfighter is. Talk of us, an actual... We forgot about a third starfighter, actually. So here it is. Here it is. This first guy didn't even need to be here because we forgot about this guy.

Oh my God. And he did that genocide. Yeah. Yeah. Talk of a sequel began again in 2008. Seth, Rogan and Steven Spielberg were interested. In 2015, it was going to be a TV reboot. And in 2021, Gary Witter, who worked on Rogue One,

He posted a sequel concept reel on YouTube called The Last Starfighters It's got concept art and music and all of that You can check that out There was a time when the rights were all over the place Like who had the sequels Who had the home distribution rights Who had cinematic rights

Do Galoob Do you still have the toy rights? Exactly Do Galoob Is it fun to say Galoob Is it fun to say Galoob Hell yeah it is You tell me brother

It's good, it's fun Gary Witter though was like It's sorted Sorter what does that mean Well, it means that like this can... Don't worry about it. This can be done now. Yes.

Will it be done? No. I don't know. I don't know, man. Maybe as a TV something. They'd have to reboot it as like, you're the kid that... First of all, I'd have to make the kid younger. Yeah.

You'd have to be the kid who loves mischief and pornoes. But then it'd have to be like, you're the best kid at scrolling TikTok. You're the best at looking at a clip for five seconds and it goes to another clip. And then it goes to another clip and then it goes to another clip. How can you be the best at that? Doesn't matter. You're going to be a galactic hero now. Cool. We've got some people we want you to kill.

Okay. Can I keep looking at TikTok? Yes, you can't keep looking at. Absolutely. It's part of it. That's part of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's easy to say you weren't there. Anyways, do you want to hint towards next week? Yes. Here it is. Is it gamer? Might be gamer. I don't know. Let me have a look. I did by the list. It is gamer. Yeah, there you go. Oh, wow. It's gamer, just like we said up top.

Jerry Butler's gamer. Jerry B's gamer. Jerry B. If you do want to see that earlier, you can actually head over to Big Sets. Anderwich.com. We're not only is the early videos, there's video game let's plays, there's bonus podcasts, there's movie commentaries. That's so true.

We also have a podcast. It's called The Weekly Planet where we talk movies and comics and TV shows comes out every Monday. Isn't it? Isn't it? Isn't it? Isn't it?

Isn't it? It's on its own YouTube channel, Spotify, Apple people. TikTok? We've got TikTok apparently. Could we release this in five second chunks on TikTok as a joke? Yes, Sarabi's going to do that. Thank you, Sarabi.

He runs a TikTok. Wonderful work. Don't really do that. Thank you so much to Ben. Yeah, you could do it. We'd never know because neither of us are on TikTok. We don't understand it. We don't like it.

Thank you so much to Ben and Lawrence for the edit. Thank you, Ben and Lawrence. And we'll see you on the next one. Grab that jammy guys. Or is they staying the last Starfighter? Death or victory or whatever they go. Whatever? Victory and death.

Yeah, man. Victory and death. Victory and death. Now let's smoke some meth. That's what they say. You're allowed to do it in space. It's not against the law. And it's free.

It's encouraged.