Starchaser: The Legend of Orin (1985)

Pretty Good

It is a performances centric movie

Expected more

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This was a shameless ripoff of star wars. From the young fish out of water kid welding a sword, with no blade, sent on an adventure by an old man, to the prissy camp ship AI. Even has a Han solo smuggler type and mask wearing bad guy. Everything about this tripe is either unoriginal or disturbing. The animation has robots wearing human skin, trying to tear the main character apart, way to appeal to kids dip shits. There are even pleasure bots and an ass probing scene. When not violating robots Han, I mean Dag, exchanges a few lines with a Jaba the hut type, complete with slave girls and paedophilia references. The star wars ripoffs continue till the end, but this film doesn't deserve any more of my time. In short don't bother, you've seen it done before and better, also less messed up.

Spoilers contained within:If you intend to read the hype of those people who give this film an 8 or higher, then you shouldn't bother to read the review of someone who went to the premiere of this film, with all of the cardboard cut outs and Klieg lights in front of the theater. The film was originally presented in 3D and as we sat with our Polarized lenses on, the first problem presented itself - the cardboard cut-out syndrome. You had the feeling you were watching the film as it must have looked to the photographer as he looked down through the multi-plane animation stand with foreground and background mostly static and the middle plane made up of the character (also flat-looking) moving around. Second, the plot was far too close to the "Star Wars" films which had just finished dominating American cinemas in their three-film run between 1977-1983. You had Orin, who more than resembled Luke, with a sword that worked like a laser; you had Dagg (Han) a rogue space pilot with a vessel like the Millennium Falcon; a cute robot Silica (C3P0) and the evil Zygon who mirrored the emperor/Vader character. Did we mention the force? Those would be the legendary Ka-Khan whose mystical guidance are used by Luke, uh Orin. Confused? You will be. This is a cardboard movie, limited animation, corny predictable plot, and horrible score (far from John Williams). If you liked this movie, you don't know science fiction. If you loved this movie, you don't know cinema. Not recommended.

This film is odd, to say the very least. I don't think I'd call it bad or anything, it's actually quite creative at times and genuinely entertaining, but its lack of originality is obvious on many occasions, even in the tried-and-true genres of science fiction and fantasy. Our story begins in a mine deep underground, there are hundreds of enslaved men and women of all ages digging for valuable red crystals, which are given to their "god", a tall caped figure with a devil-like mask, named Zygon. Zygon orders the slaves to appease the gods with more crystals lest they die in darkness. Pretty soon, a young man named Orin discovers a sword hilt with what appears to be holographic image of an old man who speaks of a world above that they may return to if they have the courage. Orin eventually escapes to the outside where he encounters such characters as a tough smuggler, a young woman whom I believe to be a princess, her robot bodyguard, a feisty female robot (called a "fembot") and there's also the computer on the smuggler's spaceship with a rather cowardly attitude and whiny voice.If by now Star Wars has popped into your head, you wouldn't be very far off, many of the characters and images in the film bear an uncanny resemblance to George Lucas' space saga, which admittedly did borrow from and pay homage to genres such as westerns, samurai films, war films and the Flash Gordon serials. The smuggler Dagg, is witty and likable in his way and sort of what you'd get if you combined Han Solo and Burt Reynolds. Orin is essentially the Luke Skywalker of the story and unfortunately, he's pretty bland on his own. Besides being the blatant ripoff that it is, the film does have some positives, one of these is that the animation looks good, sometimes very good. The quality of the animation seems to be at its best with the scenes involving spaceships, some of the images are so fluid in their appear to originate from computer animation or what could very well be drawn by hand, the latter would impress me most. The environments themselves are very nice and varied, though I'll admit I'm unsure of what planets we may be on since there are few establishing shots.The characters themselves aren't as well developed as the universe that they inhabit. They are confined by their archetype, Orin is the eager young hero becoming a part of something huge like Luke Skywalker. Dagg is a cynical smuggler with little apparent regard for anything except his own interests until he gets to redeem himself like Han Solo. Zygon is a gray-skinned villain with a long black cape and essentially is Darth Vader or Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon, but he does eventually bring about an interesting plot development regarding his master plan. The list goes on. The fembot is at first feisty until Dagg reprograms her to be dependent and attracted to him, sadly lessening the potential for comedy and real character development. Other minor characters include Zygon's followers who look like him, robots with lousy aim, some interesting aliens and non-white characters that are portrayed in an unfortunately ugly way in both their actions and looks.The ultimate resolution of Orin and his magical sword hilt is never really resolved in a way that makes sense. Such as an odd occurrence in the ability for an invisible blade to appear and slice through enemies, early on he tries to stab Dagg when he first meets him but it doesn't work, maybe the sword knew he was a good guy. At some point towards the end Orin faces off against Zygon to free the slaves from underground and discovers that the blade was his own power the whole time, but there is never any real explanation for how he obtained it or is able to heal wounds, such as curing a little boy's blindness. Still, this is one of those odd movies that comes around every once in a while that is often very entertaining but offers little that is original or coherent, despite being aimed at kids, evident by its PG-rating, it features a good deal of sexual jokes including a pedophilia joke by an Arab stereotype (lots of stereotypes, people), there is some mild profanity here and there and some of the images can be a bit violent and at times scary such as the scene with the grotesque man-droids which are crude combinations of robots with human organs, but all in all it's nothing too severe for kids.The film apparently was released in 3-D, which explains some of action aimed at the camera, but there is no way of viewing it in that way unless it gets a re-release. If you're up for some cheesy sci-fi action and good animation to please the eyes, this might be a fun film to check out, it's actually surprisingly one of the better ripoffs I've seen. My biggest complaint would be that the ideas of the film aren't fleshed out enough, no pun intended. How the invisible sword works is one thing, but there are interesting themes revolving around the relationship between man and machine, as evidenced by the robots using humans as slaves, the monstrous man-droids and so on. All in all, I enjoyed it, but if you're up for something a bit more coherent, more clever or just better, you may as well as stick with Star Wars or other animated fantasy epics such as Ralph Bakshi's Wizards or his animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. Or hey, Rene Laloux's Fantastic Planet, Time Masters or Gandahar if you're feeling extra adventurous. Regardless, you could do a lot worse than Starchaser: The Legend of Orin.

So I have been searching the net trying to figure out what the heck this 3D sci-fi cartoon was that I saw in 1985, and I am thrilled to say I've found it in Starchaser. I saw the film at the ripe young age of 11. I have found a copy of it and just watched it again last night and here are my thoughts on it 19 years after its release.Before watching it I had only vague recollections that this was a pretty cool film and a fantastic film-going experience, being a 3D film at the local AMC cinema. This 3d thing was not very common at the time--especially at an AMC mainstream theatre. I remember it being fairly dark for my 11 year old sensibilities and it was definitely influenced by Star Wars, which I personally like. It also reminded me of Logan's Run and of THX1138 a bit. It has a look not unlike Thundar the Barbarian or some of the other cartoons of that era: space ghost, He-man, etc. I saw that Matt Damon-voiced cartoon Titan AE not too long ago and couldn't help but feel like they were somehow similar in style or tone. I don't know... I was 11, like I said. I will say that overall I remember leaving the theatre with my brother who was 16 and we both liked it a lot. What's not to like about the human young hero kid trying to stop the super-villain and his army of robots?? I think there was even some sort of light-sabre sword thing that the kid had to struggle to use. That's all I can dig from the cobwebs of my memory. Don't blame me if it sucks.Starchaser today… So I received my copy of Starchaser. It looks pretty official and I find it hard to believe, looking at this box that this is an unofficial copy of it. It looks pretty authentic.Anyway, about the movie… Yes, it was okay. It was pretty much as I remembered it. It was pretty decent in its own way. You have to simply put the thing into context. Look at when it was made and most importantly, look at what it was made to be—a 3D sci-fi adventure. Seeing it like this… in 2D on my 16 inch TV, it doesn't really live up to what it was supposed to be, originally. I think being able to see it in 3D would be a great thing. I don't know if or how that could happen, but it should. I think this film could have a nice little cult following if it was re-released or released on DVD now with some 3D glasses in the box. It's a gem in its own way.Yes, it does steal from Star Wars—and A LOT—but so does everything else. And really, it's not like George ever stole—hello, DUNE, anyone?! I don't really mind the stealing. And they stole from all sorts of places. There were quite a few sources referenced by these filmmakers: maybe a bit of Tron, Empire Strikes Back, Thundar the Barbarian, Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Black Hole, THX1138, Logan's Run… But you know what? I liked it. I think that overall, they succeeded with what they were trying to do at the time. I think there were some weak spots. Some of the animation looked a little lame at times, the writing was a bit flat, there were blatant moments heisted from other scripts, but they put together an interesting film overall. It was fun, it was an adventure. And if you like the nostalgia that comes with watching something older, you'll probably enjoy it. The performances are pretty decent, and it was pretty well held together by the director. I give it a thumbs up out of a sense of nostalgia and a pretty good effort on their part, at that time, knowing what they probably had to go through in order to make this 3D adventure happen.Yes, I noticed a few damns, a son of a bitch, a bastard, a death of a principal character early on, violence towards children, some scary and mean robots and cyborgs, some sexually charged moments (no nudity), and some adult humor. I think most of that was pretty tame by modern standards and would pass over most kids' heads. I thought that it was totally appropriate and if I had kids of any age, I'd let them watch it without question.