Starchaser: The Legend of Orin

Orin, an escaped slave must free his people from an underground mine but first journey across the galaxy to fulfil his destiny.

Directed and produced by Steven Hahn, and written by Jeffrey Scott Starchaser borrows from Flash Gordon, Star Wars, the King Arthur Legend, even a bit of Blade Runner and many more. It's more young adult orientated, almost in the ballpark of Ralph Bakshi, there's disturbing 2000 A. D-like half-human, half-machine Man-Droids, Fembots. With some above PG choice language and surprise deaths, it offers an emotional clout and punch.

While the pace is at times is a little clunky like the Battle Star Galactica carbon robots, the animation (with no use of rotoscoping) is outstanding for the time. Andrew Belling's music score is a fitting highlight. The characters, especially the robot leads are quite likeable, the evil overlord Zygon is notable. The voice acting is great and there's even a nice little twist to close of the proceedings.

Overall, refreshingly made before CGI it borrows from the best and worst of sci-fi and comes out on top. Recommend.

I thought this movie was a myth. Since a kid I had a vague memory of a movie where a couple of cyborgs are killed, that's all I could remember. I didn't think this movie actually existed until I saw it on a list of obscure animated films. You could only imagine how excited I was that it actually existed.

The movie is rather well animated, in atypically 80's fashion. The story is decent enough and the voice acting is pretty good. This is a movie from an era where people were trying to make epic animated movies, that were more adult. It's a shame this movie is as forgotten as it is.

Oddly enough, I've never heard or seen "Starchaser: The Legend of Orin" before now in 2020, when I watched a video about "Star Wars" knock off movies. I saw this movie in that video, and opted to sit down and watch it. So I did.

I must admit that I had expected more of a copy/paste job of "Star Wars" as it was featured in that video. Turns out that "Starchaser: The Legend of Orin" was actually original enough to stand out from being a copy, in my opinion. Sure, there were some similarities here and there, but if you look for such, you can find similarities to other movies in every single thing you sit down to watch.

And I was a kid during the 1980s, watching the likes of "Masters of the Universe", "Bravestarr", "M.A.S.K.", etc., so it was a bit odd that this animated movie had eluded me.

I found the storyline in "Starchaser: The Legend of Orin" to be entertaining and it was a fun movie to watch. Definitely was a trip down memory lane, to the mid-1980s cartoons, given the art style and animation style in "Starchaser: The Legend of Orin".

"Starchaser: The Legend of Orin" gets a six out of ten stars rating from me. I liked this animated movie, and I can warmly recommend that you sit down to watch it, especially if you like sci-fi adventures and were a child during the 1980s. Thumbs up to this one.

This film along with Wizards, Lord of the Rings, Fire and Ice, Heavy Metal & Heavy Metal 2000, Rock and Rule, Transformers the Movie and G.I. Joe The Movie are some of the finest non anime examples that were ever produced in the 1970's and '80's (and 2000 for Heavy Metal 2000). They simply don't make films like this anymore as I stated in my comments on Fire & Ice. This is the stuff I grew up with. I am a huge fan of animation in general and this is something that has captured my imagination for years on end, ever since I saw it. The movie does a lot of borrowing from Star Wars but has an excellent story to compliment the excellent animation. Originally, from what I've heard and seen on the posters, it was supposed to be in 3-D but, I never did get to see it in theatres. Too bad the video isn't actually in 3-D...that might have been cool..maybe if they ever put this baby out on DVD someday they'll have the 3-D presentation of the film. Nostalgia is a wonderful thing and this movie brings back a lot of good memories. It's nice to see that so many others hold the same memories for the film as I do.

-Daguon

I've been searching just for confirmation that this film existed for five years! For a while, I thought I'd just imagined seeing it, that no one had ever actually made it. Like many other people who have commented on this film, I too remember seeing it when I was maybe nine or ten. It haunted me ever since, because I couldn't remember the title or the names of the characters, only the well-crafted images. As I haven't seen it since then, and copies are indeed impossible to find, I will refrain from describing those images, for my memory may be faulty. Totally ripped off from Star Wars, yes, and horribly violent for a children's cartoon, but I loved it...