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 first saw Starchaser in 3D back in 1985 and for someone who grew up on the Star Wars trilogy I was hooked for life. A beautiful, heady mix of science-fiction, fantasy and all out action laced with humour, a little violence and excellent set-pieces Starchaser is lovingly assembled from the finest sources and has more love for it's source than the three prequels helmed by Lucas have shown. The story is straightforward: thousands of slaves mine crystals for robot overseers believing this to be the will of their God, Zygon. A young slave named Orin (superbly voiced by Joe Colligan) finds a glowing sword hilt buried in the mines that tells him of the forbidden world above and in an attempt to break free is taken under wing of surly smuggler Dagg Dibrimi.

Taking it's influence from Star Wars, whispering it's name with reverent pride, layering it with images and influences as diverse as Moebius, the cartoons of René Laloux and Ralph Bakshi's Wizards it's hard not to like this movie. It's well-animated, beautifully shot and surprisingly well written which is all the more remarkable given that it's an animated feature.

In almost any combination this would have been a lacklustre, disappointing affair along the lines of Titan A.E but under the direction of Steven Hahn it's becomes something much more special. Look at the credits and you'll see cast and crew steeped in sci-fi: Stargate: SG1's Carmen Argenziano as Dagg Dibrimi, Han Solo with the attitude of J.Jonah Jameson; Masters of the Universe star Anthony DeLongis' providing the silver-tongued menace of Zygon in the vein of an early Vincent Price are the two voice highlights among a near perfect cast. More sci-fi stars are found in the background, ranging from the voice stars of Transformers and DS9 to story-boarder Boyd Kirkland, who would later go onto direct Batman: The Animated Series' greatest episode 'The Grey Ghost'. Even after 20 years Belling's music holds up remarkably well, as much an integral character of the film as Les Tremayne's marvellously cowardly ship's computer. It kicks in at all the right places, has good strong recognisable themes for the main stars and above all doesn't overpower the movie or sound like one of John William's increasingly derivative scores. And unlike many animated features it doesn't feel the need to bolster the score with some contemporary rock or pop tracks, preferring a well-crafted mix of orchestral and synthesized soundtrack.

Watched 20 years on it's still as enjoyable. It doesn't run on for too long, still has that pleasing if eccentric aesthetic style prevalent throughout the film and above all is fun. It has a story to tell, does it with style and above all manages to make you care for the characters which is a rare enough thing in a live-action movie, and for an 80's animated feature something very much to be proud of.

Starchaser hasn't been commercially available for years aside from a VHS release some 15 or 16 years back but it has a strong and loyal fan base who'll welcome the fact it's finally been released my MGM on DVD. As an animated feature it still has a certain charm two decades on even without the 3D but where it really holds it's own is it's love for Star Wars. Anybody who felt disappointed by the three prequels and prefers the honest, simple storytelling style of the original will enjoy Starchaser.

In the caverns of Mineworld a slave named Orin (Joe Colligan) toils mining crystals for their God Zygon (Anthony De Longis) to feed the Furnace of Life in exchange for food. While mining Orin comes across a mysterious sword which contains the image of an old man who tells that there is world above them and to find the blade after it disappears leaving only the hilt. With the exception of Orin's girlfriend Elan (Noelle North) the others dismiss the message as heresy as the one commandment is "never dig up, up is Hell". Orin and Elan escape the mines which reveals a technologically advanced processing facility and Zygon is in fact not a god before killing Elan. Orin Narrowly escapes to the surface and meets a crystal smuggler Dagg (Carmen Argenziano) and with his help he goes to look for the blade and free his people from Zygon.

Starchaser: The Legend of Orin is a 1985 South Korean animated space opera inspired by both the success of Star Wars as well as the early 80s revived interest in 3D. TV animator Steven Hahn owned a animation studio in Korea which had a hand in animated several U. S. produced films and TV shows and during the off season wanted to give his crew something to work on deciding a movie would be the best way to go. Contacting Jeffrey Scott who had written for many of Hahn's TV productions, Scott produced the screenplay Escape to the Stars which would eventually become Starchaser. Initially started in 1982 with its eye on a 1983 release date, the film ended up being delayed by two years from its intended 6 month production cycle due to issues involving the 3D process which took even longer due to the lengthy amount of time needed to coordinate between Hahn's American offices and the Korean animation studio. The film was eventually ready for release in 1985 where it was screened for many executives including Roy Disney of Walt Disney Animation who voiced his admiration for the project, but due to problems with distributor Atlantic Releasing who was going through financial struggles as well as the decreased interest in 3D to the point many theaters didn't have proper conditions for the format, Starchaser failed to gain much of a foothold and underperformed making $3 million against a $14 million budget. What critical reception the film did garner wasn't positive including from Siskel and Ebert who made negative comparisons to Star Wars and lamented the violence in the film (but you know, it was okay when Star Wars did it). Starchaser: The Legend of Orin certainly falls in line with many Star Wars clones of the time, but at the same time it's much better made than many of them still has enough to justify its existence.

From a purely visual standpoint Starchaser looks great, the fact that certain critics of the time said it barely looks above the level of a Saturday morning cartoon is one of the most brazen falsehoods I've ever heard because no Saturday morning cartoon ever looked this good. The movie was one of the first to mix 2D animation with 3D models with Bill Kroyer of Tron and eventual director of Ferngully responsible for handling the model work on many of the 3D assets such as Dagg's ship. The initial setup of Mineworld and its rule by theocratic dictatorship is one of the interesting points that helps differentiate it from Star Wars and while as it goes on we do see it drift closer and closer to Star Wars inspired tropes it's still well done enough that it's never boring and the beautiful animation and effective voice direction makes this a stronger example than many I've seen.

Starchaser: The Legend of Orin owes much of its existence to Star Wars in that it wouldn't exist if not for George Lucas' groundbreaking film but while it borrows generously from Star Wars it's not without ideas or passion of its own. From an artistic and technical standpoint Starchaser not only looks great for its time but still holds up decades later. The plot does fall into pretty standard hero's journey/fantasy tropes but they're at least entertainingly done.

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...

One of my favorite STAR WARS rip-offs ever is an italian movie called STARCRASH, (see my review), but sometimes i can never choose between it and this amazing animated movie STARCHASER.

Don´t let the animation aspect of the whole thing put you away, because this is a magnificent Space-Opera. Twenty minutes after the beginning of STARCHASER, i already had forgotten that i was watching an animated feature.

True, the initial images are very disappointing, i swear i thought this was going to be one of those saturday morning cartoon shows for kids. But then something in this story started to grab me. First i noticed that the way that the story was being developed, didn´t exactly followed that cartoon for kids formula. Then a few minutes later an unexpected death of one of the characters ocurred and in a very crude way. From then on, i knew that this was watching something very different.

Then the battle sequences with the spaceship fighters appeared and i was totaly blowned away, by the animation, and by the direction. There are some fantastic flying action sequences in this movie, and they are planned and "filmed" in a incredible way. Every time i watch this even know i feel like i want to cheer for the characters who are flying the ships.

The animation of the spaceships is amazingly smooth, in fact they were done using computer graphics, but we only notice it because of the quality of the sequences, because there is trditional drawing covering the wireframes. In fact, although this is a very old movie, it still is one of the best integrations between traditional and computer animation i ever saw.

Then there is another good thing in the animation. Although technically very rough, we can see there was an effort to capture very human and elaborated gestures and motion, and the best thing is that it works very well indeed.

In the story aspect, obviously we find in STARCHASER a young hero, a rogue mercenary, a space princess, a cyborg villain, a pair of robots and all the Star Wars clichés you can think off. This might have been a terrible thing, but in this case all the stolen bits and pieces are perfectly blended resulting in a very good and interesting story, and in many ways much more imaginative than the classical formula followed by George Lucas. Anyway George got everything from the E.E.DOC.SMITH books from the 30´s, to "create" his saga, so it would be unffair now to call STARCHASER a STAR WARS rip-off for doing exactly the same. The characters are great specialy the two robots who have great dialogue, the action sequences are perfect and are a thrill to watch, specialy the flying scenes with the spaceships, the story is very,very good and imaginative altough it steals from everywhere, even from BLADE RUNNER, the animation is good and the soundtrack is perfect and stays in our mind forever. Maybe the only downside in this movie are the backgrounds wich altough very detailed, are always a bit blurred. But who cares !

This is a magnificent movie. And one of the best sci-fi of the 80´s. Don´t be discouraged by the animation aspect, because this is not a kids movie. Any person who likes si-fi has to like this for sure. Brilliant, brilliant and forgotten movie.

If you can find it. Don´t miss it!