Starchaser: The Legend of Orin

I'll just echo the comments of the other reviewers; this one's a keeper. I first saw the previews for this film at a drive-in, but could never track it down until Showtime aired it a few years later.

People could call it a Star Wars knock off, and in some sense it is. But as far as knock offs go it's one of the best. But that's perhaps a little too unfair, because despite borrowing some minor themes from Star Wars it's largely an original film told via good animation.

Despite it being an animated film I wouldn't call it a children's film. Some sexuality is touched on, one of the characters swears every so often, and there is a fair amount of violence (though not too graphic) in the film.

I've heard that this film was originally supposed to be a 3-D experience (schedualed to ride the coat tails of an attempt to revitalize the 3-D genre in the early 80's), but it stands well on its own as a regular film.

There's nothing deep about this movie, but it's a good ride all the same. It's very hard to find nowadays. Myself I was able to get a rare VHS copy of it, but the transfer, though good, really doesn't do justice to this film. One can only hope that it'll see a DVD rerelease. And by that I mean a good DVD release, not one of those fly by night companies that transfers old used projector films onto DVD format. I mean a DVD transfer with all the works; remastered film and soundtrack. :-)

If you can find Starchaser, then go get it. It's worth the effort.

July 6th, 2005 update; DVD review;

Wow! After many years I finally own a crisp remastered copy of one of my favorite animated sci-fi films. Presented in widescreen format, the viewer is no longer denied the other third of the camera's frame, and can see the full image as it was meant to be seen. It is a vast improvement over the old KVC Home Video VHS release.

Additionally the film is presented in full Stereo Surround sound. Having said that the audio does hit a little hard , but it's mostly the sound effects that peak into the red, and not the dialogue nor music track.

"Starchaser; The Legend of Orin" should have shown to the major studios in the 80's what sci-fi animation was capable of had they given it a chance. The industry's only recently played catchup in the late 90's, and even then they're a day late and a dollar short.

"Starchaser" isn't the best film ever made, and "pays homage" to other sci-fi films, but is still a fun experience all the same. I hope all sci-fi and animation fans enjoy it as much as I.

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.

One question: why does the potential overlord of the entire universe walk around dressed like a Chippendale dancer?

This is one of the those movies you can't take too seriously. I happened to check it out from my local library on a whim, practically wore out their copy. I found my own copy a few years ago, and every once in a while I re-visit it. It's one of those guilty pleasures, sort of a "Star Wars Lite."

A final note. I read someone's review of this film where they said Dagg Dibrimi looked like a cross between Burt Reynolds and Han Solo. It's pretty common knowledge in Star Wars circles that George Lucas considered Reynolds to play Han Solo before deciding on Harrison Ford. If you ever wondered what it would have been like if the decision went the other way... well, now you won't have to ponder that anymore.

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!

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.