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.
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.