Where to watch Starchaser: The Legend of Orin
1 1/2 Stars
Set on the subterranean Mine-World, a band of human worker are treated like slaves under the power of the evil overlord Zygon until one, Orin, unearths the hilt of a mythical sword that only he can master. Escaping the planet, he runs into the rogue smuggler Dagg and a pair of helpful droids and the princess, who all team up to return to the Mine-World with a plan to defeat Zygon and free Orin’s enslaved people.
Before Disney resurrected the genre with The Little Mermaid, the mid-1980s were a dark period for children’s animation. Saturday morning television was surging in popularity due to properties such as He-Man, Transformers, and G.I. Joe. The animated movies released to cinemas were dreadful; this includes the (simply awful) line-up of The Black Cauldron, The Brave Little Toaster, and The Care Bears Movie, as examples of the visually unimpressive and narratively uninteresting collection of animated children’s films that were dumped into theaters. To that huge list of terrible cartoons, you can now add Starchaser: The Legend of Orin. The animation is subpar, and the storyline fails to capture one’s attention, making Starchaser a rather long slog.
Starchaser has the dubious distinction of featuring a lead character with a receding hairline (a Burt Reynolds look-alike Han Solo wannabe) and a storyline that is fairly psychedelic. Before James Cameron’s revolutionary use of 3D for Avatar in 2009, I had never seen the technology used effectively, and Starchaser: The Legend of Orin, which was initially released as a 3D theatrical event, must have induced countless headaches in 1985. This movie is a glimpse into the poor state of animated feature films in the 1980s before Disney redefined the genre and delivered a string of beloved classics.
Directed by: Steven Hahn
Written by: Jeffrey Scott
Starring: Joe Colligan, Carmen Argenziano, Noelle North