Have you ever wondered what it would look like if Star Wars as an entity made an animated film with Heavy Metal magazine, but neither wanted to give up full control? The resulting brainchild would end up being a 3D full-length space adventure for children that has graphic violence, and robot sexual assault. First off, that's a very specific thing to wonder. Secondly, you don't have to wonder anymore because it exists in Starchaser: The Legend of Orin. I mean, Star Wars as an entity and Heavy Metal didn't make it literally, but you get the idea.
Starchaser: The Legend of Orin is unsurprisingly the tale of Orin, a slave miner who has grown up underground mining red crystals for his evil god, Zygon. Yet, for Orin, being the slave of an evil god seems unfulfilling, and after finding an ancient sword, he sets off with his main squeeze, Elan, to try to escape and fulfill a long lost prophecy. This leads him on a rip-roaring, kid-friendly adventure with death, maiming, robot sexual assault, slavery, and other horrible things allowed under the label Parental Guidance.
Let's see if we can make a list of some of the things that make this feel less child appropriate. Well, the weeping over a half-crushed dead body starts it off, quickly followed by Orin's father figure having his eyes burned out by a laser whip. His girlfriend then gets choked to death right in front of him, weird cave leeches suck his blood while sleeping, as your childlike eyes watch in horror as his blood is ingested into their bloated bodies. That is not to be outdone by the Man-Droids, who are part android and part human. That doesn't sound so bad until you realize the human parts they have are all the regular inner guts and organs, but now being shown off in a glass stomach so we can watch everything pulsate and digest! Of course, the Man-Droids begin to tell us in detail what body parts and strips of flesh they want from Orin to replace on themselves in a predicament that Orin only escapes using his magic sword hilt to murder them violently and indiscriminately as we watch the gore and viscera fly. At this point, we are a solid thirty minutes into the film.
While all those scenes exist in the film, maybe I am being a bit too harsh on them and bit too detailed in their violence. If we move on past the beginning of the film though we are treated to some new super kid-friendly moments. Orin is saved by Dagg who smuggles the red crystals he used to mine and is totally not Han Solo, no matter what the vest he wears says. He whisks Orin away in his ship, the Starchaser, only after stealing some crystals. He also steals Silica, a sexy android lady bot who works as a secretary for Zygon and has the camera zoom in on her Robo-booty a lot. Sadly for Dagg, Silica is too angry and spirited for his liking, so he puts her over his lap, removes her booty casing, and reprograms her personality by zapping her ass circuits into compliance. She is also now sexually attracted to him. It's okay though because the scene included her pleading with Dagg not to touch her there...Kid's Movie! Oh, and then he tops it all off by trying to sell her into slavery because she has an attractive robot booty and a reprogrammed personality. Orin saves her, but at this point, I ain't buying into the kid's movie motif anymore.
At about the three-quarters mark of the film, the plot comes back to haunt us, and the prophecy of Orin saving the miners and completing his destiny kicks back in. Orin, his new super-rich, and may I add much whiter girlfriend head back to the mining colony with Dagg in the Starchaser. Unlucky for them, it turns out Zygon is really Nexus, an ancient evil robot who tried to rule the galaxy long ago and was only stopped by the wielder of the sword hilt Orin has. Luckily for the heroes, and due to runtime constraints, Zygon/Nexus's armada had their self destruct buttons all tied into the flagship, which the heroes just happened to have stolen. They push said button destroying every ship in the evil robot armada in seconds. Honestly, the goofy spirit of the plot is, at this point a lot more welcome than the weirdly adult nature of the first part of the film. Anyways, Orin and Zygon/Nexus fight, Orin wins, and we all get to disturb our kids with a PG-rated movie that includes violent death and robot assault.
I honestly think that this is a terrible kids movie, it's also not a great movie on a whole. It's a blatant Star Wars rip-off that looked more Heavy Metal in animation than anything and used its status of being the first feature-length animation to be made into 3D as a selling point over anything else. In fact, I think the poster even said "The Best 3D movie of All Time!" But, after all my picking at it for the plot, and adult stuff, Starchaser is still a movie I really enjoy, just as a good B-movie. I love it for the nostalgia of watching a film that probably warped my mind as a kid, but I didn't even know it until watching it years later again. Whether you agree or not with me about the adult situations and strange choices here, you have to agree that Starchaser really is a Black Sheep of the family movie genre.