YMMV / Starchaser: The Legend of Orin

• Awesome Music: Similarities with John Williams' score be damned, the main theme by Andrew Belling is pretty epic.
• Complete Monster: Zygon, originally named Nexus, is a Galactic Conqueror who used to be nothing but a rebellious android who attempted to take over Earth. Stopped and forced to bide his time, Zygon runs a slave mine on the planet Trinia, forcing human slaves—who are forced to work regardless of age or physical condition—into such harsh conditions they often die. When Orin escapes, Zygon murders his girlfriend Elan in front of him, places a massive bounty on his head, and has his Mecha-Mooks attack him at every turn. He captures Dagg and has him painfully tortured by shooting a laser into his forehead, overseeing this with a sadistic grin. Zygon intends to once again wage war on Earth with his fleet, and in the climax, threatens to kill Orin's new Love Interest Aviana the same way he did his old one unless Orin capitulates.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The infamous re-programming scene. As if kidnapping a sentient robot and re-programming her against her will wasn't enough, her personality circuits are located in her behind for some reason. Dagg is delighted finding this out and Silica start screaming for help before he gags her with a tape and proceeds the operation.
• Cult Classic: Still a very obscure film, despite the aforementioned Colbert Bump.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Silica is by far the character most people remember about the movie... not hard to see why, really. In fact, she's the character with the most fanart out of the entire cast.
• Fridge Horror: The miners use laser drills to harvest the crystals. Crystals that are demonstrated to be highly volatile and explosive...
• Hilarious in Hindsight
  • Despite the film's clear attempts to capitalize on the success of that other space opera classic, there is a scene in which the main hero cuts through a metal door with his Laser Blade and another where the Dark Lord falls down a large pit after being sliced horizontally in half with it. Coincidence?
  • The Mine Masters use light whips. They would later become popular in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. In fact, the concept was developed almost simultaneously, as issue 96 of Star Wars (Marvel 1977), where light whips originated, came out in early 1985, the same year this film debuted.
  • The Man-Droids were beings composed of both organic and robotic body parts and were suprisingly not ripped off from Star Wars. Similar creatures would later show up in Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
  • Also, the blade being invisible on the hilt of the sword brings a certain famous sword to mind.
  • A hero who came from underground who later breached the surface and still later fought the alien overlord with the artifact? Hmmm.
  • A fembot who is rescued from her evil overlords and is then reprogrammed to be more sexy and flirty? Sounds a lot like DEMI from Subverse, doesn't it?
  • Zygon monologuing about a computer beating a man in a game of chess becomes this when in 1996 the computer Deep Blue defeated legendary chess champion Garry Kasparov.
• Memetic Molester: Dagg, largely due to the re-programming scene. The Jabba expy implying (however falsely) that he's a pederast certainly doesn't help.
• Narm: While the name "Ka-Khan" by itself isn't narmy, the way Zygon says it a lot of the times makes it sound like he's saying "Ka-Ka," like "caca," which is Spanish for "poop." To quote Doug Walker:

  Nostalgia Critic: The ca-ca has returned? This movie's full of caca, I never realized it left!

• Never Live It Down: The film being a unsubtle Star Wars rip off can easily make you forget that it otherwise is a decent, well made film.
• One-Scene Wonder: The Man-Droids are one of the few original elements in the film. They're placed in a fitting environment that gives a genuinely spooky atmosphere. They appear in only one scene, barely mentioned in the next, and never again. Still, they're very memorable.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Dagg is voiced by Carmen Argenziano, who later on became more known for his role as Jacob Carter in Stargate SG-1.
  • The fast-talking auctioner Z'Gork is voiced by John Moschitta, nowadays more known for his work in commercials for toys like Micro Machines and for voicing Blurr in The Transformers: The Movie and Transformers: Animated.
• So Okay, It's Average: The film has good animation and is legitimately fun at times, especially if you're into Black Comedy, but it's mostly known as a huge Star Wars rip-off.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Starchaser theme is somehow similar to the 633 Squadron theme.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: The movie was accused of being a blatant ripoff of Star Wars by several outlets, including The New York Times.
• The Un-Twist: What? Zygon isn't a god after all?
• Values Dissonance: The movie did not age very well from the 80's with a (space analogue) Arab caricature featuring every negative stereotype and the female characters that pretty much exist as literally expendable love interests (the fact that one is reprogrammed to like Dagg through her ass is downright uncomfortable to 21st century sensibilities).
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Despite its blatant similarities to Star Wars, the film does feature strong and appealing animation that was top quality for the time in which it was released, though it probably owes a lot of this to the visual style it was clearly intended to copycat.

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