Starship

On the remote mining planet Odessa, miners work long grueling hours to extract minerals and fossil fuels for shipment back to a resource depleted Earth. The government sends down a legion of Military Police Droids to enforce their brutal rule on the Odessa miners which is resisted by a ragtag band of young resistance fighters including Lorca (John Tarrant), Abbie (Donough Rees), Suzi (Casandra Webb), and their short statured robot Kid (Deep Roy). When they uncover a conspiracy to replace the miners with a robot workforce and kill the miners, the group sets out to stop this insidious plan being carried out by the cruel Captain Jewitt.

Following Roger Christian's troubled debut on The Sender for Paramount Pictures who recut the film without Christian's input, he decided to produce his next film independently to avoid a repeat of the experience. Christian wrote the sci-fi film 2084 (aka Starship aka Lorca and the Outlaws) alongside screenwriter Matthew Jacobs who would go on to write episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and the failed 1996 relaunch of Doctor Who. Christian described the film as an update on the George Orwell novel 1984 but with an action adventure focus and lighter tone (how is it 1984 then?) and would go for a style inspired by films such as Death Watch and Alphaville. The film was financed by Swedish video company VTC and filmed in Australia and the United Kingdom and like many euro-genre productions was financed by foreign pre-sales (hence the different names). Contemporary reviews wrote the film off as a cheap knock-off of Star Wars and it certainly is, but unlike certain other Star Wars knock-offs of the time that kind of endeared themselves such as Battle Beyond the Stars or Starchaser: The Legend of Orin that were entertaining, 2084, Starship, or whatever other name it's known by dares to be a boring tedious slog and incomprehensible mess.

The movie's about as basic as you can get with a premise like this with oppressed working class and overzealous militarized villains who abuse said working class in a setup that dates all the way back to Fritz Lang's Metropolis as far as sci-fi is concerned (and possibly further if you're so inclined), but despite one of the simplest setups imaginable, the movie bungles it in terms of establishing any kind of world building, character, or motivation so while you may know "what" is going on, be prepared to be eluded by the "why" quite a few times including a climax that involves a rogue killer robot for no adequately explained reason. Despite one of the titles being Lorca and the Outlaws, Lorca's barely a factor in this movie for the first half as he disappears for a long stretch and not only is John Tarrant not a strong lead, but Abbie and Suzi are conspicuously underwritten with so little to them you could replace them with mannequins and no one would know the difference. But then we have the most prominent character of Kid the robot and with a whiny delivery and a voice that seems to have been run through a filter on top of an under annunciated delivery I maybe only understood half of what this character said if that. But to top it all off we have the film's lacklust production values which feature a host of darkly lit cooridors and a quarry complete with ordinary looking dumptrucks and contemporary automobiles.... THE FUTURE! Rather embarrassing for a man who was nominated for an Academy Award for his art direction on Alien and WON an Academy Award for his work as a set dresser on Star Wars.

The movie sets a precedent for Roger Christian's directorial career that would bring him to future films such as Battlefield Earth. The fact that the best regarded film Christian ever made as a director was his first film the Sender is a massive indictment of his skills especially since it was taken away from him and re-edited by Paramount. Watching this movie: it's undeniably Christian's film through and through.

The opening scene - where youthful protesters are seemingly trying to influence the "thinking" (more accurately, the programming) of military androids - set's the mood for this entire film: nothing makes any sense!

Roger Christian hasn't had a lot of hits in his career. Well, actually, he's not had ANY. Be that as it may, this one could be his worst movie ever. The week before I saw "Starship." I watched "Battlefield Earth." It was dreadful, of course. But it had at least two things "Starship" didn't: a plot that made *some* sense and action that didn't put you to sleep.

However, "Starship" DID have unintentional humor every so often, which saves it from being a complete and utter waste of time. For instance, why were the androids programmed to feel pain (reminds me of a parody from "The Simpsons")? Why was this movie called "Starship" when it is primarily terrestrially-based? Why was it necessary to have this movie based on some distant planet? (I didn't see anything different about Ordessa compared to an Earth of the future.) Who were the miners? (All we saw were teenagers playing video games, protesting and blowing up things.) The intrepid bounty hunter (who doesn't seem very menacing) is named "Danny"? Oh, I could go on and on...

Anyway, if you can stay awake through it, you might get a chuckle or two out of it. However, if you are looking for an interesting, exciting, well-made movie - take a pass on "Starship"!

My rating: 2

When I first saw Starship, I was actually pretty impressed. Sure it's kinda dim and has badly cliche'd characters, but I thought the direction and general style of the film lended itself well to the subject matter. It's fun in a cheezy sort of way, and even vaguely artistic to a certain extent. Where things really go wrong is the inclusion of Deep Roy as "Digit"...the robot companion. Oddly enough, most version of this film have mysteriously dubbed over Digits name and changed it to "Grid." Considering it's low budget, Starship comes off as a more entertaining sci-fi style film than alot of higher budget, straight-to-video drek. Just don't take it too seriously.

Yow, I remember this movie when it came out in the 80's. There I was, with a bunch of friends, I was about 15, popcorn in hand, expecting to see a great sci-fi movie at the theater.

We were all disappointed. The plot was totally unoriginal, the b-grade acting & the special effects were a let down. The masks they used for the bots were ugly, and the ship designs were bad. 18 years later, they stick in my head like a bad, umm, movie.

The whole underground resistance idea could have worked if they put more idea and thought into the story line and had somewhat of an interesting dialogue, but there is none worth remembering. To be fair, the movie is probably better then some of the garbage that we see today that passes as sci-fi, but that's not saying much.

3 out of 10

STARSHIP is touted in the tagline as a "warp speed adventure". Instead of being anything like an adventure this film throws great visuals at the audience and absolutely no story. STARSHIP is weird and disappointing, and not worth viewing or effort it takes to thrust it in a VHS deck.