Unknowingly he takes an ancient amulet of power from a dying Prince and is bound to it and the ongoing battle.
Trying to rid himself of this burden he picks up, literally, the goblin wizard Doodad (Laurie Field/Patton Oswalt) and thief Brisbayne (Christina Orjalo) on the way but can't shake his destiny.
CW: so much cheese it could kill the lactose intolerant
So think Hawk the Slayer meets Power Rangers and you've pretty much nailed Steven Kostanski's utterly unserious fantasy romp.
This must have doubled the number of rubber prosthetics used in movie production in 2025. Everybody's a pig man or a swamp thing or a two headed troll or weird spiky undead thing and covered in slime. There are little greebly toothy monsters everywhere and at one point we get a full on homage to the classic Ray Harryhausen stop motion skeletons. Seemingly almost everything's a rubbery practical effect with animatronics or just plain people wiggling their fingers in puppets and yanking strings. At one point a Witch gives Deathstalker directions by moving a figurine on a map and you can see it's just somebody moving it with a magnet under the table. With no explanation at all our heroes travel the countryside while in the background two giants the size of mountains have a fight in the clouds. The only concessions to modern computer driven effects appear to be some fireballs, teleportation swirls and compositing to layer/background stuff well because why wouldn't you.
Any time there's a fight scene, which really do look like something from Power Rangers, guitars scream and shred. Nobody gives a fuck about subtlety: they know filmmakers and actors who use subtlety and they're all cowards. Ham is delivered like it's the world's biggest non kosher farmer's market.
It's absolutely glorious.
Everyone concerned has delivered exactly on target here. It might not be for you but it deserves 9/10 for commitment to its own little niche. Go relive the 80s without any of the shit downsides.