Suspicious over the military's decision to hide the Masters' existence from the populous, soldier Todd Harris steals the "MODAT 5" - a mobile terminal remotely connected to the mother computer in the form of a motorcycle - and seeks help from his friend Mark Landry, telling him to contact "Eve".

Mark manages to escape with the MODAT 5, but unaware of its true significance, winds up merely using it as a prop in an amateur movie being shot by Kelly, a friend of his girlfriend, aspiring dancer Becky Michaels.

Seeing a music video from popular idol Eve, Mark presumes that she was who Todd wanted to contact and telephones her talk show to tell her about the MODAT.

The call is traced by Andrews's men, leading to a freeway chase during which the bike automatically reconfigures into a humanoid mecha form to fend off Mark's attackers.

Mark proceeds to sneak into the TV studio from which Eve's show is broadcast and discovers that the singer is not a real person at all, but a holographic projection.

Escaping, Mark attempts to warn Becky, but his recent distractedness has alienated her, and it is not until he rescues her from being sexually assaulted by an unscrupulous dance show director that the pair reconcile.

ASC forces under the command of Rolf Emerson stage another attack on the Masters’ fleet, and again meet with failure thanks to Andrews using the mother computer to feed them bad data and control their movements.

Realizing the threat Andrews poses, Embry prepares to depart for Alaska Base, location of a secondary terminal that will allow him to take control of the computer, but is delayed by waiting for his daughter Stacy – Kelly's roommate – to join him.

Exploiting the link to discern a weak spot in the Masters' defenses, the ASC is able to cripple their flagship, and when it crashes, the rest of the fleet retreats.

Transforming the space fighter to robot mode, Mark has one final battle with Andrews that ends with him killing the clone and triumphantly reuniting with Becky.

Additional voices are provided by Tony Clay, Clifton Wells, Bruce Winant, Doug Lee, Dan Woren, Richard Epcar, Barry Stigler, Dave Mallow, Frank Catalano, Bill Capizzi, Milton James, Steve Kramer, Max Christian, and Mike Reynolds.

[7][8] With the Megazone 23 license secured, the project had originally been intended to be more of a straight dub of with dialogue and music changes to reflect the Robotech universe.

[10] Thus, Macek rewrote the story to take place in the time-gap between the first and second seasons of the television series, cut segments of Southern Cross footage into it, and commissioned animation studio The Idol Company to animate a new ending (which was later included on the laserdisc of Megazone 23, Part II under the name "Present For You" and on the "Over Seas Edition" bonus DVD of the PlayStation 3 game; Megazone 23: Aoi Garland, along with the unreleased Harmony Gold dub of Part II).

Cannon Films released Robotech: The Movie on July 25, 1986 in Texas, on a test-run basis;[8] the launch involved 25 theaters in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

The film ended up being screened on various college campuses,[citation needed] at select theaters for special engagements,[7] and at festivals such as 1987's Animation Celebration in Pasadena, California.

Harmony Gold eventually relinquished its license to Megazone 23 after director Carl Macek washed his hands of the project, making these international VHS tapes and LaserDiscs now considered very rare.

[10] However, blackmarket copies of the movie have reportedly made their way onto the Internet due to file sharing, along with fan-made edits that have restored the film using Blu-ray and DVD transfers of the original source material released commercially.