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Time for yet another movie I should know better than to watch. Robot Jox. Also staring Jeffrey Combs? Oh hey, rock on. Anyway, we've got a straightforward narration explaining how it's the post-appocolyptic future, but we still have countries, and they've realized the error of their ways. No longer will wars be fought by masses of people in major cities. Instead, we have one on one duels in giant robots, with referees. How does this movie fail to be awesome again? I distinctly recall having seen enough of it once to say it's awful, but... come on!
Anyway, we've got our evil Russian mech pilot, and then we have our main character here who looks like the illegitimate lovechild of Arnold Schwartzenagger and Dennis Quaid. He's got a coach with a big ol' cowboy hat and a big ol' cowboy attitude. Then we've got some scientists, some genetically engineered super soldiers, and some bridge crew. Also some sexism and some bashing of genetically engineered people in general. It's an arms race though! The soviets (sorry, "the confederacy") have super soldiers, so we need'em too! Oh, and we also have an awesome Bank'o'Monitors. By the way, this is a movie from 1990 that totally looks like it was made in 1982 or so. Oh, and here's some people placing bets on the upcoming fight. Oh, and dear gods. Tex there is actually NAMED Tex. Wonderful. Also, the upcoming mech battle is being fought over Alaska. It's actually kinda weird how formal and structured all this is. I mean, does Not-Russia just go "Oh hey, we'd like to invade Alaska" so they just gentlemanly agree to fight over it? Do they take turns picking territories to fight over? What's the deal?
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Oh, and the mechs are controlled with a motion capture system that reminds me of the Sega Activator. This of course means we have a lot of pilots training in a traditional gym. Also, wow is that a goofy looking giant robot. Being called the Matsumoto-14, apparently America accepts that you really need a crazy Japanese dude to build your giant robots. Something the commies don't agree on. Also? I love me some stop-motion giant robots. Clunk on you magnificent hunk of plastic. Clunk on. So hey, here's giant robots fighting! And since we're going proper oldschool Battletech with it, this pretty much means standing a few hundred feet apart and just spamming missiles and lasers for a while. Oh, and the referee has a silly little UFO too! Apparently, this is set up like an oldschool joust. First there's some long range fire, then you have to stop and go all melee about it. I still say standing in a big open cockpit isn't the way to go for either of these combat modes though. I mean, how do you use motion capture to fire missiles from your shoulder pods? Then you don't really want to topple over in a big frelling robot with no support. Anyway, the fight ends with our hero, Achilles, falling over, cutting the Russian robot's foot off with a plasma knife thing, and then the russian robot staggering back and launching a rocket punch, which heads for the bleachers. Achilles jumps in front of it, but still kinda, you know, lands on the stands. The U.S. captain though points out that dude, disqualification! You can't use rocket punch when we've moved onto the melee phase! The ref decrees it's a draw though, and they need to have a rematch in a week. That's a total B.S. call ref! We all love rocket punch, but are you trying to deny it's a long ranged move? Achilles is all Screw this, I'm retiring. Also, wow, the super soldiers have amazingly stupid hair. It's like... every bad hair idea at once. Kind of like a military looking mullet, but with this little rat tail thing in the back, which is braided and then curled back up into kind of an O.
Taking a break at the bar, we have even more bad hair, and bad fashion too. Incidentally, Achilles has a bandage on his forehead, with a perfectly centered and circular blood spot, so, essentially he just has the Japanese flag taped to his temple. The other people on his team are all "Dude, why didn't you just let the spectators die and try to win? They're trailer trash losers, and it's not like they didn't all sign wavers saying they're OK with the possibility of dying any number of ways from having front row tickets to the big mech fight. They're jerks, but it'd be easier to play the moral high ground card if not for the fact that less people would clearly have died from just the fist hitting the stands than a whole robot diving into them to block it. Oh and here's some other pilot girl staring at Achilles' crotch while he sleeps. Seriously. She admits to it even. now she's just kinda stalking him through his 5th Element style Future Efficiency Apartment. Apparently lab-born girl here wanted to see if the body of a 10-time champion is visibly different from that of a normal dude. So.... what? She wanted to see if the phrase "damn, that guy must have huge balls" was literal then? Anyway, there's this whole deal of everyone picking on him for not accepting the rematch, because he insists he had a 10 fight contract and now he wants out, because, well, there's major risk of head injuries doing this and all. That and "there's a spy!" keep getting hammered in. I suspect Tex.
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Now we have some blocked female nudity, to go with the blocked male from earlier, in a nice androgynous locker room setting. And seriously, Achilles here is SO Arnold Quaid! Anyway, he's not succumbing until peer pressure (until later in the movie at least) so for now he's just driving off in his goofy looking Future Car and walking past a few lame Future Fliers tacked to the dull cement walls. Where's he going? To his brother's house full of annoying screaming kids. Apparently he's just crashing with these people because... I guess being a mech pilot pays garbage? Meanwhile the new super soldier pilots are training by playing race to the top of the jungle gym of DEAT! Random bars are superheated, or squirt water on your hands, and the whole thing has annoying flashing lights and buzzers and shakes. OK, you know what? This movie is awesome. I somehow misjudged it all these years. Crotch Girl wins, so she'll be replacing Achilles. Not surprising being the only other established pilot and all. Seeing this announcement, Achilles comes back and says he'll fight after all. Because he'll be DAMNED if he's going to allow the first female pilot ever to go and make history on his watch!
Did I mention that Dr. Matsumoto makes paper cranes? Anyway, he's refusing to explain to ANYONE, even Achilles, how this battle's new secret weapons work, or what they are, to fight spying. After all, the "green laser" from the last battle was only revealed to him and Tex, and the Russian dude still knew about that one. Crotch girl confronts Achilles in the bar insisting he must just have done the whole "retirement" thing so he could renegotiate for more money. Anyway, Dr. M is analyzing records of Tex's last battle, and confronting him on how he is so clearly totally a spy. Go Dr. M! Probably shouldn't have done this in private, sitting down, where he can easily steal your gun and kill you though. At least he gets to give a nice little "There's still good inside you!" speech before dying. Also he turns on the security camera, so, we'll have clear comeuppance later. Oh, and before it's time for the big fight, Crotch Girl swings by to be all "Let's have sex! Surprise! I mean let's shoot you with a tranquilizer dart so I can have my big debut! Ha-ha!" Then they karate fight! Then he kinda tries to rape her. You know, in that good guy, just trying to keep you safe way... and she knees him in the groin, rips the computer type panel off his door so he can't escape, and runs off to impersonate him and pilot the mech. Well... that was morally ambiguous.
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The ruse is revealed when a random tech goes to give Achilles a polite sportsy slap on the butt. Hey... wait a minute! This is some kind of GIRL butt! You aren't Achilles! Hiyah! Karate kick to you observant techie! Anyway, Achilles is locked in his room with all his communication devices smashed, having only his weird spinning orb of shiny plastic, and the big clunky remote to his Futurecar. So he has that plow through the wall, busting him out to go fight. Clone Mother is all "Shame on you Crotch Girl. I mentally conditioned you to be totally obedient. How dare you try and steal that giant robot?" She's all "You're not the boss of me!" though, and just climes out of the mech hatch by hand when they try and stop her. That jerk ref is all "Hey, your robot left the hanger, that means you're ready to start the match. Some crazy person stealing it and smashing its way out still counts! OK, seriously, %#@$ that ref! Also, wow. I totally need to point out to Thor next time I see him how this mech piloting suit is a great lookalike for Ash from Mass Effect. Anyway, Dr. M has a secret surprise for everyone. That security camera? That's how he records his pre-fight briefings, so right after the explanation of this week's secret weapon, blinding lights, comes the footage of Tex confessing to being a spy and shooting him. Go Dr. M! Seeing this, Tex is all "I sure am the spy! Watch how I straight up shoot that loser! Yeeha!" Then he punches the guards trying to arrest him, and dives out the uh... 10th story window.
Meanwhile, in the fight, wow we have some awesome classic mech type weapons here. We've got this rotating spikey-whip-grapple thing, AND a pneumatic fist! Mainly though, the Russian dude kust kinda wins by tackling the Matsumoto-14 and punching it like crazy. The judges say he wins, but he still wants to crush the pilot, because that's kind of his thing. Apparently it's legal, just in totally bad taste. Achilles rushes over, attends to Crotch Girl's wounds, makes out with her, and says he has to fight him or it doesn't really count. The judges go "No you don't, really, you already won!" Ruski's all @%#$ that! though, rips the ref out of his UFO and stomps on it. Bridge crew goes "OK then, Achilles, YOU won, because he just assaulted the ref." Achilles is ALSO all @%#$ that though. Let's kick on the jetpacks and do things PROPER. In SPACE! OK, that there? That is just plain awesome. These mechs, which are really just made for one on one fights in this arena here, are spaceflight capable, just for the hell of it. Achilles gets his foot shot off though and has to go back down to some big dirt pile. Meanwhile, did I mention that the Russian mech has 4 legs? That's just neat. Oh, and now, rather than just standing up? Achilles' mech is transforming. Into this sort of half-mech-half-tank. Yeah, it's had the treads on the legs this whole time, so this shouldn't be that surprising, but it's still cool. It seems like this should be the default though, what with stabilitiy. And suddenly, the whole fight becomes very crotch focused.
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Seriously, Achilles drives right up to fire missiles at point blank into the Russian bot's crotch, then the Russian bot grabs his by the crotch, lifts it up and slams it down, and THEN the Russian bot's crotch opens up to reveal a giant chainsaw that slices the cockpit in half. So Achilles climbs out, attempts to go all Shadow of the Colossus for a bit, realizes that won't work, and instead runs over to the arm he knocked off his opponent earlier. Because what does that arm have? That's right? ROCKET PUNCH! The ultimate weapon! So he jury-rigs it to fire at the last possible moment, hitting his opponent right in the solar plexus, which causes the whole thing to explode. Evil Russian survives though, and comes running at him with a metal bar. Achilles grabs his own, so now we get to have a good old fashioned bar fight. Well, a fight with bars anyway. It's actually a pretty darn authentic feeling fight too. No fancy shmancy choreography, just wailing on each other and getting out of breath. They have kind of a weird nihilistic exchange towards the end. Achilles tosses his big ol' metal bar aside rather than kill this psycho, who, begrudgingly, does the same with the rock he picked up while standing. Achilles hives him a nice thumbs up, which is returned as some sort of double thumbs up fist bump, which bleeds immediately into the credits.
OK, that movie there? That was 100% pure awesome. Cheesy? Yes. Stupid? You bet. But that was just an absolutely glorious embracement of that whole period when America was totally into giant robots, and had not yet really come to associate them with anime yet. I mean, everyone had seen Robotech, but nobody had seen Macross, you know? This was intended as a big tribute to FASA, not Bandai. And seriously, it was just plain great. Wouldn't change a thing. Well, OK, maybe a few scenes related to Crotch Girl. There was some weird inappropriateness going on there. But the ending of that movie in particular? Seriously that is untouchably groovy in all ways. Now though I have to try and figure out what that lame giant robot movie was that I mistook this for. Oh, and here's a fun fact. This is by the same guy as those various schlocky movies SORTA based on H.P. Lovecraft stuff. Which I suppose explains why Jeffrey Combs got prominent billing in the opening credits, despite playing, like, Random Crushed Spectator #2. Because Jeffrey Combs:Stuart Gordon::Bruce Campbell:Sam Raimi.
