Somewhere between the ages of six and eight, my parents rented Robot Jox (1990) on VHS. Or I caught a glimpse of its Cable TV commercial. I’m fuzzy on these details, but not the feeling it gave me: real-life giant robots? Oh, yeah — let’s do this.
In the mid-80s through the 90s, anime/cartoons like Robotech and ExoSquad (reviewed here) leaked onto kids’ programming, and video games like Mechwarrior made the joystick a household gaming mainstay.
In these halcyon days of mech mania infiltration to America, I was a young super fan.
My brothers and I memorized the captivating twists and turns to complete the metamorphosis of our Transformers.
And we were lucky enough to visit a BattleTech center in Colorado, sit in a real-life cockpit, and fire away at our family members (my dad toasted me because I had no idea what the hell all the different throttles and triggers did).
My passion for mechs has eroded over the last ~34 years. Yet I’ve come across Robot Jox’s fiery cover now and again. Each time a blurred image of human pilot avatars walking into metal-clad machine combat would filter back in, washing me in a hint of nostalgia for tech and mech.
Now that the picture is streaming on Tubi, could the film’s oddball charm, which worked well for a kid, still captivate an older millennial man approaching his middle years?
Let’s find out.
The Plot of Robot Jox:
Fifty years after a nuclear war, two nations have consolidated power – the U.S-influenced Market and the Soviet-Russian-like Confederation.
Because nobody wants to repeat the nuclear holocaust, traditional war is banned in favor of something (apparently) more civilized.
To settle disputes, both nations agree to fight for territories in one-on-one battles between Robot Jox – human pilots inside giant mechanized robots.
When Market pilot Achilles (Gary Graham) squares off against Alexander (Paul Koslo) for the territory of Alaska, a deadly accident occurs. Hundreds of spectators are killed. The match is ruled a draw, and a rematch is set.
But put off by the deadly events of the last match, Achilles retires from fighting.
As a public outcry against Achilles begins and Alexander taunts him, will he be coaxed back into the fold for a rematch?
The Rest of the Main Cast Includes:
- Anne-Marie Johnson – Athena
- Robert Sampson – Commissioner Jameson
- Danny Kamekona – Dr. “Doc” Matsumoto
- Hilary Mason – Professor Laplace
- Michael Alldredge – Tex Conway
- Jeffrey Combs – Spectator/Prole #1
- Michael Saad – Spectator/Prole #2
- Ian Patrick Williams – Phillip
- Jason Marsden – Tommy
- Carolyn Purdy-Gordon – Kate
- Thyme Lewis – Sargon
- Gary Houston – Sportscaster
- Russel Case – Hercules
- Stuart Gordon (uncredited) – Bartender
The Good Things
Walking that Tone, +6 Points
Directed by the eclectic creator Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, Honey I Shrunk the Kids), the film is self-aware, effectively balancing its cartoonish plot and characters with the subtlest of sci-fi societal commentaries.
Under a director like Paul Verhoeven (Robocop, Starship Troopers), this movie could have dipped into more overt sci-fi satire (and in Verhoeven’s case, left a trail of bodies and blood behind).
Instead, Gordon, the cast, and the crew play it straight, but they’re all walking in a crooked world.
Posters encourage women to have babies and help raise the population. There’s a mild celebration at a family gathering to have “actual meat” (one lone sausage). And everyone must wear filtration masks or stay inside, presumably from some kind of fallout.
But the rest of the film focuses on the pilots’ drama. This Cold War warning, a dystopian failed world still repeating its mistakes, idles in the background.
Still, this isn’t a morality tale. There’s ham and cheese in the performances.
Villain Alexander (at left) of the Confederation is all too happy to taunt or kill his opponents with over-the-top relish.
Seasoned, semi-cynical vet Achilles is Alexander’s opposite. The Market’s best, he fights for the cause but carries the air of wondering what convinced him to sign up for all this in the first place.
The cheesiness, combined with the lower-budget sets and props (at one point, one paper-thin wall is pulled down), fits.
Working together, this all-important tone matches Gordon’s intention – to make a kids’ movie that plays for adults.
Fun Robot Designs, +4 Points
You can’t have a mech arena film without fun battlebots, and the picture delivers them with help from the legendary Ron Cobb.
Hero Achilles’s Market fighter is a red-and-white tower of jingoism. The bright battlebot looks like a defender of honor, with shoulder jetpacks and tank treads on the back of its legs for alternate stances.
Villain Alexander’s dark gray spider-like machine walks on four legs, presumably for better balance and intimidation. It has giant claws, machine guns in the middle, and a special surprise: a phallic chainsaw that folds out between its legs.
Neato designs aside, how the pilots manage the combat is the fun part.
The robots mimic the pilots’ movements. Pilots walk in place on a metal platform to move the robot forward or lift their arms to extend that of their robots’. They fire weapons from triggers, but that natural movement adds human skin to the game. It justifies why you couldn’t remotely control these mechanical monsters.
Opening ~25 Minutes, +3 Points
The film’s first act is a fluid section of filmmaking. A tight script meets solid camera and editing decisions.
The opening sequence’s cinematography pairs narration with gripping imagery. As the narrator gives us the backstory, we ride over the Siberian battlefield, broken pieces of fallen robots littered about.
The camera pauses as one piece of junk still flashes and sparks, not old debris but new. It’s a fallen fighter in a current battle.
With this sequence, the film has shifted us straight into the movie. It has walked us over the past with visual and voiceover exposition and into the present as Alexander slays yet another Market fighter.
In minutes, we learn the details of Achilles’s reputation, the backstory of the intelligently designed “tubies” (fighters bred from DNA), and side characters like Tex Conway and Dr. Matsumoto.
Outside, a few urchins, ventilator masks on hand, take bets on who will win the fight. The spectators clamor for the action.
And there are some lovely shots, like the score rising in heroic tones as Achilles moves up the elevator and into his bot, giving us a grand sense of the machine’s scale.
The Not-as-Good Things
Silly Training, -1 Point
It may be a product of a low-budget production, but Achilles and the Tubies don’t train with any robot simulation. Instead, they don skin-tight suits and spar with each other.
Even if the film couldn’t afford a simulator, some shots of the Jox and Tubies jogging around the robots to stay combat-fit would have been better than this, as fistfighting doesn’t seem to have any bearing on being a Jox pilot.
Later in the film, things get absurd. When it’s time to decide which Tubie is the strongest for a fight, they don’t test their skills behind the controls of a bot or reveal who has the highest scores during training exercises.
Instead, they have a race, presumably to the death, to the top of a booby-trapped pyramid (which is funny because it reminds you of that Kurt Russell movie Soldier, where engineered soldiers 1.0 and 2.0 had to fight on a rope climb). The Tubies climb what looks like the tallest children’s jungle gym, trying to reach an escape at the top, with pieces that break off or get too hot to touch.
It’s a bizarre, brutal sideshow, and getting to the top of the pile has nothing to do with fighting in a robot.
Weak Plot, -2 Points
Achilles and Alexander taunt each other because Alexander loves his job way too much and Achilles is his best opponent. As simplistic as that is, it works.
But there could have been more here for as large a part in the film as Athena and the Tubies get. Achilles could have revealed more about his character, which would have been more for the audience to bond with, had he been invested in training this next generation of fighters. Instead, he’s attracted to Athena, and that’s about it.
You wish there was more of a small, ongoing competition between him and the Tubies or an arc in which they gain mutual respect with him as their mentor. Any of this would help the payoff by the film’s end.
There’s also a tiny who-is-the-spy subplot, but other than a bit of tension and a silly death scene, it doesn’t add much.
Lackluster Combat, -3 Points
The movie’s showpiece, as billed, is robot arena combat. But the bot vs. bot showdowns are less than exhilarating. They’re like iffy roller coaster rides at the county fair instead of the grand designs of an actual theme park.
You could argue the film bumps against the limits of a lower budget and older effects technology. Still, special-effects and set-piece heavy films like the original Star Wars trilogy had already come and gone, putting down rails a film like this, to an extent, could follow.
Much like we admire old-school muscle cars for their carbureted ear-tickling menace, even if electric vehicles of today can outpace them, the novelty of these practical and stop-motion effects adds something charming.
It’s the choreography that fails here. The robots hit each other once or twice, fire off a laser or two, and that’s about it. It hardly takes an expert Jox to handle this sort of combat, as who can have the edge in this walk-forward-and-push-button warfare.
But an even bigger flaw is that there are only two robot battles in the whole thing, bookending the opening and closing acts, where a minimum of three were due. There’s no thrilling plot in Act Two to hold your interest, and another clash of machines should have been slotted in.
Is Robot Jox a Good Movie?
Total Arbitrary Points Score: 7 Points
Robot Jox is a dumb ride, but that’s by design.
A film for kids that can work for adults, it’s worth revisiting.
It nails its cartoonish storytelling tone, giving you a sarcastic science-fiction experience high on color and personality with a little twist of social commentary.
And it will surprise you, as there are some neat bits of cinematography. And, of course, if mechs are your things, it’s a wack to your nostalgia zone.
But you’ll need to overlook the film’s flaws to stay in the joy zone. The combat isn’t special, and it doesn’t compensate with impressive character or world-building.
So for those of you with nostalgia for Transformers or the like, give your throwback itch a go.
For more on director Stuart Gordon, you can read my review for his B-movie film Space Truckers here.
Robot Jox was directed by Stuart Gordon.
It is rated PG.
You can watch the trailer here.
Disclaimer:
This review’s factual information was gathered through online sources like Wikipedia, IMDB, or interviews. Misrepresentations and errors are possible but unintentional.
Making art is hard. This is a fan’s blog. Any criticisms are meant to be constructive.
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