Movie help.

[IRC]

There was this move made roughly fifteen years ago. It was about guys who fought in giant robots. And there was a brown headed good guy who wore white and a blond bad guy who wore black and had a big spider like robot.

Anybody know what I'm talking about? It wasn't a cartoon or anime.

[The Dark Jester]

Re: Movie help.

Robot Jox?

[IRC]

Re: Movie help.

YES MAN IS THE ****. HE SHALL BE MY NEW GENERIC OTAKU.

[The Dark Jester]

Re: Movie help.

THe only part i read was Giant Robots, and i just new....i had the feeling!

[Magus]

Re: Movie help.

I got a good feeling!

[The Dark Jester]

Re: Movie help.

I got a good.......peeling?

[Funk]

Re: Movie help.

It's such a good feeling... to know you're alive... it's such a happy feeling... *puts on his left slipper*

[Translucid]

Re: Movie help.

Average imdb user rating: 3.9.
That cracks me up.

[OmegaD3k]

Re: Movie help.

*chants* ACHILLIES!!! ACHILLES!!
Best movie ever.
There was another robot/mech movie where they actually fought against a spider/scorpion mech. It's creative title: "Robot Jox 2: ROBOT WARS".
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107979/

[Big Rick Cook]

Re: Movie help.

IMDB ratings are always phenomenally low.

[The Toecutter]

Re: Movie help.

http://www.bigsky.net/apoc/cyborg.htm#robotjox

Robot Jox -- Guest Review, mailed in by Shawn Hanson
Robot Jox takes place in a post nuclear holocaust world (2018? I don't remember) where people don't fight wars anymore to settle conflicts. Nope, instead they have people (the "Robot Jox" of the title, if you will) climb into big, stupid-looking robots and duke it out on a field. The jox, I mean, *jocks* are where the robot's "head" should be, and they stand up and control the robots movements by pretend walking and by these handle-grip things that look like they're hooked to telephone cords. Apparently the robots are controlled by telepathy, or at the very least the controls have some sort of built-in fuzzy logic intuitive AI that can *sense* when the jock wants the robot to, say, lift it's arm, so it just does it. It's really not that believable, but the special effects are so bad that you'll be too distracted to notice.
Ah, the special effects, where to start... Well, in 2018 (or whatever), cybernetic research has progressed to the point where the human race is capable of building huge, warrior robots that are powered by nothing more than stop-motion animation. I don't know what I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting to see something that would remind me of the cartoon short I helped make in 6th grade as part of a TAG project. There are also a bunch of scenes where the robot's hand or foot crashes through a window, and then they cut to someone behind a desk who falls back as they try desperately to pretend that they're actually frightened/surprised by the obvious blue screen in front of them. Okay, maybe there were only 2 scenes, but they still stand out due to their badness...

Let me stop for a second for a quick plot summary, just to get it out of the way. The main character is Achilles, the good guys' (U.S. equivalent) best jock. The main bad guy is Alexander, the bad guys' (The Confederation, a.k.a., U.S.S.R.) best jock. Achilles (who, incidentally, is played by the moronic butt-face who was the human cop in the Alien Nation series) has one fight left (out of a 10 fight contract), and it will be against Alexander to decide who gets Alaska. They fight, Alexander cheats (there's two rounds, in the first you can use ranged weapons, in the second it's just melee weapons, so Alexander shot his robot's fist during the second round [just like my old Transformer toys!]), his cheating endangers spectators, Achilles tries to save them, the fist hits his robot instead...and knocks it right into the bleachers, killing 300. Achilles has a crisis of confidence, which is bad since the refs declare the match a draw and schedule a rematch. He quits, and the slot instead goes to this not-too-attractive-but-in-this-movie-she's -supposed-to-be woman who's one of the new genetically engineered jocks who've just started training. Oh, I forgot to mention that the other two main characters include a japanese weapons specialist (who likes to fold origami, since he's japanese, you see) who outifts the 'bots, and this really hokey texan that runs the control room and always overacts being from the south to the point of stupidness. There's a minor subplot about there being a spy on the inside stealing weapons secrets, and that point is illustrated by how during the first Achilles vs. Alexander (live on pay-per-view!) fight, Alexander's 'bot was outfitted with the *same* "green laser" (what?!) as Achilles 'bot. It was 'sposed to be a secret weapon, but the secret behind this particular special effect hasn't been secret since 1983. Anyway, Achilles comes out of retirement, the chick doesn't like it, she sedates him and takes the 'bot out to meet Alexander. Meanwhile, it turns out the spy was the texan, and he was found out by the japanese weapons specialist. The texan had no choice but to kill him and make it look like a suicide, though it was never explained how no one noticed that the japanese guy had chosen to kill himself by shooting himself FROM THREE FEET AWAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CHEST. I guess they don't have forensics in the future... So the chick fights Alexander, does okay for a bit, but then starts to get her ass kicked and loses once she loses consciousness. The refs come up in their little roofless flying saucer thingy and declare him the winner, but he wants to finish her off. (Meanwhile, back in the control room, the japanese guy videotaped his final confrontation w/ the texas guy, and it plays in the control room, so the texan escapes and flings himself down the robot's storage silo to his bloody death [yay!!]) _Meanwhile_, Achilles left the control room while she was getting ripped a new one, and he hopped in his hover car (quite possibly the *lamest* effects in the movie were associated w/ this car) and raced out to the battlefield. Meanwhile, Alexander won't back off (since all russians who're good at anything are egomaniacal pricks, you see), the refs declare the good guys the winners by default, he squishes their saucer (they escape), and Achilles shows up and challenges Alexander to fight using the chick's downed robot. They fight, they fly into outer space (what the?!...), they fly back down, Achilles morphs his 'bot into a tank, Achilles fails to take the initiative at least 67 different times when he could have either destroyed or incapacitated Alexander's robot, Achilles-the-dumbass manages to get his robot blown up like the turd he is, he runs over behind the severed forearm of Alexander's robot that the chick had cut off earlier, he hotwires the arm to fire the fist and it blows up Alexander's robot when it happens to bump into its chest. But wait, there's more! Alexander's not dead, so they fight hand to hand for a while before Achilles makes peace with him (there's a poignant moment when Alexander says something like, "we're already dead, we're jocks" *sniff*). Then, finally, it ends. Okay, I guess that wasn't a very short summary. It's not my fault the movie jumped around...

Some final thoughts: One of my sci-fi pet peeves is when movies incorporate sound into space (yeah, I know it's geeky). Imagine my surprise when, during the scene where the 'bots are in space, there's no sound at all. It was, stupid robots aside, completely realistic! This, to me, was the last straw; the final nail in this particular bad movie coffin. For them to have the *temerity* to execute so much of the movie so *badly* while maintaining a semblance of realism during one inconsequential scene leaves me dumbstruck. That's the cruel twist of fate that made me realize that THIS REVIEW MUST BE WRITTEN. Also, all of the fights (all TWO of them) between the 'bots consisted of the robots just standing there and shooting stuff at each other before they would get closer so the good guy could start letting Alexander beat their ass. Another thing, the little slogan the technicians and other people say to the jocks before their matches is "Crash and burn." Am I missing something? Were they attempting a lame reprise of the theater axiom, "break a leg"? I don't care, because *they* certainly didn't... Well, I think that's it (oh, everyone also wore "futuristic" jumpsuits of various colors and styles), so I'll just leave you with this: this movie came out in 1991, which is within one year of when Terminator 2 came out. Contrast and compare. It will give you nightmares. (P.S.- I'm assuming T2 came out in '92, but I'm not sure.)

[highwind]

Re: Movie help.

I used to love that movie.

[IRC]

Re: Movie help.

I have made it my quest in life to own it.

[highwind]

Re: Movie help.

I wish you the best of luck in this great endeavor.