Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema rewind.
This is Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today's Weird House Cinema rewind is It's got to be one of my all time favorite Weird House Cinema episodes. It's the one we did on the Robot Jocks, originally published on December twenty fifth, twenty twenty.
That's right, Yeah, this one was a lot. This movie is just a lot of fun and it was super fun to discuss it, and I think, weirdly enough, it was our Christmas Day episode in twenty twenty, so you know, it feels good as well that this will be the final episode that we air in the year twenty twenty one.
I don't remember if we mentioned this at the time, but it's strangely appropriate in that a lot of the characters in the movie wear clothes of a color scheme that's kind of Santa Claus, very like red and white.
Sort of thing.
Yeah, a lot of red and white. And it feels very surgical in a way that some depictions of Santa Claus's headquarters and his workshop are are created. You know, this idea that it is this place, it's magical but also a little sci fi.
Yeah, the ones that are operated by the technical elves that have that have like computers and machines. Yeah, you mean the machine elves, the machine elves.
Yes, all right, let's dive in.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name's Rob Lamb.
And I'm Joe McCormick. And I think this episode is going to be publishing on Christmas Day, which is quite apt because, if I'm not wrong, one of the biggest toy crazes of the Christmases of yesteryear were Transformers toys, and I think Transformers also probably partially inspired the movie.
We're going to be talking about today, So it's.
Very much like a like a toy robot Christmas celebration, except imagine those toy robots were fighting it out for the fate of Alaska, trading between the clutches of some like evil capitalist empire and a harsh Soviet future state.
That's right. Yeah, we're gonna be talking about nineteen nineties robot jocks, which, yeah, I am to understand that the Transformer craze helped inspire this but I think you could also pretty fairly compare this to the boxing robots, you know.
The other Rockam soccer robots, Rockham Sock and.
Rogue of Robots. Yeah, this is basically big league rock Em Socker Robots of the future.
Yeah, I imagine.
So it's rock em soccer robots, but to settle territorial disputes between post nuclear apocalyptic superpowers and they're like one hundred feet tall.
Yeah, this is It's not a Christmas movie. We thought about doing a Christmas movie, but then this came up, and this was perfect. I will say that it is rated PG, and some of the people that made it talked about how it is for children. I did not watch this with my son. I guess I could have, but I'm ultimately glad I did not. There's just, you know, there's a little bit of language in there that you know, I'm sure a TV cut of this stuff that could
easily be edited out. I'm sure. But still it's a very enjoyable picture and I'm excited to talk about it.
This is one of those movies that is it's I don't think it's for children, it's for it's for adults, in whom the child inside never died.
Yeah, I think so that's probably a better way of looking at it.
Should we hit that trailer audio?
Let's do it.
It's a new age of combat, human beings poltically engineered to be the best fighters in history. Two champions. It isn't over until someone wins at war with each other. Good. I have already kulled you invincible men, Fish and Alexander. Here now the ultimate killing machines.
I'm gonna get in this sec and I'm gonta jig.
I really love this one. This is one of those with the I'm gonna kick your explosion sound bets, which I think has been used in various other cinematic trailers as well, but to great effect here.
Yeah.
So this was actually directed by somebody you might not expect, by Stuart Gordon, who is mainly known for Lovecraftian adaptations. This is not in any way connected to Lovecraft. This is a giant robot fight movie.
That's right, and again it is. It is rated PG, which which certainly some of Stuart Gordon's most famous works are not. He's probably best remembered for directing nineteen eighty five's re Animator and then nineteen eighty six is from Beyond both just wonderfully weird adaptations of HP Lovecraft else that went off in their own, crazy, fleshy directions.
He also made a Lovecraft adaptation confusingly called Daygone, which came out in the year two thousand and one, which is the name of a Lovecraft story, but it's not really an adaptation of that story. It's more an adaptation of The Shadow over Ensmouth, which is a different Lovecraft story. And that movie I remember kind of liking, even though I don't know if I would say it's good.
Right, I remember at the time when I watched it, I remember thinking, wow, this is not an accurate, you know, depiction of an HBU Lovecraft story. But especially now, I'm kind of like, well, good it went off into all these films. It's good that they went off in their own directions and became their own crazy weird thing. Like I think it takes place in Spain and it's a modern day and like sexuality exists in it, that sort
of thing. Yeah, I would say that's one of the major contributions that Stuart Gordon's Lovecraft films, and also you know the work of Brian Yazna who worked with often they inject sexuality into these horror worlds, the other rather sterile originally.
Yeah, the kind of barren, hateful landscape of the original Lovecraft is a little bit enlivened by the Gordon touch. Yeah, there's another thing I really like about Dagon, though. I remember thinking it's just merely a visual touch, which is that the color palette of the film is very like blue and green everywhere, but the main character wears an orange sweater throughout the movie, and I just remember thinking that was a great visual decision and it really looks fun throughout.
The whole movie had some cool monsters, as I recall too, they went with the like the double finned mermaid type creature. Yeah, all right, well let's see. So these are some of the most I think noteworthy Stuart Gordon films. But he also did a lot of other stuff, and I did mention already, but he did pass away earlier this year. He lived nineteen forty seven through twenty twenty. But yeah,
he directed a lot of stuff. He did science fiction, such as nineteen ninety six as Space Truckers, and with Brian Yasna and Ed Naha, he created Honey I Shrunk the Kids for Disney. They were the original creators, and you know they have scriptwriting credits on that project and any subsequent projects. So when you see the next Honey, I Shrunk the Kids reboot or what have you, you're going to see their names again.
Okay, I don't think I've seen any recent Stuart Gordon stuff.
I haven't either. He seemed to have branched out a lot later in his career, getting further away from some of the really like obvious genre stuff, such as a two thousand and five drama film titled Edmund starring William H. Macy and written by David Mammett. So you know, he really ultimately had a very i think, a varied career and worked on a lot of different types of stuff.
Though horror fans I think are always going to remember him best from some of those those early gory nineteen eighties Lovecraft adaptations.
Yeah.
Now, one thing that must be said about Robot Jocks is that it is a very zany, cliche written robot slugfest that is in many ways just excellent and delightful, but it's also I don't know, you could make many extremely legitimate criticisms of the script, and yet it was written by a like revered science fiction author.
That's right, Joe Haldeman, the author of the Hugo Award winning nineteen seventy four military science fiction novel The Forever War. Now, I had not read this one before, but I picked it up after watching watching Robot Jocks last week and I've been reading it. I haven't finished it yet, but it's a very interesting book, very much a book of its time in many ways, especially concerning you know, various
sort of like gender ideas and so forth. But it's essentially a Vietnam story, a Vietnam memoir, even written by an author who, having just received a bachelors in a in physics and astronomy, was immediately drafted in the US
Army in nineteen sixty seven as a combat engineer. That's Haldemann's story, and he was subsequently wounded, received a purple Heart, and The Forever War it seems to reflect all of this, except dealing with futuristic warriors cast into an armed conflict in a distant star system of a slew of different star systems against an unknown alien enemy, and the main character in that a gentleman by the name of Mandela is also a physicist who finds himself drafted into a war,
only this time it's against the so called Tarans, who are these aliens that nobody really has a clear picture of or understanding of as they're starting out. So it's again very much a product of its time, quite interesting, quite influential. It's a solid power armor military science fiction yarn, very much in the same in keeping with stuff like starship troopers and so forth, but it has a focus on first of all, the physics of other worlds and the physics of space travel, as well as of course
the psychology of the soldiers experience and afe. The interesting things have very popped up in it. He touches on the perils of fighting around frozen hydrogen on other worlds. There's discussion of how time dilation impacts war. So you encounter the enemy one day and your technology is superior to them, but then the next encounter you have with them, their technology is yours ahead of yours because of time
dilation and travel at speeds approaching light. Because you were a creature now of their past and they are denizens of what was your future.
That's very interesting. So, like every time you travel to meet your opponent, they get a leg up on you because they have more time to prepare than you do.
Yeah, so that's really interesting. He gets into the use of hypnotic suggestion to invoke xenophobic hatred and soldiers. But on top of that, he seems to spend a lot of time focusing on what it means to be enveloped by the war machine, how it changes your life, how it affects your psyche, and how in the Forever War it also co opts sexuality as well as individuality. It's just kind of like this all consuming force on your life.
This is interesting because I feel like what you're just talking about comes through, maybe not so much in the original novel, but in the Paul Verehoven movie adaptation of Starship Troopers.
Yeah.
Yeah, I understand that the Forever War is often brought up as kind of a counterbalance to the largely pro war narrative of the original novel Starship Troopers, which I have also read, but I honestly don't remember much about it other than some of the cool power armor battles that were going on in it.
So, how do Haldeman and Stuart Gordon get teamed up to make this ridiculous robot slugfest movie.
All right, So apparently what happened is, let's say, Haldeman wrote this book and it was a huge success and critically a claimed and Haldeman and Stuart ended up chatting with each other and working on putting together a film adaptation of the Forever War, and they were both really excited about it, but it never came together. I think the way they described it is like Reagan was elected
and then kind of like things changed. There was less funding for the arts, and therefore the project never came together, but it led to this project with Haldeman working on the script that would ultimately become Robot Jocks, directed by
Stuart Gordon. Now, apparently there was a fair amount of disagreement between the two as the project rolled on, which has been summed up at times as Haldeman wanting to create a movie for adults that kids could also enjoy and Gordon wanted to create a movie for kids that adults could enjoy, and.
They ended up creating not exactly either one.
Right, Yeah, it's kind of a hybrid of the two, which is again perfectly enjoyable, but it's more more of a film that the inner child and the inner adult can both enjoy or kind of fight over.
Yeah.
So here's a bit from Haldeman's blog where he talked about this. He said, I wanted the mechanics he's talking about as a title. He Stuart Gordon insisted on robojocks. He finally wound up being robot Jocks after the people who did RoboCop asked whether we wanted to spend a lot of dreary time in court. I would try to change the science into something reasonable. Stuart would change it
back to Saturday morning cartoon stuff. I tried to make believable, reasonable characters, and Stuart would insist on throwing in cliches and caricatures. It was especially annoying because it was a story about soldiers, and I was the only person around who'd ever been one. In fact, he was right and I was wrong, But it wasn't until we were actually shooting the movie that that became clear.
That's interesting. I mean, you can absolutely feel this tension in the movie when you watch it, because it will alternate between moments that almost kind of actually work as as thoughtful science fiction. There'll be like moments of dialogue that are kind of thoughtful and interesting, and then it just immediately like throttles back into hilarious, absurd, cliche sci fi mode.
Yeah, you can get whiplash at times from it because you're like, oh man, that was really beautiful, and then and then something else happens and you're like, that was goofy. But but then again, like I started, I started thinking, I tried to sort of divide these two possible films in my head, and I was thinking, all right, what if what if this character was played by a different actor and it was a more of a serious role, it was more of a soldier role, like Haldeman would
have written. You know, maybe maybe you bring in some like Michael Ironside to play in instead of a cartoon cowboy. We'll get to that in a bed. And I was thinking, well, that would be good. But but then again, it wouldn't be Robot Jocks, Like there's the ultimate form of the picture. Like the absurdities and the contradictions are one of the most notable things about it.
Oh no, no, I wouldn't change a thing about Robot Jocks. Robot Jocks is exactly the thing it should be. I absolutely would not change it. I mean, Robot Jos is the kind of film for which weird house cinema exists, something that that cannot just be praised as a normal kind of successful movie that is in some sense absurd or a failure, but is absolutely worth talking about and has things to be appreciated.
Yeah.
And I think just on the serious end of the spectrum, on the Haldamn end of the spectrum. Even though I think he ultimately like considered it a you know, a disappointing child from a creative standpoint, I feel like there are elements that totally arrange to you. You get the sense of the absurdity of war, a vast war machine, you know, a military industrial complex that just sucks everything in and in this film co ops reproduction. So yeah, there's lots to talk about here.
And one more thing I will say about it is that the ending of this film I think is a genuine triumph in both senses in which the movie works. It actually is a surprise narrative conclusion.
That I was kind of like, Wow, it's amazing.
They did that, but it's also hilarious in an unintentional way.
Yeah, absolutely, like it seems to like if it seems like there are two different films competing for coexistence. At the end of the film, those two visions come together and fist bump each other and it works.
So maybe we should talk about the cast.
All right. Well, our main character in this is Achilles, played by Gary Graham. I think a lot of people will recognize Gary Graham out that he's been around for a long time. The main place I knew him from due to all my time watching the Sci Fi Channel back in the day, is that Graham was on the Alien Nation TV series. He played Detective Matt Sykes on that.
Yeah, I don't know what I recognized him from, but he looks like a sort of combination of other existing actors, so that kind of helps him seem very familiar to me. He was a three way if they of Scott Glenn, Mick Jagger and Billy Bob Thornton put those three in a blender and that's him.
That's yeah, that's him. And you know, I don't know a lot about about him and his work, but in this particular film, he does a good job. I have no complaints about his acting. He's perfectly serviceable as the lead in an action film.
I would say, his name, Gary Graham is so close to the name Garrett Graham, of who of course was in Chopping Mall and who played Beef in Fantom of the Paradise, And this movie could only possibly have been improved by swapping him for Garrett Graham.
Oh, that would have been interesting. Yeah, And I feel like Garrett Graham would have had to lean into like a sleazier version of Achilles, like he has, like he has a natural sleezy era and a lot of the roles that he has.
So Achilles Achilles is the hero of the movie. And he is the titular robot jock. He is one of these pilots who drives around these giant mech robots and fights it out. And I guess we'll get into more of the plot mechanics and setting when we do the full plot breakdown. But imagine this guy we're talking about, like sitting in the pilot's seat of a giant mech warrior.
Yeah, and he is the best. He is the best robot jocks jock that this particular faction has at their disposal.
Right, But there are some up and coming robot jocks who maybe could rival his greatness and probably The most promising of them is a young robot jock named Athena.
Right, and she's played by Anne Marie Johnson. She was in the Heat of the Night TV show that I mainly remember as being a show that my grandfather watched all the time, and I don't think I ever watched. But Amory Johnson, she's been around forever. She's done a lot of work, and I understand she's also been heavily involved in the Screen Actors Guild. So yeah, a major name, especially if you're an actor, you probably are familiar.
With her now.
I think there are a couple of roles that make this movie by adding in a level of cartoonishness that I think clashes with whatever serious thing Holdoman may have been going for. And I would say that the one of the two main super cartoony characters is the villain of the film, Alexander, who is I think supposed to be Ivan Drago from Rocky four.
Yeah, you get a strong sense of that.
He is.
He is our Russian villain, our Russian superman that that fights, I should say, in a in this giant mech that has an amazing design but is interestingly less human, in form less humanoid compared to the mech used by our hero. So even though it's not I forget what the factions are even called, but it's not called the US versus the Soviet Union. This is supposed to all take place after warfare or a comet or something something that's wrecked the world.
There was a nuclear war. Yea, there was a nuclear war that like wiped out huge parts of humanity. And then after the nuclear war, your two main superpowers, which again are just apparently basically the United States and the Soviet Union. But the United States is called the Market and the Soviet Union is called the Confederation or the Confed.
That's right. Yeah, so these are the two main main factions. But yeah, they're essentially the US future US versus future Soviet Union. And this particular robot jocks Jack played by Paul is played by Paul Koslow, who lived nineteen forty four through twenty nineteen. He was a German Canadian actor who was in a lot of TV back in the day, but also some key seventies cult films. He had a supporting role in nineteen seventy one's The Omega Man oh Okay, which is a wonderful film.
Yeah.
His Russian accent in this is so awful. Every time he talks, I couldn't stop laughing. It's on the level of, like, you know, he like meets up his opponents in the bar for a drink. Why is that happening? By the way, we should talk about the when we get into the plot. But like so he and Achilles are drinking at the bar together and he's like, your drink It makes me think of blood?
Yeah yeah, I mean again, he was German Canadian, he did, you know? And this is not his natural accent. I had to look him up because he's been in some other like key film, like The Vanishing Point from seventy one. Okay, I was looking at it something that claimed to be his reel on YouTube, and yeah, he's he seems good in things, but he's he's never using a Russian accent except in this film, where it comes off as a like a Saturday Night Live or World Wrestling Federation level of believability.
Yeah, yeah, he would be like a wrestler called the Czar played by a guy from New Jersey.
Now that being said, he's he's very fun in this role, but that accent is not believable.
I literally think the one I just did to make fun of it was better than the one he uses in the movie. Okay, but then we got to get to our other main cartoon character from the movie. This one is the character of Texts text Conway, played by an actor named Michael Aldridge.
Yeah. This, Oh my goodness. So this character Tex Conway. He's our heroes trainer, he's his mentor. He's a former robot jocks champion in his own right who won some key battles in the past. But man, he is a root and toot in text and stereotype with a cowboy hat but a futuristic jumpsuit.
Yeah.
So he's Buck Strickland in a red and white jumpsuit talking about.
You can't get the lasers calibrated.
And he so he specifies that he was a former like you say, he was a former robot jock himself, like one of the greatest that ever lived, and that his jock, his jocking, his robot piloting won the area of Campuccia, which I guess is Cambodia for the market. So you got to imagine, Okay, they're capitalists now and it's all because of texts.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's He also reminds me of the rich Textan character from The Simpsons. Yes, pops up from time to time. Yeah, so it's it is a very cartoony role, but a richly enjoyable role. It's it's every
time he's on the screen, it's it's it's wonderful. And Aldrum himself is as an actor who was just a regular TV player back in the day, Like you just you scroll through his IMDb page and it's just everything that was on television with with some notable titles to call out, like Murder she wrote, Dallas of course the A team. He was on that mini series V So, yeah, he was in tons of stuff as well, and he's great in.
This as we as we go on, we should also be thinking about like who should be cast in each role for our twenty twenty one remake of Robot Jocks. And I think there's a pretty obvious choice that you landed on for the new casting of Texts.
Oh I think this was this was you?
Right?
Oh? No, no, well you brought up Buck Strickland, who was voiced by Stephen root Right and Steve and we would be perfect for this role because you know, he's great at yucking it up, but also is superb at also having this kind of streak of darkness which plays into Tex Conway's characters as well.
Right, all right, let's see, who else do we want to talk about in the in the connections.
Here, Well, let's see, there's a character named doctor Matsumoto played by Danny Kamikono, part of the He's part of This character's part of the tech team. This is a solid performer who did a lot of a lot of things, most notably The Karate Kid. He was in that, but he also appeared in nineteen ninety threes Robot Wars, directed by Albert band We'll get to him in a minute.
Same production company also Giant Robots, sometimes marketed as a sequel to this film, but not directly related to Robot Jocks.
One was not enough. People needed more robot jocks.
We always do. There's a fun cameo in this We mentioned Reanimator earlier and the Beyond well, Jeffrey Combs, the love Crafty and Lothario himself the B movie Icon shows up as just one of the robojocks. Robot Jocks fans that are cheering on what's happening.
Oh yeah, Occasionally we get some shots of the proletariat, you know, just the regular society and what they think about the ongoing They treat the Robot Jocks battles. It basically is a sporting event rather than a major geopolitical conflict.
Uh.
And and there is a great scene where we're watching a couple of the proles watch the robot Jocks announcements on TV, and for some reason they're wearing the hats that members of House Frey wear.
I don't know where that comes from.
Yeah, that is an interesting wrinkle in the show though, where it's geopolitics as pure entertainment to a large section of the populace. So yeah, there again another area where this show gets. Uh, this movie gets a bit meaty before it gets goofy again.
Now, one thing we see in the credits of the beginning of this movie is that it is definitely a Charles Band production, and that name. If you have watched a lot of trashy eighties movies, that name shows up a good bit.
Yeah that's right.
Yeah.
I almost hesitant to spend too much time on him here because I know we'll come back to some pictures that are actually directed by Charles Band or Albert Band. But briefly, we're talking about the Band family here. Their history begins with artist Max Band, who lived nineteen oh one through nineteen seventy four, born in Lithuania, lived in France, and then made the move to California. His son, Albert Band, who lived twenty four through two thousand and two, became
a filmmaker. He was assistant director on John Houston's The Asphalt Jungle in nineteen fifty and then went on to direct a bunch of genre films, including I Bury the Living from fifty eight, Dracula Dog from seventy eight, and Gooli's Too from in nineteen eighty seven. So he's already be Cinema loyalty. But then his son is Charles Band,
who again we've mentioned before on the show. So he's the man behind first Empire International Pictures that put out Robot Jocks and then Full Moon Features, and he directed some really awesome eighties and nineties sci fi horror films before going increasingly in the evil bong direction, which isn't quite my thing, but you know, you can't argue with success.
Oh he does like demon Bong movies.
Yeah, yeah, the evil Bong like one through however, many Ginger dead Man that that sort of thing.
Yeah, yeah, okay, but.
I can't stress enough that his earlier pictures are are often a lot more serious and are really interesting. Will definitely come back to something Charles Band directed in the future, but again, evil bong direction seems to have been very successful for Full Moon.
Okay.
Charles's brother, by the way, is Richard Band, a composer who worked on a lot of Full Moon pictures. And then Charles Band's son is Alex Band, the lead singer of a band called The Calling, which I'm not that familiar with but exists, so like the the Band family is still going strong.
They are a schlock dynasty.
And another connection to Robot Jocks is that Charles Band had a nineteen ninety film called Crash and Burn that was marketed in Europe as Robot Jocks two. But again there's another one where it's not actually related to Robot Jocks, but it does feature a cool giant robot plus Bill Moseley as a killer cyborg.
Oh, I'd watch that.
Now.
One thing I will say about this movie that I do just totally unironically enjoy is all of the robot fights, including I think there's some stop motion animation, and I think there's probably also some people in suits, some puppetry. I get the feeling that both are at play at different times. I could be wrong about that, but whatever they were doing, I really enjoyed the robot effects. It's
not like they look realistic. They don't, but they're that kind of non realistic, highlight stylized, great old school practical effects that I just adore.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And so it's not surprising that you have some you have it at least a couple of big names in this one that stood out was this guy Steve Berg, who was a conceptual designer. He went into work on the art department on a number of big films, big sci fi properties like Chronicles of Ritick, Alien Three, Leviathan, The Martian, Interstellar, Prometheus.
Oh, Leviathan.
You've seen Leviathan, right, Oh, we've talked about it. Yeah, that's right, we've talked about it on the show before. That was one of the nineteen was it eighty nine? Was it that the year when like five different underwater terror movies came out.
I think that was the underwater terror year. Yeah, we'll have to come back to Leviathan because there's a lot of fun stuff going on in that picture.
Oh, we should do a whole series of weird house cinema where we just do one after another. We do Leviathan, Deep Star six, Lords of the Deep, we were like round up the whole crew.
But it's like diving deeper into the ocean, Joe. The deeper you go on that play list, the greater the pressure, the harder it is to come out without doing harm to your body. Because Yeah, they're the underwater films that come to mind, and they are the ones you have to sort of hunt for from that same year, and they just get progressively harder to watch.
I remember the Lord's of the Deep.
Really not much happens in it, Like most of the movie is just watching people sit in a chair and say like they're coming for us.
Yeah.
Lords of the Deep is probably the point in anybody's attempt to watch all the underwater movies of eighty nine where they realized that their eyes were bigger than their stomach.
Yeah.
But oh, one of the huge names on this picture on robot jocks that helped create these wonderful stop motion effects, David Allen, who did stop motion animation and visual effects director credits on this. So this is the I think this is the real star of the movie. He's an awesome name in the stop motion animation field. He sadly died in nineteen ninety nine at the age of fifty four.
He worked on The Howling on Willow, Ghostbusters Too Young, Sherlock Holmes, you know, all the all films that had some wonderful stop motion work in them, I believe, And then he did a ton of Charles band Full Moon productions, providing the store to sort of stop motion work that
really sets some of those films apart. So he's the man behind the cool animation in Laser Blast, in Q the Wing Serpent, and in various other films like where oftentimes films where there's not much else notable about it, but just has some real eye catching stop motion effects.
Uh yeah, I would say that that's probably true about laser blasts, except that Laser Blast is pretty funny. Q the Winging Serpent that's a little bit different. I mean, that's got that that that Cohen energy like, there's a there's a pretty fun script underneath that one.
In addition to the great stop motion effects.
Yeah, so when David Allen died, he was still working on a picture called The Prime Evils and it was was never finished and this was going to be just like an old school stop motion animation fest. But yeah,
he died before he could finish it. But around twenty seventeen, Charles Band announced that it would be completed and released in twenty nineteen, and I think that got pushed back to twenty twenty, and then, of course most things in twenty twenty were pushed back or released in a weird fashion. So I don't think it's actually come out yet. But if you look around for information about the Prime Evils film, you'll see some clips from it, and it looks really awesome.
So I do hope that finally comes to light.
Well, are you ready to jump into a full breakdown of the plot and then maybe talk a little bit of weird science and the ideas in the movie.
Let's do it?
Okay, Well, I guess we got to start with the opening credits, which really set the scene. So the very first thing, you are panning over a snowy field of dead robots and mechanical debris, and I remember I was watching this with Rachel. She was like, is this a Christmas movie? Because it very much seems like a combination of the Terminator and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and
the voiceover narration. While you get the Terminator font credits, the voiceover says, it has been fifty years since the nuclear holocaust almost destroyed mankind. War is now outlawed. Oh good idea, nobody ever thought of that before. Just make
it illegal. And so they specify, well, with war outlawed, how do you settle disputes between these superpowers between the Market and the Confederation, While they say that territorial disputes are now settled by single combat, and they go on to explain here at the Confederation playing field in Siberia, and they recount that these robots that are piloted by robot jocks fight it out and whichever robot and they're corresponding jock wins the you know, to the victor go
the spoils. So like you might be fighting over who gets control of Campuccia, and the winner in this case apparently was the Market with the old tex Conway piloting his mech and so they get control of the land and then you immediately cut to the present from here, where there is an ongoing fight between Alexander, who we mentioned before, the villain the Russian robot Jock, and a market robot Jack who I think is maybe named Ajax.
I could be wrong about.
That, but he's a guy in a red and white jumpsuit with a black guy and a bloody lip, lying in the cockpit of his robot. His robot has been destroyed and he's trying to throw in the towel. He's like pleading for mercy.
He says, Alexander, you win, Alexander. I can't move. I think my back is.
Broken, and Alexander just coldly says judgment.
I would like judgment. It's very very much.
If he dies, he dies Ivan Drego thing and then he just stomps on him. He uses his robot to stomp on Ajax and kill him, and it's victory for the Confederation.
Fun behind the scenes fact is that I believe that the stop motion animation we see in this ultimate this opening encounter was actually originally test footage that was used to convince Charles Band that they could make the picture.
Oh that's interesting, So maybe that's why it's in a different setting than the rest of what goes on in the movie. So the battle is a victory for the Confederation. I'm not sure exactly what they're fighting over in this case. And again, yeah, Ajax is like, I yield mercy and Alexander's like, too bad, and he just smashes him. And then Alexander looks into the camera and says, you're next Achilles. He's you know, he's got it out for Achilles. I guess because Achilles.
Is the best and he wants to defeat him.
Yeah, he's all about just superiority and proving himself in battle.
And so next we cut to the market robot Jocks commands. It's like mission control for robot jocks, where the Allied robot jocks and their friends watch in horror as Ajax is stomped by the bot and we find out that Alexander has killed nine of their guys. Now and it is and there's immediately talk about why this is.
It's because there's a spy, and.
I feel like this is great. You know, set this up right at the beginning that there's a betrayer in their ranks. Somebody keeps giving the Confederation advance information about the new weapons systems that they bring online in their robots.
Right, and of course you only have what five characters with names that matter, so so you know, you don't have have that many choices here to go on, but you easily can see one of them is a spy, and part of the fun of the film is going to be trying to figure out who that spy is.
Right, So they are, So there are various people hanging out and you get to meet some of the characters. One of them, of course, is Tech Conway, who've talked about before. Techs is a kill he's trainer and he's, as we said, a former robot jock himself who had been very successful and ultimately victorious. Now I guess he's retired and he's he's the burgess Meredith teaching Rocky how to fight. Oh and we also find out that they are fighting over Alaska. They're fighting for control of Alaska.
I'm not sure why they want it so bad, but that's what the dispute.
Is, right, Yeah, Like maybe it's the first step and then subsequently conquering other areas that belong to the market.
But I guess we find out that Achilles is the only robot jock left that Alexander has killed all of the other market robot jocks. It seems like they should have had more, but eh, and I guess they.
Are making more. We'll get to that in a second.
So then from mission control you cut straight to a sparring scene where they've got Achilles fighting a circle of people all around him. All these people in pads surround him and attack him one at a time so he can fight them off. It's kind of like that scene in The Chinese Connection where Bruce Lee goes to the Japanese martial arts school and is surrounded by people in the circle and they all come in one at a time and he.
Has to fight him off.
Except everybody here is wearing goofy looking red pads.
Not only pads, though, Joe, They're also wearing jumpsuits. Because this film is a celebration of futuristic jumpsuits. They're like multiple different varieties of jumpsuits, and they seem to be whoever is in charge of jumpsuits did a good job of putting them together and making them look quality and keeping track of who should be wearing what, which I love because I realized more and more watching this film
that it's something I love about science fiction films. I love a good jumpsuit, be it a jumpsuit in something like Mystery Science Theater three thousand or any other science fiction film. Like in the future, there will be jumpsuits and you will be assigned to jumpsuit. And so everybody's got one, even Text Conway's wearing this big, diculous bright jumpsuit.
Yeah, they're red and white jumpsuits.
That's so.
The market wears red and white jumpsuits and the Confederation wears I think yellow and black jumpsuits.
I think that's right.
So we see Gary Graham the Achilles fighting all these people, and he does quite well, except there's one fighter who really puts up a good fight against him. And it turns out that this fighter is Athena, who at first I thought her name was Pathena the way they were saying it. But we find out that a lot of these fighters, or maybe all of them, are something. This is again something I couldn't understand what they were saying at first, but it becomes clear they are what the
characters refer to as two bees. In this scene, Text makes his prejudice against multiple types of people. Clear, it's clear that he does not like two bees. And he also states his opinion that women will never be jocks, so there will never be a woman robot jock.
Yes, he also doesn't seem to like Japanese people.
Yes, text is just full of prejudices.
Yeah, and so you then but then so you're wondering, what are these two bees? Why doesn't text like the tubs and what are they? Professor Laplace shows up and I love her. She is all business.
She shows up.
She's this uh, this small older lady who is apparently like the the market's greatest geneticist, greatest scientist, and she's there to collect DNA samples from all of the great robot jocks. So she like gives these tubes to U two Achilles and texts and is like, I need your genetic material because she's developing what she calls gen jocks, which, as far as I can tell, these are, uh, these are eugenically created perfect robot jock soldiers that are that
are created through in vitro fertilization. And there is there is like there's a twobe race in this movie. The people they're calling tubs are these people who are who are a product of in vitro fertilization, which they regard in the film as this like bizarre futuristic thing, even though it was it was already being done at the time the movie was made.
Yeah, it's in it. So first of all, not a lot of detail is really provided about how they're supposedly doing this, Like are they are they growing two bees at the rate one would actually create you know, you know, reed new people through a process like this, or is there some sort of sci fi speeding up of the process. You know, is this Boys from Brazil? Or is this attack of the Clones? I can't tell.
Well, the way it seems like in this movie the concept of two bees is invoked because it's it sounds futuristic. It's almost as if it's being written about by someone who didn't maybe didn't even know what was actually involved.
I'm not sure, right, Yeah, Like I'm one hand on the Haldeman level, I think it works perfectly as this idea that like the military industrial complex ends up absorbed being co opting reproduction itself, you know, like that makes sense within his seeming worldview of of the military engine. But yeah, it also hearkens to a time when when there were a lot of headlines and certain a certain amount of fear mongering and even moral panic about the
idea of test to babies. Yeah, so, perhaps some of our listeners remember that hysteria, because I feel like we see less of it now specifically.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's this movie is weirdly projecting into the future a kind of temporary, irrational stigma that arose from culture at a particular.
Time, like in the late eighties or early nineties.
Yeah, because again, what Test two Babies refers to is in vitro fertilization, and in vitro means within the glass. But the process doesn't actually take place in a test tube, but rather in a Petrie dish. The egg is fertilized in a in a Petrie dish, and when it is three to five days old, it's transferred to a uterus. And today this is mainstream, granted expensive, but it's a mainstream reproductive choice. The term itself, however, this is interesting.
Test two babies was coined in the nineteen thirties to refer to artificial insemination. Huh, So in both cases, we can, you know, just taste the moral panic regarding some sort of new reproduction trend. And in both cases these are things that you know, for the most part, quickly, it
quickly became normalized. It is also interesting that there's like a brief gag in the film about just the idea of sperm donation as well as Oh yeah, in and of itself, is this ridiculous, like yuck it up kind of scenario.
Yeah, text goes like, there ain't here's my DNA to make no tubes.
Yeah, that's exactly how it went. So Yeah, anyway, another case of science fiction doing what science fiction often does. But it certainly seems a bit silly now given the mainstream acceptance.
Of ib Yeah.
But the two bees remain a major theme in the film, and as I said, Laplace announces to everybody that there is basically a two B race between the between the superpowers, and each one is creating their own robot jock super soldiers, and so there's like a constant escalation back and forth. Let's see, so we meet some of the two bes, and if you watch this movie, they will say the word two b's until it loses all meaning. There is just so much talk about two bees in this movie.
But we meet some of the young young soldiers, and of course Athena, the one we were talking about earlier, who's a major character in the film. And then we see Alexander doing a threat video for Achilles. It's kind of like those wrestling promos where the wrestler would come out and say, like next week, I'm going to destroy
you in the cage. But then after that we get a view of the populace at large, just people hanging out in the street, watch on big public TV screens the ongoing saga of the robot jocks conflict, and so this is where we see the dudes in the house fray hats. But also most people we see in this movie who are outside at any point are wearing masks, which was kind of strange to watch this year. I don't think they're wearing masks for any disease control reason.
My best guess is that so it's part of the setting that the world they live in is after a nuclear war has taken place. So my guess is it's supposed to be that there are radio nuclides everywhere and that the masks are to help prevent people from inhaling radioactive particles. I don't know if that would be effective in reality, but I think that's at least the reason that they're shown wearing them.
Yeah, it is interesting to watch that this year because so many films and TV shows I've watched this year. I'm just constantly thinking to myself, why are they standing so close to each other? Why is no one wearing a mask?
Huh?
You know, as illogical as it is to expect that in a film from ten twenty years ago, as opposed to out in the normal world, where it is perfectly reasonable to expect that.
So it's coming down to the big fight, right, It's going to be Achilles versus Alexander. So we see Achilles get into his robot and it's like getting ready for a rocket launch. There's like a launch platform and there's all this staff getting everything ready. He's wearing his jumpsuit and his helmet and everybody, instead of break a leg, they say crash and burn. That's the good luck saying. And in fact, they specify in the movie that it is bad luck to say good luck, just like.
In a theater.
While we were watching it, Rachel made some good joke. She said something like, we call it the confed play might have gotten that wrong on the delivery. But anyway, Achilles gets into a giant Optimus Prime, and of course there are a bunch of kids who call Achilles on a video phone before he goes into battle. I think they're his brother's many children and or his brother in law, maybe his sister's husbands. Anyways, a bunch of people call him on a video phone and they wish him good luck.
And then so he goes into battle, and then we get one of the first big like full stop motion animation fight scenes. We get to see what the robots do when they fight, and I love the effects.
In this scene.
You get these these they sort of like go down the list of trying out each of their weapons on each other, like they're like try that new green laser pair. And this scene I thought is just great. Like it's not like it looks realistic, but that's not the point.
It looks excellent.
And I have to say the animation style that they use, the stop motion animation and the suits as well. They create a very clunky sort of movement, which I think really works well in the film because we're used to seeing some giant robot battles and more recent things like the Pacific Rim movies and so forth, and there's a
lot of like fluid modern action in those films. But I feel like the clunky action in this works works really well because it does feel like colossal machines doing very specific things, and the stakes are really high, like there's no wasted movement. And we'll get into some of the physical challenges of the idea of giant machines battling each other in a bit, but I ultimately really like the kind of clunky and deliberate motions that happen in these battles.
Yes, and so the battle ends with a horrific tragedy. So they sort of fight each other to a draw. But then then Alexander tries to do something dirty and fire a fire a projectile weapon and a part in the match when he's not supposed to do that, and it looks like it's going to hit the stands of spectators. I don't know why there were stands of live spectators, but this.
Is it's a power claw. It's like a power punch, yeah, exactly, like he launches the fist of the robot.
And Achilles is like, no. The people to reference Superman four he goes no the people and he dives in front of it before it can hit the stands.
But I don't know.
I guess he should have anticipated this. The power claw hits him and knocks him back, and he falls on the stands, crushing tons of people and killing them, and there is I'm not sure I was trying to put my finger on what exactly is so funny about this, but the staging of the horrific mayhem that we see in the aftermath of him falling on the stands is hilarious. There are all these like bloody bodies all over the place,
but for some reason it looks so funny. And I think maybe it's because the bodies are all kind of like perfectly evenly spaced apart from each other. It just looks staged in a really funny way.
I didn't get that as much, but I was thinking, well, like, well, I don't think the boy needed to see this. It's best, so we didn't watch it. One kind of neat bit of trivia about that scene, though, is apparently audio from it is used in the creation was used in the creation of the nine Inch Nails track. The becoming off of the downward Spiral huh okay, which I'd never picked up on that before. But as it turns out, like
that album. As much as we might think of the Downward Spiral as just you know being this this industrial, you know, deep gothic, phallic oriented, you know, plunge into the psyche, it's ultimately a celebration of science fiction films from the day because you've got samples from Robot Jocks, but also from THHX eleven thirty eight, from Leviathan, Angel Heart, Texas, Chainsaw, Massacre, Alien, The Elephant Man, and.
Sorcerer, the Truck movie.
Yeah, the Truck movie, the remake of Wages of Fear that had the awesome, I mean just amazing Tangerine Dream soundtrack.
You had me at Leviathan.
So next thing in the movie, we get to see what their international Criminal Cord or whatever it is looks like, and it's just dudes in referee outfits, which like, so, these these referees are now settling international disputes. Who appoints them? Where do they come from? I don't know.
I assume it's supposed to be some sort of Unitedations type thing, But yeah, they have this cool floating vehicle, this like hover hovering referee vehicle that they use, which is pretty cool.
But they're wearing literally the black and white stripe referee outfits, and they're they're like justices. They're like judges presiding over a trial in which both sides are presenting arguments about why they technically won this match in which a bunch of people got crushed. And it turns out the referees decided is inconclusive and there will have to be a rematch in one week, And of course Alexander loves this. He cries out in the trial. He says, yes, one week,
I kill you dead. And Achilles is very sad because he does not want to fight anymore. He says, I did my contract ten fights.
That's it.
So he's like, I won't do anymore. I retire, and Alexander calls him out. He says, coward, you lost your nerve.
Well, he's also really torn up about all the people that died when his robot fell into the stands right, yes, so I think it's understandable. Like he's like, I'm done, I don't want anymore of this. Let the tub's handle and the tubs of course are like yes, yeah, let us in there. This is all we've been raised to do.
Oh, they're so excited that the tub's are loving it. One of them is going to get to fight. So one of the toob boys says Achilles is a coward for retiring, but Pathena is not having it. She stands up for Achilles, and Athena is like, he's not a coward. And then we get an argument with the market commissioner. I guess he's like Achilles's boss. I'm not sure exactly what he's supposed to be, but he's in charge of the robot jocks for the market side, I guess. And
he tries to argue. We get like squabbling over what the contract means. He's like, you haven't actually finished your contract because you didn't finish ten fights. The last one was inconclusive and it isn't over until someone wins. And then Achilles response, I don't know what this line means. He responds by saying, you sound like one of your damn two bees.
What what? What is the meaning of that?
I don't know. I guess it's just that the two bees are utterly indoctrinated into this this idea of.
Warfare.
Okay, you know like the new generation has raised for it and knows nothing else and has and just in a way, it's kind of like they represent like youthful vigor for in almost innocence before the battle. And of course he is the veteran. He's been through it, he's come out the other end, uh and and knows that warfare is horrible.
Right, So I guess the next thing that we get to is this really amazing scene. It's it's like there's a dance party in a bar that includes text dancing with a woman and it's hard to describe it. You just need to see this scene. It's like the scene in Message from Space where they have their canteena equivalent the it is a party that must be witnessed.
Yeah, it's a fun atina scene.
And so while this dance party is going on in the background, Achilles, now depressed, is in the bar getting blackout drunk. He's doing this thing where he's drinking the alphabet. So he's going down the alphabet, drinking a drink for every letter, and I think he's made his way to J and the bartender suggests a julop.
Wow.
Wow, this is an interesting concept that I kind of glossed over watching the film. Certainly not advisable for a single evening, though, But I wonder what would be the proper way to drink the alphabet. It would be kind of interesting to make that list and to pick out a particular cocktail for each one.
What starts with a give me one alcohol please. But so then he's sitting there and then all the two b's come in, and they're young and full of excitement and vigor, and they try to cheer Achilles up, talking about how the.
They this was great.
The way they try to cheer him up is they talk about, Hey, the audience members in the stands signed releases. You know, they agreed to be there, they knew what the You shouldn't feel bad.
Yeah, the two b's have just bought every line that the market has told them. Yeah, I just believe it all absolutely, Like.
They actually read the fine print and they love it. They're all on board with every bit of the contract. And then Alexander shows up and this is one of multiple scenes in the movie where the characters are drinking in this bar that they share with the opposing side.
And I don't know how to so, so the premise that's going on is that the Confederation is constantly winning these fights because of info security leaks on the market side, like there are spies and everybody's concerned about how people are finding out about the new weapons systems on the market robots. But then at night, the two different sides just go get drunk together in the same bar. That's that seems not secure.
Yeah, absolutely, it seems like a terrible idea, but it works really well to move the plot along because it's one of those things. Anytime you have giant robot battles or giant monster suit battles or whatever, you got to have a lot of human interaction to pat out the movie. And this works well for the most part.
Right, So, one of the kids, so Alexander shows up at the bar and he's just being a bully. He's just swinging his weight around, just being me and everybody, and one of the kids challenges him and he and he scoffs.
He's like, I do not fight poo bees.
So apparently Alexander is also prejudiced against the two bees, and Alexander starts twisting this kid's fingers and then Achilles, still drunk, intervenes and that they start to fight, but then Alexander says he will not fight him. Now he says, I.
Do not fight for fun? What do you fight for?
Which is a strange moment where the movie suddenly like asks you to be thoughtful in a way that it hasn't maybe so far, or certainly not for a while, because it appears that Achilles does not actually know. He's maybe like, huh, I've spent my life becoming a soldier, but I really don't know if there's a good reason for any of the fighting that I'm doing.
It feels like an artifact of an earlier version of the script, but it's also an energy that we come back to later.
Right, So, Athena carries the drunk Achilles home. He she apparently she takes his clothes off, and then the next morning they have this long, like naked hangover conversation where he's like dragging his sheets around and arguing with her about arguing about what they're fighting for and who should be fighting, and Athena gets mad at him, I guess because he's retiring, and she's like, I was bred not to have fear.
I was bred for a purpose. You you just happened, And.
So it's clear actually that the prejudice kind of goes both ways. Like the two bees apparently disdain non two bees because they exist for no particular reason.
Yeah, just random existence. Yeah, so it's interesting. There's a fair amount of cool world building going on in this film.
Yeah, and so she's like one of the things in the scene I think is she's trying to figure out, like, what are the secrets of how he always won his battles and he was and he's like, I don't know, a lot of it's just luck. And she doesn't like this answer. So she gets really mad at him, and she says, I wanted to learn the secret of the Great Achilles, but you just talk about luck and fear. There's nothing you can teach me except how to lose.
So there's another scene where we see like the the youngsters training, they're they're doing their their their to B exercises, and Text reiterates to Achilles. He says for the second time, you know a woman can never be a robot jock.
Yeah.
Yeah, he's again the old the old fashioned attitudes of text here.
Yeah, so text is quite the sexist and he and he makes it clear over and over.
But this does not.
This does not discourage Achilles from retiring. I think maybe he's trying to talk Achilles into staying on. He's like, look, you know, you're the only one who can do it. But Achilles retires anyway, and he becomes a sivvy. Uh So you see him suddenly going around the city. He's not at mission control anymore. He sees a mural on a wall somewhere. I think that has his picture on it, and someone has written the word coward but misspelled it's cow erd.
Now, how do you know that's not just how they spell in the future.
Go, that's true. Spelling changes over time. That's a very good point.
It's just like how in the future the word jox plural is spelled with an X instead of cks.
Yeah.
But so now the market's got a problem. Achilles, their greatest warrior, has retired. So they've got to put one of these two b's in the robot to fight Alexander. So they go through some rapid two B training and the way this shakes out is that Athena and the other two bees have to climb the Agrocrag. There's this big, rattling jungle gym of death and they're all fighting each other to get to the top first and climb through
this hole in the ceiling, and Athena is victorious. She is the greatest of the two b's, so she's going to become the new jocks, and as a newscaster declared, she is the first female robo jock. But Achilles, now at home, sees this on TV and he's like, no, I can't let her go into battle, so he goes back.
He goes back to Jock's control, and he's like, I will be the jock, and he trains with Texts, and then there's a scene where doctor Matsumoto and Text begin to argue about how to best keep the new robot system a secret from spies. Doctor Matsumoto has taken measures to keep it secret in a way that Text does not approve of. And so there's more drinking at the bar. Of course I mentioned that would come back. Alexander sits down next to Achilles, and he declares that you make my drink.
Taste like blood? Thinking, is that an expression? What does that mean? Do you know what he's getting at there?
I can think of no way that that makes sense. Yeah, unless because he is he saying I can't tell. He's saying it in a way where he's like, my drink is better because it tastes like blood, or is it worse because it tastes like blood. It's really hard to get a read on what exactly floats Alexander's boat here.
Yeah, so we're ramping up to the final confrontation between Achilles and Alexander. But then before that, there is a great scene where I think maybe we shouldn't reveal what happens, but there is a confrontation about who is actually the spy on the market side, who's been leaking the new technology secrets to the enemy. There's a great show down there that has some good dialogue in it, actually, well some like good dialogue that changes almost mid sentence to become hilariously cliched.
Yeah, it's punctuated by hilarious cliches, but has some nice lines in there.
Yeah.
So it's it's a very interesting scene, and of course the spy is.
Revealed, but we won't spoil it for you. We're not going to tell you who the spy is.
But then anyway, so Athena comes to Achilles room the night before the big battle, and you think maybe this is going to pan out to be like a love scene, but instead she tricks him and shoots him with a sedative and locks him in his apartment. Because her angle is no, I will be the robot jock, I will fight Alexander.
I don't mean to harp on the film, because the film looks great and I love I love the way the sets look, I love I love the props, I love I love everything. But in this scene when she uses an injector gun on him, it's it's fairly obvious that in the wide shots she's using a hot glue gun, like a hot glue gun that's been painted silver, and then on close ups it's like an actual injection gun or something that looks more, far more believably like an
injection gun. So it's just something interesting. I noticed. They didn't really take me out of the film, And again I don't want to harp on it, like this is like, yea, you know, the cheapness of the movie, because for the most part it looks wonderful.
The effects budget went mainly into the robot battles, I think.
And jumpsuits too. Jumpsuits and robot battles.
Yes, but I think you're right. In the close ups it's it's a regular prop gun. So it makes me wonder why they couldn't use the regular prop gun in the wide shots too. But in the wide shots it's a thousand percent of hot glue gun.
Yeah, maybe something that changed pretty late in production.
Yeah.
So anyway, the next morning, Athena goes in to take Achilles place inside the robot. She's got her visor down so nobody can see who she is. She's pretending to be him, and she's going to go do the fight herself. Meanwhile, meanwhile, Achilles escapes his apartment and he runs to the battlefield,
and we get this final showdown. And I don't know how much we should say about the final showdown or how exactly to talk about it, but it's a pretty great robot battle that involves flying into space and different interesting weapons get deployed. I don't know, it's a lot of fun.
Yeah, I mean, there's one way I will spoil one weapon that they use, that is the Bolo saw, which I remember from watching part of this, I think probably on Sci Fi Channel back in the day. But even in the rewatch, it was just a wonderful moment because I've never seen a sci fi weapon quite like it. It's this device it like shoots a chain around the limb of another robot and then that that boloed chain like locks into place, allowing rotary motion of the chain.
So it works kind of like an inverted chainsaw then to saw off the limb of an enemy robot. And it's wonderful. It's great. I'm surprised it's not. I don't know that I've seen it ripped off in any subsequent giant robot movie or anything, but they should because it's a it's a fabulous weapon.
Yeah, totally.
Maybe we should just focus on the big robots for a minute before we get to the glory of the ending.
Yeah. So again, the robots look pretty awesome in this a combo of awesome old school stop motion, and I think some old school man ensued effects and the battles may not feel as dynamic as something you get nowadays or even in mech fiction of decades past, but it all has a feeling of authenticity to it, and I think one of the main reasons, and this is something that I think ties in well with you know, some elements you see in the forever war. These are big
weapons and mass and gravity. These are perpetually your greatest threat and your enemy's greatest weakness. As such, one of the worst things that could possibly happen to you in one of these robot jocks max is that you might fall over or be pushed over.
Yeah, and this is actually, I think really smart, Like, if you're going to take the premise seriously, it's good to think about physics in this way. And I guess Holdeman, did you know he knew a lot about physics, and so he did actually have this in mind. And I think this is a great monster science connection because it's worth keeping this in mind about biology. Evolutionary design problems
are not symmetrical across great differences in scale. One of the examples of this offen sided is, you know those like articles we've probably said things like this in the past, being you know, being kind of loose when we talked about you say, like if a flea were the size of a car, it could jump the height of the Empire, state building or something like that. Except the problem is, in a way that could be true just as a matter of you know, scaling up the distance of a
flea's jump. But it's also not literally true, because if a flea were the size of a car, it wouldn't be able to do that anymore. It's like athleticism would not scale up proportionately. It's because it's the size it is that it can make that jump proportional to its body length. So depending on the size of your body, you actually face vastly different threats and different constraints from
the physical world. And one of my favorite examples, which I think people rarely think about, is the amazing difference that body size makes when you're thinking about the dangers posed to you by water. So there's a classic article by the great scientist JBS hall Day and who was behind a number of extremely important biological concepts in the
twentieth century. He wrote this article called on being the Right Size, And this is a paragraph that I remember when I first read this, this really did blow my mind.
So think about this.
Haldane writes, A man coming out of the bath carries with him a film of water about one fiftieth of an inch in thickness.
This way is.
Roughly a pound. A wet mouse has to carry about its own weight of water. A wet fly has to lift many times its own weight, and as everyone knows, a fly, once wetted by water in any other liquid, is in a very serious position. Indeed, an insect going for a drink is in as great danger as a man leaning out over a precipice in search of food. If it once falls into the grip of the surface tension of the water, that is to say, it gets wet,
it is likely to remain so until it drowns. A few insects, such as water beetles, control to be unwettable, the majority keep well away from their drink by means
of a long prebosis. So it's amazing to think about how like getting wet doesn't bother us at all, but for much smaller animals because of the difference in the mass of your body and the strength of your muscles compared to the surface area of your body and the properties of water at that scale, water could be like this horrifying slime that takes a grip on you, and
like you can't get away from. But a lot of these asymmetries, not all of them, but a lot of them are based on the force of gravity and the ratio of surface area to mass, as an object, it gets bigger. And this brings us back to the robot jocks. So to read a section from that same JBS Halliday in article, he's talking about the dangers of falling. What falling is as a threat to animals of different size quote to the mouse. In any smaller animal, it presents
practically no dangers. You can drop a mouse down a thousand yard mind shaft, and on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes. For the resistance presented to movement by the air is proportional to the surface of the moving object, divide an animal's length, breadth, and
height each by ten. Its weight is reduced to a thousandth but its surface only to one hundredth So the resistance to falling in the case of a small animal is relatively ten times greater than the driving force. And I think this would absolutely be the same kind of concern if you were considering mech battles. So if you were to have something like the autoloader and aliens, you know,
like these roughly slightly bigger than human sized mechs. Fighting in those things would be entirely different a proposition than fighting in these hundred foot tall or two hundred foot tall giant robots, where in the case of the larger robots, gravity itself is an immense threat to you, like just falling over will will very likely destroy you.
So yeah, in this film, you get you do get the impression that most of these robot jocks battles end when the first combatant is is knocked over or made prone, Like it seems like most of the time there's no getting up from that, right, And it's interesting to think about, like, like how did they get here? How did they get to the point where they're basically each battling in a
skyscraper on legs? Yes, and I'm guessing there's there would have been an arms race over time, So maybe they started smaller, like just kind of like power armor sort of a situation maximize the individual for one on one battle.
But then over time, like what do you do do You start getting bigger suits, Like my suit's bigger than yours and has bigger weapons, so now you've got to get bigger too, And so now we see like the end results of that where the combatants are absolutely as large as they could possibly get and are you know, and they have all of these weaknesses based on that size, but there's just no scaling back at this point.
Yeah, that's interesting. It's almost one of those like prisoner's dilemma type problems where like the incentives for the individual are different than the incentives for like both parties when they look at things together, and if you could just get them agreed to both agree to scale back down, that would be better for both. But they but you can't get them to agree to that, so they just keep getting bigger. And that also brings me to another
interesting question. This movie raises some things about it that you wonder if they would make sense in reality, and that is the very concept of symbolic warfare through single combat or champion combat. So the premise of the film is that you've got these superpowers, they are in violent conflict with one another, but they can't go to war.
They don't go to war on the whole.
Instead, they pick one person from each side to get in the robot fight it out, and then the winner gets whatever it is they wanted.
Yeah, yeah, you know it works in the in this film and of course you all see this in mythology, when mythological characters are used to embody whole nations or peoples,
et cetera. It does remind me a bit of something that we discussed in our stuff to Blow your Mind episodes on the ant Wars earlier in the year, where we talked about the various tournament tournament battle that you see in ants, but also in certain small armed groups historically in human civilization, and the idea here being like, if you're if you don't have large armies that are combating each other, sometimes it makes more sense for a select few individuals to engage in sort of you know,
less high stakes combat, to sort of feel each other out, to see which way the battle would go and then act accordingly. But in these cases we're still not talking about like one soldier fighting one soldier champion versus champions.
Right, And this brings us back to something that we also talked about in the ant Wars episode, which are
these models. Again, these these are not perfect descriptions of what actually happens in battle, but they are somewhat accurate descriptions for modeling casualties in conflict, and they're known as Lanchester's square laws and Lanchester's linear laws, and so the main idea there is more complicated than this, but the main idea is that as you approach a situation that is a war of all against all, so the more your battle resembles something where any soldier can engage any
other at any time, so maybe like a shooting war. As it approaches that instead of the type of battle where one soldier can only fight one other soldier at a times a big series of duels, as it becomes more of a war of all against all, than the advantages provided by having superior numbers go up, not just in a linear way but in a squared way, so that having superior numbers is much more important than having better individual fighters in a war of all against all.
And that's be because like the force with superior numbers can quite quickly reduce the numbers of the other forces so that they can't really put up a fight of any kind. And so anyway, in a world with technology that enables, you know, a war of all against all, like a basic shooting war scenario, the side with superior
numbers is almost always at an extreme advantage. And that makes me think about how It's hard to imagine in a modern context, with modern technology, that champion warfare would ever really emerge unless it were like imposed by an outside force. Like, for champion warfare to be the way that you would settle geopolitical conflict, it would require the side with more with numerical superiority to agree to the champion warfare and to say, yes, we will honor the
outcome of this duel. But champion warfare necessarily improves the odds for the weaker force and hurts the odds for the strong young force. So why would the stronger force agree to it?
Yeah?
Now, if in this film, if the judges, if the referees were aliens representing say a technologically advanced species that could just simply wipe out either side without thinking about it, like that would potentially make more sense.
Yeah, but it did.
Well, But I was gonna in that case though, Why not just have a trial where like you argue about who actually has the correct claim to the land, rather than people just both say they want the land and you settle it with a fight.
I wish I could have, you know, seen more what Haldeman had in mind for this, like what his read on it, would it would have been, you know, because I mean, certainly it worked, there's the symbolic level at which it works. But I wonder what the world building arguments would have been.
Yeah, I mean I think obviously it would be better for the soldiers and better for the people on both sides of a conflict if it could be settled without massive bloodshed, whatever whatever that method is. I mean, even if it's single combat between robot jocks, that's better than just having an all out total war where you send people into the meat grinder. But the the you know, you hit the war pigs problem, Like leaders setting military policy are going to want to win. They're not usually
the people who themselves have to die in battle. So while the weaker force may very much want to settle things with robot jocks, it just seems like the side with the numerical and weapons superiority would tend to just say, no, now we'll have a war.
Yeah.
But you know, ultimately, this is this is not a picture that celebrates warfare. It's it has has a message of you know, an anti war message, which which I ultimately like.
Well, let's talk about the ending, the very ending, which is both actually sort of transcendently excellent and hilarious.
Yeah.
So basically they just battle the hell out of each other. So this is this ends up being like the main event in which robots do get up after being knocked prone through the use of superior tactics, but also lots of tricky weaponry, because again it all comes down to what secret weapons do you have that your enemy doesn't know about. So they engage in a lot of this and they end up going up into the stratosphere. They
end up coming back down again. They end up destroying each other's suits, and there's some clever twists and turns in that battle, but it ends up with them both unsuited, both of them just on amid the rubble, trying to bash each other with like pipes and pieces of metal, like reduced to you know, almost like paleolithic battle.
Yeah, yeah, literally trying to bash each other with sticks and rocks.
And they reach a point where, okay, it looks like Achilles is going to be victorious, you know, it's one of those those moments where is he going to finish off his adversary, But no, Achilles has another option that he presents, and they have this wonderful little back and forth, which I quite like the dialogue, you know, and the way that they ended this because Achilles says to him, you can live, and Alexander says, yes if I kill you with this, and it's the pipey thing that he's holding or.
Was it a rock?
I thought it was a rock, but I could be wrong.
Okay, And then Achille says we can both live, and then Alexander says we are already dead. We are robot jocks, which which I think is a line. I think it works here, but I also have to remind myself that Haldeman's original working title for this was The Mechanics. Yes, so so that would have been a more interesting line. And he's like, no, we like we're mere mechanics, you know, like we're not even really controlling these things, these things
and this this military engine. We're just caring for it and making it run, right.
I mean, in a weird way. It's an exchange that, with a little bit of like verbal tweaking, could have been very powerful and is in some way as powerful, but because of the phrase robot jocks, it it absolutely spills over into absurdity, you know. So like if he had said we can both live, and Alexander said, no, we are already dead.
We're soldiers.
I think the idea would be driven home there that like their their fates are not up to them, you know, their fates are decided for them by forces beyond their control. Uh, And that does seem to be the theme. But instead he says, you know, we can live.
No, we are robot shocks yeah.
But then ultimately, like this is the spoiler for the end of the film, but but he wins. Achilles is able to convince Alexander that yes, we can live. We don't have to fight, we can stop fighting, and they stop fighting and then they do that awesome fist bump at the end, and that closes the picture, and you end up with this message of hope, that you know that we can resist, that we can move beyond like senseless battle. And I love it. I thought it ended perfectly, ends on a great note.
It ends with the hero and the villain agreeing not to kill one another.
Right, And they didn't do that thing that they often do in films where the hero appeals to the villain's humanity and the villa villain seems to say yes, but then goes for a double right then yeah, and then you know he shoots him dead, and then it's like, oh, well, he did kill the villain, but he tried. He gave him a chance, he gave him a chance to be good. No, instead they do something different, and I think it works that.
I mean, so many movies use that.
It is a plot device that I have come to absolutely despise just because of how common and how in a way, how cheap it is. Because what it's trying to show you is that it's trying to have it both ways. It's trying to have the hero show mercy and not be vindictive and cruel. So the hero gets the upper hand, gives the villain a chance to like walk away or to live or whatever, and then the villain tries to stab them in the back and then the hero kills them.
Yeah, it's trying to have it both ways.
So you get to see the villain killed and punished, but you also get to see the hero have mercy. I think it's it's better to just choose one or the other.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know what kind of arguments may have happened, or maybe there weren't arguments over this part, but I like the way it turned out, So I don't know if this was ultimately the way Halman wanted it, or if this was more of a Stuart Gordon direction, or maybe this is just the way it feels. Is like, this is where the two visions come together and they work.
It is a weirdly transcendent way to conclude this utterly ridiculous film.
All right, and well, speaking of concluding, it's time for us to conclude. You may be wondering, though, where can I see robot Jocks? Unfortunately this is a tough one. You can buy some at times crazy overpriced DVDs, vhs and Blu rays of robot Jocks, but the Shout Factory edition of this from twenty fifteen is currently out of print print. I think it went out of print in October of twenty nineteen, so hopefully it'll become more widely
available in the future. No one seems to be streaming it, like, not even for rent or or digital purchase right now, say for the odd unauthorized like highly unauthorized version. Joe, didn't you find this one on Facebook of all places?
Well, I didn't watch it there. I ended up watching the version that you rented lent me, but dig around for it if you desire.
But yeah you should also.
I mean, I would say, start a letter writing campaign to the Criterion Collection and get them to put out their own edition of robot Jocks, which is what.
The world deserves.
Yeah. Yeah, we definitely rented it. Got it from Atlanta's own video drome. They're still renting films there at Atlanta's last video rental place. But if you're not in the Atlanta area, you can still get in on the fund with their merchandise. You can find them at videodrome dot tv in their main website is videodromeatl dot com. As for US, Weird House Cinema will continue. We're gonna do this every Friday. We're gonna celebrate some sort of a
weird film. We may talk a little bit about science and culture in it, but for the most part is the celebration of the film itself. Our core science and culture episodes will continue to air on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then we have, of course some other content sprinkled around throughout the week as well. You can find all of that in the Stuff to Blow your Mind feed.
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