Robot Jox (1989)

 

Stuart Gordon, you wonderful man, you. 

Most people will know the name from his Lovecraft inspired films like 'Re-Animator', 'From Beyond' or 'Dagon', but the man also wanted to do something with giant mech suits and well: why not? It's fair to say these films don't belong to his best but the first one in an unofficial trilogy of sorts is fun if you like cheese and - well - giant mechs duking it out. 

After a nuclear war (because of course), the Earth is divided into territories and two massive conglomerates compete with one another for control of these areas. War has been outlawed and now the conflicts are resolved through combat between two massive mechs and their pilot or 'robot jox'. It's usually between Achilles and Alexander, but in their last fight, Achilles wanted to divert a rocketarm from Alexander and crashed onto the bleechers, killing roughly 300 spectators. This rattles Achilles quite a lot, yet within a week he is scheduled to fight Alexander again. 

In the meantime, a group of genetically engineered humans know pejoratively as 'Tubies' (because test tubes, naturally) is primed and ready to go, but when Achilles finds out the female warrior known as Athena is going to fight Alexander, he comes back because... reasons? 

Yeah, they try and do away with the fact that it's because Achilles cares for her, even if he has been rather racist towards her and her siblings and yes, it smells of more than just plain sexism as well, but let's try to ignore this for a moment, shall we?

Athena drugs Achilles and takes on Alexander and takes a whooping, but Achilles steps in and also gets a whooping before finally besting Alexander and the dispute is settled. 

Is this a silly flick? Absolutely! The dialogue is cringeworthy, the characterization is just a little more than cookie cutter and the story is pretty bland at best. The introduction of a spy/traitor feels like an afterthought and the resolution is sudden, to say the least. 

But there is one reason to give this a watch: giant mech battles. 

Sure, they aren't as much in the film as one would hope or want, but they look great. The stop motion and suitmation feels clunky and perfectly fitting for bots battling. The design is also cool and you get a clear sense of differentiation between the white-and-red bot of Achilles and the green/black one of Alexander. Okay, the scene where they fly off into outer space is ludicrous and makes no sense in the story, but it gives the makers a reason to show off some transforming capabilities of the bots. 

So is this a film that speaks to the child in me? Heck yeah. I can remember this was one of those films me and all my friends loved as kids and seeing it now so many years later, I can honestly say it is by no means a 'good' film, but what kid at heart wouldn't want to see mech suit battles? It will always be something that is beyond cool and for that, one is willing to disregard plot, acting and silliness.