Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name's Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick. And I think this episode is
Speaker 3: going to be publishing on Christmas Day, which is quite
Speaker 3: apt because, if I'm not wrong, one of the biggest
Speaker 3: toy crazes of the Christmases of yesteryear were Transformers toys,
Speaker 3: and I think Transformers also probably partially inspired the movie
Speaker 3: we're going to be talking about today, So it's very
Speaker 3: much like a toy robot Christmas celebration, except imagine those
Speaker 3: toy robots we're fighting it out for the fate of Alaska,
Speaker 3: trading between the clutches of some like evil capitalist empire
Speaker 3: in a harsh Soviet future state.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to be talking about nineteen nineties robot which. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I am to understand that the Transformer craze helped inspire this,
Speaker 2: but I think you could also pretty fairly compare this
Speaker 2: to the boxing robots, you know, the the Rockham soccer robots,
Speaker 2: Rockham Sock and Rogue of Robots. Yeah, this is basically
Speaker 2: big league rock'am sockem robots of the future.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I imagine. So it's rock em soccer robots, but
Speaker 3: to settle territorial disputes between post nuclear apocalyptic superpowers, and
Speaker 3: they're like one hundred feet tall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is It's not a Christmas movie. We thought
Speaker 2: about doing a Christmas movie, but then this came up,
Speaker 2: and this was perfect. I will say that it is
Speaker 2: rated PG, and some of the people that made it
Speaker 2: talked about how it is for children. I did not
Speaker 2: watch this with my son. I guess I could have,
Speaker 2: but I'm ultimately glad I did not. There's just, you know,
Speaker 2: there's a little bit of language in there that you know,
Speaker 2: I'm sure a TV cut of this stuff that could
Speaker 2: easily be edited out, I'm sure. But still it's a
Speaker 2: very enjoyable picture, and I'm excited to talk about it.
Speaker 3: This is one of those movies that is it's I
Speaker 3: don't think it's for children, it's for it's for adults
Speaker 3: in whom the child inside never died.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so that's probably a better way of
Speaker 2: looking at it.
Speaker 3: Should we hit that trailer audio.
Speaker 4: Let's do it.
Speaker 5: It's a new age of combat.
Speaker 2: Human beings pltically engineered to be the best fighters in.
Speaker 5: History, two champions. It isn't over until someone wins at
Speaker 5: war with each other. I have already killed you, two
Speaker 5: invincible men. Let's fish Alexander here now the ultimate killing machines.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get in this thing and I've got a chick.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I really love this one. And this is one of
Speaker 2: those with the I'm going to kick your explosion sound debts,
Speaker 2: which I think has been used in various other cinematic
Speaker 2: trailers as well, but to great effect here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So this was actually directed by somebody you might
Speaker 3: not expect, by Stuart Gordon, who is mainly known for
Speaker 3: Lovecraftian adaptations. This is not in any way connected to Lovecraft.
Speaker 3: This is a giant robot fight.
Speaker 4: Movie, that's right.
Speaker 2: And again it is rated PG, which certainly some of
Speaker 2: Stuart Gordon's most famous works are not. He's probably best
Speaker 2: remembered for directing nineteen eighty five's re Animator and then
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty six Is From Beyond, both just wonderfully weird
Speaker 2: adaptations of HP Lovecraft tales that went off in their
Speaker 2: own crazy fleshy directions.
Speaker 3: He also made a Lovecraft adaptation confusingly called Daygone, which
Speaker 3: came out in the year two thousand and one, which
Speaker 3: is the name of a Lovecraft story, but it's not
Speaker 3: really an adaptation of that story. It's more adaptation of
Speaker 3: The Shadow over Endsmouth, which is a different Lovecraft story. Uh.
Speaker 3: That movie I I remember kind of liking, even though
Speaker 3: I don't know if I would say it's good right it.
Speaker 2: I remember at the time when I watched it, I
Speaker 2: remember thinking, well, this is not an accurate, uh you know,
Speaker 2: depiction of an Hbu Lovecraft story. But especially now, I'm
Speaker 2: kind of like, well, good it went off in all
Speaker 2: these films. It's good that they went off in their
Speaker 2: own directions and became their own, crazy, weird thing. Like
Speaker 2: I think it takes place in Spain and it's a
Speaker 2: modern day and like sexuality exists in it, that sort
Speaker 2: of thing. Yeah, I would say it's one of the
Speaker 2: major contributions that Stuart Stuart Gordon's Lovecraft films, and also
Speaker 2: you know the work of Brian Yazna, who worked with
Speaker 2: often the they inject sexuality into this these these horror worlds.
Speaker 2: The other rather sterile originally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the kind of bare and hateful landscape of the
Speaker 3: original Lovecraft is a little bit enlivened by the by
Speaker 3: the Gordon touch. Yeah, there's another thing I really like
Speaker 3: about Dagon, though I remember thinking it's just merely a
Speaker 3: visual touch, which is that the color palette of the
Speaker 3: film is very like blue and green everywhere, but the
Speaker 3: main character wears an orange sweater throughout the movie, and
Speaker 3: I just remember thinking that was a great visual decision
Speaker 3: and it really looks fun throughout. The whole movie had.
Speaker 2: Some cool monsters, as I recall too, they went with
Speaker 2: the like the double finned mermaid type creature. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: well let's see. So these are some of the most
Speaker 2: I think noteworthy Stuart Gordon films. But he also did
Speaker 2: a lot of other stuff, and I didn't mention already,
Speaker 2: but he did pass away earlier this year. He lived
Speaker 2: nineteen forty seven through twenty twenty, but he Yeah, he
Speaker 2: directed a lot of stuff. He did science fiction, such
Speaker 2: as nineteen ninety six as Space Truckers, and with Brian
Speaker 2: Yazna and Ed Naha, he created Honey I Shrunk the
Speaker 2: Kids for Disney. They were the original creators, and you
Speaker 2: know they have scriptwriting credits on that project and any
Speaker 2: subsequent projects. So when you see the next Honey Shrunk,
Speaker 2: the Kids reboot or what have you. You're going to
Speaker 2: see their names again.
Speaker 3: Okay, I don't think I've seen any recent Stuart Gordon stuff.
Speaker 4: I haven't either.
Speaker 2: He seemed to have branched out a lot later in
Speaker 2: his career, getting further away from some of the really
Speaker 2: like obvious genre stuff, such as a two thousand and
Speaker 2: five drama film titled Edmund starring William H. Macy and
Speaker 2: written by David Mammott. So you know, he really ultimately
Speaker 2: had a very I think, a varied career and worked
Speaker 2: on a lot of different types of stuff. Though horror
Speaker 2: fans I think are always going to remember him best
Speaker 2: from some of those those early gory nineteen eighties Lovecraft adaptations.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now, one thing that must be said about Robot
Speaker 3: Jocks is that it is a very zany, cliche ridden
Speaker 3: robot slugfest that is in many ways just excellent and delightful,
Speaker 3: but it's also I don't know, you could make many
Speaker 3: extremely legitimate criticisms of the script, and yet it was
Speaker 3: written by a like revered science fiction author.
Speaker 2: That's right, Joe Haldeman, the author of the Hugo Award
Speaker 2: winning nineteen seventy four military science fiction novel The Forever War. Now,
Speaker 2: I had not read this one before, but I picked
Speaker 2: it up after watching Robot Jocks last week and I've
Speaker 2: been reading it. I haven't finished it yet, but it's
Speaker 2: a very interesting book, very much a book of its
Speaker 2: time in many ways, especially concerning various sort of like
Speaker 2: gender ideas and so forth. But it's essentially a Vietnam story,
Speaker 2: a Vietnam memoir, even written by an author who, having
Speaker 2: just received a bachelors in physics and astronomy, was immediately
Speaker 2: drafted in the US Army in nineteen sixty seven as
Speaker 2: a combat engineer. That's Haldeman's story, and he was subsequently wounded,
Speaker 2: received a purple heart, and the Forever War it seems
Speaker 2: to reflect all of this, except dealing with futuristic war
Speaker 2: cast into an armed conflict and a distant star system
Speaker 2: of a slew of different star systems against an unknown
Speaker 2: alien enemy. And the main character in that, a gentleman
Speaker 2: by the name of Mandela, is also a physicist who
Speaker 2: finds himselves drafted into a war, only this time it's
Speaker 2: against the so called Tarans, who are these aliens that
Speaker 2: nobody really has a clear picture of or understanding of,
Speaker 2: as they're starting out, So it's again very much a
Speaker 2: product of its time, quite interesting, quite influential. It's a
Speaker 2: solid power armor military science fiction yarn, very much in
Speaker 2: the same in keeping with stuff like starship troopers and
Speaker 2: so forth. But it has a focus on first of all,
Speaker 2: the physics of other worlds and the physics of space travel,
Speaker 2: as well as, of course the psychology of the soldiers experience,
Speaker 2: and a few of the interesting things have already popped
Speaker 2: up in it. He touches on the perils of fighting
Speaker 2: around frozen hydrogen on other worlds. There's discussion of how
Speaker 2: time dilation impacts war. So you encounter the enemy one
Speaker 2: day and your technology is superior to them, but then
Speaker 2: the next encounter you have with them, their technology is
Speaker 2: yours ahead of yours because of time dilation and travel
Speaker 2: at speeds approaching light, because you were a creature now
Speaker 2: of their past and their denizens of what was your future.
Speaker 3: That's very interesting. So like every time you travel to
Speaker 3: meet your opponent, they get a leg up on you
Speaker 3: because they have more time to prepare than you do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's really interesting. It gets into the use
Speaker 2: of hypnotic suggestion to invoke xenophobic hatred and soldiers. But
Speaker 2: on top of that, he seems to spend a lot
Speaker 2: of time focusing on what it means to be enveloped
Speaker 2: by the war machine, how it changes your life, how
Speaker 2: it affects your psyche, and how in the Forever War
Speaker 2: it also co opts sexuality as well as individuality. It's
Speaker 2: just kind of like this all consuming force on your life.
Speaker 3: This is interesting because I feel like what you're just
Speaker 3: talking about comes through, maybe not so much in the
Speaker 3: original novel, but in the Paul Verehoven movie adaptation of
Speaker 3: Starship Troopers.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I understand that the Forever War is often brought
Speaker 2: up as kind of a counterbalance to the largely pro
Speaker 2: war narrative of the original novel Starship Troopers, which I
Speaker 2: have also read, but I honestly don't remember much about
Speaker 2: it other than some of the the cool power armor
Speaker 2: battles that were going on in it.
Speaker 3: So how do Haldeman and Stuart Gordon get teamed up
Speaker 3: to make this ridiculous robot slugfest movie?
Speaker 4: All Right?
Speaker 2: So apparently what happened is, let's say, Haldeman wrote this
Speaker 2: book and it was a huge success and critically acclaimed
Speaker 2: and Haldeman and Stuart ended up chatting with each other
Speaker 2: and working on putting together a film adaptation of the
Speaker 2: Forever War, and they were both really excited about it,
Speaker 2: but it never came together. I think the way they
Speaker 2: described it is like Reagan was elected and then kind
Speaker 2: of like things changed. There was less funding for the arts,
Speaker 2: and therefore the project never came together. But it led
Speaker 2: to this project with Haldeman working on the script that
Speaker 2: would ultimately become Robot Jocks, directed by Stuart Gordon. Now,
Speaker 2: apparently there was a fair amount of disagreement between the
Speaker 2: two as the project rolled on, which has been summed
Speaker 2: up at times as Haldeman wanting to create a movie
Speaker 2: for adults that kids could also enjoy and Gordon wanted
Speaker 2: to create a movie for kids that adults could.
Speaker 3: Enjoy, and they ended up creating not exactly either one.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it's kind of a hybrid of the two,
Speaker 2: which is again perfectly enjoyable, but it's more more of
Speaker 2: a film that the inner child and the inner adult
Speaker 2: can both enjoy or kind of fight over.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So here's a bit from Haldeman's blog where he talked
Speaker 2: about this. He said, I wanted the mechanics he's talking about.
Speaker 2: As a title, he Stuart Gordon insisted on robojocks. He
Speaker 2: finally wound up being robot Jocks after the people who
Speaker 2: did RoboCop asked whether we wanted to spend a lot
Speaker 2: of dreary time in court. I would try to change
Speaker 2: the science into something reasonable, Stuart would change it back
Speaker 2: to Saturday morning cartoon stuff. I tried to make believable,
Speaker 2: reasonable characters, and Stuart would insist on throwing in cliches
Speaker 2: and caricatures. It was especially annoying because it was a
Speaker 2: story about soldiers, and I was the only person around
Speaker 2: who'd ever been one. In fact, he was right and
Speaker 2: I was wrong. But it wasn't until we were actually
Speaker 2: shooting the movie that that became clear.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. I mean, you can absolutely feel this tension
Speaker 3: in the movie when you watch it, because it will
Speaker 3: alternate between moments that almost kind of actually work as
Speaker 3: as thoughtful science fiction. There will be like moments of
Speaker 3: dialogue that are kind of thoughtful and interesting, and then
Speaker 3: it just immediately like throttles back into hilarious, absurd, cliche
Speaker 3: sci fi mode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can get whiplash at times from it because
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, man, that was really beautiful, and then
Speaker 2: something else happened and you're like, well that was goofy.
Speaker 2: But but then again, like I started, I started thinking.
Speaker 2: I tried to sort of divide these two possible films
Speaker 2: in my head, and I was thinking, all right, what
Speaker 2: if what if this character was played by a different
Speaker 2: actor and it was a more of a serious role,
Speaker 2: it was more of a soldier role, like Haldeman would
Speaker 2: have written, you know, maybe maybe you bring in someone
Speaker 2: like Michael Ironside to play in instead of a cartoon cowboy.
Speaker 2: We'll get to that in a bed. And I was thinking, well,
Speaker 2: that would be good. But but then again, it wouldn't
Speaker 2: be Robot Jocks. Like there's the ultimate form of the picture,
Speaker 2: Like the absurdities and the contradictions are one of the
Speaker 2: most notable things about it.
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, I wouldn't change a thing about Robot Jocks.
Speaker 3: Robot Jocks is exactly the thing it should be. I
Speaker 3: absolutely would not change it. I mean, Robot Jocks is
Speaker 3: the kind of film for which weird house cinema exists,
Speaker 3: something that that cannot cannot just be praised as a
Speaker 3: normal kind of successful movie that is in some sense
Speaker 3: absurd or a failure, but is absolutely worth talking about
Speaker 3: and has things to be appreciated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think just on the serious end of
Speaker 2: the spectrum, on the Halaman end of the spectrum, even
Speaker 2: though I think he ultimately like considered it a disappointing
Speaker 2: child from a creative standpoint, I feel like there are
Speaker 2: elements that totally arrange you. You get this sense of
Speaker 2: the absurdity of war, a vast war machine, you know,
Speaker 2: a military industrial complex that just sucks everything in and
Speaker 2: in this film co ops reproduction. So yeah, there's lots
Speaker 2: to talk about here.
Speaker 3: And one more thing I will say about it is
Speaker 3: that the ending of this film I think is a
Speaker 3: genuine triumph in both senses in which the movie works.
Speaker 3: It actually is a surprising narrative conclusion that I was
Speaker 3: kind of like, uh, wow, it's amazing they did that.
Speaker 3: But it's also hilarious in an unintentional way.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, like it seems to like if it seems like
Speaker 2: there are two different films competing for coexistence, at the
Speaker 2: end of the film, those two visions come together and
Speaker 2: fist bump each other and it works.
Speaker 3: So maybe we should talk about the cast.
Speaker 2: All right, well, our main character in this is Achilles,
Speaker 2: played by Gary Graham.
Speaker 4: I think a lot of.
Speaker 2: People will recognize Gary Graham ow that he's been around
Speaker 2: for a long time. The main place I knew him
Speaker 2: from due to all my time watching the Sci Fi
Speaker 2: Channel back in the day, is that Graham was on
Speaker 2: the Alien Nation TV series. He played Detective Matt Sykes
Speaker 2: on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know what I recognized him from, but
Speaker 3: he looks like a sort of combination of other existing actors,
Speaker 3: so that kind of helps him seem very familiar to me.
Speaker 3: He was a three way if they made it of
Speaker 3: Scott Glenn, Mick Jagger and Billy Bob Thornton. Put those
Speaker 3: three in a blender, and that's him.
Speaker 2: That's him. And you know, I don't know a lot
Speaker 2: about about him and his work, but in this particular
Speaker 2: film he does a good job. I have no no complaint.
Speaker 2: It's about his acting. He's perfectly serviceable as the lead
Speaker 2: in an action film.
Speaker 3: I would say his name, Gary Graham is so close
Speaker 3: to the name Garrett Graham, of who of course was
Speaker 3: in Chopping Mall and who played Beef in Phantom of
Speaker 3: the Paradise. And this movie could only possibly have been
Speaker 3: improved by swapping him for Garrett Graham.
Speaker 2: Oh, that would have been interesting. Yeah, And I feel
Speaker 2: like Garrett Graham would have had to lean into like
Speaker 2: a sleazier version of Achilles. Asa is a natural sleezy
Speaker 2: ara and a lot of the roles that he has.
Speaker 3: So Achilles Achilles is the hero of the movie. And
Speaker 3: he is the titular robot jock. He is one of
Speaker 3: these pilots who drives around these giant mech robots and
Speaker 3: fights it out. And I guess we'll get into more
Speaker 3: of the plot mechanics and setting when we do the
Speaker 3: full plot breakdown, But imagine this guy we're talking about,
Speaker 3: like sitting in the pilot's seat of a giant mech warrior.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he is the best he is. He is
Speaker 2: the best robot jocks jock that this particular faction has
Speaker 2: at their disposal.
Speaker 3: Right, But there are some up and coming robot jocks
Speaker 3: who maybe could rival his greatness, and probably the most
Speaker 3: promising of them is a young robot jock named Athena.
Speaker 2: Right, and she's played by Anne Marie Johnson. She was
Speaker 2: in the Heat of the Night TV show that I
Speaker 2: mainly remember as being a show that my grandfather watched
Speaker 2: all the time, and I don't think I ever watched.
Speaker 2: But Amory Johnson, she's been around forever. She's done a
Speaker 2: lot of work, and I understand she's also been heavily
Speaker 2: involved in the Screen Actors Guild. So yeah, a major name.
Speaker 2: Especially if you're an actor, you probably are familiar with her.
Speaker 3: Now, I think there are a couple of roles that
Speaker 3: really make this movie by adding in a level of
Speaker 3: cartoonishness that I think clashes with whatever serious thing Holdoman
Speaker 3: may have been going for. And I would say that
Speaker 3: the one of the two main super cartoony characters is
Speaker 3: the villain of the film, Alexander, who is I think
Speaker 3: supposed to be Ivan Drago from Rocky four.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you get a strong sense of that.
Speaker 4: He is.
Speaker 2: He is our Russian villain, our Russian superman that that fights,
Speaker 2: I should say, in a in this giant mech that
Speaker 2: has an amazing design but is interestingly less human, in
Speaker 2: form less humanoid, compared to the mech used by our heroes.
Speaker 2: So even though it's not I forget what the factions
Speaker 2: are even called, but it's not called the US versus
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union. This is supposed to all take place
Speaker 2: after warfare or a comet or something something that's wrecked
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 3: There was a nuclear war. Yeah, there was a nuclear
Speaker 3: war that like wiped out huge parts of humanity. And
Speaker 3: then after the nuclear war, your two main superpowers, which
Speaker 3: again are just apparently basically the United States and the
Speaker 3: Soviet Union. But the United States is called the Market
Speaker 3: and the Soviet Union is called the Confederation or the Confed.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so these are the two main main factions. But yeah,
Speaker 2: there's essentially the US future US versus future Soviet Union.
Speaker 2: And this particular robot Jocks of Jack played by Paul
Speaker 2: is played by Paul Coslow, who lived nineteen forty four
Speaker 2: through twenty nineteen. He was a German Canadian actor who
Speaker 2: was in a lot of TV back in the day,
Speaker 2: but also some key seventies cult films. He had a
Speaker 2: supporting role in nineteen seventy one's The Omega Man Oh Okay,
Speaker 2: which is a wonderful film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, his Russian accent in this is so awful. Every
Speaker 3: time he talks, I couldn't stop laughing. It's on the
Speaker 3: level of, like, you know, he like meets up his
Speaker 3: opponents in the bar for a drink. Why is that happening?
Speaker 3: By the way, we should talk about that when we
Speaker 3: get into the plot. But like, so he and Achilles
Speaker 3: are drinking at the bar together and he's like, your
Speaker 3: drink it makes me think of blood?
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean again, he was German Canadian, he did,
Speaker 2: you know? And this is not his natural accent. I
Speaker 2: had to look him up because he's been in some
Speaker 2: other like key films, like The Vanishing Point from seventy one. Okay,
Speaker 2: I was looking at it something that claimed to be
Speaker 2: his reel on YouTube, and yeah, he's he seems good
Speaker 2: in things, but he's he's never using a Russian accent
Speaker 2: except in this film, where it comes off as a
Speaker 2: like a Saturday Night Live or World Wrestling Federation level
Speaker 2: of believability.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, he would be like a wrestler called the
Speaker 3: Czar played by a guy from New Jersey.
Speaker 2: Now that being said, he's he's very fun in this role,
Speaker 2: but that accent is not believable.
Speaker 3: I literally think the one I just did to make
Speaker 3: fun of it was better than the one he uses
Speaker 3: in the movie. Okay, but then we got to get
Speaker 3: to our other main cartoon character from the movie. This
Speaker 3: one is the character of techs Tex Conway, played by
Speaker 3: an actor named Michael Aldridge.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This, oh my goodness. So this character Tex Conway,
Speaker 2: he's our heroes trainer, he's his mentor. He's a former
Speaker 2: robot jocks champion in his own right who who won
Speaker 2: some key battles in the past. But man, he is
Speaker 2: a root and toot and text and stereotype with a
Speaker 2: cowboy hat but a futuristic jumpsuit.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So he's Buck Strickland in a in a red and
Speaker 3: white jumpsuit talking about you can't get the lasers calibrated.
Speaker 3: And he so he specifies that he was a former
Speaker 3: like you say, he was a former robot jock himself,
Speaker 3: like one of the greatest that ever lived, and that
Speaker 3: his jock, his jocking, his robot piloting won the area
Speaker 3: of Campuccia, which I guess is Cambodia for the market.
Speaker 3: So you got to imagine, Okay, they're capitalists now and
Speaker 3: it's all because of texts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's He also reminds me of the
Speaker 2: Rich textan character from The Simpsons, Yes, pops up from
Speaker 2: time to time. Yeah, so it's it is a very
Speaker 2: cartoony role but a richly enjoyable role.
Speaker 4: It's it's every time.
Speaker 2: He's on the screen, it's it's wonderful. And Aldrum himself
Speaker 2: is as an actor who was just a regular TV
Speaker 2: player back in the day, Like you just you scroll
Speaker 2: through his IMDb page and it's just everything that was
Speaker 2: on television, with some notable titles to call out, like Murder,
Speaker 2: she wrote, Dallas of course the A team. He was
Speaker 2: on that mini series V So yeah, he was in
Speaker 2: tons of stuff as well, and he's great.
Speaker 3: In this as we as we go on, we should
Speaker 3: also be thinking about like who should be cast in
Speaker 3: each role for our twenty twenty one remake of Robot Jocks.
Speaker 3: And I think there's a pretty obvious choice that you
Speaker 3: landed on for the new casting of texts.
Speaker 2: Oh, I think this was you, right? No, no, well
Speaker 2: you brought up Buck Strickland, who was voiced by Stephen Root, right,
Speaker 2: and Stephen Root would be perfect for this role because
Speaker 2: you know, he's great at yucking it up but also
Speaker 2: is superb at also having this kind of streak of
Speaker 2: darkness which plays into tex Conway's characters as well.
Speaker 3: Right, all right, let's see who else do we want
Speaker 3: to talk about in the connections here.
Speaker 2: Well, let's see, there's a character named doctor Matsumoto played
Speaker 2: by Danny Kamikono, part of the He's part of This
Speaker 2: character's part of the tech team. This is a solid
Speaker 2: performer who did a lot of a lot of things,
Speaker 2: most notably The Karate Kid. He was in that, but
Speaker 2: he also appeared in nineteen ninety threes Robot Wars, directed
Speaker 2: by Albert Band We'll get to him in a minute.
Speaker 2: Same production company also Giant Robots, sometimes marketed as a
Speaker 2: sequel to this film, but not directly related to Robot Jocks.
Speaker 3: One was not enough. People needed more robot jocks.
Speaker 2: We always do. There's a fun cameo in this. We
Speaker 2: mentioned Reanimator earlier and the Beyond Well, Jeffrey Combs, the
Speaker 2: lovecrafty and lothario himself, the B Movie Icon shows up
Speaker 2: as just one of the robojockx Robot Jocks fans that
Speaker 2: are cheering on what's happening.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. Occasionally we get some shots of the proletariat,
Speaker 3: you know, they're just the regular society and what they
Speaker 3: think about the ongoing They treat the robot Jocks battles.
Speaker 3: It basically is a sporting event rather than a major
Speaker 3: geopolitical conflict. And there is a great scene where we're
Speaker 3: watching a couple of the proles watch the robot Jocks
Speaker 3: announcements on TV, and for some reason they're wearing the
Speaker 3: hats that members of House Frey wear. I don't know
Speaker 3: where that comes from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is an interesting wrinkle in the show though,
Speaker 2: where it's geopolitics as pure entertainment to a large section
Speaker 2: of the populace. So yeah, there again another area where
Speaker 2: this show gets. This movie gets a bit meaty before
Speaker 2: it gets goofy again.
Speaker 3: Now, one thing we see in the credits at the
Speaker 3: beginning of this movie is that it is definitely a
Speaker 3: Charles Band production, and that name. If you have watched
Speaker 3: a lot of trashy eighties movies, that name shows up
Speaker 3: a good bit.
Speaker 4: Yeah that's right.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I almost hesitant to spend too much time on them
Speaker 2: here because I know we'll come back to to some
Speaker 2: pictures that are actually directed by Charles Band or Albert Band.
Speaker 2: But briefly, we're talking about the Band family here. Their
Speaker 2: history begins with artist Max Band, who lived nineteen oh
Speaker 2: one through nineteen seventy four. Born in Lithuania, lived in
Speaker 2: France and then made the move to California. His son,
Speaker 2: Albert Band, who lived twenty four through two thousand and two,
Speaker 2: became a filmmaker. He was assistant director on John Houston's
Speaker 2: The Asphalt Jungle in nineteen fifty and then went on
Speaker 2: to direct a bunch of genre films, including I Bury
Speaker 2: the Living from fifty eight, Dracula Dog from seventy eight,
Speaker 2: and Goolies Too from in nineteen eighty seven. So he's
Speaker 2: already be Cinema loyalty. But then his son is Charles Band,
Speaker 2: who again we've mentioned before on the show. He's the
Speaker 2: man behind first Empire International Pictures that put out Robot
Speaker 2: Jocks and then Full Moon Features, and he directed some
Speaker 2: really awesome eighties and nineties sci fi horror films before
Speaker 2: going increasingly in the evil Bong direction, which isn't quite
Speaker 2: I thing, but you know, you can't argue with success.
Speaker 3: Oh he does like demon Bong movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the Evil Bong like one through however many
Speaker 2: Ginger Dead Man that.
Speaker 4: Sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, okay, But.
Speaker 2: I can't stress enough that his earlier pictures are are
Speaker 2: often a lot more serious and really interesting. Will definitely
Speaker 2: come back to something Charles Band directed in the future,
Speaker 2: but again evil bong direction seems to have been very
Speaker 2: successful for Full Okay. Charles's brother, by the way, is
Speaker 2: Richard Band, a composer who worked on a lot of
Speaker 2: Full Moon pictures, and then Charles Band's son is Alex Band,
Speaker 2: the lead singer of a band called The Calling, which
Speaker 2: I'm not that familiar with but exists. So like the
Speaker 2: Band family is still going strong.
Speaker 3: They are a Schlock dynasty.
Speaker 2: And another connection to Robot Jocks is that Charles Band
Speaker 2: had a nineteen ninety film called Crash and Burn that
Speaker 2: was marketed in Europe as Robot Jocks two. But again
Speaker 2: there's another one where it's not actually related to Robot Jocks,
Speaker 2: but it does feature a cool giant robot plus Bill
Speaker 2: Moseley as a killer cyborg.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'd watch that.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 3: One thing I will say about this movie that I
Speaker 3: do just totally, unironically enjoy is all of the robot fights,
Speaker 3: including I think there's some stop motion animation, and I
Speaker 3: think there's probably also some people in suits, some puppetry.
Speaker 3: I get the feeling that both are at play at
Speaker 3: different times. I could be wrong about that, but whatever
Speaker 3: they were doing I really enjoyed the robot effects, Like
Speaker 3: it's not like they look realistic. They don't, but they're
Speaker 3: that kind of non realistic, highly stylized, great old school
Speaker 3: practical effects that I just adore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And so it's not surprising that you
Speaker 2: have some You have at least a couple of big
Speaker 2: names in this one that stood out was this guy,
Speaker 2: Steve Berg, who was a conceptual designer. He went into
Speaker 2: work on the art department on a number of big films,
Speaker 2: big sci fi properties like Chronicles of Riddick, Alien Three, Leviathan,
Speaker 2: The Martian, Interstellar, Prometheus.
Speaker 3: Oh, Leviathan. You've seen Leviathan, right, Oh, we've talked about it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's right, we've talked about it on the show before.
Speaker 3: That was one of the nineteen was it eighty nine?
Speaker 3: Was that the year when like five different underwater terror
Speaker 3: movies came out?
Speaker 2: I think that was the underwater terror year. Yeah, we'll
Speaker 2: have to come back to Leviathan because there's a lot
Speaker 2: of fun stuff going on in that picture.
Speaker 3: Oh, we should do a whole series of weird house
Speaker 3: cinema where we just do one after another. We do Leviathan,
Speaker 3: Deep Star six, Lords of the Deep. We were like
Speaker 3: round up the whole crew.
Speaker 2: But it's like diving deeper into the ocean, Joe. The
Speaker 2: deeper you go on that playlist, the greater the pressure,
Speaker 2: the harder it is to come out without doing harm
Speaker 2: to your body. Because, yeah, they're the underwater films that
Speaker 2: come to mind, and they are the ones you have
Speaker 2: to sort of hunt for from that same year, and
Speaker 2: they just get progressively harder.
Speaker 3: I remember the Lord's of the Deep. Really not much
Speaker 3: happens in it, Like most of the movie is just
Speaker 3: watching people sit in a chair and say like they're
Speaker 3: coming for us.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Lords of the Deep is probably the point in anybody's
Speaker 2: attempt to watch all the underwater movies of eighty nine
Speaker 2: where they realized that their eyes were bigger than their stomach.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But oh, one of the huge names on this picture
Speaker 2: on robot jocks that helped create these wonderful stop motion
Speaker 2: effects David Allen, who who did stop motion animation and
Speaker 2: visual effects director credits on this. So this is the
Speaker 2: I think this is the real star of the movie.
Speaker 2: He's an awesome name in the stop motion animation field.
Speaker 2: He sadly died in nineteen ninety nine at the age
Speaker 2: of fifty four, but he worked on the Howling on Willow,
Speaker 2: Ghostbusters Too Young, Sherlock Holmes, you know, all the all
Speaker 2: films that had some wonderful stop motion work in them,
Speaker 2: I believe, And then he did a ton of Charles
Speaker 2: Band Full Moon productions, providing the store to sort of
Speaker 2: stop motion world that really sets some of those films apart.
Speaker 2: So he's the man behind the cool animation in Laser Blast,
Speaker 2: in Q the Wing Serpent, and in various other films
Speaker 2: like where oftentimes films where there's not much else notable
Speaker 2: about it but just has some real eye catching stop
Speaker 2: motion effects. Uh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say that that's probably true about laser blasts,
Speaker 3: except that Laser Blast is pretty funny. Q the Wing Serpent,
Speaker 3: that's a little bit different. I mean, that's got that
Speaker 3: Cohen energy, Like there's a pretty fun script underneath that
Speaker 3: one in addition to the great stop motion effects.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So when David Allen died, he was still working on
Speaker 2: a picture called The Prime Evils and it was never
Speaker 2: finished and this was going to be just like an
Speaker 2: old school stop motion animation fest. But yeah, he died
Speaker 2: before he could finish it. But around twenty seventeen, Charles
Speaker 2: Band announced that it would be completed and released in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, and I think that got pushed back to
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, and then, of course most things in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty were pushed back or at least in a weird fashion.
Speaker 2: So I don't think it's actually come out yet. But
Speaker 2: if you look around for information about the Prime Evils film,
Speaker 2: you'll see some clips from it, and it looks really awesome.
Speaker 2: So I do hope that finally comes to light.
Speaker 3: Well, are you ready to jump into a full breakdown
Speaker 3: of the plot and then maybe talk a little bit
Speaker 3: of weird science and the ideas in the movie.
Speaker 4: Let's do it?
Speaker 5: Okay?
Speaker 3: Well, I guess we got to start with the opening credits,
Speaker 3: which really set the scene. So at the very first thing,
Speaker 3: you are panning over a snowy field of dead robots
Speaker 3: and mechanical debris. And I remember I was watching this
Speaker 3: with Rachel. She was like, is this a Christmas movie?
Speaker 3: Because it very much seems like a combination of the
Speaker 3: Terminator and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Yes, And the
Speaker 3: voiceover narration. While you get the Terminator font credits, the
Speaker 3: voiceover says it has been fifty years since the nuclear
Speaker 3: holocaust almost destroyed mankind. War is now outlawed. Oh good idea,
Speaker 3: nobody ever thought of that before. Just make it illegal.
Speaker 3: And so they specify, well, with war outlawed, how do
Speaker 3: you settle disputes between these superpowers, between the Market and
Speaker 3: the Confederation. Well, they say that territorial disputes are now
Speaker 3: settled by single combat, and they go on to explain
Speaker 3: here at the Confederation playing field in Siberia, and they
Speaker 3: recount that these robots that are piloted by robot jocks
Speaker 3: fight it out and whichever robot and they're corresponding jock
Speaker 3: wins the you know, to the victor go the spoils.
Speaker 3: So like you might be fighting over who gets control
Speaker 3: of Campuccia and uh, and the winner in this case
Speaker 3: apparently was the Market with the old tex Conway piloting
Speaker 3: his mech and so they get control of the land.
Speaker 3: And then you immediately cut to the present from here,
Speaker 3: where there is like an ongoing fight between al Alex
Speaker 3: Sander who we mentioned before, the villain, the Russian robot jock,
Speaker 3: and a Market robot jock who I think is maybe
Speaker 3: named Ajax. I could be wrong, about that. But he's
Speaker 3: a guy in a red and white jumpsuit with a
Speaker 3: black guy and a bloody lip, lying in the cockpit
Speaker 3: of his robot. His robot has been destroyed, and he's
Speaker 3: trying to throw in the towel. He's like pleading for mercy.
Speaker 3: He says, Alexander, you win, Alexander, I can't move. I
Speaker 3: think my back is broken, and Alexander just coldly says, judgment.
Speaker 3: I would like judgment. It's very very much. If he dies,
Speaker 3: he dies Ivan Drego thing, and then he just stomps
Speaker 3: on him. He uses his robot to stomp on Ajax
Speaker 3: and kill him, and it's victory for the Confederation.
Speaker 2: Fun behind the scenes fact is that I believe that
Speaker 2: the stop motion animation we see in this altiate, this
Speaker 2: opening encounter was actually originally test footage that was used
Speaker 2: to convince Charles Band that they could make the picture.
Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting, So maybe that's why it's in a
Speaker 3: different setting than the rest of what goes on in
Speaker 3: a movie. So the battle is a victory for the Confederation.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure exactly what they're fighting over in this case.
Speaker 3: And again, yeah, Ajax is like I yield Mercy and
Speaker 3: Alexander's like, too bad, and he just smashes him. And
Speaker 3: then Alexander looks into the camera and says, you're next Achilles.
Speaker 3: He's you know, he's got it out for Achilles, I
Speaker 3: guess because Achilles is the best, and he wants to
Speaker 3: defeat him.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, He's all about just superiority and proving himself in battle.
Speaker 3: And so next we cut to the market robot Jocks
Speaker 3: command center. It's like mission control for robot jocks, where
Speaker 3: the Allied robot Jocks and their friends watch in horror
Speaker 3: as Ajax is stomped by the bot and we find
Speaker 3: out that Alexander has killed nine of their guys. Now
Speaker 3: and it is and there's a imediately talk about why
Speaker 3: this is. It's because there's a spy, and I feel
Speaker 3: like this is great. You know, set this up right
Speaker 3: at the beginning, that there's a betrayer in their ranks.
Speaker 3: Somebody keeps giving the Confederation advance information about the new
Speaker 3: weapons systems that they bring online in their robots.
Speaker 2: Right, and of course you only have what five characters
Speaker 2: with names that matter, so you know, you don't have
Speaker 2: that many choices here to go on, but you easily
Speaker 2: can see one of them is a spy, and part
Speaker 2: of the fun of the film is going to be
Speaker 2: trying to figure out who that spy is.
Speaker 3: Right, So they are, So there are various people hanging
Speaker 3: out and you get to meet some of the characters.
Speaker 3: One of them, of course, is tex Conway, who've talked
Speaker 3: about before. Techs is Achilles trainer, and he's, as we said,
Speaker 3: a former robot jock himself who had been very successful
Speaker 3: and ultimately victorious. Now I guess he's retired and he's
Speaker 3: he's the burgess Meredith teaching Rocky how to fight. Oh
Speaker 3: and we also find out that they are fighting over Alaska.
Speaker 3: They're fighting for control of Alaska. I'm not sure why
Speaker 3: they want it so bad, but that's what the dispute is.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, like maybe it's the first step and then
Speaker 2: subsequently conquering other areas that belong to the market.
Speaker 3: But I guess We find out that Achilles is the
Speaker 3: only robot jock left, that Alexander has killed all of
Speaker 3: the other market robot jocks. It seems like they should
Speaker 3: have had more, but eh, and I guess they are
Speaker 3: making more. We'll get to that in a second. So
Speaker 3: then from mission control. You cut straight to a sparring
Speaker 3: scene where they've got Achilles fighting a circle of people
Speaker 3: all around him. All these people in pads surround him
Speaker 3: and attack him one at a time so he can
Speaker 3: fight them off. It's kind of like that scene in
Speaker 3: The Chinese Connection where Bruce Lee goes to the Japanese
Speaker 3: martial arts school and is surrounded by people in the
Speaker 3: circle and they all come in one at a time
Speaker 3: and he has to fight him off. Except everybody here
Speaker 3: wearing goofy looking red pads.
Speaker 2: Not only pads, though, Joe, They're also wearing jumpsuits. Because
Speaker 2: this film is a celebration of futuristic jumpsuits. They're like
Speaker 2: multiple different varieties of jumpsuits, and they seem to be
Speaker 2: whoever was in charge of jumpsuits did a good job
Speaker 2: of putting them together and making them look quality and
Speaker 2: keeping track of who should be wearing what. Which I
Speaker 2: love because I realized more and more watching this film
Speaker 2: that it's something I love about science fiction films. I
Speaker 2: love a good jumpsuit, be it a jumpsuit in something
Speaker 2: like Mystery Science Theater three thousand or any other science
Speaker 2: fiction film. Like in the future, there will be jumpsuits,
Speaker 2: and you will be assigned to a jumpsuit, and so.
Speaker 4: Everybody's got one.
Speaker 2: Even Text conways wearing this big, ridiculous bright jumpsuit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're red and white jumpsuits. That's so the market
Speaker 3: wears red and white jumpsuits and the Confederation wears I
Speaker 3: think yellow and black jumpsuits.
Speaker 4: I think that's right.
Speaker 3: So we see Gary Graham the Achilles fighting all these people,
Speaker 3: and he does quite well, except there's one fighter who
Speaker 3: really puts up a good fight against him. And it
Speaker 3: turns out that this fighter is Athena, who at first
Speaker 3: I thought her name was Pathena the way they were
Speaker 3: saying it. But we find out that a lot of
Speaker 3: these fighters, or maybe all of them, are something. This
Speaker 3: is again something I couldn't understand what they were saying
Speaker 3: at first, but it becomes clear they are what the
Speaker 3: characters refer to as two bees. In this scene. Text
Speaker 3: makes his prejudice against multiple types of people clear. It's
Speaker 3: clear that he does not like two bees, and he
Speaker 3: also states his opinion that women will never be jocks,
Speaker 3: so there will never be a woman robot jock.
Speaker 2: Yes, he also doesn't seem to like Japanese people.
Speaker 3: Yes, text is just full of prejudices.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so.
Speaker 3: But then so you're wondering, what are these two bees?
Speaker 3: Why doesn't text like the two bees and what are they?
Speaker 3: Professor Laplace shows up and I love her. She is
Speaker 3: all business. She shows up. She's this this small older
Speaker 3: lady who is apparently like the market's greatest geneticist, greatest scientist,
Speaker 3: and she's there to collect DNA samples from all of
Speaker 3: the great robot jocks. So she like gives these tubes
Speaker 3: to U two Achilles and texts and is like, I
Speaker 3: need your genetic material because she's developing what she calls
Speaker 3: gen jocks, which, as far as I can tell, these
Speaker 3: are these are eugenically created perfect robot jock soldiers that
Speaker 3: are that are created through in vitro fertilization, and there
Speaker 3: is there is like there's a twob race in this movie.
Speaker 3: The people they're calling tubs are these people who are
Speaker 3: who are a product of in vitro fertilization, which they
Speaker 3: regard in the film as this like bizarre futuristic thing,
Speaker 3: even though it was it was already being done at
Speaker 3: the time the movie was made.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's in it.
Speaker 2: So, first of all, not a lot of detail is
Speaker 2: really provided about how they're supposedly doing this, Like are
Speaker 2: they are they growing two b's at the rate one
Speaker 2: would actually create you know, you know, breed new people
Speaker 2: through a process like this, or is there some sort
Speaker 2: of sci fi speeding up of the process.
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Is this boys from Brazil? Or is this attack
Speaker 2: of the Clones? I can't tell.
Speaker 3: Well the way it seems like in this movie the
Speaker 3: concept of two bees is invoked because it's it sounds futuristic.
Speaker 3: It's almost as if it's being written about by someone
Speaker 3: who didn't maybe didn't even know what was actually involved.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, right, Yeah, Like I'm one hand on
Speaker 2: the Haldeman level, I think it works perfectly. Is this
Speaker 2: idea that like the military industrial complex ends up absorbing,
Speaker 2: co opting reproduction itself, you know, like that makes sense
Speaker 2: within his his seeming worldview of of of the military engine.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it also hearkens to a time when when
Speaker 2: there were a lot of headlines and certain a certain
Speaker 2: amount of fear mongering and even moral panic about the
Speaker 2: idea of test tube babies. So perhaps some of our
Speaker 2: listeners remember that hysteria because I feel like we see
Speaker 2: less of it now specifically, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think it's this movie is weirdly
Speaker 3: projecting into the future a kind of temporary, irrational stigma
Speaker 3: that arose from culture at a particular time, like in
Speaker 3: the late eighties or early nineties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because again, what Test two Babies refers to is
Speaker 2: in vitro fertilization, and in vitro means within the glass.
Speaker 2: But the process doesn't actually take place in a test tube,
Speaker 2: but rather in a petri dish. The egg is fertilized
Speaker 2: in a petri dish, and when it is three to
Speaker 2: five days old, it's transferred to a uterus. And today
Speaker 2: this is mainstream, granted expensive, but it's a mainstream reproductive choice.
Speaker 2: The term itself, however, this is interesting. Test two Babies
Speaker 2: was coined in the nineteen thirties to refer to artificial insemination.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 2: So in both cases we can you know, just taste
Speaker 2: them oral panic regarding some sort of new reproduction trend.
Speaker 2: And in both cases these are things that you know,
Speaker 2: for the most part, quickly it quickly became normalized. It
Speaker 2: is also interesting that there's like a brief gag in
Speaker 2: the film about just the idea of sperm donation as
Speaker 2: well as Oh yeah in and of itself, is this ridiculous,
Speaker 2: like yuck it up kind of scenario.
Speaker 3: Yeah, text goes like, you're right, here's my DNA to
Speaker 3: make no two bees.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly how it went. So yeah, anyway, another
Speaker 2: case of science fiction doing what science fiction often does.
Speaker 2: But it certainly seems a bit silly now given the
Speaker 2: mainstream acceptance of IVF.
Speaker 3: But the two bees remain a major theme in the film.
Speaker 3: And as I said, Laplace announces to everybody that there
Speaker 3: is basically a two B race between the between the superpowers,
Speaker 3: and each one is creating their own robot jock super soldiers,
Speaker 3: and so there's like a constant escalation back and forth.
Speaker 3: Let's see. So we meet some of the tubs and
Speaker 3: if you watch this movie, they will say the word
Speaker 3: two b's until it loses all meaning. There is just
Speaker 3: so much talk about two bees in this movie. But
Speaker 3: we meet some of the young young soldiers, and of
Speaker 3: course Athena, the one we were talking about earlier, who's
Speaker 3: a major character in the film. And then we see
Speaker 3: Alexander doing a threat video for Achilles. It's kind of
Speaker 3: like those wrestling promos where the wrestler would come out
Speaker 3: and say, like next week, I'm gonna destroy you in
Speaker 3: the cage. But then after that we get a view
Speaker 3: of the populace at large, just people hanging out in
Speaker 3: the street watching on big public TV screens the ongoing
Speaker 3: saga of the of the robot Jock's conflict, And so
Speaker 3: this is where we see the dudes in the house
Speaker 3: fray hats. But also most people we see in this
Speaker 3: movie who are outside at any point are wearing masks,
Speaker 3: which was kind of strange to watch this year. I
Speaker 3: don't think they're wearing masks for any disease control reason.
Speaker 3: My best guess is that so it's part of the
Speaker 3: setting that the world they live in is after a
Speaker 3: nuclear war has taken place. So my guess is it's
Speaker 3: supposed to be that there are radio nuclides everywhere and
Speaker 3: that the masks are to help prevent people from inhaling
Speaker 3: radioactive particles. I don't know if that would be effective
Speaker 3: in reality, but I think that's at least the reason
Speaker 3: that they're shown wearing them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is interesting to watch that this year because
Speaker 2: so many films and TV shows I've watched this year,
Speaker 2: I'm just constantly thinking to myself, why are they standing
Speaker 2: so close to each other? Why is no one wearing
Speaker 2: a mask?
Speaker 4: Huh?
Speaker 2: You know, as illogical as it is to expect that
Speaker 2: in a film from ten twenty years ago, right as
Speaker 2: opposed to out in the normal world, where it is
Speaker 2: perfectly reasonable to expect that.
Speaker 3: So it's coming down to the big fight, right, It's
Speaker 3: going to be Achilles versus Alexander. So we see Achilles
Speaker 3: get into his robot and it's like getting ready for
Speaker 3: a rocket launch. There's like a law platform and there's
Speaker 3: all this staff getting everything ready. He's wearing his jumpsuit
Speaker 3: and his helmet and everybody, instead of break a leg,
Speaker 3: they say crash and burn. That's the good luck saying.
Speaker 3: And in fact they specify in the movie that it
Speaker 3: is bad luck to say good luck, just like in
Speaker 3: a theater. While we were watching it, Rachel made some
Speaker 3: good joke. She said something like, we call it the
Speaker 3: confed play. Might have gotten that wrong on the delivery.
Speaker 3: But anyway, Achilles gets into a giant Optimus Prime. And
Speaker 3: of course there are a bunch of kids who call
Speaker 3: Achilles on a video phone before he goes into battle.
Speaker 3: I think they're his brother's many children and or his
Speaker 3: brother in law, maybe his sister's husbands. Anyways, a bunch
Speaker 3: of people call him on a video phone and they
Speaker 3: wish him good luck, and then so he goes into battle,
Speaker 3: and then we get one of the first big full
Speaker 3: stop motion animation fight scenes. We get to see what
Speaker 3: the robots do when they fight, and I love the
Speaker 3: effects in this scene. You get these these they sort
Speaker 3: of like go down the list of trying out each
Speaker 3: of their weapons on each other, like they're like, try
Speaker 3: that new green laser pair. And this scene I thought
Speaker 3: is just great. Like it's not like it looks realistic,
Speaker 3: but that's not the point. It looks excellent.
Speaker 2: And I have to say the animation style that they use,
Speaker 2: the stop motion animation and the suits as well. They
Speaker 2: create a very clunky sort of movement, which I think
Speaker 2: really works well in the film because we're used to
Speaker 2: seeing some giant robot battles and more recent things like
Speaker 2: the Pacific Rim movies and so forth, and there's a
Speaker 2: lot of like fluid modern action in those films. But
Speaker 2: I feel like the clunky action in this works works
Speaker 2: really well because it does feel like colossal machines doing
Speaker 2: very specific things, and the stakes are really high, like
Speaker 2: there's no wasted movement, and we'll get into some of
Speaker 2: the physical challenges of the idea of giant machines battling
Speaker 2: each other in a bit. But but I ultimately really
Speaker 2: like the kind of clunky and deliberate motions that happen
Speaker 2: in these battles.
Speaker 3: Yes, and so the battle ends with a horrific tragedy.
Speaker 3: So they sort of fight each other to a draw.
Speaker 3: But then then Alexander tries to do something dirty and
Speaker 3: fire a fire a projectile weapon at a part in
Speaker 3: the match when he's not supposed to do that, and
Speaker 3: it looks like it's going to hit the stands of spectators.
Speaker 3: I don't know why there were stands of live spectators by.
Speaker 4: This is it's a power claw.
Speaker 2: It's like a power punch, Yeah, exactly, Like he launches
Speaker 2: the fist of the robot.
Speaker 3: And Achilles is like, no the people to reference Superman four.
Speaker 3: He goes no the people, and he dives in front
Speaker 3: of it before it can hit the stands. But I
Speaker 3: don't know, I guess he should have anticipated this. The
Speaker 3: power claw hits him and knocks him back and he
Speaker 3: falls on the stands. Crushing tons of people and killing them,
Speaker 3: and there is I'm not sure I was trying to
Speaker 3: put my finger on what exactly is so funny about this,
Speaker 3: but the staging of the horrific mayhem that we see
Speaker 3: in the aftermath of him falling on the stands is hilarious.
Speaker 3: There are all these like bloody bodies all over the place,
Speaker 3: but for some reason it looks so funny. And I
Speaker 3: think maybe it's because the bodies are all kind of
Speaker 3: like perfectly evenly spaced apart from each other. It just
Speaker 3: looks staged in a really funny way.
Speaker 2: I didn't get that as much, but I was thinking, well, like, well,
Speaker 2: I don't think the boy needed to see this, so
Speaker 2: that we didn't watch it. One kind of neat bit
Speaker 2: of trivia about that scene, though, is apparently audio from
Speaker 2: it is used in the creation was used in the
Speaker 2: creation of the Nine Inch Nails track the becoming off
Speaker 2: of the Downward Spiral huh okay, which I'd never picked
Speaker 2: up on that before. But as it turns out, like
Speaker 2: that album, as much as we might think of the
Speaker 2: Downward Spiral as just you know being this this industrial,
Speaker 2: you know, deep gothic, phallic oriented, you know, plunge into
Speaker 2: the psyche. It's ultimately a celebration of science fiction films
Speaker 2: from the because you've got samples from Robot Jocks, but
Speaker 2: also from THHX eleven thirty eight, from Leviathan, Angel Heart, Texas, Chainsaw, Massacre, Alien,
Speaker 2: the Elephant Man, and Sorcerer, The Truck movie. Yeah, the
Speaker 2: Truck movie, the remake of Wages of Fear that had
Speaker 2: the awesome, I mean just amazing Tangerine Dream soundtrack.
Speaker 3: You had me at Leviathan. So next thing in the movie,
Speaker 3: we get to see what their international Criminal Cord or
Speaker 3: whatever it is looks like, and it's just dudes in
Speaker 3: referee outfits, which like, so these these referees are now
Speaker 3: settling international disputes. Who appoints them? Where do they come from?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I assume it's supposed to be some sort of United
Speaker 2: Nations type thing. But yeah, they have this cool floating vehicle,
Speaker 2: this like hover hovering referee vehicle that they use, which
Speaker 2: is pretty cool.
Speaker 3: But they're wearing literally the black and white stripe referee outfits,
Speaker 3: and they're they're like justice. They're like judges presiding over
Speaker 3: a trial in which both sides are presenting arguments about
Speaker 3: why they technically won this match in which a bunch
Speaker 3: of people got crushed, and it turns out the referees
Speaker 3: decided is inconclusive and there will have to be a
Speaker 3: rematch in one week, and of course Alexander loves this.
Speaker 3: He cries out in the trial.
Speaker 5: He says, yes, one week, I kill you dead.
Speaker 3: And Achilles is very sad because he does not want
Speaker 3: to fight anymore. He says, I did my contract ten fights.
Speaker 3: That's it. So he's like, I won't do anymore. I retire,
Speaker 3: and Alexander calls him out. He says, coward, you lost
Speaker 3: your nerve.
Speaker 2: Well, he's also really torn up about all the people
Speaker 2: that died when his robot fell into the stand, right, yes,
Speaker 2: so I think it's understandable. Like he's like, I'm done,
Speaker 2: I don't want any more. There's let the tubbs handle it.
Speaker 2: And the two Bees, of course are like, yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: let us in there. This is all we've been raised
Speaker 2: to do. Oh.
Speaker 3: They're so excited that the two b's are loving it.
Speaker 3: One of them is going to get to fight. So
Speaker 3: one of the two Bee boys says Achilles is a
Speaker 3: coward for retiring, but Pathena is not having it, She
Speaker 3: stands up for Achilles, and Athena is like, he's not
Speaker 3: a coward, and then we get an argument with the
Speaker 3: market commissioner. I guess he's like Achilles's boss. I'm not
Speaker 3: sure exactly what he's supposed to be, but he's in
Speaker 3: charge of the robot jocks for the market side, I guess.
Speaker 3: And he tries to argue. We get like squabbling over
Speaker 3: what the contract means. He's like, you haven't actually finished
Speaker 3: your contract because you didn't finish ten fights. The last
Speaker 3: one was inconclusive, and it isn't over until someone wins.
Speaker 3: And then Achilles response, I don't know what this line means.
Speaker 3: He responds by saying, you sound like one of your
Speaker 3: damn two bees. What is the meaning of that?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I guess it's just that the two bees are utterly
Speaker 2: indoctrinated into this idea of.
Speaker 4: Warfare.
Speaker 3: Okay, you like the.
Speaker 2: New generation has raised for it and knows nothing else has.
Speaker 2: And just in a way, it's kind of like they
Speaker 2: represent like youthful vigor for in almost innocence before the battle.
Speaker 2: And of course he is the veteran, he's been through it,
Speaker 2: he's come out the other end and knows that warfare
Speaker 2: is horrible.
Speaker 3: Right, So I guess the next thing that we get
Speaker 3: to is this really amazing scene. It's like there's a
Speaker 3: dance party in a bar that includes text dancing with
Speaker 3: a woman and it's hard to describe it. You just
Speaker 3: need to see this scene. It's like the scene in
Speaker 3: Message from Space where they have their cantena equivalent. It
Speaker 3: is a party that must be witnessed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a fun cantena scene.
Speaker 3: And so while this dance party is going on in
Speaker 3: the background, Achilles, now depressed, is in the bar getting
Speaker 3: blackout drunk. He's doing this thing where he's drinking the alphabet.
Speaker 3: So he's going down the alphabet, drinking a drink for
Speaker 3: every letter, and I think he's made his way to
Speaker 3: J and bartender suggests a julop.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 2: Wow, this is This is an interesting concept that I
Speaker 2: kind of glossed over watching the film. Certainly not advisable
Speaker 2: for a single evening, though, but I wonder what would
Speaker 2: be the proper way to drink the alphabet. It would
Speaker 2: be kind of interesting to make that list and to
Speaker 2: pick out a particular cocktail for each one.
Speaker 3: What starts with a give me one alcohol, please. But
Speaker 3: so then he's sitting there and then all the twob's
Speaker 3: come in and they're young and full of excitement and vigor,
Speaker 3: and they try to cheer Achilles up talking about how
Speaker 3: the they this was great. The way they try to
Speaker 3: cheer him up is they talk about, Hey, the audience
Speaker 3: members in the stands signed releases. You know, they agreed
Speaker 3: to be there. They knew what the risks were. You
Speaker 3: shouldn't feel bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they the two b's have just bought every line
Speaker 2: that the markets has told them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just believe it all absolutely.
Speaker 3: They like they actually read the fine print and they
Speaker 3: love it. They're all on board with every bit of
Speaker 3: the contract. And then Alexander shows up and this is
Speaker 3: one of multiple scenes in the movie where the characters
Speaker 3: are drinking in this bar that they share with the
Speaker 3: opposing side and I don't know how to So so
Speaker 3: the premise that's going on is that the Confederation is
Speaker 3: constantly winning these fights because of info security leaks on
Speaker 3: the market side, like there are spies and everybody's concerned
Speaker 3: about how people are finding out about the new weapons
Speaker 3: systems on the market robots. But then at night, the
Speaker 3: two different sides just go get drunk together in the
Speaker 3: same bar. That's that seems not secure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, it seems like a terrible idea, but it
Speaker 2: works really well to move the plot along because it's
Speaker 2: one of those things. Anytime you have giant robot battles
Speaker 2: or giant monster suit battles or whatever, you got to
Speaker 2: have a lot of human interaction to pad out the movie.
Speaker 4: And this works well for the most part.
Speaker 3: Right, So, one of the kids, so Alexander shows up
Speaker 3: at the bar and he's just being a bully. He's
Speaker 3: just swinging his weight around, just being me and to everybody,
Speaker 3: and one of the kids, Chow lenges him, and he scoffs.
Speaker 3: He's like, I do not fight two bees. So apparently
Speaker 3: Alexander is also prejudiced against the two bees. And Alexander
Speaker 3: starts twisting this kid's fingers and then Achilles, still drunk,
Speaker 3: intervenes and that they start to fight. But then Alexander
Speaker 3: says he will not fight him. Now, he says, I
Speaker 3: do not fight for fun. What do you fight for?
Speaker 3: Which is a strange moment where the movie suddenly like
Speaker 3: asks you to be thoughtful in a way that it
Speaker 3: hasn't maybe so far or certainly not for a while,
Speaker 3: And because it appears that Achilles does not actually know,
Speaker 3: he's maybe like, huh, I've spent my life becoming a soldier,
Speaker 3: but I really don't know if there's a good reason
Speaker 3: for any of the fighting that I'm doing.
Speaker 2: It feels like an artifact of an earlier version of
Speaker 2: the script, but it's also an energy that we come
Speaker 2: back to later.
Speaker 3: Right, So, Athena carries the drunk Achilles home. She apparently
Speaker 3: she takes his clothes off, and then the next morning
Speaker 3: they have this long, like naked hangover conversation where he's
Speaker 3: like dragging his sheets around and arguing with her about
Speaker 3: arguing about what they're fighting for and who should be fighting,
Speaker 3: and Athena gets mad at him, I guess because he's retiring,
Speaker 3: and she's like, I was bred not to have fear.
Speaker 3: I was bred for a purpose. You you just happened.
Speaker 3: And so it's clear actually that the prejudice kind of
Speaker 3: goes both ways. Like the two bees apparently disdain non
Speaker 3: tubes because they exist for no particular reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just random existence. Yeah, so it's interesting. There's a
Speaker 2: fair amount of cool world building going on in this film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so she's like one of the things in
Speaker 3: the scene I think is she's trying to figure out, like,
Speaker 3: what are the secrets of how he always won his
Speaker 3: battles and he was and he's like, I don't know
Speaker 3: a lot of it's just luck. And she doesn't like
Speaker 3: this answer, so she gets really mad at him, and
Speaker 3: she says, I wanted to learn the secret the great Achilles,
Speaker 3: but you just talk about luck and fear. There's nothing
Speaker 3: you can teach me except how to lose. So there's
Speaker 3: another scene where we see like the the youngsters training,
Speaker 3: they're they're doing their their their to B exercises, and
Speaker 3: Text reiterates to Achilles. He says, for the second time,
Speaker 3: you know a woman can never be a robot jock.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's again the old the old fashioned attitudes of
Speaker 2: texts here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Text is quite the sexist and he and
Speaker 3: he makes it clear over and over. But this does
Speaker 3: not this does not discourage Achilles from retiring. I think
Speaker 3: maybe he's trying to talk Achilles into staying on. He's like, look,
Speaker 3: you know, you're the only one who can do it.
Speaker 3: But Achilles retires anyway, and he becomes a civvy. So
Speaker 3: you see him just suddenly going around the city. He's
Speaker 3: not at mission control anymore. He sees a mural on
Speaker 3: a wall somewhere. I think that has his picture on it,
Speaker 3: and someone has written the word coward but misspelled it's
Speaker 3: cow erd.
Speaker 2: Now, how do you know that's not just how they
Speaker 2: spell in the future, Joe.
Speaker 3: That's true. Spelling changes over time. That's a very good point.
Speaker 3: It's just like how in the future the word jocks
Speaker 3: plural is spelled with an X instead of cks. But
Speaker 3: so now the market's got a problem. Achilles, their greatest warrior,
Speaker 3: has retired. So they've got to put one of these
Speaker 3: two b's in the robot to fight Alexander. So they
Speaker 3: go through some rapid two B training and the way
Speaker 3: this shakes out is that Athena and the other two
Speaker 3: bees have to climb the Agrocrag. There's this big, rattling
Speaker 3: jungle gym of death, and they're all fighting each other
Speaker 3: to get to the top first and climb through this
Speaker 3: hole in the ceiling. And Athena is victorious. She is
Speaker 3: the greatest of the two bes, so she's going to
Speaker 3: become the new Jocks, And as a newscaster declares, she
Speaker 3: is the first female robo jock. But Achilles, now at home,
Speaker 3: sees this on TV and he's like, no, I can't
Speaker 3: let her go into battle, so he goes back. He
Speaker 3: goes back to Jock's control and he's like, I will
Speaker 3: be the jock and he It rains with Texts, and
Speaker 3: then there's a scene where doctor Matsumoto and Text begin
Speaker 3: to argue about how to best keep the new robot
Speaker 3: system a secret from spies. Doctor Matsumoto has taken measures
Speaker 3: to keep it secret in a way that Text does
Speaker 3: not approve of. And so there's more drinking at the bar.
Speaker 3: Of course I mentioned that would come back. Alexander sits
Speaker 3: down next to Achilles and he declares that you make
Speaker 3: my drink taste like blood? Is that an expression? What
Speaker 3: does that mean? Do you know what he's getting at there?
Speaker 2: I can think of no way that that makes sense. Yeah,
Speaker 2: unless because he is he saying I can't tell he's
Speaker 2: saying it in a way where he's like, my drink
Speaker 2: is better because it tastes like blood, or is it
Speaker 2: worse because it tastes like blood. It's really hard to
Speaker 2: get a read on what exactly floats Alexander's boat here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we're ramping up to the final confrontation between
Speaker 3: Achilles and Alexander. But then before that, there is a
Speaker 3: great scene where I think maybe we shouldn't reveal what happens,
Speaker 3: but there is a conference about who is actually the
Speaker 3: spy on the market side, who's been leaking the new
Speaker 3: technology secrets to the enemy. There's a there's a great
Speaker 3: show down there that has some some good dialogue in it, actually,
Speaker 3: well some like good dialogue that changes almost mid sentence
Speaker 3: to become hilariously cliched.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's punctuated by hilarious cliches, but has some some
Speaker 2: nice lines in there.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So it's it's a very interesting scene. And of course
Speaker 2: the spy is.
Speaker 3: Revealed, but we won't spoil it for you. We're not
Speaker 3: going to tell you who the spy is. But then anyway,
Speaker 3: so Athena comes to achilles room the night before the
Speaker 3: big battle, and you think maybe this is going to
Speaker 3: pan out to be like a love scene, but instead
Speaker 3: she tricks him and shoots him with a sedative and
Speaker 3: locks him in his apartment because her angle is no,
Speaker 3: I will be the robot Jock, I will fight Alexander.
Speaker 2: I don't mean to harp on the film, because the
Speaker 2: film looks great and I love I love the way
Speaker 2: the sets look, I love I love the props, I
Speaker 2: love I love everything. But in this scene when she
Speaker 2: uses an injector gun on him, it's fairly obvious that
Speaker 2: in the wide shots she's using a hot glue gun,
Speaker 2: like a hot glue gun that's been painted silver, and
Speaker 2: then on close ups it's like an actual injection gun
Speaker 2: or something that looks more far more believably like an
Speaker 2: injection gun. So it's just something interesting. I noticed they
Speaker 2: didn't really take me out of the film, And again
Speaker 2: I don't want to harp on it, like this is like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, the cheapness of the movie, because for the
Speaker 2: most part it looks wonderful.
Speaker 3: The effects budget went mainly into the robot battles, I think.
Speaker 4: And jumpsuits too, jumpsuits and robot battles.
Speaker 3: Yes, but I think you're right. In the close ups
Speaker 3: it's a regular prop gun. So it makes me wonder
Speaker 3: why they couldn't use the regular prop gun in the
Speaker 3: wide shots too. But in the wide shots it's a
Speaker 3: thousand percent of hot glue gun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe something that changed pretty late in production.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So anyway, the next morning, Athena goes in to
Speaker 3: take Achilles place inside the robot. She's got her visor
Speaker 3: down so nobody can see who she is. She pretending
Speaker 3: to be him, and she's going to go do the
Speaker 3: fight herself. Meanwhile, meanwhile, Achilles escapes his apartment and he
Speaker 3: runs to the battlefield, and we get this final showdown.
Speaker 3: And I don't know how much we should say about
Speaker 3: the final showdown or how exactly to talk about it,
Speaker 3: but it's a pretty great robot battle that involves flying
Speaker 3: into space and different interesting weapons get deployed. I don't know,
Speaker 3: it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean there's one I will spoil one weapon that
Speaker 2: they use that is the bolo saw, which I remember
Speaker 2: from watching part of this I think probably on Sci
Speaker 2: Fi Channel back in the day, but even in the rewatch,
Speaker 2: it was just a wonderful moment because I've never seen
Speaker 2: a sci Fi weapon quite like it. It's this device
Speaker 2: it like shoots a chain around the limb of another
Speaker 2: robot and then that boloed chain like locks into place,
Speaker 2: allowing rotary motion of the chain, so it works kind
Speaker 2: of like an inverted chainsaw then to saw off the
Speaker 2: limb of an enemy robot, and it's wonderful. It's great.
Speaker 2: I'm surprised it's not. I don't know that I've seen
Speaker 2: it ripped off in any subsequent giant robot movie or anything,
Speaker 2: but they should because it's a fabulous weapon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. Maybe we should just focus on the big
Speaker 3: robots for a minute before we get to the glory
Speaker 3: of the ending.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So again, the robots look pretty awesome in this a
Speaker 2: combo of awesome old school stop motion, and I think
Speaker 2: some old school man ensued effects and the battles may
Speaker 2: not feel as dynamic as something you get nowadays or
Speaker 2: even in mech fiction of decades past, but it all
Speaker 2: has a feeling of authenticity to it, and I think
Speaker 2: one of the main reasons, and this is something that
Speaker 2: I think ties in well with you know, some elements
Speaker 2: you see in the Forever War. These are big weapons
Speaker 2: and mass and gravity. These are perpetually your greatest threat
Speaker 2: and your enemy's greatest weakness. As such, one of the
Speaker 2: worst things that could possibly happen to you in one
Speaker 2: of these robot jocks, Max is that you might fall
Speaker 2: over or be pushed over.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is actually, I think, really smart, Like
Speaker 3: if you're going to take the premise seriously, it's good
Speaker 3: to think about physics in this way. And I guess
Speaker 3: Haldeman did you know, he knew a lot about physics,
Speaker 3: and so he did actually have this in mind. And
Speaker 3: I think this is a great monster science connection because
Speaker 3: it's worth keeping this in mind about biology. Evolutionary design
Speaker 3: problems are not symmetrical across great differences in scale. One
Speaker 3: of the examples of this offen sided is, you know
Speaker 3: those like articles we've probably said things like this in
Speaker 3: the past, being you know, being kind of loose when
Speaker 3: we talked about it, where you say, like, if a
Speaker 3: flea were the size of a car, it could jump
Speaker 3: the height of the Empire, state building or something like that.
Speaker 3: Except the problem is, in a way, that could be
Speaker 3: true just as a matter of you know, scaling up
Speaker 3: the distance of a fleas jump, but it's also not
Speaker 3: literally true, because if a flea were the size of
Speaker 3: a car, it wouldn't be able to do that anymore.
Speaker 3: It's like athleticism would not scale up proportionately. It's because
Speaker 3: it's the size it is that it can make that
Speaker 3: jump proportional to its body length. So depending on the
Speaker 3: size of your body, you actually face vastly different threats
Speaker 3: and different constraints from the physical world. And one of
Speaker 3: my favorite examples, which I think people rarely think about,
Speaker 3: is the amazing difference that body size makes when you're
Speaker 3: thinking about the dangers posed to you by water. So
Speaker 3: there's a classic article by the great scientist JBS Haldane,
Speaker 3: who was behind a number of extremely important biological concepts
Speaker 3: in the twentieth century. He wrote this article called on
Speaker 3: Being the Right Size, And this is a paragraph that
Speaker 3: I remember when I first read this, This really did
Speaker 3: blow my mind. So think about this. Haldane writes, A
Speaker 3: man coming out of the carries with him a film
Speaker 3: of water about one fiftieth of an inch in thickness.
Speaker 3: This way is roughly a pound. A wet mouse has
Speaker 3: to carry about its own weight of water. A wet
Speaker 3: fly has to lift many times its own weight. And
Speaker 3: as everyone knows, a fly, once wetted by water in
Speaker 3: any other liquid, is in a very serious position. Indeed,
Speaker 3: an insect going for a drink is in as great
Speaker 3: danger as a man leaning out over a precipice in
Speaker 3: search of food, if it once falls into the grip
Speaker 3: of the surface tension of the water. That is to say,
Speaker 3: it gets wet, it is likely to remain so until
Speaker 3: it drowns. A few insects, such as water beetles, contrive
Speaker 3: to be unwettable. The majority keep well away from their
Speaker 3: drink by means of a long prebossis. So it's amazing
Speaker 3: to think about how like getting wet doesn't bother us
Speaker 3: at all, but for much smaller animals because of the
Speaker 3: difference in like the mass of your body and the
Speaker 3: strength of your muscles can compared to the surface area
Speaker 3: of your body and the properties of water at that scale,
Speaker 3: water could be like this horrifying slime that takes a
Speaker 3: grip on you and like you can't get away from.
Speaker 3: But a lot of these asymmetries, not all of them,
Speaker 3: but a lot of them are based on the force
Speaker 3: of gravity and the ratio of surface area to mass
Speaker 3: as an object gets bigger. And this brings us back
Speaker 3: to the robot jocks. So to read a section from
Speaker 3: that same JBS hal day in article, he's talking about
Speaker 3: the dangers of falling. What falling is as a threat
Speaker 3: to animals of different size. Quote to the mouse in
Speaker 3: any smaller animal, it presents practically no dangers. You can
Speaker 3: drop a mouse down a thousand yard mind shaft, and
Speaker 3: on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock
Speaker 3: and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft.
Speaker 3: A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes.
Speaker 3: For the resistance presented to movement by the air is
Speaker 3: proportional to the surface of the moving object, divide an
Speaker 3: animal's length, breadth, and height each by ten. Its weight
Speaker 3: is reduced to a thousandth but its surface only to
Speaker 3: one hundredth So the resistance to falling in the case
Speaker 3: of a small animal is relatively ten times greater than
Speaker 3: the driving force. And I think this would absolutely be
Speaker 3: the same kind of concern if you were considering mech battles.
Speaker 3: So if you were to have something like the autoloader
Speaker 3: and aliens, you know, like these roughly slightly bigger than
Speaker 3: human sized mechs, fighting in those things would be entirely
Speaker 3: different a proposition than fighting in these hundred foot tall
Speaker 3: or two hundred foot tall giant robots, where in the
Speaker 3: case of the larger robots, gravity itself is an immense
Speaker 3: threat to you, like just falling over will very likely
Speaker 3: destroy you.
Speaker 2: So yeah, in this film, you do get the impression
Speaker 2: that most of these robot jocks battles end when the
Speaker 2: first combatant is knocked over or made prone, Like it
Speaker 2: seems like most of the time there's getting up from that, right,
Speaker 2: And it's interesting to think about, like, like, how did
Speaker 2: they get here? How did they get to the point
Speaker 2: where they're basically each battling in a skyscraper on legs? Yes,
Speaker 2: and I'm guessing there's there would have been an arms
Speaker 2: race over time, so maybe they started smaller, like just
Speaker 2: kind of like power armor sort of a situation maximize
Speaker 2: the individual for one on one battle, but then over time,
Speaker 2: like what do you do do you start getting bigger suits,
Speaker 2: Like my suit's bigger than yours and has bigger weapons,
Speaker 2: so now you've got to get bigger too. And so
Speaker 2: now we see like the end results of that where
Speaker 2: the combatants are absolutely as large as they could possibly
Speaker 2: get and are you know, and they have all of
Speaker 2: these weaknesses based on that size, but there's just no
Speaker 2: scaling back at this point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's interesting. It's almost one of those like prisoner's
Speaker 3: dilemma type problems where like the incentives for the individual
Speaker 3: are different than the incentives for like both parties when
Speaker 3: they look at things together and if you could just
Speaker 3: get them agreed to both agree to scale back down,
Speaker 3: that would be better for both. But they but you
Speaker 3: can't get them to agree to that, so they just
Speaker 3: keep getting bigger. And that also brings me to another
Speaker 3: interesting question. This movie raises some things about it that
Speaker 3: you wonder if they would make sense in reality, and
Speaker 3: that is the very concept of symbolic warfare through single
Speaker 3: combat or champion combat. So the premise of the film
Speaker 3: is that you've got these superpowers, they are in violent
Speaker 3: conflict with one another, but they can't go to war.
Speaker 3: They don't go to war on the whole. Instead, they
Speaker 3: pick one person from each side to get in a
Speaker 3: robot fight it out, and then the winner gets whatever
Speaker 3: it is they wanted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know it works in this film. And
Speaker 2: of course you also see this in mythology when mythological
Speaker 2: characters are used to embody whole nations or peoples, et cetera.
Speaker 2: It does remind me a bit of something that we
Speaker 2: discussed in our stuff to Blow your Mind episodes on
Speaker 2: the ant Wars earlier in the year, where we talked
Speaker 2: about the various turner tournament battle that you see in ants,
Speaker 2: but also in certain small armed groups historically in human civilization,
Speaker 2: and the idea here being like you're if you don't
Speaker 2: have large armies that are combating each other, sometimes it
Speaker 2: makes more sense for a select few individuals to engage
Speaker 2: in sort of you know, less high stakes combat, to
Speaker 2: sort of feel each other out, to see which way
Speaker 2: the battle would go and then act accordingly. But in
Speaker 2: these cases we're still not talking about like one soldier
Speaker 2: fighting one soldier champion versus champions.
Speaker 3: Right, And this brings us back to something that we
Speaker 3: also talked about in the ant Wars episode, which are
Speaker 3: these models. Again, these these are not perfect descriptions of
Speaker 3: what actually happens in battle, but they are somewhat accurate
Speaker 3: descriptions for modeling casualties and conflict. And they're known as
Speaker 3: Lanchester's square laws and Lanchester's linear laws, and so the
Speaker 3: main idea there, it's more complicated than this, but the
Speaker 3: main idea is that as you approach a situation that
Speaker 3: is a war of all against all, so the more
Speaker 3: your battle resembles something where any soldier can engage any
Speaker 3: other at any time, so maybe like a shooting war,
Speaker 3: as it approaches that instead of the type of battle
Speaker 3: where one soldier can only fight one other soldier at
Speaker 3: a times a big series of duels, as it becomes
Speaker 3: more of a war of all against all, than the
Speaker 3: advantages provided by having superior numbers go up, not just
Speaker 3: in a linear way, but in a squared way, so
Speaker 3: that having superior numbers is much more important than having
Speaker 3: better individual fighters in a war of all against all.
Speaker 3: And that's because like the force with superior numbers can
Speaker 3: quite quickly reduce the numbers of the other forces so
Speaker 3: that they can't really put up a fight of any kind.
Speaker 3: And so anyway, in a world with technology that enables,
Speaker 3: you know, a war of all against all, like a
Speaker 3: basic shooting war scenario, the side with superior numbers is
Speaker 3: almost always at an extreme advantage. And that makes me
Speaker 3: think about how it's hard to imagine in a modern
Speaker 3: context with modern technology, that champion warfare would ever really
Speaker 3: emerge unless it were like imposed by an outside force.
Speaker 3: For champion warfare to be the way that you would
Speaker 3: settle geopolitical conflict, it would require the side more with
Speaker 3: numerical superiority to agree to the champion warfare and to say, yes,
Speaker 3: we will honor the outcome of this duel. But champion
Speaker 3: warfare necessarily improves the odds for the weaker force and
Speaker 3: hurts the odds for the stronger force. So why would
Speaker 3: the stronger force agree to it?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Now, if in this film, if the judges, if the
Speaker 2: referees were aliens representing, say a technologically advanced species that
Speaker 2: could just simply wipe out either side without thinking about it,
Speaker 2: like that would potentially make sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it does well.
Speaker 3: But I was gonna in that case, though, why not
Speaker 3: just have a trial where like you argue about who
Speaker 3: actually has the correct claim to the land, rather than
Speaker 3: people just both say they want the land and you
Speaker 3: settle it with a fight.
Speaker 2: I wish I could have, you know, seen more what
Speaker 2: Haldeman had in mind for this, like what his read
Speaker 2: on it would would have been, you know, because I mean,
Speaker 2: certainly it worked, there's the symbolic level at which it works.
Speaker 2: But I wonder what the world building arguments would have been.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think obviously it would be better
Speaker 3: for the soldiers and better for the people on both
Speaker 3: sides of a conflict if it could be settled without
Speaker 3: massive bloodshed whatever whatever that method is. I mean, even
Speaker 3: if it's single combat between robot jocks, that's better than
Speaker 3: just having an all out total war where you send
Speaker 3: people into the meat grinder. But the the you know,
Speaker 3: you hit the war pigs problem. Like leaders setting military
Speaker 3: policy are going to want to win, they're not usually
Speaker 3: the people who themselves have to die in battle. So
Speaker 3: while the weaker force may very much want to settle
Speaker 3: things with robot jocks, it just seems like the side
Speaker 3: with the numerical and weapons superiority would tend to just say, no,
Speaker 3: now we'll have a war.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But you know, ultimately this is this is not a
Speaker 2: picture that celebrates warfare. It's it has has a message
Speaker 2: of you know, an anti war message, which which I
Speaker 2: ultimately like.
Speaker 3: Well, let's talk about the ending, the very ending, which
Speaker 3: is both actually sort of transcendently excellent and hilarious.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So basically they just battle the hell out of each other.
Speaker 2: So this is this ends up being like the main
Speaker 2: event in which robots do get up after being knocked
Speaker 2: prone through the use of superior tactics, but also lots
Speaker 2: of tricky weaponry because again it all comes down to
Speaker 2: what secret weapons do you have that your enemy doesn't
Speaker 2: know about? So they engage in a lot of this
Speaker 2: and they end up going up into the stratosphere. They
Speaker 2: end up coming back down again. They end up destroying
Speaker 2: each other's suits and and there's some clever twists and
Speaker 2: turns in that battle, but it ends up with them
Speaker 2: both unsuited, both of them just on amid the rubble,
Speaker 2: trying to bash each other with like pipes and pieces
Speaker 2: of metal, like reduced to you know, almost like paleolithic battle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, literally trying to bash each other with sticks
Speaker 3: and rocks.
Speaker 2: And they reach a point where, Okay, it looks like
Speaker 2: Achilles is going to be victorious, you know, it's one
Speaker 2: of those those moments where is he going to finish
Speaker 2: off his adversary. But no, Achilles has another option that
Speaker 2: he presents and they have this wonderful little back and
Speaker 2: forth which I quite like the dialogue, you know, and
Speaker 2: the way that they ended this because Achilles says to him,
Speaker 2: you can live, and Alexander says, yes, if I kill
Speaker 2: you with this, And it's the pipey thing that he's
Speaker 2: holding or was it a rock?
Speaker 3: I thought it was a rock, but I could be wrong.
Speaker 2: Okay, and then Achilles says we can both live, and
Speaker 2: then Alexander says, we are already dead. We are robot jicks,
Speaker 2: which which I think is a line. I think it
Speaker 2: works here, but I also have to remind myself that
Speaker 2: Haldeman's original working title for this was The Mechanics. Yes,
Speaker 2: so so that would have been a more interesting line.
Speaker 2: And he's like, no, we like we're mere mechanics, you know,
Speaker 2: like we're not even really controlling these things, these things
Speaker 2: and this this military engine, We're just caring for it
Speaker 2: and making it run, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, in a weird way. It's an exchange that,
Speaker 3: with a little bit of like verbal tweaking, could have
Speaker 3: been very powerful and is in some ways powerful, but
Speaker 3: because of the phrase robot jocks, it it absolutely spills
Speaker 3: over into absurdity. You know. So like if he had
Speaker 3: said we can both live and Alexander said, no, we
Speaker 3: are already dead. We're soldiers, I think the idea would
Speaker 3: be driven home there that like, their their fates are
Speaker 3: not up to them, you know, their fates are decided
Speaker 3: for them by forces beyond their control. Uh, And that
Speaker 3: does seem to be the theme. But instead he says,
Speaker 3: you know, we can live. No, we are robot jocks.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then but then ultimately, like this is the spoiler
Speaker 2: for the end of the film, but but he wins.
Speaker 2: Achilles is able to convince Alexander that yes, we can live,
Speaker 2: we don't have to fight, we can stop fighting, and
Speaker 2: they stop fighting and then they do that awesome fist
Speaker 2: bump at the end, and that closes the picture and
Speaker 2: you end up with this message of hope that you
Speaker 2: know that we can resist, that we can move beyond
Speaker 2: like senseless battle. And I love it.
Speaker 5: I got it.
Speaker 2: It ended perfectly, ends on a great note.
Speaker 3: It ends with the hero and the villain agreeing not
Speaker 3: to kill one another.
Speaker 2: Right, And they didn't do that thing that they often
Speaker 2: do in films where the hero appeals to the villain's
Speaker 2: humanity and the villain seems to say yes, but then
Speaker 2: goes for a double t yeah, and then you know,
Speaker 2: he shoots him dead. And then it's like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: he did kill the villain, but he tried. He gave
Speaker 2: him a chance, he gave him a chance to be good. No,
Speaker 2: instead they do something different, and I think it works that.
Speaker 3: I mean, so many movies use that. It is a
Speaker 3: plot device that I have come to absolutely despise just
Speaker 3: because of how common and how in a way, how
Speaker 3: cheap it is. Because what it's trying to show you
Speaker 3: is that it's trying to have it both ways. It's
Speaker 3: trying to have the hero show mercy and not be
Speaker 3: vindictive and cruel. So the hero gets the upper hand,
Speaker 3: gives the villain a chance to like walk away or
Speaker 3: to live or whatever, and then the villain tries to
Speaker 3: stab them in the back, and then the hero kills them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's trying to have it both ways.
Speaker 3: So you get to see the villain killed and punished,
Speaker 3: but you also get to see the hero have mercy.
Speaker 3: I think it's it's better to just choose one or
Speaker 3: the other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't know what kind of arguments may
Speaker 2: have happened, or maybe there weren't arguments over this part,
Speaker 2: but I like the way it turned out, So I
Speaker 2: don't know if this was ultimately the way hal Theman
Speaker 2: wanted it, or if this was more of a Stuart
Speaker 2: Gordon direction, or maybe this is just you know, the
Speaker 2: way it feels is like this is where the two
Speaker 2: visions come together and they work.
Speaker 3: It is a weirdly transcendent way to conclude this utterly
Speaker 3: ridiculous film.
Speaker 2: All right, and well, speaking of concluding, it's time for
Speaker 2: us to conclude. You may be wondering, though, where can
Speaker 2: I see robot Jocks? Unfortunately this is a tough one.
Speaker 2: You can buy some at times crazy overpriced DVDs, vhs
Speaker 2: and Blu rays of Robot Jocks, But the Shout Factory
Speaker 2: edition of this from twenty fifteen is currently out of
Speaker 2: print print. I think it went out of print in
Speaker 2: October of twenty nineteen, so hopefully it'll become more widely
Speaker 2: available in the future. No one seems to be streaming it, like,
Speaker 2: not even for rent or or digital purchase right now,
Speaker 2: say for the odd unauthorized like highly unauthorized version. Joe,
Speaker 2: didn't you find this one on Facebook of all places?
Speaker 3: Well, I didn't watch it there. I ended up watching
Speaker 3: the version that you rented and lent me. But dig
Speaker 3: around for it if you desire. But yeah, you should also.
Speaker 3: I mean I would say, start a letter writing campaign
Speaker 3: to the Criterion Collection and get them to put out
Speaker 3: their own edition of Robot Jocks, which is what the
Speaker 3: world deserves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we definitely rented it, got it from Atlanta's
Speaker 2: own Videodrome. They're still renting films at Atlanta's last video
Speaker 2: rental place, but if you're not in the Atlanta area,
Speaker 2: you can still get in on the fund with their merchandise.
Speaker 2: You can find them at videodrome dot tv in their
Speaker 2: main website is videodromeatl dot com. As for US, Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema will continue. We're gonna do this every Friday.
Speaker 2: We're gonna celebrate some sort of a weird film. We
Speaker 2: may talk a little bit about science and culture in it,
Speaker 2: but for the most part is the celebration of the
Speaker 2: film itself. Our core science and culture episodes will continue
Speaker 2: to air on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then we have,
Speaker 2: of course some other content sprinkled around throughout the week
Speaker 2: as well. You can find all of that in the
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow your Mind Feed and you can find
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Speaker 2: of course get in touch with us. Tell us what
Speaker 2: you thought about Robot Jocks. You have memories of seeing
Speaker 2: it back in the day, if you rewatched it recently,
Speaker 2: did you rewatch it? For this episode, we want to
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Speaker 3: Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 3: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
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