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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema rewind.

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Speaker 2: This is Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today's

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Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema rewind is It's got to be one

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Speaker 2: of my all time favorite Weird House Cinema episodes. It's

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Speaker 2: the one we did on the Robot Jocks, originally published

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Speaker 2: on December twenty fifth, twenty twenty.

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Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, this one was a lot. This movie

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Speaker 1: is just a lot of fun and it was super

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Speaker 1: fun to discuss it, and I think, weirdly enough, it

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Speaker 1: was our Christmas Day episode in twenty twenty, so you know,

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Speaker 1: it feels good as well that this will be the

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Speaker 1: final episode that we air in the year twenty twenty one.

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Speaker 2: I don't remember if we mentioned this at the time,

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Speaker 2: but it's strangely appropriate in that a lot of the

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Speaker 2: characters in the movie wear clothes of a color scheme

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Speaker 2: that's kind of Santa Claus, very like red and white.

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Speaker 3: Sort of thing.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of red and white. And it feels

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Speaker 1: very surgical in a way that some depictions of Santa

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Speaker 1: Claus's headquarters and his workshop are are created. You know,

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Speaker 1: this idea that it is this place, it's magical but

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Speaker 1: also a little sci fi.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the ones that are operated by the technical elves

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Speaker 2: that have that have like computers and machines. Yeah, you

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Speaker 2: mean the machine elves, the machine elves.

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Speaker 1: Yes, all right, let's dive in.

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Speaker 4: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name's Rob Lamb.

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Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick. And I think this episode is

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Speaker 2: going to be publishing on Christmas Day, which is quite

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Speaker 2: apt because, if I'm not wrong, one of the biggest

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Speaker 2: toy crazes of the Christmases of yesteryear were Transformers toys,

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Speaker 2: and I think Transformers also probably partially inspired the movie.

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Speaker 5: We're going to be talking about today, So it's.

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Speaker 2: Very much like a like a toy robot Christmas celebration,

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Speaker 2: except imagine those toy robots were fighting it out for

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Speaker 2: the fate of Alaska, trading between the clutches of some

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Speaker 2: like evil capitalist empire and a harsh Soviet future state.

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Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, we're gonna be talking about nineteen nineties

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Speaker 1: robot jocks, which, yeah, I am to understand that the

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Speaker 1: Transformer craze helped inspire this but I think you could

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Speaker 1: also pretty fairly compare this to the boxing robots, you know.

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Speaker 5: The other Rockam soccer robots, Rockham Sock and.

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Speaker 1: Rogue of Robots. Yeah, this is basically big league rock

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Speaker 1: Em Socker Robots of the future.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I imagine.

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Speaker 2: So it's rock em soccer robots, but to settle territorial

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Speaker 2: disputes between post nuclear apocalyptic superpowers and they're like one

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Speaker 2: hundred feet tall.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, this is It's not a Christmas movie. We thought

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Speaker 1: about doing a Christmas movie, but then this came up,

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Speaker 1: and this was perfect. I will say that it is

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Speaker 1: rated PG, and some of the people that made it

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Speaker 1: talked about how it is for children. I did not

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Speaker 1: watch this with my son. I guess I could have,

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Speaker 1: but I'm ultimately glad I did not. There's just, you know,

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Speaker 1: there's a little bit of language in there that you know,

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Speaker 1: I'm sure a TV cut of this stuff that could

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Speaker 1: easily be edited out. I'm sure. But still it's a

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Speaker 1: very enjoyable picture and I'm excited to talk about it.

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Speaker 2: This is one of those movies that is it's I

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Speaker 2: don't think it's for children, it's for it's for adults,

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Speaker 2: in whom the child inside never died.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so that's probably a better way of

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Speaker 1: looking at it.

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Speaker 5: Should we hit that trailer audio?

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Speaker 1: Let's do it.

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Speaker 3: It's a new age of combat, human beings poltically engineered

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Speaker 3: to be the best fighters in history. Two champions. It

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Speaker 3: isn't over until someone wins at war with each other. Good.

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Speaker 3: I have already kulled you invincible men, Fish and Alexander.

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Speaker 3: Here now the ultimate killing machines.

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Speaker 4: I'm gonna get in this sec and I'm gonta jig.

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Speaker 1: I really love this one. This is one of those

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Speaker 1: with the I'm gonna kick your explosion sound bets, which

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Speaker 1: I think has been used in various other cinematic trailers

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Speaker 1: as well, but to great effect here.

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Speaker 5: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So this was actually directed by somebody you might not expect,

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Speaker 2: by Stuart Gordon, who is mainly known for Lovecraftian adaptations.

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Speaker 2: This is not in any way connected to Lovecraft. This

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Speaker 2: is a giant robot fight movie.

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Speaker 1: That's right, and again it is. It is rated PG,

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Speaker 1: which which certainly some of Stuart Gordon's most famous works

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Speaker 1: are not. He's probably best remembered for directing nineteen eighty

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Speaker 1: five's re Animator and then nineteen eighty six is from

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Speaker 1: Beyond both just wonderfully weird adaptations of HP Lovecraft else

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Speaker 1: that went off in their own, crazy, fleshy directions.

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Speaker 2: He also made a Lovecraft adaptation confusingly called Daygone, which

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Speaker 2: came out in the year two thousand and one, which

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Speaker 2: is the name of a Lovecraft story, but it's not

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Speaker 2: really an adaptation of that story. It's more an adaptation

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Speaker 2: of The Shadow over Ensmouth, which is a different Lovecraft story.

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Speaker 2: And that movie I remember kind of liking, even though

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Speaker 2: I don't know if I would say it's good.

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Speaker 1: Right, I remember at the time when I watched it,

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Speaker 1: I remember thinking, wow, this is not an accurate, you know,

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Speaker 1: depiction of an HBU Lovecraft story. But especially now, I'm

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Speaker 1: kind of like, well, good it went off into all

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Speaker 1: these films. It's good that they went off in their

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Speaker 1: own directions and became their own crazy weird thing. Like

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Speaker 1: I think it takes place in Spain and it's a

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Speaker 1: modern day and like sexuality exists in it, that sort

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Speaker 1: of thing. Yeah, I would say that's one of the

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Speaker 1: major contributions that Stuart Gordon's Lovecraft films, and also you

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Speaker 1: know the work of Brian Yazna who worked with often

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Speaker 1: they inject sexuality into these horror worlds, the other rather

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Speaker 1: sterile originally.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the kind of barren, hateful landscape of the original

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Speaker 2: Lovecraft is a little bit enlivened by the Gordon touch. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: there's another thing I really like about Dagon, though. I

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Speaker 2: remember thinking it's just merely a visual touch, which is

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Speaker 2: that the color palette of the film is very like

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Speaker 2: blue and green everywhere, but the main character wears an

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Speaker 2: orange sweater throughout the movie, and I just remember thinking

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Speaker 2: that was a great visual decision and it really looks

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Speaker 2: fun throughout.

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Speaker 1: The whole movie had some cool monsters, as I recall too,

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Speaker 1: they went with the like the double finned mermaid type creature. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: all right, well let's see. So these are some of

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Speaker 1: the most I think noteworthy Stuart Gordon films. But he

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Speaker 1: also did a lot of other stuff, and I did

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Speaker 1: mention already, but he did pass away earlier this year.

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Speaker 1: He lived nineteen forty seven through twenty twenty. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: he directed a lot of stuff. He did science fiction,

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Speaker 1: such as nineteen ninety six as Space Truckers, and with

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Speaker 1: Brian Yasna and Ed Naha, he created Honey I Shrunk

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Speaker 1: the Kids for Disney. They were the original creators, and

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Speaker 1: you know they have scriptwriting credits on that project and

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Speaker 1: any subsequent projects. So when you see the next Honey,

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Speaker 1: I Shrunk the Kids reboot or what have you, you're going

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Speaker 1: to see their names again.

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Speaker 2: Okay, I don't think I've seen any recent Stuart Gordon stuff.

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Speaker 1: I haven't either. He seemed to have branched out a

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Speaker 1: lot later in his career, getting further away from some

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Speaker 1: of the really like obvious genre stuff, such as a

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Speaker 1: two thousand and five drama film titled Edmund starring William H.

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Speaker 1: Macy and written by David Mammett. So you know, he

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Speaker 1: really ultimately had a very i think, a varied career

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Speaker 1: and worked on a lot of different types of stuff.

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Speaker 1: Though horror fans I think are always going to remember

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Speaker 1: him best from some of those those early gory nineteen

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Speaker 1: eighties Lovecraft adaptations.

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Speaker 5: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Now, one thing that must be said about Robot Jocks

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Speaker 2: is that it is a very zany, cliche written robot

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Speaker 2: slugfest that is in many ways just excellent and delightful,

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Speaker 2: but it's also I don't know, you could make many

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Speaker 2: extremely legitimate criticisms of the script, and yet it was

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Speaker 2: written by a like revered science fiction author.

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Speaker 1: That's right, Joe Haldeman, the author of the Hugo Award

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Speaker 1: winning nineteen seventy four military science fiction novel The Forever War. Now,

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Speaker 1: I had not read this one before, but I picked

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Speaker 1: it up after watching watching Robot Jocks last week and

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Speaker 1: I've been reading it. I haven't finished it yet, but

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Speaker 1: it's a very interesting book, very much a book of

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Speaker 1: its time in many ways, especially concerning you know, various

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Speaker 1: sort of like gender ideas and so forth. But it's

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Speaker 1: essentially a Vietnam story, a Vietnam memoir, even written by

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Speaker 1: an author who, having just received a bachelors in a

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Speaker 1: in physics and astronomy, was immediately drafted in the US

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Speaker 1: Army in nineteen sixty seven as a combat engineer. That's

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Speaker 1: Haldemann's story, and he was subsequently wounded, received a purple Heart,

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Speaker 1: and The Forever War it seems to reflect all of this,

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Speaker 1: except dealing with futuristic warriors cast into an armed conflict

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Speaker 1: in a distant star system of a slew of different

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Speaker 1: star systems against an unknown alien enemy, and the main

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Speaker 1: character in that a gentleman by the name of Mandela

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Speaker 1: is also a physicist who finds himself drafted into a war,

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Speaker 1: only this time it's against the so called Tarans, who

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Speaker 1: are these aliens that nobody really has a clear picture

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Speaker 1: of or understanding of as they're starting out. So it's

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Speaker 1: again very much a product of its time, quite interesting,

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Speaker 1: quite influential. It's a solid power armor military science fiction yarn,

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Speaker 1: very much in the same in keeping with stuff like

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Speaker 1: starship troopers and so forth, but it has a focus

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Speaker 1: on first of all, the physics of other worlds and

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Speaker 1: the physics of space travel, as well as of course

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Speaker 1: the psychology of the soldiers experience and afe. The interesting

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Speaker 1: things have very popped up in it. He touches on

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Speaker 1: the perils of fighting around frozen hydrogen on other worlds.

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Speaker 1: There's discussion of how time dilation impacts war. So you

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Speaker 1: encounter the enemy one day and your technology is superior

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Speaker 1: to them, but then the next encounter you have with them,

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Speaker 1: their technology is yours ahead of yours because of time

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Speaker 1: dilation and travel at speeds approaching light. Because you were

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Speaker 1: a creature now of their past and they are denizens

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Speaker 1: of what was your future.

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Speaker 2: That's very interesting. So, like every time you travel to

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Speaker 2: meet your opponent, they get a leg up on you

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Speaker 2: because they have more time to prepare than you do.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's really interesting. He gets into the use

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Speaker 1: of hypnotic suggestion to invoke xenophobic hatred and soldiers. But

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Speaker 1: on top of that, he seems to spend a lot

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Speaker 1: of time focusing on what it means to be enveloped

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Speaker 1: by the war machine, how it changes your life, how

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Speaker 1: it affects your psyche, and how in the Forever War

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Speaker 1: it also co opts sexuality as well as individuality. It's

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Speaker 1: just kind of like this all consuming force on your life.

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Speaker 2: This is interesting because I feel like what you're just

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Speaker 2: talking about comes through, maybe not so much in the

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Speaker 2: original novel, but in the Paul Verehoven movie adaptation of

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Speaker 2: Starship Troopers.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I understand that the Forever War is often brought

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Speaker 1: up as kind of a counterbalance to the largely pro

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Speaker 1: war narrative of the original novel Starship Troopers, which I

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Speaker 1: have also read, but I honestly don't remember much about

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Speaker 1: it other than some of the cool power armor battles

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Speaker 1: that were going on in it.

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Speaker 2: So, how do Haldeman and Stuart Gordon get teamed up

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Speaker 2: to make this ridiculous robot slugfest movie.

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Speaker 1: All right, So apparently what happened is, let's say, Haldeman

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Speaker 1: wrote this book and it was a huge success and

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Speaker 1: critically a claimed and Haldeman and Stuart ended up chatting

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Speaker 1: with each other and working on putting together a film

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Speaker 1: adaptation of the Forever War, and they were both really

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Speaker 1: excited about it, but it never came together. I think

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Speaker 1: the way they described it is like Reagan was elected

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Speaker 1: and then kind of like things changed. There was less

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Speaker 1: funding for the arts, and therefore the project never came together,

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Speaker 1: but it led to this project with Haldeman working on

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Speaker 1: the script that would ultimately become Robot Jocks, directed by

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Speaker 1: Stuart Gordon. Now, apparently there was a fair amount of

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Speaker 1: disagreement between the two as the project rolled on, which

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Speaker 1: has been summed up at times as Haldeman wanting to

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Speaker 1: create a movie for adults that kids could also enjoy

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Speaker 1: and Gordon wanted to create a movie for kids that

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Speaker 1: adults could enjoy, and.

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Speaker 5: They ended up creating not exactly either one.

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Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it's kind of a hybrid of the two,

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Speaker 1: which is again perfectly enjoyable, but it's more more of

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Speaker 1: a film that the inner child and the inner adult

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Speaker 1: can both enjoy or kind of fight over.

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Speaker 5: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So here's a bit from Haldeman's blog where he talked

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Speaker 1: about this. He said, I wanted the mechanics he's talking

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Speaker 1: about as a title. He Stuart Gordon insisted on robojocks.

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Speaker 1: He finally wound up being robot Jocks after the people

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Speaker 1: who did RoboCop asked whether we wanted to spend a

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Speaker 1: lot of dreary time in court. I would try to

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Speaker 1: change the science into something reasonable. Stuart would change it

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Speaker 1: back to Saturday morning cartoon stuff. I tried to make believable,

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Speaker 1: reasonable characters, and Stuart would insist on throwing in cliches

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Speaker 1: and caricatures. It was especially annoying because it was a

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Speaker 1: story about soldiers, and I was the only person around

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Speaker 1: who'd ever been one. In fact, he was right and

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Speaker 1: I was wrong, But it wasn't until we were actually

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Speaker 1: shooting the movie that that became clear.

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Speaker 2: That's interesting. I mean, you can absolutely feel this tension

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Speaker 2: in the movie when you watch it, because it will

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Speaker 2: alternate between moments that almost kind of actually work as

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Speaker 2: as thoughtful science fiction. There'll be like moments of dialogue

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Speaker 2: that are kind of thoughtful and interesting, and then it

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Speaker 2: just immediately like throttles back into hilarious, absurd, cliche sci

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Speaker 2: fi mode.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you can get whiplash at times from it because

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Speaker 1: you're like, oh man, that was really beautiful, and then

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Speaker 1: and then something else happens and you're like, that was goofy.

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Speaker 1: But but then again, like I started, I started thinking,

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Speaker 1: I tried to sort of divide these two possible films

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Speaker 1: in my head, and I was thinking, all right, what

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Speaker 1: if what if this character was played by a different

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Speaker 1: actor and it was a more of a serious role,

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Speaker 1: it was more of a soldier role, like Haldeman would

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Speaker 1: have written. You know, maybe maybe you bring in some

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Speaker 1: like Michael Ironside to play in instead of a cartoon cowboy.

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Speaker 1: We'll get to that in a bed. And I was thinking, well,

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Speaker 1: that would be good. But but then again, it wouldn't

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Speaker 1: be Robot Jocks, Like there's the ultimate form of the picture.

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Speaker 1: Like the absurdities and the contradictions are one of the

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Speaker 1: most notable things about it.

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Speaker 2: Oh no, no, I wouldn't change a thing about Robot Jocks.

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Speaker 2: Robot Jocks is exactly the thing it should be. I

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Speaker 2: absolutely would not change it. I mean, Robot Jos is

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Speaker 2: the kind of film for which weird house cinema exists,

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Speaker 2: something that that cannot just be praised as a normal

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Speaker 2: kind of successful movie that is in some sense absurd

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Speaker 2: or a failure, but is absolutely worth talking about and

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Speaker 2: has things to be appreciated.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And I think just on the serious end of the spectrum,

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Speaker 1: on the Haldamn end of the spectrum. Even though I

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Speaker 1: think he ultimately like considered it a you know, a

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Speaker 1: disappointing child from a creative standpoint, I feel like there

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Speaker 1: are elements that totally arrange to you. You get the sense

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Speaker 1: of the absurdity of war, a vast war machine, you know,

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Speaker 1: a military industrial complex that just sucks everything in and

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Speaker 1: in this film co ops reproduction. So yeah, there's lots

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Speaker 1: to talk about here.

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Speaker 2: And one more thing I will say about it is

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Speaker 2: that the ending of this film I think is a

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Speaker 2: genuine triumph in both senses in which the movie works.

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Speaker 2: It actually is a surprise narrative conclusion.

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Speaker 5: That I was kind of like, Wow, it's amazing.

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Speaker 2: They did that, but it's also hilarious in an unintentional way.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, like it seems to like if it seems

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Speaker 1: like there are two different films competing for coexistence. At

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Speaker 1: the end of the film, those two visions come together

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Speaker 1: and fist bump each other and it works.

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Speaker 5: So maybe we should talk about the cast.

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Speaker 1: All right. Well, our main character in this is Achilles,

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Speaker 1: played by Gary Graham. I think a lot of people

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Speaker 1: will recognize Gary Graham out that he's been around for

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Speaker 1: a long time. The main place I knew him from

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Speaker 1: due to all my time watching the Sci Fi Channel

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Speaker 1: back in the day, is that Graham was on the

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Speaker 1: Alien Nation TV series. He played Detective Matt Sykes on that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know what I recognized him from, but

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Speaker 2: he looks like a sort of combination of other existing actors,

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Speaker 2: so that kind of helps him seem very familiar to me.

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Speaker 2: He was a three way if they of Scott Glenn,

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Speaker 2: Mick Jagger and Billy Bob Thornton put those three in

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Speaker 2: a blender and that's him.

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Speaker 1: That's yeah, that's him. And you know, I don't know

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Speaker 1: a lot about about him and his work, but in

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Speaker 1: this particular film, he does a good job. I have

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Speaker 1: no complaints about his acting. He's perfectly serviceable as the

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Speaker 1: lead in an action film.

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Speaker 2: I would say, his name, Gary Graham is so close

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Speaker 2: to the name Garrett Graham, of who of course was

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Speaker 2: in Chopping Mall and who played Beef in Fantom of

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Speaker 2: the Paradise, And this movie could only possibly have been

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Speaker 2: improved by swapping him for Garrett Graham.

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Speaker 1: Oh, that would have been interesting. Yeah, And I feel

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Speaker 1: like Garrett Graham would have had to lean into like

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Speaker 1: a sleazier version of Achilles, like he has, like he

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Speaker 1: has a natural sleezy era and a lot of the

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Speaker 1: roles that he has.

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Speaker 2: So Achilles Achilles is the hero of the movie. And

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Speaker 2: he is the titular robot jock. He is one of

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Speaker 2: these pilots who drives around these giant mech robots and

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Speaker 2: fights it out. And I guess we'll get into more

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Speaker 2: of the plot mechanics and setting when we do the

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Speaker 2: full plot breakdown. But imagine this guy we're talking about,

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Speaker 2: like sitting in the pilot's seat of a giant mech warrior.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and he is the best. He is the best

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Speaker 1: robot jocks jock that this particular faction has at their disposal.

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Speaker 2: Right, But there are some up and coming robot jocks

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Speaker 2: who maybe could rival his greatness and probably The most

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Speaker 2: promising of them is a young robot jock named Athena.

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Speaker 1: Right, and she's played by Anne Marie Johnson. She was

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Speaker 1: in the Heat of the Night TV show that I

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Speaker 1: mainly remember as being a show that my grandfather watched

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Speaker 1: all the time, and I don't think I ever watched.

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Speaker 1: But Amory Johnson, she's been around forever. She's done a

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Speaker 1: lot of work, and I understand she's also been heavily

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Speaker 1: involved in the Screen Actors Guild. So yeah, a major name,

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Speaker 1: especially if you're an actor, you probably are familiar.

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Speaker 5: With her now.

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Speaker 2: I think there are a couple of roles that make

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Speaker 2: this movie by adding in a level of cartoonishness that

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Speaker 2: I think clashes with whatever serious thing Holdoman may have

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Speaker 2: been going for. And I would say that the one

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Speaker 2: of the two main super cartoony characters is the villain

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Speaker 2: of the film, Alexander, who is I think supposed to

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Speaker 2: be Ivan Drago from Rocky four.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you get a strong sense of that.

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Speaker 3: He is.

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Speaker 1: He is our Russian villain, our Russian superman that that fights,

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Speaker 1: I should say, in a in this giant mech that

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Speaker 1: has an amazing design but is interestingly less human, in

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Speaker 1: form less humanoid compared to the mech used by our hero.

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Speaker 1: So even though it's not I forget what the factions

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Speaker 1: are even called, but it's not called the US versus

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Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. This is supposed to all take place

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Speaker 1: after warfare or a comet or something something that's wrecked

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Speaker 1: the world.

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Speaker 2: There was a nuclear war. Yea, there was a nuclear

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Speaker 2: war that like wiped out huge parts of humanity. And

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Speaker 2: then after the nuclear war, your two main superpowers, which

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Speaker 2: again are just apparently basically the United States and the

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Speaker 2: Soviet Union. But the United States is called the Market

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Speaker 2: and the Soviet Union is called the Confederation or the Confed.

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Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, so these are the two main main factions.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, they're essentially the US future US versus future

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Speaker 1: Soviet Union. And this particular robot jocks Jack played by

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Speaker 1: Paul is played by Paul Koslow, who lived nineteen forty

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Speaker 1: four through twenty nineteen. He was a German Canadian actor

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Speaker 1: who was in a lot of TV back in the day,

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Speaker 1: but also some key seventies cult films. He had a

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Speaker 1: supporting role in nineteen seventy one's The Omega Man oh Okay,

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Speaker 1: which is a wonderful film.

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Speaker 5: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: His Russian accent in this is so awful. Every time

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Speaker 2: he talks, I couldn't stop laughing. It's on the level of, like,

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Speaker 2: you know, he like meets up his opponents in the

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Speaker 2: bar for a drink. Why is that happening? By the way,

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Speaker 2: we should talk about the when we get into the plot.

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Speaker 2: But like so he and Achilles are drinking at the

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Speaker 2: bar together and he's like, your drink It makes me

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Speaker 2: think of blood?

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean again, he was German Canadian, he did,

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Speaker 1: you know? And this is not his natural accent. I

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Speaker 1: had to look him up because he's been in some

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Speaker 1: other like key film, like The Vanishing Point from seventy one. Okay,

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Speaker 1: I was looking at it something that claimed to be

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Speaker 1: his reel on YouTube, and yeah, he's he seems good

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Speaker 1: in things, but he's he's never using a Russian accent

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Speaker 1: except in this film, where it comes off as a

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Speaker 1: like a Saturday Night Live or World Wrestling Federation level

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Speaker 1: of believability.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he would be like a wrestler called the

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Speaker 2: Czar played by a guy from New Jersey.

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Speaker 1: Now that being said, he's he's very fun in this role,

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Speaker 1: but that accent is not believable.

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Speaker 2: I literally think the one I just did to make

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Speaker 2: fun of it was better than the one he uses

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Speaker 2: in the movie. Okay, but then we got to get

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Speaker 2: to our other main cartoon character from the movie. This

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Speaker 2: one is the character of Texts text Conway, played by

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Speaker 2: an actor named Michael Aldridge.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. This, Oh my goodness. So this character Tex Conway.

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Speaker 1: He's our heroes trainer, he's his mentor. He's a former

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Speaker 1: robot jocks champion in his own right who won some

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Speaker 1: key battles in the past. But man, he is a

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Speaker 1: root and toot in text and stereotype with a cowboy

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Speaker 1: hat but a futuristic jumpsuit.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So he's Buck Strickland in a red and white jumpsuit

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Speaker 2: talking about.

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Speaker 3: You can't get the lasers calibrated.

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Speaker 2: And he so he specifies that he was a former

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Speaker 2: like you say, he was a former robot jock himself,

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Speaker 2: like one of the greatest that ever lived, and that

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Speaker 2: his jock, his jocking, his robot piloting won the area

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Speaker 2: of Campuccia, which I guess is Cambodia for the market.

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Speaker 2: So you got to imagine, Okay, they're capitalists now and

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Speaker 2: it's all because of texts.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's He also reminds me of the

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Speaker 1: rich Textan character from The Simpsons. Yes, pops up from

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Speaker 1: time to time. Yeah, so it's it is a very

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Speaker 1: cartoony role, but a richly enjoyable role. It's it's every

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Speaker 1: time he's on the screen, it's it's it's wonderful. And

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Speaker 1: Aldrum himself is as an actor who was just a

436
00:23:21,080 --> 00:23:23,480
Speaker 1: regular TV player back in the day, Like you just

437
00:23:23,560 --> 00:23:26,760
Speaker 1: you scroll through his IMDb page and it's just everything

438
00:23:26,800 --> 00:23:30,720
Speaker 1: that was on television with with some notable titles to

439
00:23:31,080 --> 00:23:34,240
Speaker 1: call out, like Murder she wrote, Dallas of course the

440
00:23:34,359 --> 00:23:38,200
Speaker 1: A team. He was on that mini series V So, yeah,

441
00:23:38,240 --> 00:23:39,920
Speaker 1: he was in tons of stuff as well, and he's

442
00:23:39,920 --> 00:23:40,240
Speaker 1: great in.

443
00:23:40,280 --> 00:23:43,200
Speaker 2: This as we as we go on, we should also

444
00:23:43,240 --> 00:23:45,440
Speaker 2: be thinking about like who should be cast in each

445
00:23:45,520 --> 00:23:48,679
Speaker 2: role for our twenty twenty one remake of Robot Jocks.

446
00:23:48,960 --> 00:23:50,760
Speaker 2: And I think there's a pretty obvious choice that you

447
00:23:50,840 --> 00:23:52,760
Speaker 2: landed on for the new casting of Texts.

448
00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:54,600
Speaker 1: Oh I think this was this was you?

449
00:23:54,720 --> 00:23:54,840
Speaker 5: Right?

450
00:23:55,200 --> 00:23:57,480
Speaker 1: Oh? No, no, well you brought up Buck Strickland, who

451
00:23:57,480 --> 00:24:00,480
Speaker 1: was voiced by Stephen root Right and Steve and we

452
00:24:00,480 --> 00:24:02,680
Speaker 1: would be perfect for this role because you know, he's

453
00:24:02,680 --> 00:24:06,879
Speaker 1: great at yucking it up, but also is superb at

454
00:24:07,080 --> 00:24:09,439
Speaker 1: also having this kind of streak of darkness which plays

455
00:24:09,440 --> 00:24:11,800
Speaker 1: into Tex Conway's characters as well.

456
00:24:12,119 --> 00:24:15,480
Speaker 2: Right, all right, let's see, who else do we want

457
00:24:15,480 --> 00:24:17,840
Speaker 2: to talk about in the in the connections.

458
00:24:17,280 --> 00:24:21,680
Speaker 1: Here, Well, let's see, there's a character named doctor Matsumoto

459
00:24:21,760 --> 00:24:24,919
Speaker 1: played by Danny Kamikono, part of the He's part of

460
00:24:24,920 --> 00:24:27,399
Speaker 1: This character's part of the tech team. This is a

461
00:24:27,400 --> 00:24:29,760
Speaker 1: solid performer who did a lot of a lot of things,

462
00:24:29,800 --> 00:24:32,280
Speaker 1: most notably The Karate Kid. He was in that, but

463
00:24:32,320 --> 00:24:36,360
Speaker 1: he also appeared in nineteen ninety threes Robot Wars, directed

464
00:24:36,359 --> 00:24:38,919
Speaker 1: by Albert band We'll get to him in a minute.

465
00:24:39,080 --> 00:24:43,800
Speaker 1: Same production company also Giant Robots, sometimes marketed as a

466
00:24:43,840 --> 00:24:47,400
Speaker 1: sequel to this film, but not directly related to Robot Jocks.

467
00:24:47,920 --> 00:24:51,000
Speaker 5: One was not enough. People needed more robot jocks.

468
00:24:51,400 --> 00:24:54,879
Speaker 1: We always do. There's a fun cameo in this We

469
00:24:54,960 --> 00:24:59,919
Speaker 1: mentioned Reanimator earlier and the Beyond well, Jeffrey Combs, the

470
00:25:00,080 --> 00:25:03,440
Speaker 1: love Crafty and Lothario himself the B movie Icon shows

471
00:25:03,520 --> 00:25:08,040
Speaker 1: up as just one of the robojocks. Robot Jocks fans

472
00:25:08,600 --> 00:25:10,400
Speaker 1: that are cheering on what's happening.

473
00:25:10,560 --> 00:25:14,439
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Occasionally we get some shots of the proletariat,

474
00:25:14,600 --> 00:25:18,200
Speaker 2: you know, just the regular society and what they think

475
00:25:18,240 --> 00:25:21,680
Speaker 2: about the ongoing They treat the Robot Jocks battles. It

476
00:25:21,760 --> 00:25:25,320
Speaker 2: basically is a sporting event rather than a major geopolitical conflict.

477
00:25:26,000 --> 00:25:26,119
Speaker 1: Uh.

478
00:25:26,560 --> 00:25:29,320
Speaker 2: And and there is a great scene where we're watching

479
00:25:29,359 --> 00:25:33,320
Speaker 2: a couple of the proles watch the robot Jocks announcements

480
00:25:33,359 --> 00:25:36,560
Speaker 2: on TV, and for some reason they're wearing the hats

481
00:25:36,600 --> 00:25:38,480
Speaker 2: that members of House Frey wear.

482
00:25:38,960 --> 00:25:41,400
Speaker 5: I don't know where that comes from.

483
00:25:41,880 --> 00:25:44,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is an interesting wrinkle in the show though,

484
00:25:44,680 --> 00:25:49,280
Speaker 1: where it's geopolitics as pure entertainment to a large section

485
00:25:49,640 --> 00:25:53,360
Speaker 1: of the populace. So yeah, there again another area where

486
00:25:53,359 --> 00:25:55,760
Speaker 1: this show gets. Uh, this movie gets a bit meaty

487
00:25:56,280 --> 00:25:57,520
Speaker 1: before it gets goofy again.

488
00:25:58,440 --> 00:26:00,080
Speaker 2: Now, one thing we see in the credits of the

489
00:26:00,080 --> 00:26:02,520
Speaker 2: beginning of this movie is that it is definitely a

490
00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:06,639
Speaker 2: Charles Band production, and that name. If you have watched

491
00:26:06,680 --> 00:26:09,560
Speaker 2: a lot of trashy eighties movies, that name shows up

492
00:26:09,600 --> 00:26:10,080
Speaker 2: a good bit.

493
00:26:10,520 --> 00:26:11,280
Speaker 1: Yeah that's right.

494
00:26:12,160 --> 00:26:12,360
Speaker 3: Yeah.

495
00:26:12,480 --> 00:26:14,440
Speaker 1: I almost hesitant to spend too much time on him

496
00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:17,320
Speaker 1: here because I know we'll come back to some pictures

497
00:26:17,320 --> 00:26:21,399
Speaker 1: that are actually directed by Charles Band or Albert Band.

498
00:26:21,440 --> 00:26:25,320
Speaker 1: But briefly, we're talking about the Band family here. Their

499
00:26:25,440 --> 00:26:29,480
Speaker 1: history begins with artist Max Band, who lived nineteen oh

500
00:26:29,480 --> 00:26:32,440
Speaker 1: one through nineteen seventy four, born in Lithuania, lived in France,

501
00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:35,960
Speaker 1: and then made the move to California. His son, Albert Band,

502
00:26:36,080 --> 00:26:38,160
Speaker 1: who lived twenty four through two thousand and two, became

503
00:26:38,200 --> 00:26:40,879
Speaker 1: a filmmaker. He was assistant director on John Houston's The

504
00:26:40,960 --> 00:26:44,239
Speaker 1: Asphalt Jungle in nineteen fifty and then went on to

505
00:26:44,240 --> 00:26:47,080
Speaker 1: direct a bunch of genre films, including I Bury the

506
00:26:47,119 --> 00:26:50,760
Speaker 1: Living from fifty eight, Dracula Dog from seventy eight, and

507
00:26:51,040 --> 00:26:54,360
Speaker 1: Gooli's Too from in nineteen eighty seven. So he's already

508
00:26:54,480 --> 00:26:58,119
Speaker 1: be Cinema loyalty. But then his son is Charles Band,

509
00:26:58,160 --> 00:27:00,560
Speaker 1: who again we've mentioned before on the show. So he's

510
00:27:00,600 --> 00:27:03,840
Speaker 1: the man behind first Empire International Pictures that put out

511
00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:07,399
Speaker 1: Robot Jocks and then Full Moon Features, and he directed

512
00:27:07,440 --> 00:27:10,159
Speaker 1: some really awesome eighties and nineties sci fi horror films

513
00:27:10,280 --> 00:27:15,800
Speaker 1: before going increasingly in the evil bong direction, which isn't

514
00:27:15,840 --> 00:27:18,440
Speaker 1: quite my thing, but you know, you can't argue with success.

515
00:27:18,680 --> 00:27:21,320
Speaker 5: Oh he does like demon Bong movies.

516
00:27:21,560 --> 00:27:25,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the evil Bong like one through however, many

517
00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:28,400
Speaker 1: Ginger dead Man that that sort of thing.

518
00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:30,640
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, okay, but.

519
00:27:30,720 --> 00:27:34,560
Speaker 1: I can't stress enough that his earlier pictures are are

520
00:27:34,600 --> 00:27:37,440
Speaker 1: often a lot more serious and are really interesting. Will

521
00:27:37,480 --> 00:27:40,480
Speaker 1: definitely come back to something Charles Band directed in the future,

522
00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:43,600
Speaker 1: but again, evil bong direction seems to have been very

523
00:27:43,600 --> 00:27:44,960
Speaker 1: successful for Full Moon.

524
00:27:45,440 --> 00:27:45,800
Speaker 5: Okay.

525
00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:49,919
Speaker 1: Charles's brother, by the way, is Richard Band, a composer

526
00:27:49,960 --> 00:27:52,119
Speaker 1: who worked on a lot of Full Moon pictures. And

527
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:55,280
Speaker 1: then Charles Band's son is Alex Band, the lead singer

528
00:27:55,320 --> 00:27:57,440
Speaker 1: of a band called The Calling, which I'm not that

529
00:27:57,520 --> 00:28:01,000
Speaker 1: familiar with but exists, so like the the Band family

530
00:28:01,359 --> 00:28:02,520
Speaker 1: is still going strong.

531
00:28:02,760 --> 00:28:04,320
Speaker 5: They are a schlock dynasty.

532
00:28:04,640 --> 00:28:08,280
Speaker 1: And another connection to Robot Jocks is that Charles Band

533
00:28:08,280 --> 00:28:11,040
Speaker 1: had a nineteen ninety film called Crash and Burn that

534
00:28:11,200 --> 00:28:14,120
Speaker 1: was marketed in Europe as Robot Jocks two. But again

535
00:28:14,160 --> 00:28:17,119
Speaker 1: there's another one where it's not actually related to Robot Jocks,

536
00:28:17,359 --> 00:28:19,680
Speaker 1: but it does feature a cool giant robot plus Bill

537
00:28:19,760 --> 00:28:21,280
Speaker 1: Moseley as a killer cyborg.

538
00:28:21,320 --> 00:28:22,200
Speaker 5: Oh, I'd watch that.

539
00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:30,240
Speaker 3: Now.

540
00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:33,520
Speaker 2: One thing I will say about this movie that I

541
00:28:33,560 --> 00:28:38,240
Speaker 2: do just totally unironically enjoy is all of the robot fights,

542
00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:40,960
Speaker 2: including I think there's some stop motion animation, and I

543
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:45,600
Speaker 2: think there's probably also some people in suits, some puppetry.

544
00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:48,200
Speaker 2: I get the feeling that both are at play at

545
00:28:48,200 --> 00:28:51,720
Speaker 2: different times. I could be wrong about that, but whatever

546
00:28:51,760 --> 00:28:54,880
Speaker 2: they were doing, I really enjoyed the robot effects. It's

547
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:57,840
Speaker 2: not like they look realistic. They don't, but they're that

548
00:28:58,000 --> 00:29:03,640
Speaker 2: kind of non realistic, highlight stylized, great old school practical

549
00:29:03,640 --> 00:29:05,200
Speaker 2: effects that I just adore.

550
00:29:05,640 --> 00:29:08,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And so it's not surprising that you

551
00:29:08,640 --> 00:29:10,240
Speaker 1: have some you have it at least a couple of

552
00:29:10,280 --> 00:29:13,560
Speaker 1: big names in this one that stood out was this

553
00:29:13,600 --> 00:29:15,880
Speaker 1: guy Steve Berg, who was a conceptual designer. He went

554
00:29:15,920 --> 00:29:18,440
Speaker 1: into work on the art department on a number of

555
00:29:18,760 --> 00:29:22,800
Speaker 1: big films, big sci fi properties like Chronicles of Ritick,

556
00:29:22,840 --> 00:29:27,920
Speaker 1: Alien Three, Leviathan, The Martian, Interstellar, Prometheus.

557
00:29:27,920 --> 00:29:28,880
Speaker 5: Oh, Leviathan.

558
00:29:29,560 --> 00:29:32,320
Speaker 2: You've seen Leviathan, right, Oh, we've talked about it. Yeah,

559
00:29:32,320 --> 00:29:34,000
Speaker 2: that's right, we've talked about it on the show before.

560
00:29:34,320 --> 00:29:36,680
Speaker 2: That was one of the nineteen was it eighty nine?

561
00:29:36,800 --> 00:29:39,960
Speaker 2: Was it that the year when like five different underwater

562
00:29:40,080 --> 00:29:41,120
Speaker 2: terror movies came out.

563
00:29:41,200 --> 00:29:43,200
Speaker 1: I think that was the underwater terror year. Yeah, we'll

564
00:29:43,200 --> 00:29:45,120
Speaker 1: have to come back to Leviathan because there's a lot

565
00:29:45,120 --> 00:29:46,640
Speaker 1: of fun stuff going on in that picture.

566
00:29:46,760 --> 00:29:48,640
Speaker 2: Oh, we should do a whole series of weird house

567
00:29:48,680 --> 00:29:52,040
Speaker 2: cinema where we just do one after another. We do Leviathan,

568
00:29:52,120 --> 00:29:54,240
Speaker 2: Deep Star six, Lords of the Deep, we were like

569
00:29:54,320 --> 00:29:55,480
Speaker 2: round up the whole crew.

570
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:58,520
Speaker 1: But it's like diving deeper into the ocean, Joe. The

571
00:29:58,800 --> 00:30:02,320
Speaker 1: deeper you go on that play list, the greater the pressure,

572
00:30:02,360 --> 00:30:06,800
Speaker 1: the harder it is to come out without doing harm

573
00:30:06,840 --> 00:30:10,440
Speaker 1: to your body. Because Yeah, they're the underwater films that

574
00:30:10,480 --> 00:30:12,200
Speaker 1: come to mind, and they are the ones you have

575
00:30:12,240 --> 00:30:14,400
Speaker 1: to sort of hunt for from that same year, and

576
00:30:14,440 --> 00:30:16,280
Speaker 1: they just get progressively harder to watch.

577
00:30:17,280 --> 00:30:18,520
Speaker 5: I remember the Lord's of the Deep.

578
00:30:18,640 --> 00:30:20,800
Speaker 2: Really not much happens in it, Like most of the

579
00:30:20,840 --> 00:30:23,200
Speaker 2: movie is just watching people sit in a chair and

580
00:30:23,240 --> 00:30:24,560
Speaker 2: say like they're coming for us.

581
00:30:24,760 --> 00:30:24,960
Speaker 3: Yeah.

582
00:30:25,040 --> 00:30:27,800
Speaker 1: Lords of the Deep is probably the point in anybody's

583
00:30:27,800 --> 00:30:30,040
Speaker 1: attempt to watch all the underwater movies of eighty nine

584
00:30:30,040 --> 00:30:32,480
Speaker 1: where they realized that their eyes were bigger than their stomach.

585
00:30:32,680 --> 00:30:34,040
Speaker 3: Yeah.

586
00:30:33,680 --> 00:30:37,360
Speaker 1: But oh, one of the huge names on this picture

587
00:30:37,360 --> 00:30:42,240
Speaker 1: on robot jocks that helped create these wonderful stop motion effects,

588
00:30:42,600 --> 00:30:46,400
Speaker 1: David Allen, who did stop motion animation and visual effects

589
00:30:46,400 --> 00:30:51,560
Speaker 1: director credits on this. So this is the I think

590
00:30:51,600 --> 00:30:54,080
Speaker 1: this is the real star of the movie. He's an

591
00:30:54,080 --> 00:30:57,120
Speaker 1: awesome name in the stop motion animation field. He sadly

592
00:30:57,160 --> 00:30:59,520
Speaker 1: died in nineteen ninety nine at the age of fifty four.

593
00:31:00,080 --> 00:31:04,240
Speaker 1: He worked on The Howling on Willow, Ghostbusters Too Young,

594
00:31:04,280 --> 00:31:07,120
Speaker 1: Sherlock Holmes, you know, all the all films that had

595
00:31:07,160 --> 00:31:10,360
Speaker 1: some wonderful stop motion work in them, I believe, And

596
00:31:10,400 --> 00:31:13,360
Speaker 1: then he did a ton of Charles band Full Moon productions,

597
00:31:13,600 --> 00:31:16,240
Speaker 1: providing the store to sort of stop motion work that

598
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:18,760
Speaker 1: really sets some of those films apart. So he's the

599
00:31:18,800 --> 00:31:21,880
Speaker 1: man behind the cool animation in Laser Blast, in Q

600
00:31:22,080 --> 00:31:26,040
Speaker 1: the Wing Serpent, and in various other films like where

601
00:31:26,280 --> 00:31:29,280
Speaker 1: oftentimes films where there's not much else notable about it,

602
00:31:29,400 --> 00:31:32,440
Speaker 1: but just has some real eye catching stop motion effects.

603
00:31:33,120 --> 00:31:35,720
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, I would say that that's probably true about

604
00:31:35,760 --> 00:31:38,680
Speaker 2: laser blasts, except that Laser Blast is pretty funny. Q

605
00:31:38,880 --> 00:31:41,080
Speaker 2: the Winging Serpent that's a little bit different. I mean,

606
00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:44,480
Speaker 2: that's got that that that Cohen energy like, there's a

607
00:31:44,560 --> 00:31:47,880
Speaker 2: there's a pretty fun script underneath that one.

608
00:31:47,960 --> 00:31:49,920
Speaker 5: In addition to the great stop motion effects.

609
00:31:50,240 --> 00:31:53,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, so when David Allen died, he was still working

610
00:31:53,560 --> 00:31:56,800
Speaker 1: on a picture called The Prime Evils and it was

611
00:31:56,800 --> 00:31:58,360
Speaker 1: was never finished and this was going to be just

612
00:31:59,320 --> 00:32:04,800
Speaker 1: like an old school stop motion animation fest. But yeah,

613
00:32:04,800 --> 00:32:07,120
Speaker 1: he died before he could finish it. But around twenty seventeen,

614
00:32:07,240 --> 00:32:10,240
Speaker 1: Charles Band announced that it would be completed and released

615
00:32:10,280 --> 00:32:12,600
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, and I think that got pushed back

616
00:32:12,640 --> 00:32:15,400
Speaker 1: to twenty twenty, and then, of course most things in

617
00:32:15,440 --> 00:32:19,040
Speaker 1: twenty twenty were pushed back or released in a weird fashion.

618
00:32:19,120 --> 00:32:21,280
Speaker 1: So I don't think it's actually come out yet. But

619
00:32:21,440 --> 00:32:24,840
Speaker 1: if you look around for information about the Prime Evils film,

620
00:32:24,880 --> 00:32:27,120
Speaker 1: you'll see some clips from it, and it looks really awesome.

621
00:32:27,160 --> 00:32:29,480
Speaker 1: So I do hope that finally comes to light.

622
00:32:30,240 --> 00:32:32,440
Speaker 2: Well, are you ready to jump into a full breakdown

623
00:32:32,480 --> 00:32:34,600
Speaker 2: of the plot and then maybe talk a little bit

624
00:32:34,640 --> 00:32:37,160
Speaker 2: of weird science and the ideas in the movie.

625
00:32:37,360 --> 00:32:37,880
Speaker 1: Let's do it?

626
00:32:38,120 --> 00:32:39,720
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, I guess we got to start with the

627
00:32:39,760 --> 00:32:43,080
Speaker 2: opening credits, which really set the scene. So the very

628
00:32:43,480 --> 00:32:47,920
Speaker 2: first thing, you are panning over a snowy field of

629
00:32:48,040 --> 00:32:51,120
Speaker 2: dead robots and mechanical debris, and I remember I was

630
00:32:51,160 --> 00:32:52,920
Speaker 2: watching this with Rachel. She was like, is this a

631
00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:56,600
Speaker 2: Christmas movie? Because it very much seems like a combination

632
00:32:56,760 --> 00:33:00,680
Speaker 2: of the Terminator and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and

633
00:33:00,840 --> 00:33:06,200
Speaker 2: the voiceover narration. While you get the Terminator font credits,

634
00:33:06,520 --> 00:33:09,640
Speaker 2: the voiceover says, it has been fifty years since the

635
00:33:09,720 --> 00:33:16,640
Speaker 2: nuclear holocaust almost destroyed mankind. War is now outlawed. Oh

636
00:33:16,720 --> 00:33:20,280
Speaker 2: good idea, nobody ever thought of that before. Just make

637
00:33:20,320 --> 00:33:25,840
Speaker 2: it illegal. And so they specify, well, with war outlawed,

638
00:33:25,840 --> 00:33:29,040
Speaker 2: how do you settle disputes between these superpowers between the

639
00:33:29,080 --> 00:33:33,120
Speaker 2: Market and the Confederation, While they say that territorial disputes

640
00:33:33,160 --> 00:33:36,960
Speaker 2: are now settled by single combat, and they go on

641
00:33:37,040 --> 00:33:41,360
Speaker 2: to explain here at the Confederation playing field in Siberia,

642
00:33:41,560 --> 00:33:45,320
Speaker 2: and they recount that these robots that are piloted by

643
00:33:45,400 --> 00:33:49,720
Speaker 2: robot jocks fight it out and whichever robot and they're

644
00:33:49,760 --> 00:33:53,880
Speaker 2: corresponding jock wins the you know, to the victor go

645
00:33:54,000 --> 00:33:56,520
Speaker 2: the spoils. So like you might be fighting over who

646
00:33:56,560 --> 00:34:01,080
Speaker 2: gets control of Campuccia, and the winner in this case

647
00:34:01,120 --> 00:34:04,840
Speaker 2: apparently was the Market with the old tex Conway piloting

648
00:34:04,880 --> 00:34:07,800
Speaker 2: his mech and so they get control of the land

649
00:34:08,600 --> 00:34:11,399
Speaker 2: and then you immediately cut to the present from here,

650
00:34:11,920 --> 00:34:16,960
Speaker 2: where there is an ongoing fight between Alexander, who we

651
00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:22,080
Speaker 2: mentioned before, the villain the Russian robot Jock, and a

652
00:34:22,600 --> 00:34:25,719
Speaker 2: market robot Jack who I think is maybe named Ajax.

653
00:34:25,800 --> 00:34:27,040
Speaker 5: I could be wrong about.

654
00:34:26,760 --> 00:34:29,080
Speaker 2: That, but he's a guy in a red and white

655
00:34:29,160 --> 00:34:32,000
Speaker 2: jumpsuit with a black guy and a bloody lip, lying

656
00:34:32,600 --> 00:34:35,160
Speaker 2: in the cockpit of his robot. His robot has been

657
00:34:35,200 --> 00:34:38,160
Speaker 2: destroyed and he's trying to throw in the towel. He's

658
00:34:38,239 --> 00:34:39,360
Speaker 2: like pleading for mercy.

659
00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:43,560
Speaker 5: He says, Alexander, you win, Alexander. I can't move. I

660
00:34:43,600 --> 00:34:44,560
Speaker 5: think my back is.

661
00:34:44,520 --> 00:34:49,160
Speaker 2: Broken, and Alexander just coldly says judgment.

662
00:34:49,600 --> 00:34:52,359
Speaker 5: I would like judgment. It's very very much.

663
00:34:52,600 --> 00:34:56,200
Speaker 2: If he dies, he dies Ivan Drego thing and then

664
00:34:56,280 --> 00:34:59,239
Speaker 2: he just stomps on him. He uses his robot to

665
00:34:59,360 --> 00:35:02,480
Speaker 2: stomp on Ajax and kill him, and it's victory for

666
00:35:02,560 --> 00:35:03,279
Speaker 2: the Confederation.

667
00:35:03,840 --> 00:35:06,799
Speaker 1: Fun behind the scenes fact is that I believe that

668
00:35:06,880 --> 00:35:09,160
Speaker 1: the stop motion animation we see in this ultimate this

669
00:35:09,280 --> 00:35:14,799
Speaker 1: opening encounter was actually originally test footage that was used

670
00:35:14,800 --> 00:35:17,400
Speaker 1: to convince Charles Band that they could make the picture.

671
00:35:17,640 --> 00:35:20,120
Speaker 2: Oh that's interesting, So maybe that's why it's in a

672
00:35:20,120 --> 00:35:23,360
Speaker 2: different setting than the rest of what goes on in

673
00:35:23,440 --> 00:35:27,520
Speaker 2: the movie. So the battle is a victory for the Confederation.

674
00:35:28,040 --> 00:35:30,520
Speaker 2: I'm not sure exactly what they're fighting over in this case.

675
00:35:31,080 --> 00:35:34,680
Speaker 2: And again, yeah, Ajax is like, I yield mercy and

676
00:35:34,760 --> 00:35:38,279
Speaker 2: Alexander's like, too bad, and he just smashes him. And

677
00:35:38,320 --> 00:35:43,480
Speaker 2: then Alexander looks into the camera and says, you're next Achilles.

678
00:35:44,000 --> 00:35:46,480
Speaker 2: He's you know, he's got it out for Achilles. I

679
00:35:46,480 --> 00:35:47,960
Speaker 2: guess because Achilles.

680
00:35:47,600 --> 00:35:49,640
Speaker 5: Is the best and he wants to defeat him.

681
00:35:49,920 --> 00:35:54,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's all about just superiority and proving himself in battle.

682
00:35:55,719 --> 00:35:59,960
Speaker 2: And so next we cut to the market robot Jocks commands.

683
00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:04,280
Speaker 2: It's like mission control for robot jocks, where the Allied

684
00:36:04,360 --> 00:36:07,600
Speaker 2: robot jocks and their friends watch in horror as Ajax

685
00:36:07,680 --> 00:36:10,440
Speaker 2: is stomped by the bot and we find out that

686
00:36:10,520 --> 00:36:15,239
Speaker 2: Alexander has killed nine of their guys. Now and it

687
00:36:15,280 --> 00:36:17,719
Speaker 2: is and there's immediately talk about why this is.

688
00:36:17,960 --> 00:36:21,080
Speaker 5: It's because there's a spy, and.

689
00:36:21,080 --> 00:36:22,840
Speaker 2: I feel like this is great. You know, set this

690
00:36:22,920 --> 00:36:25,000
Speaker 2: up right at the beginning that there's a betrayer in

691
00:36:25,040 --> 00:36:29,879
Speaker 2: their ranks. Somebody keeps giving the Confederation advance information about

692
00:36:29,920 --> 00:36:34,120
Speaker 2: the new weapons systems that they bring online in their robots.

693
00:36:34,080 --> 00:36:37,560
Speaker 1: Right, and of course you only have what five characters

694
00:36:37,640 --> 00:36:40,399
Speaker 1: with names that matter, so so you know, you don't

695
00:36:40,440 --> 00:36:42,600
Speaker 1: have have that many choices here to go on, but

696
00:36:43,160 --> 00:36:45,239
Speaker 1: you easily can see one of them is a spy,

697
00:36:45,400 --> 00:36:46,640
Speaker 1: and part of the fun of the film is going

698
00:36:46,680 --> 00:36:48,399
Speaker 1: to be trying to figure out who that spy is.

699
00:36:48,840 --> 00:36:53,840
Speaker 2: Right, So they are, So there are various people hanging

700
00:36:53,880 --> 00:36:55,560
Speaker 2: out and you get to meet some of the characters.

701
00:36:55,600 --> 00:36:58,000
Speaker 2: One of them, of course, is Tech Conway, who've talked

702
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:01,399
Speaker 2: about before. Techs is a kill he's trainer and he's,

703
00:37:01,640 --> 00:37:04,399
Speaker 2: as we said, a former robot jock himself who had

704
00:37:04,400 --> 00:37:08,200
Speaker 2: been very successful and ultimately victorious. Now I guess he's

705
00:37:08,239 --> 00:37:13,960
Speaker 2: retired and he's he's the burgess Meredith teaching Rocky how

706
00:37:13,960 --> 00:37:16,920
Speaker 2: to fight. Oh and we also find out that they

707
00:37:16,920 --> 00:37:21,520
Speaker 2: are fighting over Alaska. They're fighting for control of Alaska.

708
00:37:22,040 --> 00:37:23,920
Speaker 2: I'm not sure why they want it so bad, but

709
00:37:24,520 --> 00:37:26,840
Speaker 2: that's what the dispute.

710
00:37:26,440 --> 00:37:28,799
Speaker 1: Is, right, Yeah, Like maybe it's the first step and

711
00:37:28,840 --> 00:37:31,760
Speaker 1: then subsequently conquering other areas that belong to the market.

712
00:37:32,680 --> 00:37:36,239
Speaker 2: But I guess we find out that Achilles is the

713
00:37:36,280 --> 00:37:40,680
Speaker 2: only robot jock left that Alexander has killed all of

714
00:37:40,719 --> 00:37:43,959
Speaker 2: the other market robot jocks. It seems like they should

715
00:37:43,960 --> 00:37:46,399
Speaker 2: have had more, but eh, and I guess they.

716
00:37:46,280 --> 00:37:48,080
Speaker 5: Are making more. We'll get to that in a second.

717
00:37:48,400 --> 00:37:51,239
Speaker 2: So then from mission control you cut straight to a

718
00:37:51,280 --> 00:37:55,839
Speaker 2: sparring scene where they've got Achilles fighting a circle of

719
00:37:55,880 --> 00:38:00,239
Speaker 2: people all around him. All these people in pads surround

720
00:38:00,320 --> 00:38:02,080
Speaker 2: him and attack him one at a time so he

721
00:38:02,120 --> 00:38:04,720
Speaker 2: can fight them off. It's kind of like that scene

722
00:38:04,760 --> 00:38:07,719
Speaker 2: in The Chinese Connection where Bruce Lee goes to the

723
00:38:07,840 --> 00:38:10,480
Speaker 2: Japanese martial arts school and is surrounded by people in

724
00:38:10,520 --> 00:38:12,279
Speaker 2: the circle and they all come in one at a

725
00:38:12,320 --> 00:38:12,719
Speaker 2: time and he.

726
00:38:12,719 --> 00:38:13,600
Speaker 5: Has to fight him off.

727
00:38:15,120 --> 00:38:17,800
Speaker 2: Except everybody here is wearing goofy looking red pads.

728
00:38:18,160 --> 00:38:21,160
Speaker 1: Not only pads, though, Joe, They're also wearing jumpsuits. Because

729
00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:25,640
Speaker 1: this film is a celebration of futuristic jumpsuits. They're like

730
00:38:25,800 --> 00:38:28,440
Speaker 1: multiple different varieties of jumpsuits, and they seem to be

731
00:38:28,640 --> 00:38:31,040
Speaker 1: whoever is in charge of jumpsuits did a good job

732
00:38:31,320 --> 00:38:34,320
Speaker 1: of putting them together and making them look quality and

733
00:38:35,200 --> 00:38:37,839
Speaker 1: keeping track of who should be wearing what, which I

734
00:38:37,880 --> 00:38:40,920
Speaker 1: love because I realized more and more watching this film

735
00:38:41,080 --> 00:38:43,480
Speaker 1: that it's something I love about science fiction films. I

736
00:38:43,560 --> 00:38:47,239
Speaker 1: love a good jumpsuit, be it a jumpsuit in something

737
00:38:47,280 --> 00:38:51,120
Speaker 1: like Mystery Science Theater three thousand or any other science

738
00:38:51,120 --> 00:38:53,920
Speaker 1: fiction film. Like in the future, there will be jumpsuits

739
00:38:53,920 --> 00:38:57,520
Speaker 1: and you will be assigned to jumpsuit. And so everybody's

740
00:38:57,560 --> 00:39:01,240
Speaker 1: got one, even Text Conway's wearing this big, diculous bright jumpsuit.

741
00:39:01,360 --> 00:39:03,120
Speaker 5: Yeah, they're red and white jumpsuits.

742
00:39:03,120 --> 00:39:03,719
Speaker 3: That's so.

743
00:39:03,920 --> 00:39:07,879
Speaker 2: The market wears red and white jumpsuits and the Confederation

744
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:10,480
Speaker 2: wears I think yellow and black jumpsuits.

745
00:39:11,239 --> 00:39:11,919
Speaker 1: I think that's right.

746
00:39:12,360 --> 00:39:16,000
Speaker 2: So we see Gary Graham the Achilles fighting all these people,

747
00:39:16,040 --> 00:39:19,080
Speaker 2: and he does quite well, except there's one fighter who

748
00:39:19,160 --> 00:39:21,960
Speaker 2: really puts up a good fight against him. And it

749
00:39:22,080 --> 00:39:26,160
Speaker 2: turns out that this fighter is Athena, who at first

750
00:39:26,200 --> 00:39:28,960
Speaker 2: I thought her name was Pathena the way they were

751
00:39:29,000 --> 00:39:31,880
Speaker 2: saying it. But we find out that a lot of

752
00:39:31,880 --> 00:39:35,600
Speaker 2: these fighters, or maybe all of them, are something. This

753
00:39:35,640 --> 00:39:37,640
Speaker 2: is again something I couldn't understand what they were saying

754
00:39:37,640 --> 00:39:40,160
Speaker 2: at first, but it becomes clear they are what the

755
00:39:40,239 --> 00:39:44,600
Speaker 2: characters refer to as two bees. In this scene, Text

756
00:39:44,760 --> 00:39:47,960
Speaker 2: makes his prejudice against multiple types of people. Clear, it's

757
00:39:47,960 --> 00:39:50,840
Speaker 2: clear that he does not like two bees. And he

758
00:39:50,960 --> 00:39:55,040
Speaker 2: also states his opinion that women will never be jocks,

759
00:39:55,239 --> 00:39:57,560
Speaker 2: so there will never be a woman robot jock.

760
00:39:57,960 --> 00:40:02,080
Speaker 1: Yes, he also doesn't seem to like Japanese people.

761
00:40:02,200 --> 00:40:04,359
Speaker 5: Yes, text is just full of prejudices.

762
00:40:04,840 --> 00:40:08,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so you then but then so you're wondering,

763
00:40:08,600 --> 00:40:10,680
Speaker 2: what are these two bees? Why doesn't text like the

764
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:14,920
Speaker 2: tubs and what are they? Professor Laplace shows up and

765
00:40:15,040 --> 00:40:17,839
Speaker 2: I love her. She is all business.

766
00:40:18,320 --> 00:40:18,920
Speaker 5: She shows up.

767
00:40:18,960 --> 00:40:23,160
Speaker 2: She's this uh, this small older lady who is apparently

768
00:40:23,280 --> 00:40:27,080
Speaker 2: like the the market's greatest geneticist, greatest scientist, and she's

769
00:40:27,120 --> 00:40:30,760
Speaker 2: there to collect DNA samples from all of the great

770
00:40:30,880 --> 00:40:34,320
Speaker 2: robot jocks. So she like gives these tubes to U

771
00:40:34,680 --> 00:40:37,560
Speaker 2: two Achilles and texts and is like, I need your

772
00:40:37,680 --> 00:40:43,640
Speaker 2: genetic material because she's developing what she calls gen jocks, which,

773
00:40:44,280 --> 00:40:46,759
Speaker 2: as far as I can tell, these are, uh, these

774
00:40:46,760 --> 00:40:52,360
Speaker 2: are eugenically created perfect robot jock soldiers that are that

775
00:40:52,400 --> 00:40:56,600
Speaker 2: are created through in vitro fertilization. And there is there

776
00:40:56,680 --> 00:40:59,640
Speaker 2: is like there's a twobe race in this movie. The

777
00:40:59,640 --> 00:41:02,520
Speaker 2: people they're calling tubs are these people who are who

778
00:41:02,520 --> 00:41:05,280
Speaker 2: are a product of in vitro fertilization, which they regard

779
00:41:05,719 --> 00:41:09,359
Speaker 2: in the film as this like bizarre futuristic thing, even

780
00:41:09,360 --> 00:41:10,920
Speaker 2: though it was it was already being done at the

781
00:41:10,920 --> 00:41:12,000
Speaker 2: time the movie was made.

782
00:41:12,320 --> 00:41:14,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's in it. So first of all, not a

783
00:41:14,120 --> 00:41:17,200
Speaker 1: lot of detail is really provided about how they're supposedly

784
00:41:17,800 --> 00:41:20,839
Speaker 1: doing this, Like are they are they growing two bees

785
00:41:21,239 --> 00:41:25,400
Speaker 1: at the rate one would actually create you know, you know,

786
00:41:25,440 --> 00:41:27,600
Speaker 1: reed new people through a process like this, or is

787
00:41:27,600 --> 00:41:30,680
Speaker 1: there some sort of sci fi speeding up of the process.

788
00:41:31,080 --> 00:41:34,200
Speaker 1: You know, is this Boys from Brazil? Or is this

789
00:41:34,280 --> 00:41:36,160
Speaker 1: attack of the Clones? I can't tell.

790
00:41:36,080 --> 00:41:38,799
Speaker 2: Well, the way it seems like in this movie the

791
00:41:38,880 --> 00:41:43,960
Speaker 2: concept of two bees is invoked because it's it sounds futuristic.

792
00:41:44,000 --> 00:41:46,440
Speaker 2: It's almost as if it's being written about by someone

793
00:41:46,440 --> 00:41:49,719
Speaker 2: who didn't maybe didn't even know what was actually involved.

794
00:41:49,760 --> 00:41:52,719
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, right, Yeah, Like I'm one hand on

795
00:41:52,719 --> 00:41:55,279
Speaker 1: the Haldeman level, I think it works perfectly as this

796
00:41:55,360 --> 00:42:00,000
Speaker 1: idea that like the military industrial complex ends up absorbed

797
00:42:00,160 --> 00:42:03,160
Speaker 1: being co opting reproduction itself, you know, like that makes

798
00:42:03,160 --> 00:42:07,759
Speaker 1: sense within his seeming worldview of of the military engine.

799
00:42:08,360 --> 00:42:11,839
Speaker 1: But yeah, it also hearkens to a time when when

800
00:42:12,120 --> 00:42:14,200
Speaker 1: there were a lot of headlines and certain a certain

801
00:42:14,200 --> 00:42:17,000
Speaker 1: amount of fear mongering and even moral panic about the

802
00:42:17,040 --> 00:42:21,000
Speaker 1: idea of test to babies. Yeah, so, perhaps some of

803
00:42:21,000 --> 00:42:23,640
Speaker 1: our listeners remember that hysteria, because I feel like we

804
00:42:23,680 --> 00:42:26,040
Speaker 1: see less of it now specifically.

805
00:42:26,360 --> 00:42:26,840
Speaker 3: Yeah.

806
00:42:27,040 --> 00:42:31,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think it's this movie is weirdly

807
00:42:31,200 --> 00:42:36,000
Speaker 2: projecting into the future a kind of temporary, irrational stigma

808
00:42:36,120 --> 00:42:38,839
Speaker 2: that arose from culture at a particular.

809
00:42:38,320 --> 00:42:40,760
Speaker 5: Time, like in the late eighties or early nineties.

810
00:42:41,120 --> 00:42:44,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, because again, what Test two Babies refers to is

811
00:42:44,040 --> 00:42:47,400
Speaker 1: in vitro fertilization, and in vitro means within the glass.

812
00:42:47,680 --> 00:42:50,120
Speaker 1: But the process doesn't actually take place in a test tube,

813
00:42:50,120 --> 00:42:53,080
Speaker 1: but rather in a Petrie dish. The egg is fertilized

814
00:42:53,120 --> 00:42:55,960
Speaker 1: in a in a Petrie dish, and when it is

815
00:42:56,000 --> 00:42:58,360
Speaker 1: three to five days old, it's transferred to a uterus.

816
00:42:58,880 --> 00:43:02,160
Speaker 1: And today this is mainstream, granted expensive, but it's a

817
00:43:02,200 --> 00:43:06,640
Speaker 1: mainstream reproductive choice. The term itself, however, this is interesting.

818
00:43:06,840 --> 00:43:10,279
Speaker 1: Test two babies was coined in the nineteen thirties to

819
00:43:10,400 --> 00:43:14,799
Speaker 1: refer to artificial insemination. Huh, So in both cases, we can,

820
00:43:15,080 --> 00:43:18,439
Speaker 1: you know, just taste the moral panic regarding some sort

821
00:43:18,440 --> 00:43:22,080
Speaker 1: of new reproduction trend. And in both cases these are

822
00:43:22,120 --> 00:43:25,160
Speaker 1: things that you know, for the most part, quickly, it

823
00:43:25,280 --> 00:43:29,880
Speaker 1: quickly became normalized. It is also interesting that there's like

824
00:43:30,640 --> 00:43:34,400
Speaker 1: a brief gag in the film about just the idea

825
00:43:33,600 --> 00:43:36,759
Speaker 1: of sperm donation as well as Oh yeah, in and

826
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:40,359
Speaker 1: of itself, is this ridiculous, like yuck it up kind

827
00:43:40,400 --> 00:43:41,239
Speaker 1: of scenario.

828
00:43:41,480 --> 00:43:44,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, text goes like, there ain't here's my DNA to

829
00:43:44,719 --> 00:43:45,920
Speaker 2: make no tubes.

830
00:43:48,160 --> 00:43:53,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly how it went. So Yeah, anyway, another

831
00:43:53,840 --> 00:43:56,200
Speaker 1: case of science fiction doing what science fiction often does.

832
00:43:56,600 --> 00:43:58,600
Speaker 1: But it certainly seems a bit silly now given the

833
00:43:58,640 --> 00:44:00,080
Speaker 1: mainstream acceptance.

834
00:43:59,600 --> 00:44:01,800
Speaker 5: Of ib Yeah.

835
00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:04,920
Speaker 2: But the two bees remain a major theme in the film,

836
00:44:04,920 --> 00:44:10,080
Speaker 2: and as I said, Laplace announces to everybody that there

837
00:44:10,160 --> 00:44:14,560
Speaker 2: is basically a two B race between the between the superpowers,

838
00:44:14,600 --> 00:44:18,320
Speaker 2: and each one is creating their own robot jock super soldiers,

839
00:44:18,680 --> 00:44:22,080
Speaker 2: and so there's like a constant escalation back and forth.

840
00:44:23,000 --> 00:44:25,000
Speaker 2: Let's see, so we meet some of the two bes,

841
00:44:25,040 --> 00:44:27,719
Speaker 2: and if you watch this movie, they will say the

842
00:44:27,719 --> 00:44:30,759
Speaker 2: word two b's until it loses all meaning. There is

843
00:44:30,880 --> 00:44:33,720
Speaker 2: just so much talk about two bees in this movie.

844
00:44:34,560 --> 00:44:37,120
Speaker 2: But we meet some of the young young soldiers, and

845
00:44:37,400 --> 00:44:40,080
Speaker 2: of course Athena, the one we were talking about earlier,

846
00:44:40,120 --> 00:44:42,960
Speaker 2: who's a major character in the film. And then we

847
00:44:43,000 --> 00:44:46,520
Speaker 2: see Alexander doing a threat video for Achilles. It's kind

848
00:44:46,520 --> 00:44:49,799
Speaker 2: of like those wrestling promos where the wrestler would come

849
00:44:49,800 --> 00:44:52,200
Speaker 2: out and say, like next week, I'm going to destroy

850
00:44:52,360 --> 00:44:56,040
Speaker 2: you in the cage. But then after that we get

851
00:44:56,080 --> 00:44:58,960
Speaker 2: a view of the populace at large, just people hanging

852
00:44:58,960 --> 00:45:02,360
Speaker 2: out in the street, watch on big public TV screens

853
00:45:02,440 --> 00:45:07,440
Speaker 2: the ongoing saga of the robot jocks conflict, and so

854
00:45:07,520 --> 00:45:09,160
Speaker 2: this is where we see the dudes in the house

855
00:45:09,200 --> 00:45:12,719
Speaker 2: fray hats. But also most people we see in this

856
00:45:12,800 --> 00:45:16,719
Speaker 2: movie who are outside at any point are wearing masks,

857
00:45:16,800 --> 00:45:19,360
Speaker 2: which was kind of strange to watch this year. I

858
00:45:19,400 --> 00:45:22,520
Speaker 2: don't think they're wearing masks for any disease control reason.

859
00:45:23,040 --> 00:45:25,520
Speaker 2: My best guess is that so it's part of the

860
00:45:25,560 --> 00:45:28,440
Speaker 2: setting that the world they live in is after a

861
00:45:28,520 --> 00:45:31,680
Speaker 2: nuclear war has taken place. So my guess is it's

862
00:45:31,680 --> 00:45:34,480
Speaker 2: supposed to be that there are radio nuclides everywhere and

863
00:45:34,600 --> 00:45:37,480
Speaker 2: that the masks are to help prevent people from inhaling

864
00:45:37,600 --> 00:45:40,360
Speaker 2: radioactive particles. I don't know if that would be effective

865
00:45:40,360 --> 00:45:43,120
Speaker 2: in reality, but I think that's at least the reason

866
00:45:43,440 --> 00:45:45,359
Speaker 2: that they're shown wearing them.

867
00:45:45,680 --> 00:45:47,959
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is interesting to watch that this year because

868
00:45:48,000 --> 00:45:50,439
Speaker 1: so many films and TV shows I've watched this year.

869
00:45:50,480 --> 00:45:53,280
Speaker 1: I'm just constantly thinking to myself, why are they standing

870
00:45:53,320 --> 00:45:55,239
Speaker 1: so close to each other? Why is no one wearing

871
00:45:55,280 --> 00:45:55,640
Speaker 1: a mask?

872
00:45:55,840 --> 00:45:56,320
Speaker 3: Huh?

873
00:45:56,360 --> 00:45:59,400
Speaker 1: You know, as illogical as it is to expect that

874
00:45:59,480 --> 00:46:02,480
Speaker 1: in a film from ten twenty years ago, as opposed

875
00:46:02,520 --> 00:46:05,200
Speaker 1: to out in the normal world, where it is perfectly

876
00:46:05,239 --> 00:46:06,279
Speaker 1: reasonable to expect that.

877
00:46:07,560 --> 00:46:09,680
Speaker 2: So it's coming down to the big fight, right, It's

878
00:46:09,680 --> 00:46:12,400
Speaker 2: going to be Achilles versus Alexander. So we see Achilles

879
00:46:12,440 --> 00:46:14,560
Speaker 2: get into his robot and it's like getting ready for

880
00:46:14,600 --> 00:46:17,480
Speaker 2: a rocket launch. There's like a launch platform and there's

881
00:46:17,560 --> 00:46:20,719
Speaker 2: all this staff getting everything ready. He's wearing his jumpsuit

882
00:46:20,800 --> 00:46:24,080
Speaker 2: and his helmet and everybody, instead of break a leg,

883
00:46:24,239 --> 00:46:27,320
Speaker 2: they say crash and burn. That's the good luck saying.

884
00:46:27,360 --> 00:46:29,279
Speaker 2: And in fact, they specify in the movie that it

885
00:46:29,360 --> 00:46:31,399
Speaker 2: is bad luck to say good luck, just like.

886
00:46:31,280 --> 00:46:31,800
Speaker 5: In a theater.

887
00:46:32,640 --> 00:46:34,640
Speaker 2: While we were watching it, Rachel made some good joke.

888
00:46:34,880 --> 00:46:37,600
Speaker 2: She said something like, we call it the confed play

889
00:46:38,680 --> 00:46:41,680
Speaker 2: might have gotten that wrong on the delivery. But anyway,

890
00:46:42,080 --> 00:46:46,000
Speaker 2: Achilles gets into a giant Optimus Prime, and of course

891
00:46:46,280 --> 00:46:48,520
Speaker 2: there are a bunch of kids who call Achilles on

892
00:46:48,560 --> 00:46:50,719
Speaker 2: a video phone before he goes into battle. I think

893
00:46:50,719 --> 00:46:55,640
Speaker 2: they're his brother's many children and or his brother in law,

894
00:46:55,840 --> 00:47:00,000
Speaker 2: maybe his sister's husbands. Anyways, a bunch of people call

895
00:47:00,120 --> 00:47:01,839
Speaker 2: him on a video phone and they wish him good luck.

896
00:47:02,640 --> 00:47:04,680
Speaker 2: And then so he goes into battle, and then we

897
00:47:04,719 --> 00:47:07,960
Speaker 2: get one of the first big like full stop motion

898
00:47:08,200 --> 00:47:11,840
Speaker 2: animation fight scenes. We get to see what the robots

899
00:47:11,880 --> 00:47:15,120
Speaker 2: do when they fight, and I love the effects.

900
00:47:14,719 --> 00:47:15,440
Speaker 5: In this scene.

901
00:47:16,120 --> 00:47:18,719
Speaker 2: You get these these they sort of like go down

902
00:47:18,760 --> 00:47:21,120
Speaker 2: the list of trying out each of their weapons on

903
00:47:21,200 --> 00:47:23,759
Speaker 2: each other, like they're like try that new green laser pair.

904
00:47:24,560 --> 00:47:27,560
Speaker 2: And this scene I thought is just great. Like it's

905
00:47:27,600 --> 00:47:29,959
Speaker 2: not like it looks realistic, but that's not the point.

906
00:47:30,040 --> 00:47:31,240
Speaker 5: It looks excellent.

907
00:47:31,520 --> 00:47:35,160
Speaker 1: And I have to say the animation style that they use,

908
00:47:35,160 --> 00:47:37,799
Speaker 1: the stop motion animation and the suits as well. They

909
00:47:37,800 --> 00:47:42,600
Speaker 1: create a very clunky sort of movement, which I think

910
00:47:42,719 --> 00:47:45,080
Speaker 1: really works well in the film because we're used to

911
00:47:45,120 --> 00:47:48,160
Speaker 1: seeing some giant robot battles and more recent things like

912
00:47:48,160 --> 00:47:51,600
Speaker 1: the Pacific Rim movies and so forth, and there's a

913
00:47:51,600 --> 00:47:55,319
Speaker 1: lot of like fluid modern action in those films. But

914
00:47:55,600 --> 00:47:59,200
Speaker 1: I feel like the clunky action in this works works

915
00:47:59,239 --> 00:48:03,479
Speaker 1: really well because it does feel like colossal machines doing

916
00:48:03,600 --> 00:48:06,920
Speaker 1: very specific things, and the stakes are really high, like

917
00:48:07,520 --> 00:48:10,759
Speaker 1: there's no wasted movement. And we'll get into some of

918
00:48:11,200 --> 00:48:14,960
Speaker 1: the physical challenges of the idea of giant machines battling

919
00:48:15,000 --> 00:48:17,319
Speaker 1: each other in a bit, but I ultimately really like

920
00:48:17,360 --> 00:48:19,800
Speaker 1: the kind of clunky and deliberate motions that happen in

921
00:48:19,840 --> 00:48:20,440
Speaker 1: these battles.

922
00:48:20,600 --> 00:48:24,600
Speaker 2: Yes, and so the battle ends with a horrific tragedy.

923
00:48:24,760 --> 00:48:26,720
Speaker 2: So they sort of fight each other to a draw.

924
00:48:26,840 --> 00:48:30,840
Speaker 2: But then then Alexander tries to do something dirty and

925
00:48:31,120 --> 00:48:34,200
Speaker 2: fire a fire a projectile weapon and a part in

926
00:48:34,239 --> 00:48:36,400
Speaker 2: the match when he's not supposed to do that, and

927
00:48:36,440 --> 00:48:39,120
Speaker 2: it looks like it's going to hit the stands of spectators.

928
00:48:39,160 --> 00:48:41,480
Speaker 2: I don't know why there were stands of live spectators,

929
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:42,040
Speaker 2: but this.

930
00:48:42,040 --> 00:48:44,800
Speaker 1: Is it's a power claw. It's like a power punch, yeah, exactly,

931
00:48:44,880 --> 00:48:47,800
Speaker 1: like he launches the fist of the robot.

932
00:48:47,600 --> 00:48:52,160
Speaker 2: And Achilles is like, no. The people to reference Superman

933
00:48:52,239 --> 00:48:54,480
Speaker 2: four he goes no the people and he dives in

934
00:48:54,520 --> 00:48:56,320
Speaker 2: front of it before it can hit the stands.

935
00:48:56,760 --> 00:48:57,480
Speaker 5: But I don't know.

936
00:48:57,560 --> 00:48:59,920
Speaker 2: I guess he should have anticipated this. The power claw

937
00:49:00,120 --> 00:49:03,279
Speaker 2: hits him and knocks him back, and he falls on

938
00:49:03,480 --> 00:49:07,160
Speaker 2: the stands, crushing tons of people and killing them, and

939
00:49:07,200 --> 00:49:09,640
Speaker 2: there is I'm not sure I was trying to put

940
00:49:09,680 --> 00:49:12,160
Speaker 2: my finger on what exactly is so funny about this,

941
00:49:12,560 --> 00:49:16,040
Speaker 2: but the staging of the horrific mayhem that we see

942
00:49:16,080 --> 00:49:19,640
Speaker 2: in the aftermath of him falling on the stands is hilarious.

943
00:49:20,160 --> 00:49:23,480
Speaker 2: There are all these like bloody bodies all over the place,

944
00:49:23,520 --> 00:49:26,200
Speaker 2: but for some reason it looks so funny. And I

945
00:49:26,200 --> 00:49:29,200
Speaker 2: think maybe it's because the bodies are all kind of

946
00:49:29,239 --> 00:49:33,360
Speaker 2: like perfectly evenly spaced apart from each other. It just

947
00:49:33,440 --> 00:49:35,439
Speaker 2: looks staged in a really funny way.

948
00:49:35,719 --> 00:49:38,480
Speaker 1: I didn't get that as much, but I was thinking, well, like, well,

949
00:49:38,560 --> 00:49:40,959
Speaker 1: I don't think the boy needed to see this. It's best,

950
00:49:40,960 --> 00:49:44,080
Speaker 1: so we didn't watch it. One kind of neat bit

951
00:49:44,080 --> 00:49:46,919
Speaker 1: of trivia about that scene, though, is apparently audio from

952
00:49:46,920 --> 00:49:49,200
Speaker 1: it is used in the creation was used in the

953
00:49:49,200 --> 00:49:51,919
Speaker 1: creation of the nine Inch Nails track. The becoming off

954
00:49:51,920 --> 00:49:56,040
Speaker 1: of the downward Spiral huh okay, which I'd never picked

955
00:49:56,120 --> 00:49:59,880
Speaker 1: up on that before. But as it turns out, like

956
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:01,719
Speaker 1: that album. As much as we might think of the

957
00:50:01,760 --> 00:50:05,680
Speaker 1: Downward Spiral as just you know being this this industrial,

958
00:50:05,960 --> 00:50:10,919
Speaker 1: you know, deep gothic, phallic oriented, you know, plunge into

959
00:50:10,960 --> 00:50:15,440
Speaker 1: the psyche, it's ultimately a celebration of science fiction films

960
00:50:15,440 --> 00:50:18,880
Speaker 1: from the day because you've got samples from Robot Jocks,

961
00:50:18,880 --> 00:50:25,280
Speaker 1: but also from THHX eleven thirty eight, from Leviathan, Angel Heart, Texas, Chainsaw, Massacre, Alien,

962
00:50:25,320 --> 00:50:26,520
Speaker 1: The Elephant Man, and.

963
00:50:26,760 --> 00:50:28,440
Speaker 5: Sorcerer, the Truck movie.

964
00:50:28,920 --> 00:50:33,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Truck movie, the remake of Wages of Fear

965
00:50:33,800 --> 00:50:37,440
Speaker 1: that had the awesome, I mean just amazing Tangerine Dream soundtrack.

966
00:50:38,000 --> 00:50:39,239
Speaker 5: You had me at Leviathan.

967
00:50:41,080 --> 00:50:43,000
Speaker 2: So next thing in the movie, we get to see

968
00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:46,239
Speaker 2: what their international Criminal Cord or whatever it is looks like,

969
00:50:46,320 --> 00:50:50,759
Speaker 2: and it's just dudes in referee outfits, which like, so,

970
00:50:50,920 --> 00:50:55,279
Speaker 2: these these referees are now settling international disputes. Who appoints them?

971
00:50:55,320 --> 00:50:56,879
Speaker 2: Where do they come from? I don't know.

972
00:50:57,840 --> 00:51:00,400
Speaker 1: I assume it's supposed to be some sort of Unitedations

973
00:51:00,400 --> 00:51:04,560
Speaker 1: type thing, But yeah, they have this cool floating vehicle,

974
00:51:04,719 --> 00:51:09,640
Speaker 1: this like hover hovering referee vehicle that they use, which

975
00:51:09,680 --> 00:51:10,279
Speaker 1: is pretty cool.

976
00:51:10,640 --> 00:51:14,480
Speaker 2: But they're wearing literally the black and white stripe referee outfits,

977
00:51:14,600 --> 00:51:18,759
Speaker 2: and they're they're like justices. They're like judges presiding over

978
00:51:18,800 --> 00:51:21,879
Speaker 2: a trial in which both sides are presenting arguments about

979
00:51:21,920 --> 00:51:25,080
Speaker 2: why they technically won this match in which a bunch

980
00:51:25,080 --> 00:51:28,279
Speaker 2: of people got crushed. And it turns out the referees

981
00:51:28,320 --> 00:51:31,080
Speaker 2: decided is inconclusive and there will have to be a

982
00:51:31,160 --> 00:51:35,600
Speaker 2: rematch in one week, And of course Alexander loves this.

983
00:51:35,800 --> 00:51:39,120
Speaker 2: He cries out in the trial. He says, yes, one week,

984
00:51:39,239 --> 00:51:43,360
Speaker 2: I kill you dead. And Achilles is very sad because

985
00:51:43,400 --> 00:51:45,799
Speaker 2: he does not want to fight anymore. He says, I

986
00:51:45,880 --> 00:51:48,600
Speaker 2: did my contract ten fights.

987
00:51:48,680 --> 00:51:49,200
Speaker 5: That's it.

988
00:51:49,800 --> 00:51:53,799
Speaker 2: So he's like, I won't do anymore. I retire, and

989
00:51:53,880 --> 00:51:57,480
Speaker 2: Alexander calls him out. He says, coward, you lost your nerve.

990
00:51:58,000 --> 00:52:00,360
Speaker 1: Well, he's also really torn up about all the people

991
00:52:00,400 --> 00:52:04,320
Speaker 1: that died when his robot fell into the stands right, yes,

992
00:52:04,640 --> 00:52:06,640
Speaker 1: so I think it's understandable. Like he's like, I'm done,

993
00:52:06,680 --> 00:52:08,279
Speaker 1: I don't want anymore of this. Let the tub's handle

994
00:52:08,360 --> 00:52:10,520
Speaker 1: and the tubs of course are like yes, yeah, let

995
00:52:10,600 --> 00:52:12,920
Speaker 1: us in there. This is all we've been raised to do.

996
00:52:13,000 --> 00:52:15,799
Speaker 2: Oh, they're so excited that the tub's are loving it.

997
00:52:15,880 --> 00:52:17,880
Speaker 2: One of them is going to get to fight. So

998
00:52:17,960 --> 00:52:20,600
Speaker 2: one of the toob boys says Achilles is a coward

999
00:52:20,680 --> 00:52:23,960
Speaker 2: for retiring, but Pathena is not having it. She stands

1000
00:52:24,040 --> 00:52:27,560
Speaker 2: up for Achilles, and Athena is like, he's not a coward.

1001
00:52:28,600 --> 00:52:31,799
Speaker 2: And then we get an argument with the market commissioner.

1002
00:52:31,880 --> 00:52:35,240
Speaker 2: I guess he's like Achilles's boss. I'm not sure exactly

1003
00:52:35,239 --> 00:52:38,319
Speaker 2: what he's supposed to be, but he's in charge of

1004
00:52:38,320 --> 00:52:40,359
Speaker 2: the robot jocks for the market side, I guess. And

1005
00:52:40,800 --> 00:52:44,080
Speaker 2: he tries to argue. We get like squabbling over what

1006
00:52:44,120 --> 00:52:47,120
Speaker 2: the contract means. He's like, you haven't actually finished your

1007
00:52:47,120 --> 00:52:50,200
Speaker 2: contract because you didn't finish ten fights. The last one

1008
00:52:50,239 --> 00:52:54,040
Speaker 2: was inconclusive and it isn't over until someone wins. And

1009
00:52:54,080 --> 00:52:57,160
Speaker 2: then Achilles response, I don't know what this line means.

1010
00:52:57,320 --> 00:52:59,640
Speaker 2: He responds by saying, you sound like one of your

1011
00:52:59,719 --> 00:53:00,800
Speaker 2: damn two bees.

1012
00:53:02,520 --> 00:53:04,520
Speaker 5: What what? What is the meaning of that?

1013
00:53:06,360 --> 00:53:07,919
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess it's just that the two

1014
00:53:07,960 --> 00:53:12,319
Speaker 1: bees are utterly indoctrinated into this this idea of.

1015
00:53:13,840 --> 00:53:14,360
Speaker 3: Warfare.

1016
00:53:14,600 --> 00:53:18,600
Speaker 1: Okay, you know like the new generation has raised for

1017
00:53:18,680 --> 00:53:21,480
Speaker 1: it and knows nothing else and has and just in

1018
00:53:21,480 --> 00:53:24,600
Speaker 1: a way, it's kind of like they represent like youthful

1019
00:53:24,880 --> 00:53:29,120
Speaker 1: vigor for in almost innocence before the battle. And of

1020
00:53:29,120 --> 00:53:31,319
Speaker 1: course he is the veteran. He's been through it, he's

1021
00:53:31,320 --> 00:53:34,440
Speaker 1: come out the other end, uh and and knows that

1022
00:53:34,520 --> 00:53:35,640
Speaker 1: warfare is horrible.

1023
00:53:35,840 --> 00:53:38,879
Speaker 2: Right, So I guess the next thing that we get

1024
00:53:38,920 --> 00:53:41,719
Speaker 2: to is this really amazing scene. It's it's like there's

1025
00:53:41,760 --> 00:53:45,320
Speaker 2: a dance party in a bar that includes text dancing

1026
00:53:45,400 --> 00:53:49,080
Speaker 2: with a woman and it's hard to describe it. You

1027
00:53:49,160 --> 00:53:51,680
Speaker 2: just need to see this scene. It's like the scene

1028
00:53:51,840 --> 00:53:55,200
Speaker 2: in Message from Space where they have their canteena equivalent

1029
00:53:55,320 --> 00:53:58,880
Speaker 2: the it is a party that must be witnessed.

1030
00:53:59,200 --> 00:54:00,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a fun atina scene.

1031
00:54:01,160 --> 00:54:03,000
Speaker 2: And so while this dance party is going on in

1032
00:54:03,000 --> 00:54:06,360
Speaker 2: the background, Achilles, now depressed, is in the bar getting

1033
00:54:06,400 --> 00:54:09,560
Speaker 2: blackout drunk. He's doing this thing where he's drinking the alphabet.

1034
00:54:09,640 --> 00:54:11,880
Speaker 2: So he's going down the alphabet, drinking a drink for

1035
00:54:11,920 --> 00:54:14,920
Speaker 2: every letter, and I think he's made his way to

1036
00:54:15,040 --> 00:54:17,880
Speaker 2: J and the bartender suggests a julop.

1037
00:54:18,280 --> 00:54:18,520
Speaker 3: Wow.

1038
00:54:18,600 --> 00:54:21,160
Speaker 1: Wow, this is an interesting concept that I kind of

1039
00:54:21,520 --> 00:54:26,640
Speaker 1: glossed over watching the film. Certainly not advisable for a

1040
00:54:26,680 --> 00:54:28,799
Speaker 1: single evening, though, But I wonder what would be the

1041
00:54:28,800 --> 00:54:30,680
Speaker 1: proper way to drink the alphabet. It would be kind

1042
00:54:30,680 --> 00:54:33,080
Speaker 1: of interesting to make that list and to pick out

1043
00:54:33,120 --> 00:54:35,640
Speaker 1: a particular cocktail for each one.

1044
00:54:36,239 --> 00:54:40,960
Speaker 2: What starts with a give me one alcohol please. But

1045
00:54:41,040 --> 00:54:43,439
Speaker 2: so then he's sitting there and then all the two

1046
00:54:43,440 --> 00:54:46,120
Speaker 2: b's come in, and they're young and full of excitement

1047
00:54:46,120 --> 00:54:48,560
Speaker 2: and vigor, and they try to cheer Achilles up, talking

1048
00:54:48,600 --> 00:54:51,480
Speaker 2: about how the.

1049
00:54:50,320 --> 00:54:51,600
Speaker 5: They this was great.

1050
00:54:52,480 --> 00:54:54,120
Speaker 2: The way they try to cheer him up is they

1051
00:54:54,120 --> 00:54:57,719
Speaker 2: talk about, Hey, the audience members in the stands signed releases.

1052
00:54:57,840 --> 00:54:59,719
Speaker 2: You know, they agreed to be there, they knew what

1053
00:54:59,719 --> 00:55:01,720
Speaker 2: the You shouldn't feel bad.

1054
00:55:02,040 --> 00:55:05,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, the two b's have just bought every line that

1055
00:55:05,200 --> 00:55:07,480
Speaker 1: the market has told them. Yeah, I just believe it

1056
00:55:07,520 --> 00:55:09,000
Speaker 1: all absolutely, Like.

1057
00:55:09,080 --> 00:55:11,920
Speaker 2: They actually read the fine print and they love it.

1058
00:55:12,040 --> 00:55:14,920
Speaker 2: They're all on board with every bit of the contract.

1059
00:55:15,760 --> 00:55:18,560
Speaker 2: And then Alexander shows up and this is one of

1060
00:55:18,760 --> 00:55:21,640
Speaker 2: multiple scenes in the movie where the characters are drinking

1061
00:55:21,800 --> 00:55:25,000
Speaker 2: in this bar that they share with the opposing side.

1062
00:55:25,440 --> 00:55:28,360
Speaker 2: And I don't know how to so, so the premise

1063
00:55:28,520 --> 00:55:32,399
Speaker 2: that's going on is that the Confederation is constantly winning

1064
00:55:32,480 --> 00:55:36,400
Speaker 2: these fights because of info security leaks on the market side,

1065
00:55:36,440 --> 00:55:39,560
Speaker 2: like there are spies and everybody's concerned about how people

1066
00:55:39,640 --> 00:55:42,200
Speaker 2: are finding out about the new weapons systems on the

1067
00:55:42,200 --> 00:55:45,880
Speaker 2: market robots. But then at night, the two different sides

1068
00:55:45,920 --> 00:55:48,680
Speaker 2: just go get drunk together in the same bar. That's

1069
00:55:49,239 --> 00:55:50,440
Speaker 2: that seems not secure.

1070
00:55:50,840 --> 00:55:53,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, it seems like a terrible idea, but it

1071
00:55:53,840 --> 00:55:57,160
Speaker 1: works really well to move the plot along because it's

1072
00:55:57,160 --> 00:55:59,280
Speaker 1: one of those things. Anytime you have giant robot battles

1073
00:55:59,360 --> 00:56:01,600
Speaker 1: or giant monster suit battles or whatever, you got to

1074
00:56:01,600 --> 00:56:04,000
Speaker 1: have a lot of human interaction to pat out the movie.

1075
00:56:04,360 --> 00:56:05,960
Speaker 1: And this works well for the most part.

1076
00:56:06,040 --> 00:56:09,880
Speaker 2: Right, So, one of the kids, so Alexander shows up

1077
00:56:09,880 --> 00:56:11,839
Speaker 2: at the bar and he's just being a bully. He's

1078
00:56:11,880 --> 00:56:14,280
Speaker 2: just swinging his weight around, just being me and everybody,

1079
00:56:14,640 --> 00:56:18,160
Speaker 2: and one of the kids challenges him and he and

1080
00:56:18,239 --> 00:56:19,520
Speaker 2: he scoffs.

1081
00:56:19,560 --> 00:56:21,960
Speaker 5: He's like, I do not fight poo bees.

1082
00:56:23,239 --> 00:56:27,440
Speaker 2: So apparently Alexander is also prejudiced against the two bees,

1083
00:56:28,040 --> 00:56:31,960
Speaker 2: and Alexander starts twisting this kid's fingers and then Achilles,

1084
00:56:32,000 --> 00:56:35,759
Speaker 2: still drunk, intervenes and that they start to fight, but

1085
00:56:35,800 --> 00:56:39,319
Speaker 2: then Alexander says he will not fight him. Now he says, I.

1086
00:56:39,400 --> 00:56:42,399
Speaker 5: Do not fight for fun? What do you fight for?

1087
00:56:43,040 --> 00:56:45,799
Speaker 2: Which is a strange moment where the movie suddenly like

1088
00:56:46,000 --> 00:56:48,120
Speaker 2: asks you to be thoughtful in a way that it

1089
00:56:48,200 --> 00:56:51,320
Speaker 2: hasn't maybe so far, or certainly not for a while,

1090
00:56:52,040 --> 00:56:54,960
Speaker 2: because it appears that Achilles does not actually know. He's

1091
00:56:55,080 --> 00:56:58,080
Speaker 2: maybe like, huh, I've spent my life becoming a soldier,

1092
00:56:58,120 --> 00:57:00,480
Speaker 2: but I really don't know if there's a good reason

1093
00:57:01,360 --> 00:57:03,040
Speaker 2: for any of the fighting that I'm doing.

1094
00:57:03,280 --> 00:57:06,440
Speaker 1: It feels like an artifact of an earlier version of

1095
00:57:06,440 --> 00:57:08,960
Speaker 1: the script, but it's also an energy that we come

1096
00:57:09,000 --> 00:57:09,600
Speaker 1: back to later.

1097
00:57:09,760 --> 00:57:14,520
Speaker 2: Right, So, Athena carries the drunk Achilles home. He she

1098
00:57:14,560 --> 00:57:17,080
Speaker 2: apparently she takes his clothes off, and then the next

1099
00:57:17,120 --> 00:57:21,000
Speaker 2: morning they have this long, like naked hangover conversation where

1100
00:57:21,000 --> 00:57:24,720
Speaker 2: he's like dragging his sheets around and arguing with her

1101
00:57:24,840 --> 00:57:29,160
Speaker 2: about arguing about what they're fighting for and who should

1102
00:57:29,200 --> 00:57:34,200
Speaker 2: be fighting, and Athena gets mad at him, I guess

1103
00:57:34,200 --> 00:57:37,040
Speaker 2: because he's retiring, and she's like, I was bred not

1104
00:57:37,200 --> 00:57:37,920
Speaker 2: to have fear.

1105
00:57:38,080 --> 00:57:42,200
Speaker 5: I was bred for a purpose. You you just happened, And.

1106
00:57:42,200 --> 00:57:45,320
Speaker 2: So it's clear actually that the prejudice kind of goes

1107
00:57:45,360 --> 00:57:48,840
Speaker 2: both ways. Like the two bees apparently disdain non two

1108
00:57:48,920 --> 00:57:52,480
Speaker 2: bees because they exist for no particular reason.

1109
00:57:52,840 --> 00:57:56,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, just random existence. Yeah, so it's interesting. There's a

1110
00:57:56,880 --> 00:57:59,480
Speaker 1: fair amount of cool world building going on in this film.

1111
00:57:59,560 --> 00:58:02,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so she's like one of the things in

1112
00:58:02,400 --> 00:58:04,240
Speaker 2: the scene I think is she's trying to figure out, like,

1113
00:58:04,280 --> 00:58:06,520
Speaker 2: what are the secrets of how he always won his

1114
00:58:06,560 --> 00:58:09,240
Speaker 2: battles and he was and he's like, I don't know,

1115
00:58:09,280 --> 00:58:12,160
Speaker 2: a lot of it's just luck. And she doesn't like

1116
00:58:12,240 --> 00:58:14,360
Speaker 2: this answer. So she gets really mad at him, and

1117
00:58:14,400 --> 00:58:16,160
Speaker 2: she says, I wanted to learn the secret of the

1118
00:58:16,200 --> 00:58:19,040
Speaker 2: Great Achilles, but you just talk about luck and fear.

1119
00:58:19,360 --> 00:58:22,240
Speaker 2: There's nothing you can teach me except how to lose.

1120
00:58:24,040 --> 00:58:26,600
Speaker 2: So there's another scene where we see like the the

1121
00:58:27,080 --> 00:58:30,880
Speaker 2: youngsters training, they're they're doing their their their to B exercises,

1122
00:58:31,000 --> 00:58:34,240
Speaker 2: and Text reiterates to Achilles. He says for the second time,

1123
00:58:34,320 --> 00:58:36,600
Speaker 2: you know a woman can never be a robot jock.

1124
00:58:37,040 --> 00:58:37,280
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1125
00:58:37,360 --> 00:58:40,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's again the old the old fashioned attitudes of

1126
00:58:40,920 --> 00:58:41,439
Speaker 1: text here.

1127
00:58:41,560 --> 00:58:45,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, so text is quite the sexist and he and

1128
00:58:45,040 --> 00:58:46,640
Speaker 2: he makes it clear over and over.

1129
00:58:47,120 --> 00:58:48,000
Speaker 5: But this does not.

1130
00:58:48,600 --> 00:58:51,000
Speaker 2: This does not discourage Achilles from retiring. I think maybe

1131
00:58:51,040 --> 00:58:53,720
Speaker 2: he's trying to talk Achilles into staying on. He's like, look,

1132
00:58:53,760 --> 00:58:55,400
Speaker 2: you know, you're the only one who can do it.

1133
00:58:55,880 --> 00:58:59,200
Speaker 2: But Achilles retires anyway, and he becomes a sivvy. Uh

1134
00:58:59,240 --> 00:59:02,040
Speaker 2: So you see him suddenly going around the city. He's

1135
00:59:02,080 --> 00:59:05,600
Speaker 2: not at mission control anymore. He sees a mural on

1136
00:59:05,640 --> 00:59:08,080
Speaker 2: a wall somewhere. I think that has his picture on it,

1137
00:59:08,160 --> 00:59:12,160
Speaker 2: and someone has written the word coward but misspelled it's

1138
00:59:12,240 --> 00:59:12,959
Speaker 2: cow erd.

1139
00:59:13,440 --> 00:59:15,000
Speaker 1: Now, how do you know that's not just how they

1140
00:59:15,000 --> 00:59:15,800
Speaker 1: spell in the future.

1141
00:59:15,840 --> 00:59:18,360
Speaker 5: Go, that's true. Spelling changes over time. That's a very

1142
00:59:18,400 --> 00:59:19,000
Speaker 5: good point.

1143
00:59:19,160 --> 00:59:22,200
Speaker 2: It's just like how in the future the word jox

1144
00:59:22,280 --> 00:59:25,440
Speaker 2: plural is spelled with an X instead of cks.

1145
00:59:25,680 --> 00:59:26,200
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1146
00:59:26,240 --> 00:59:29,360
Speaker 2: But so now the market's got a problem. Achilles, their

1147
00:59:29,400 --> 00:59:31,800
Speaker 2: greatest warrior, has retired. So they've got to put one

1148
00:59:31,840 --> 00:59:34,200
Speaker 2: of these two b's in the robot to fight Alexander.

1149
00:59:34,480 --> 00:59:37,560
Speaker 2: So they go through some rapid two B training and

1150
00:59:37,640 --> 00:59:41,640
Speaker 2: the way this shakes out is that Athena and the

1151
00:59:41,680 --> 00:59:44,920
Speaker 2: other two bees have to climb the Agrocrag. There's this big,

1152
00:59:45,640 --> 00:59:49,000
Speaker 2: rattling jungle gym of death and they're all fighting each

1153
00:59:49,000 --> 00:59:51,160
Speaker 2: other to get to the top first and climb through

1154
00:59:51,160 --> 00:59:54,480
Speaker 2: this hole in the ceiling, and Athena is victorious. She

1155
00:59:54,640 --> 00:59:56,840
Speaker 2: is the greatest of the two b's, so she's going

1156
00:59:56,920 --> 01:00:00,000
Speaker 2: to become the new jocks, and as a newscaster declared,

1157
01:00:00,280 --> 01:00:04,800
Speaker 2: she is the first female robo jock. But Achilles, now

1158
01:00:04,960 --> 01:00:07,600
Speaker 2: at home, sees this on TV and he's like, no,

1159
01:00:07,800 --> 01:00:11,400
Speaker 2: I can't let her go into battle, so he goes back.

1160
01:00:11,600 --> 01:00:13,920
Speaker 2: He goes back to Jock's control, and he's like, I

1161
01:00:13,960 --> 01:00:17,360
Speaker 2: will be the jock, and he trains with Texts, and

1162
01:00:17,560 --> 01:00:22,040
Speaker 2: then there's a scene where doctor Matsumoto and Text begin

1163
01:00:22,160 --> 01:00:25,640
Speaker 2: to argue about how to best keep the new robot

1164
01:00:25,760 --> 01:00:30,160
Speaker 2: system a secret from spies. Doctor Matsumoto has taken measures

1165
01:00:30,200 --> 01:00:32,160
Speaker 2: to keep it secret in a way that Text does

1166
01:00:32,200 --> 01:00:35,800
Speaker 2: not approve of. And so there's more drinking at the bar.

1167
01:00:35,960 --> 01:00:38,439
Speaker 2: Of course I mentioned that would come back. Alexander sits

1168
01:00:38,480 --> 01:00:41,640
Speaker 2: down next to Achilles, and he declares that you make

1169
01:00:41,720 --> 01:00:42,640
Speaker 2: my drink.

1170
01:00:42,440 --> 01:00:46,720
Speaker 5: Taste like blood? Thinking, is that an expression? What does

1171
01:00:46,720 --> 01:00:49,280
Speaker 5: that mean? Do you know what he's getting at there?

1172
01:00:49,520 --> 01:00:52,040
Speaker 1: I can think of no way that that makes sense. Yeah,

1173
01:00:52,120 --> 01:00:54,640
Speaker 1: unless because he is he saying I can't tell. He's

1174
01:00:54,640 --> 01:00:56,919
Speaker 1: saying it in a way where he's like, my drink

1175
01:00:56,960 --> 01:00:59,120
Speaker 1: is better because it tastes like blood, or is it

1176
01:00:59,160 --> 01:01:01,280
Speaker 1: worse because it tastes like blood. It's really hard to

1177
01:01:01,280 --> 01:01:03,880
Speaker 1: get a read on what exactly floats Alexander's boat here.

1178
01:01:04,000 --> 01:01:07,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're ramping up to the final confrontation between

1179
01:01:07,480 --> 01:01:12,120
Speaker 2: Achilles and Alexander. But then before that, there is a

1180
01:01:12,160 --> 01:01:14,800
Speaker 2: great scene where I think maybe we shouldn't reveal what happens,

1181
01:01:14,840 --> 01:01:18,440
Speaker 2: but there is a confrontation about who is actually the

1182
01:01:18,520 --> 01:01:21,160
Speaker 2: spy on the market side, who's been leaking the new

1183
01:01:21,200 --> 01:01:25,200
Speaker 2: technology secrets to the enemy. There's a great show down

1184
01:01:25,240 --> 01:01:28,480
Speaker 2: there that has some good dialogue in it, actually, well

1185
01:01:28,520 --> 01:01:31,600
Speaker 2: some like good dialogue that changes almost mid sentence to

1186
01:01:31,600 --> 01:01:33,240
Speaker 2: become hilariously cliched.

1187
01:01:33,560 --> 01:01:38,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's punctuated by hilarious cliches, but has some nice

1188
01:01:38,480 --> 01:01:39,080
Speaker 1: lines in there.

1189
01:01:39,160 --> 01:01:39,400
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1190
01:01:39,480 --> 01:01:41,680
Speaker 1: So it's it's a very interesting scene, and of course

1191
01:01:41,760 --> 01:01:42,520
Speaker 1: the spy is.

1192
01:01:42,520 --> 01:01:44,360
Speaker 5: Revealed, but we won't spoil it for you. We're not

1193
01:01:44,400 --> 01:01:45,600
Speaker 5: going to tell you who the spy is.

1194
01:01:46,240 --> 01:01:49,360
Speaker 2: But then anyway, so Athena comes to Achilles room the

1195
01:01:49,480 --> 01:01:52,280
Speaker 2: night before the big battle, and you think maybe this

1196
01:01:52,440 --> 01:01:54,680
Speaker 2: is going to pan out to be like a love scene,

1197
01:01:54,680 --> 01:01:57,880
Speaker 2: but instead she tricks him and shoots him with a

1198
01:01:57,920 --> 01:02:01,680
Speaker 2: sedative and locks him in his apartment. Because her angle

1199
01:02:01,800 --> 01:02:04,600
Speaker 2: is no, I will be the robot jock, I will

1200
01:02:04,600 --> 01:02:05,520
Speaker 2: fight Alexander.

1201
01:02:05,960 --> 01:02:07,640
Speaker 1: I don't mean to harp on the film, because the

1202
01:02:07,640 --> 01:02:09,960
Speaker 1: film looks great and I love I love the way

1203
01:02:09,960 --> 01:02:12,800
Speaker 1: the sets look, I love I love the props, I

1204
01:02:12,840 --> 01:02:17,040
Speaker 1: love I love everything. But in this scene when she

1205
01:02:18,200 --> 01:02:21,360
Speaker 1: uses an injector gun on him, it's it's fairly obvious

1206
01:02:21,480 --> 01:02:26,360
Speaker 1: that in the wide shots she's using a hot glue gun,

1207
01:02:26,640 --> 01:02:28,640
Speaker 1: like a hot glue gun that's been painted silver, and

1208
01:02:28,680 --> 01:02:31,920
Speaker 1: then on close ups it's like an actual injection gun

1209
01:02:32,000 --> 01:02:34,760
Speaker 1: or something that looks more, far more believably like an

1210
01:02:34,760 --> 01:02:37,520
Speaker 1: injection gun. So it's just something interesting. I noticed. They

1211
01:02:37,520 --> 01:02:39,400
Speaker 1: didn't really take me out of the film, And again

1212
01:02:39,480 --> 01:02:42,280
Speaker 1: I don't want to harp on it, like this is like, yea,

1213
01:02:42,360 --> 01:02:45,040
Speaker 1: you know, the cheapness of the movie, because for the

1214
01:02:45,040 --> 01:02:46,680
Speaker 1: most part it looks wonderful.

1215
01:02:46,920 --> 01:02:50,320
Speaker 2: The effects budget went mainly into the robot battles, I think.

1216
01:02:50,720 --> 01:02:53,000
Speaker 1: And jumpsuits too. Jumpsuits and robot battles.

1217
01:02:53,160 --> 01:02:55,960
Speaker 2: Yes, but I think you're right. In the close ups

1218
01:02:56,040 --> 01:02:58,480
Speaker 2: it's it's a regular prop gun. So it makes me

1219
01:02:58,520 --> 01:03:00,560
Speaker 2: wonder why they couldn't use the regular prop gun in

1220
01:03:00,600 --> 01:03:02,480
Speaker 2: the wide shots too. But in the wide shots it's

1221
01:03:02,520 --> 01:03:04,160
Speaker 2: a thousand percent of hot glue gun.

1222
01:03:04,360 --> 01:03:06,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe something that changed pretty late in production.

1223
01:03:07,160 --> 01:03:07,880
Speaker 5: Yeah.

1224
01:03:07,880 --> 01:03:11,640
Speaker 2: So anyway, the next morning, Athena goes in to take

1225
01:03:11,680 --> 01:03:14,640
Speaker 2: Achilles place inside the robot. She's got her visor down

1226
01:03:14,680 --> 01:03:16,680
Speaker 2: so nobody can see who she is. She's pretending to

1227
01:03:16,680 --> 01:03:21,200
Speaker 2: be him, and she's going to go do the fight herself. Meanwhile, meanwhile,

1228
01:03:21,280 --> 01:03:24,840
Speaker 2: Achilles escapes his apartment and he runs to the battlefield,

1229
01:03:25,120 --> 01:03:27,200
Speaker 2: and we get this final showdown. And I don't know

1230
01:03:27,240 --> 01:03:29,840
Speaker 2: how much we should say about the final showdown or

1231
01:03:29,840 --> 01:03:32,320
Speaker 2: how exactly to talk about it, but it's a pretty

1232
01:03:32,320 --> 01:03:36,920
Speaker 2: great robot battle that involves flying into space and different

1233
01:03:37,000 --> 01:03:41,120
Speaker 2: interesting weapons get deployed. I don't know, it's a lot

1234
01:03:41,120 --> 01:03:41,480
Speaker 2: of fun.

1235
01:03:41,760 --> 01:03:44,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there's one way I will spoil one

1236
01:03:44,440 --> 01:03:48,160
Speaker 1: weapon that they use, that is the Bolo saw, which

1237
01:03:48,200 --> 01:03:51,360
Speaker 1: I remember from watching part of this, I think probably

1238
01:03:51,400 --> 01:03:54,440
Speaker 1: on Sci Fi Channel back in the day. But even

1239
01:03:54,440 --> 01:03:56,680
Speaker 1: in the rewatch, it was just a wonderful moment because

1240
01:03:56,680 --> 01:03:59,440
Speaker 1: I've never seen a sci fi weapon quite like it.

1241
01:03:59,440 --> 01:04:02,440
Speaker 1: It's this device it like shoots a chain around the

1242
01:04:02,440 --> 01:04:05,880
Speaker 1: limb of another robot and then that that boloed chain

1243
01:04:06,040 --> 01:04:10,120
Speaker 1: like locks into place, allowing rotary motion of the chain.

1244
01:04:10,200 --> 01:04:12,680
Speaker 1: So it works kind of like an inverted chainsaw then

1245
01:04:13,160 --> 01:04:16,000
Speaker 1: to saw off the limb of an enemy robot. And

1246
01:04:16,040 --> 01:04:20,760
Speaker 1: it's wonderful. It's great. I'm surprised it's not. I don't

1247
01:04:20,800 --> 01:04:22,840
Speaker 1: know that I've seen it ripped off in any subsequent

1248
01:04:23,120 --> 01:04:25,800
Speaker 1: giant robot movie or anything, but they should because it's

1249
01:04:25,840 --> 01:04:27,200
Speaker 1: a it's a fabulous weapon.

1250
01:04:27,400 --> 01:04:28,040
Speaker 5: Yeah, totally.

1251
01:04:37,320 --> 01:04:39,720
Speaker 2: Maybe we should just focus on the big robots for

1252
01:04:39,720 --> 01:04:42,360
Speaker 2: a minute before we get to the glory of the ending.

1253
01:04:42,680 --> 01:04:45,120
Speaker 1: Yeah. So again, the robots look pretty awesome in this

1254
01:04:45,280 --> 01:04:48,400
Speaker 1: a combo of awesome old school stop motion, and I

1255
01:04:48,400 --> 01:04:51,760
Speaker 1: think some old school man ensued effects and the battles

1256
01:04:51,800 --> 01:04:54,280
Speaker 1: may not feel as dynamic as something you get nowadays

1257
01:04:54,440 --> 01:04:57,400
Speaker 1: or even in mech fiction of decades past, but it

1258
01:04:57,440 --> 01:04:59,680
Speaker 1: all has a feeling of authenticity to it, and I

1259
01:04:59,680 --> 01:05:02,439
Speaker 1: think one of the main reasons, and this is something

1260
01:05:02,480 --> 01:05:05,720
Speaker 1: that I think ties in well with you know, some

1261
01:05:05,760 --> 01:05:08,760
Speaker 1: elements you see in the forever war. These are big

1262
01:05:08,840 --> 01:05:13,040
Speaker 1: weapons and mass and gravity. These are perpetually your greatest

1263
01:05:13,040 --> 01:05:17,080
Speaker 1: threat and your enemy's greatest weakness. As such, one of

1264
01:05:17,080 --> 01:05:19,840
Speaker 1: the worst things that could possibly happen to you in

1265
01:05:19,840 --> 01:05:23,760
Speaker 1: one of these robot jocks max is that you might

1266
01:05:23,840 --> 01:05:25,320
Speaker 1: fall over or be pushed over.

1267
01:05:25,720 --> 01:05:28,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is actually, I think really smart, Like,

1268
01:05:28,800 --> 01:05:32,160
Speaker 2: if you're going to take the premise seriously, it's good

1269
01:05:32,200 --> 01:05:34,360
Speaker 2: to think about physics in this way. And I guess Holdeman,

1270
01:05:34,520 --> 01:05:36,720
Speaker 2: did you know he knew a lot about physics, and

1271
01:05:36,760 --> 01:05:39,520
Speaker 2: so he did actually have this in mind. And I

1272
01:05:39,520 --> 01:05:42,200
Speaker 2: think this is a great monster science connection because it's

1273
01:05:42,240 --> 01:05:46,920
Speaker 2: worth keeping this in mind about biology. Evolutionary design problems

1274
01:05:47,000 --> 01:05:51,440
Speaker 2: are not symmetrical across great differences in scale. One of

1275
01:05:51,440 --> 01:05:54,360
Speaker 2: the examples of this offen sided is, you know those

1276
01:05:54,440 --> 01:05:57,280
Speaker 2: like articles we've probably said things like this in the past,

1277
01:05:57,680 --> 01:05:59,560
Speaker 2: being you know, being kind of loose when we talked

1278
01:05:59,560 --> 01:06:02,960
Speaker 2: about you say, like if a flea were the size

1279
01:06:03,000 --> 01:06:05,720
Speaker 2: of a car, it could jump the height of the Empire,

1280
01:06:05,720 --> 01:06:08,920
Speaker 2: state building or something like that. Except the problem is,

1281
01:06:09,760 --> 01:06:11,880
Speaker 2: in a way that could be true just as a

1282
01:06:12,040 --> 01:06:14,840
Speaker 2: matter of you know, scaling up the distance of a

1283
01:06:14,840 --> 01:06:18,040
Speaker 2: flea's jump. But it's also not literally true, because if

1284
01:06:18,040 --> 01:06:20,240
Speaker 2: a flea were the size of a car, it wouldn't

1285
01:06:20,280 --> 01:06:23,360
Speaker 2: be able to do that anymore. It's like athleticism would

1286
01:06:23,440 --> 01:06:26,960
Speaker 2: not scale up proportionately. It's because it's the size it

1287
01:06:27,200 --> 01:06:29,760
Speaker 2: is that it can make that jump proportional to its

1288
01:06:29,800 --> 01:06:33,680
Speaker 2: body length. So depending on the size of your body,

1289
01:06:34,200 --> 01:06:39,240
Speaker 2: you actually face vastly different threats and different constraints from

1290
01:06:39,280 --> 01:06:42,480
Speaker 2: the physical world. And one of my favorite examples, which

1291
01:06:42,480 --> 01:06:46,480
Speaker 2: I think people rarely think about, is the amazing difference

1292
01:06:46,520 --> 01:06:49,880
Speaker 2: that body size makes when you're thinking about the dangers

1293
01:06:49,960 --> 01:06:53,920
Speaker 2: posed to you by water. So there's a classic article

1294
01:06:54,040 --> 01:06:57,400
Speaker 2: by the great scientist JBS hall Day and who was

1295
01:06:57,920 --> 01:07:01,240
Speaker 2: behind a number of extremely important biological concepts in the

1296
01:07:01,280 --> 01:07:05,320
Speaker 2: twentieth century. He wrote this article called on being the

1297
01:07:05,400 --> 01:07:08,080
Speaker 2: Right Size, And this is a paragraph that I remember

1298
01:07:08,120 --> 01:07:11,680
Speaker 2: when I first read this, this really did blow my mind.

1299
01:07:12,160 --> 01:07:13,160
Speaker 5: So think about this.

1300
01:07:13,280 --> 01:07:16,800
Speaker 2: Haldane writes, A man coming out of the bath carries

1301
01:07:16,840 --> 01:07:19,640
Speaker 2: with him a film of water about one fiftieth of

1302
01:07:19,680 --> 01:07:21,000
Speaker 2: an inch in thickness.

1303
01:07:21,440 --> 01:07:21,920
Speaker 3: This way is.

1304
01:07:21,960 --> 01:07:26,320
Speaker 2: Roughly a pound. A wet mouse has to carry about

1305
01:07:26,400 --> 01:07:30,680
Speaker 2: its own weight of water. A wet fly has to

1306
01:07:30,760 --> 01:07:34,600
Speaker 2: lift many times its own weight, and as everyone knows,

1307
01:07:34,880 --> 01:07:38,040
Speaker 2: a fly, once wetted by water in any other liquid,

1308
01:07:38,360 --> 01:07:41,880
Speaker 2: is in a very serious position. Indeed, an insect going

1309
01:07:41,920 --> 01:07:44,520
Speaker 2: for a drink is in as great danger as a

1310
01:07:44,520 --> 01:07:47,680
Speaker 2: man leaning out over a precipice in search of food.

1311
01:07:48,280 --> 01:07:50,680
Speaker 2: If it once falls into the grip of the surface

1312
01:07:50,720 --> 01:07:53,640
Speaker 2: tension of the water, that is to say, it gets wet,

1313
01:07:54,120 --> 01:07:57,800
Speaker 2: it is likely to remain so until it drowns. A

1314
01:07:57,800 --> 01:08:01,360
Speaker 2: few insects, such as water beetles, control to be unwettable,

1315
01:08:01,640 --> 01:08:04,520
Speaker 2: the majority keep well away from their drink by means

1316
01:08:04,520 --> 01:08:07,720
Speaker 2: of a long prebosis. So it's amazing to think about

1317
01:08:07,720 --> 01:08:10,200
Speaker 2: how like getting wet doesn't bother us at all, but

1318
01:08:10,240 --> 01:08:13,840
Speaker 2: for much smaller animals because of the difference in the

1319
01:08:13,880 --> 01:08:15,920
Speaker 2: mass of your body and the strength of your muscles

1320
01:08:15,920 --> 01:08:18,240
Speaker 2: compared to the surface area of your body and the

1321
01:08:18,240 --> 01:08:21,559
Speaker 2: properties of water at that scale, water could be like

1322
01:08:21,680 --> 01:08:25,280
Speaker 2: this horrifying slime that takes a grip on you, and

1323
01:08:25,520 --> 01:08:29,080
Speaker 2: like you can't get away from. But a lot of

1324
01:08:29,120 --> 01:08:31,640
Speaker 2: these asymmetries, not all of them, but a lot of

1325
01:08:31,640 --> 01:08:34,800
Speaker 2: them are based on the force of gravity and the

1326
01:08:34,920 --> 01:08:37,439
Speaker 2: ratio of surface area to mass, as an object, it

1327
01:08:37,439 --> 01:08:40,120
Speaker 2: gets bigger. And this brings us back to the robot jocks.

1328
01:08:40,400 --> 01:08:42,960
Speaker 2: So to read a section from that same JBS Halliday

1329
01:08:43,000 --> 01:08:46,320
Speaker 2: in article, he's talking about the dangers of falling. What

1330
01:08:46,600 --> 01:08:49,840
Speaker 2: falling is as a threat to animals of different size

1331
01:08:50,360 --> 01:08:53,200
Speaker 2: quote to the mouse. In any smaller animal, it presents

1332
01:08:53,240 --> 01:08:56,560
Speaker 2: practically no dangers. You can drop a mouse down a

1333
01:08:56,640 --> 01:08:59,879
Speaker 2: thousand yard mind shaft, and on arriving at the bottom,

1334
01:09:00,120 --> 01:09:03,320
Speaker 2: it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that

1335
01:09:03,360 --> 01:09:06,880
Speaker 2: the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a

1336
01:09:06,960 --> 01:09:12,320
Speaker 2: man is broken, a horse splashes. For the resistance presented

1337
01:09:12,360 --> 01:09:15,719
Speaker 2: to movement by the air is proportional to the surface

1338
01:09:15,760 --> 01:09:19,360
Speaker 2: of the moving object, divide an animal's length, breadth, and

1339
01:09:19,479 --> 01:09:22,439
Speaker 2: height each by ten. Its weight is reduced to a

1340
01:09:22,560 --> 01:09:25,960
Speaker 2: thousandth but its surface only to one hundredth So the

1341
01:09:26,000 --> 01:09:28,639
Speaker 2: resistance to falling in the case of a small animal

1342
01:09:28,680 --> 01:09:32,439
Speaker 2: is relatively ten times greater than the driving force. And

1343
01:09:32,479 --> 01:09:34,600
Speaker 2: I think this would absolutely be the same kind of

1344
01:09:34,640 --> 01:09:37,439
Speaker 2: concern if you were considering mech battles. So if you

1345
01:09:37,479 --> 01:09:41,160
Speaker 2: were to have something like the autoloader and aliens, you know,

1346
01:09:41,240 --> 01:09:46,920
Speaker 2: like these roughly slightly bigger than human sized mechs. Fighting

1347
01:09:46,960 --> 01:09:51,040
Speaker 2: in those things would be entirely different a proposition than

1348
01:09:51,120 --> 01:09:53,760
Speaker 2: fighting in these hundred foot tall or two hundred foot

1349
01:09:53,760 --> 01:09:57,200
Speaker 2: tall giant robots, where in the case of the larger robots,

1350
01:09:57,600 --> 01:10:01,320
Speaker 2: gravity itself is an immense threat to you, like just

1351
01:10:01,479 --> 01:10:04,439
Speaker 2: falling over will will very likely destroy you.

1352
01:10:04,880 --> 01:10:06,400
Speaker 1: So yeah, in this film, you get you do get

1353
01:10:06,400 --> 01:10:09,160
Speaker 1: the impression that most of these robot jocks battles end

1354
01:10:09,520 --> 01:10:14,080
Speaker 1: when the first combatant is is knocked over or made prone,

1355
01:10:14,360 --> 01:10:16,080
Speaker 1: Like it seems like most of the time there's no

1356
01:10:16,160 --> 01:10:19,360
Speaker 1: getting up from that, right, And it's interesting to think about, like,

1357
01:10:19,600 --> 01:10:21,200
Speaker 1: like how did they get here? How did they get

1358
01:10:21,200 --> 01:10:24,120
Speaker 1: to the point where they're basically each battling in a

1359
01:10:24,160 --> 01:10:27,880
Speaker 1: skyscraper on legs? Yes, and I'm guessing there's there would

1360
01:10:27,920 --> 01:10:30,040
Speaker 1: have been an arms race over time, So maybe they

1361
01:10:30,080 --> 01:10:33,160
Speaker 1: started smaller, like just kind of like power armor sort

1362
01:10:33,200 --> 01:10:37,360
Speaker 1: of a situation maximize the individual for one on one battle.

1363
01:10:38,000 --> 01:10:40,840
Speaker 1: But then over time, like what do you do do

1364
01:10:40,960 --> 01:10:43,120
Speaker 1: You start getting bigger suits, Like my suit's bigger than

1365
01:10:43,160 --> 01:10:45,479
Speaker 1: yours and has bigger weapons, so now you've got to

1366
01:10:45,479 --> 01:10:48,080
Speaker 1: get bigger too, And so now we see like the

1367
01:10:48,200 --> 01:10:52,160
Speaker 1: end results of that where the combatants are absolutely as

1368
01:10:52,280 --> 01:10:54,960
Speaker 1: large as they could possibly get and are you know,

1369
01:10:55,000 --> 01:10:58,519
Speaker 1: and they have all of these weaknesses based on that size,

1370
01:10:59,000 --> 01:11:01,240
Speaker 1: but there's just no scaling back at this point.

1371
01:11:01,320 --> 01:11:04,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting. It's almost one of those like prisoner's

1372
01:11:04,080 --> 01:11:08,120
Speaker 2: dilemma type problems where like the incentives for the individual

1373
01:11:08,320 --> 01:11:11,479
Speaker 2: are different than the incentives for like both parties when

1374
01:11:11,560 --> 01:11:13,400
Speaker 2: they look at things together, and if you could just

1375
01:11:13,439 --> 01:11:16,160
Speaker 2: get them agreed to both agree to scale back down,

1376
01:11:16,520 --> 01:11:19,040
Speaker 2: that would be better for both. But they but you

1377
01:11:19,080 --> 01:11:20,840
Speaker 2: can't get them to agree to that, so they just

1378
01:11:20,920 --> 01:11:24,519
Speaker 2: keep getting bigger. And that also brings me to another

1379
01:11:24,600 --> 01:11:28,000
Speaker 2: interesting question. This movie raises some things about it that

1380
01:11:28,360 --> 01:11:30,479
Speaker 2: you wonder if they would make sense in reality, and

1381
01:11:30,520 --> 01:11:35,759
Speaker 2: that is the very concept of symbolic warfare through single

1382
01:11:35,840 --> 01:11:39,160
Speaker 2: combat or champion combat. So the premise of the film

1383
01:11:39,600 --> 01:11:42,799
Speaker 2: is that you've got these superpowers, they are in violent

1384
01:11:42,920 --> 01:11:45,719
Speaker 2: conflict with one another, but they can't go to war.

1385
01:11:45,880 --> 01:11:48,240
Speaker 5: They don't go to war on the whole.

1386
01:11:48,360 --> 01:11:51,559
Speaker 2: Instead, they pick one person from each side to get

1387
01:11:51,560 --> 01:11:54,000
Speaker 2: in the robot fight it out, and then the winner

1388
01:11:54,080 --> 01:11:55,559
Speaker 2: gets whatever it is they wanted.

1389
01:11:56,000 --> 01:11:59,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know it works in the in this

1390
01:11:59,120 --> 01:12:01,480
Speaker 1: film and of course you all see this in mythology,

1391
01:12:01,520 --> 01:12:06,160
Speaker 1: when mythological characters are used to embody whole nations or peoples,

1392
01:12:06,160 --> 01:12:09,280
Speaker 1: et cetera. It does remind me a bit of something

1393
01:12:09,280 --> 01:12:11,120
Speaker 1: that we discussed in our stuff to Blow your Mind

1394
01:12:11,160 --> 01:12:14,439
Speaker 1: episodes on the ant Wars earlier in the year, where

1395
01:12:14,479 --> 01:12:17,200
Speaker 1: we talked about the various tournament tournament battle that you

1396
01:12:17,240 --> 01:12:21,559
Speaker 1: see in ants, but also in certain small armed groups

1397
01:12:22,200 --> 01:12:26,800
Speaker 1: historically in human civilization, and the idea here being like,

1398
01:12:26,840 --> 01:12:30,280
Speaker 1: if you're if you don't have large armies that are

1399
01:12:30,320 --> 01:12:33,400
Speaker 1: combating each other, sometimes it makes more sense for a

1400
01:12:33,479 --> 01:12:36,720
Speaker 1: select few individuals to engage in sort of you know,

1401
01:12:36,800 --> 01:12:39,360
Speaker 1: less high stakes combat, to sort of feel each other out,

1402
01:12:39,400 --> 01:12:41,519
Speaker 1: to see which way the battle would go and then

1403
01:12:42,080 --> 01:12:45,559
Speaker 1: act accordingly. But in these cases we're still not talking

1404
01:12:45,560 --> 01:12:51,120
Speaker 1: about like one soldier fighting one soldier champion versus champions.

1405
01:12:50,920 --> 01:12:53,200
Speaker 2: Right, And this brings us back to something that we

1406
01:12:53,240 --> 01:12:55,880
Speaker 2: also talked about in the ant Wars episode, which are

1407
01:12:55,960 --> 01:13:00,640
Speaker 2: these models. Again, these these are not perfect descriptions of

1408
01:13:00,680 --> 01:13:03,719
Speaker 2: what actually happens in battle, but they are somewhat accurate

1409
01:13:03,760 --> 01:13:08,440
Speaker 2: descriptions for modeling casualties in conflict, and they're known as

1410
01:13:08,720 --> 01:13:12,360
Speaker 2: Lanchester's square laws and Lanchester's linear laws, and so the

1411
01:13:12,439 --> 01:13:14,840
Speaker 2: main idea there is more complicated than this, but the

1412
01:13:14,840 --> 01:13:18,400
Speaker 2: main idea is that as you approach a situation that

1413
01:13:18,560 --> 01:13:21,240
Speaker 2: is a war of all against all, so the more

1414
01:13:21,400 --> 01:13:26,200
Speaker 2: your battle resembles something where any soldier can engage any

1415
01:13:26,240 --> 01:13:28,719
Speaker 2: other at any time, so maybe like a shooting war.

1416
01:13:29,040 --> 01:13:32,000
Speaker 2: As it approaches that instead of the type of battle

1417
01:13:32,000 --> 01:13:35,160
Speaker 2: where one soldier can only fight one other soldier at

1418
01:13:35,160 --> 01:13:38,639
Speaker 2: a times a big series of duels, as it becomes

1419
01:13:38,640 --> 01:13:43,000
Speaker 2: more of a war of all against all, than the

1420
01:13:43,080 --> 01:13:47,920
Speaker 2: advantages provided by having superior numbers go up, not just

1421
01:13:47,960 --> 01:13:50,519
Speaker 2: in a linear way but in a squared way, so

1422
01:13:50,680 --> 01:13:54,920
Speaker 2: that having superior numbers is much more important than having

1423
01:13:55,200 --> 01:13:58,280
Speaker 2: better individual fighters in a war of all against all.

1424
01:13:58,760 --> 01:14:02,439
Speaker 2: And that's be because like the force with superior numbers

1425
01:14:02,520 --> 01:14:05,799
Speaker 2: can quite quickly reduce the numbers of the other forces

1426
01:14:05,800 --> 01:14:07,760
Speaker 2: so that they can't really put up a fight of

1427
01:14:07,800 --> 01:14:11,720
Speaker 2: any kind. And so anyway, in a world with technology

1428
01:14:11,760 --> 01:14:14,160
Speaker 2: that enables, you know, a war of all against all,

1429
01:14:14,200 --> 01:14:19,440
Speaker 2: like a basic shooting war scenario, the side with superior

1430
01:14:19,600 --> 01:14:24,080
Speaker 2: numbers is almost always at an extreme advantage. And that

1431
01:14:24,160 --> 01:14:27,240
Speaker 2: makes me think about how It's hard to imagine in

1432
01:14:27,280 --> 01:14:31,960
Speaker 2: a modern context, with modern technology, that champion warfare would

1433
01:14:31,960 --> 01:14:35,640
Speaker 2: ever really emerge unless it were like imposed by an

1434
01:14:35,680 --> 01:14:39,479
Speaker 2: outside force. Like, for champion warfare to be the way

1435
01:14:39,520 --> 01:14:44,439
Speaker 2: that you would settle geopolitical conflict, it would require the

1436
01:14:44,640 --> 01:14:49,720
Speaker 2: side with more with numerical superiority to agree to the

1437
01:14:49,800 --> 01:14:52,680
Speaker 2: champion warfare and to say, yes, we will honor the

1438
01:14:52,720 --> 01:14:57,240
Speaker 2: outcome of this duel. But champion warfare necessarily improves the

1439
01:14:57,280 --> 01:14:59,600
Speaker 2: odds for the weaker force and hurts the odds for

1440
01:14:59,640 --> 01:15:02,160
Speaker 2: the strong young force. So why would the stronger force

1441
01:15:02,200 --> 01:15:02,840
Speaker 2: agree to it?

1442
01:15:03,320 --> 01:15:03,559
Speaker 3: Yeah?

1443
01:15:04,000 --> 01:15:07,200
Speaker 1: Now, if in this film, if the judges, if the

1444
01:15:07,280 --> 01:15:11,960
Speaker 1: referees were aliens representing say a technologically advanced species that

1445
01:15:12,000 --> 01:15:14,639
Speaker 1: could just simply wipe out either side without thinking about it,

1446
01:15:14,800 --> 01:15:16,519
Speaker 1: like that would potentially make more sense.

1447
01:15:16,600 --> 01:15:18,160
Speaker 5: Yeah, but it did.

1448
01:15:18,200 --> 01:15:20,040
Speaker 2: Well, But I was gonna in that case though, Why

1449
01:15:20,080 --> 01:15:22,400
Speaker 2: not just have a trial where like you argue about

1450
01:15:22,439 --> 01:15:25,280
Speaker 2: who actually has the correct claim to the land, rather

1451
01:15:25,360 --> 01:15:27,840
Speaker 2: than people just both say they want the land and

1452
01:15:27,880 --> 01:15:28,840
Speaker 2: you settle it with a fight.

1453
01:15:30,479 --> 01:15:33,120
Speaker 1: I wish I could have, you know, seen more what

1454
01:15:33,439 --> 01:15:35,599
Speaker 1: Haldeman had in mind for this, like what his read

1455
01:15:35,680 --> 01:15:37,800
Speaker 1: on it, would it would have been, you know, because

1456
01:15:37,800 --> 01:15:40,400
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly it worked, there's the symbolic level at

1457
01:15:40,400 --> 01:15:43,360
Speaker 1: which it works. But I wonder what the world building

1458
01:15:44,600 --> 01:15:45,559
Speaker 1: arguments would have been.

1459
01:15:46,200 --> 01:15:48,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think obviously it would be better

1460
01:15:48,960 --> 01:15:51,719
Speaker 2: for the soldiers and better for the people on both

1461
01:15:51,760 --> 01:15:54,240
Speaker 2: sides of a conflict if it could be settled without

1462
01:15:54,320 --> 01:15:57,320
Speaker 2: massive bloodshed, whatever whatever that method is. I mean, even

1463
01:15:57,360 --> 01:16:00,519
Speaker 2: if it's single combat between robot jocks, that's better than

1464
01:16:00,560 --> 01:16:02,679
Speaker 2: just having an all out total war where you send

1465
01:16:03,040 --> 01:16:06,479
Speaker 2: people into the meat grinder. But the the you know,

1466
01:16:06,640 --> 01:16:09,679
Speaker 2: you hit the war pigs problem, Like leaders setting military

1467
01:16:09,720 --> 01:16:11,759
Speaker 2: policy are going to want to win. They're not usually

1468
01:16:11,840 --> 01:16:14,760
Speaker 2: the people who themselves have to die in battle. So

1469
01:16:14,880 --> 01:16:17,719
Speaker 2: while the weaker force may very much want to settle

1470
01:16:17,720 --> 01:16:20,360
Speaker 2: things with robot jocks, it just seems like the side

1471
01:16:20,400 --> 01:16:23,759
Speaker 2: with the numerical and weapons superiority would tend to just say, no,

1472
01:16:23,760 --> 01:16:24,639
Speaker 2: now we'll have a war.

1473
01:16:25,080 --> 01:16:25,559
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1474
01:16:25,600 --> 01:16:27,920
Speaker 1: But you know, ultimately, this is this is not a

1475
01:16:27,920 --> 01:16:31,919
Speaker 1: picture that celebrates warfare. It's it has has a message

1476
01:16:32,160 --> 01:16:35,160
Speaker 1: of you know, an anti war message, which which I

1477
01:16:35,240 --> 01:16:35,840
Speaker 1: ultimately like.

1478
01:16:35,880 --> 01:16:38,040
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about the ending, the very ending, which

1479
01:16:38,160 --> 01:16:43,200
Speaker 2: is both actually sort of transcendently excellent and hilarious.

1480
01:16:43,560 --> 01:16:43,760
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1481
01:16:43,800 --> 01:16:45,920
Speaker 1: So basically they just battle the hell out of each other.

1482
01:16:46,000 --> 01:16:48,360
Speaker 1: So this is this ends up being like the main

1483
01:16:48,400 --> 01:16:52,759
Speaker 1: event in which robots do get up after being knocked

1484
01:16:52,760 --> 01:16:56,719
Speaker 1: prone through the use of superior tactics, but also lots

1485
01:16:56,720 --> 01:16:59,880
Speaker 1: of tricky weaponry, because again it all comes down to

1486
01:17:00,040 --> 01:17:02,200
Speaker 1: what secret weapons do you have that your enemy doesn't

1487
01:17:02,240 --> 01:17:04,760
Speaker 1: know about. So they engage in a lot of this

1488
01:17:05,400 --> 01:17:07,760
Speaker 1: and they end up going up into the stratosphere. They

1489
01:17:07,800 --> 01:17:10,480
Speaker 1: end up coming back down again. They end up destroying

1490
01:17:10,520 --> 01:17:15,280
Speaker 1: each other's suits, and there's some clever twists and turns

1491
01:17:15,280 --> 01:17:17,920
Speaker 1: in that battle, but it ends up with them both unsuited,

1492
01:17:18,040 --> 01:17:22,880
Speaker 1: both of them just on amid the rubble, trying to

1493
01:17:22,920 --> 01:17:26,280
Speaker 1: bash each other with like pipes and pieces of metal,

1494
01:17:26,360 --> 01:17:30,880
Speaker 1: like reduced to you know, almost like paleolithic battle.

1495
01:17:31,000 --> 01:17:34,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, literally trying to bash each other with sticks

1496
01:17:34,320 --> 01:17:34,839
Speaker 2: and rocks.

1497
01:17:35,320 --> 01:17:38,080
Speaker 1: And they reach a point where, okay, it looks like

1498
01:17:38,760 --> 01:17:41,639
Speaker 1: Achilles is going to be victorious, you know, it's one

1499
01:17:41,640 --> 01:17:44,360
Speaker 1: of those those moments where is he going to finish

1500
01:17:44,400 --> 01:17:48,240
Speaker 1: off his adversary, But no, Achilles has another option that

1501
01:17:48,280 --> 01:17:51,240
Speaker 1: he presents, and they have this wonderful little back and forth,

1502
01:17:51,439 --> 01:17:54,640
Speaker 1: which I quite like the dialogue, you know, and the

1503
01:17:54,640 --> 01:17:57,880
Speaker 1: way that they ended this because Achilles says to him,

1504
01:17:58,200 --> 01:18:01,519
Speaker 1: you can live, and Alexander says, yes if I kill

1505
01:18:01,560 --> 01:18:03,599
Speaker 1: you with this, and it's the pipey thing that he's

1506
01:18:03,600 --> 01:18:04,080
Speaker 1: holding or.

1507
01:18:04,040 --> 01:18:04,479
Speaker 3: Was it a rock?

1508
01:18:04,520 --> 01:18:06,240
Speaker 5: I thought it was a rock, but I could be wrong.

1509
01:18:06,120 --> 01:18:08,519
Speaker 1: Okay, And then Achille says we can both live, and

1510
01:18:08,520 --> 01:18:12,280
Speaker 1: then Alexander says we are already dead. We are robot jocks,

1511
01:18:13,479 --> 01:18:16,280
Speaker 1: which which I think is a line. I think it

1512
01:18:16,360 --> 01:18:19,320
Speaker 1: works here, but I also have to remind myself that

1513
01:18:19,400 --> 01:18:22,519
Speaker 1: Haldeman's original working title for this was The Mechanics. Yes,

1514
01:18:23,000 --> 01:18:25,160
Speaker 1: so so that would have been a more interesting line.

1515
01:18:25,160 --> 01:18:27,760
Speaker 1: And he's like, no, we like we're mere mechanics, you know,

1516
01:18:27,800 --> 01:18:31,200
Speaker 1: like we're not even really controlling these things, these things

1517
01:18:31,240 --> 01:18:34,120
Speaker 1: and this this military engine. We're just caring for it

1518
01:18:34,120 --> 01:18:35,519
Speaker 1: and making it run, right.

1519
01:18:35,439 --> 01:18:38,920
Speaker 2: I mean, in a weird way. It's an exchange that,

1520
01:18:40,160 --> 01:18:42,960
Speaker 2: with a little bit of like verbal tweaking, could have

1521
01:18:43,040 --> 01:18:45,960
Speaker 2: been very powerful and is in some way as powerful,

1522
01:18:46,520 --> 01:18:50,880
Speaker 2: but because of the phrase robot jocks, it it absolutely

1523
01:18:50,920 --> 01:18:55,120
Speaker 2: spills over into absurdity, you know. So like if he

1524
01:18:55,160 --> 01:18:58,360
Speaker 2: had said we can both live, and Alexander said, no,

1525
01:18:58,520 --> 01:18:59,519
Speaker 2: we are already dead.

1526
01:18:59,720 --> 01:19:00,640
Speaker 5: We're soldiers.

1527
01:19:01,600 --> 01:19:03,720
Speaker 2: I think the idea would be driven home there that

1528
01:19:03,880 --> 01:19:06,960
Speaker 2: like their their fates are not up to them, you know,

1529
01:19:07,080 --> 01:19:11,640
Speaker 2: their fates are decided for them by forces beyond their control. Uh,

1530
01:19:11,840 --> 01:19:14,839
Speaker 2: And that does seem to be the theme. But instead

1531
01:19:14,840 --> 01:19:17,000
Speaker 2: he says, you know, we can live.

1532
01:19:17,200 --> 01:19:20,519
Speaker 5: No, we are robot shocks yeah.

1533
01:19:20,840 --> 01:19:22,920
Speaker 1: But then ultimately, like this is the spoiler for the

1534
01:19:22,960 --> 01:19:26,439
Speaker 1: end of the film, but but he wins. Achilles is

1535
01:19:26,479 --> 01:19:30,080
Speaker 1: able to convince Alexander that yes, we can live. We

1536
01:19:30,160 --> 01:19:32,200
Speaker 1: don't have to fight, we can stop fighting, and they

1537
01:19:32,240 --> 01:19:35,280
Speaker 1: stop fighting and then they do that awesome fist bump

1538
01:19:35,680 --> 01:19:37,640
Speaker 1: at the end, and that closes the picture, and you

1539
01:19:37,720 --> 01:19:40,000
Speaker 1: end up with this message of hope, that you know

1540
01:19:40,040 --> 01:19:43,400
Speaker 1: that we can resist, that we can move beyond like

1541
01:19:43,640 --> 01:19:48,599
Speaker 1: senseless battle. And I love it. I thought it ended perfectly,

1542
01:19:48,680 --> 01:19:49,679
Speaker 1: ends on a great note.

1543
01:19:49,840 --> 01:19:52,360
Speaker 2: It ends with the hero and the villain agreeing not

1544
01:19:52,479 --> 01:19:53,760
Speaker 2: to kill one another.

1545
01:19:53,880 --> 01:19:55,840
Speaker 1: Right, And they didn't do that thing that they often

1546
01:19:55,880 --> 01:19:58,759
Speaker 1: do in films where the hero appeals to the villain's

1547
01:19:58,800 --> 01:20:02,080
Speaker 1: humanity and the villa villain seems to say yes, but

1548
01:20:02,120 --> 01:20:05,439
Speaker 1: then goes for a double right then yeah, and then

1549
01:20:05,479 --> 01:20:07,400
Speaker 1: you know he shoots him dead, and then it's like, oh, well,

1550
01:20:07,439 --> 01:20:09,599
Speaker 1: he did kill the villain, but he tried. He gave

1551
01:20:09,640 --> 01:20:12,400
Speaker 1: him a chance, he gave him a chance to be good. No,

1552
01:20:12,520 --> 01:20:15,240
Speaker 1: instead they do something different, and I think it works that.

1553
01:20:15,400 --> 01:20:17,439
Speaker 5: I mean, so many movies use that.

1554
01:20:17,560 --> 01:20:19,600
Speaker 2: It is a plot device that I have come to

1555
01:20:19,760 --> 01:20:23,160
Speaker 2: absolutely despise just because of how common and how in

1556
01:20:23,160 --> 01:20:26,400
Speaker 2: a way, how cheap it is. Because what it's trying

1557
01:20:26,479 --> 01:20:29,120
Speaker 2: to show you is that it's trying to have it

1558
01:20:29,160 --> 01:20:32,000
Speaker 2: both ways. It's trying to have the hero show mercy

1559
01:20:32,240 --> 01:20:35,400
Speaker 2: and not be vindictive and cruel. So the hero gets

1560
01:20:35,400 --> 01:20:37,720
Speaker 2: the upper hand, gives the villain a chance to like

1561
01:20:37,800 --> 01:20:40,360
Speaker 2: walk away or to live or whatever, and then the

1562
01:20:40,439 --> 01:20:42,360
Speaker 2: villain tries to stab them in the back and then

1563
01:20:42,360 --> 01:20:43,840
Speaker 2: the hero kills them.

1564
01:20:44,160 --> 01:20:45,840
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's trying to have it both ways.

1565
01:20:45,840 --> 01:20:48,200
Speaker 2: So you get to see the villain killed and punished,

1566
01:20:48,400 --> 01:20:50,799
Speaker 2: but you also get to see the hero have mercy.

1567
01:20:51,160 --> 01:20:53,559
Speaker 2: I think it's it's better to just choose one or

1568
01:20:53,560 --> 01:20:53,880
Speaker 2: the other.

1569
01:20:54,320 --> 01:20:54,759
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1570
01:20:54,840 --> 01:20:58,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know what kind of arguments may have happened,

1571
01:20:58,280 --> 01:21:00,280
Speaker 1: or maybe there weren't arguments over this part, but I

1572
01:21:00,360 --> 01:21:01,680
Speaker 1: like the way it turned out, So I don't know

1573
01:21:01,680 --> 01:21:04,439
Speaker 1: if this was ultimately the way Halman wanted it, or

1574
01:21:04,479 --> 01:21:06,240
Speaker 1: if this was more of a Stuart Gordon direction, or

1575
01:21:06,280 --> 01:21:08,960
Speaker 1: maybe this is just the way it feels. Is like,

1576
01:21:09,000 --> 01:21:11,080
Speaker 1: this is where the two visions come together and they work.

1577
01:21:11,360 --> 01:21:14,639
Speaker 2: It is a weirdly transcendent way to conclude this utterly

1578
01:21:14,720 --> 01:21:15,679
Speaker 2: ridiculous film.

1579
01:21:17,600 --> 01:21:20,040
Speaker 1: All right, and well, speaking of concluding, it's time for

1580
01:21:20,120 --> 01:21:22,519
Speaker 1: us to conclude. You may be wondering, though, where can

1581
01:21:22,560 --> 01:21:26,160
Speaker 1: I see robot Jocks? Unfortunately this is a tough one.

1582
01:21:26,720 --> 01:21:31,320
Speaker 1: You can buy some at times crazy overpriced DVDs, vhs

1583
01:21:31,320 --> 01:21:34,160
Speaker 1: and Blu rays of robot Jocks, but the Shout Factory

1584
01:21:34,280 --> 01:21:36,599
Speaker 1: edition of this from twenty fifteen is currently out of

1585
01:21:36,600 --> 01:21:38,600
Speaker 1: print print. I think it went out of print in

1586
01:21:38,640 --> 01:21:42,280
Speaker 1: October of twenty nineteen, so hopefully it'll become more widely

1587
01:21:42,320 --> 01:21:46,360
Speaker 1: available in the future. No one seems to be streaming it, like,

1588
01:21:46,439 --> 01:21:49,599
Speaker 1: not even for rent or or digital purchase right now,

1589
01:21:50,000 --> 01:21:54,200
Speaker 1: say for the odd unauthorized like highly unauthorized version. Joe,

1590
01:21:54,200 --> 01:21:56,320
Speaker 1: didn't you find this one on Facebook of all places?

1591
01:21:56,720 --> 01:21:58,439
Speaker 2: Well, I didn't watch it there. I ended up watching

1592
01:21:58,560 --> 01:22:02,719
Speaker 2: the version that you rented lent me, but dig around

1593
01:22:02,720 --> 01:22:03,679
Speaker 2: for it if you desire.

1594
01:22:03,840 --> 01:22:05,559
Speaker 5: But yeah you should also.

1595
01:22:05,720 --> 01:22:08,400
Speaker 2: I mean, I would say, start a letter writing campaign

1596
01:22:08,439 --> 01:22:10,880
Speaker 2: to the Criterion Collection and get them to put out

1597
01:22:10,920 --> 01:22:13,280
Speaker 2: their own edition of robot Jocks, which is what.

1598
01:22:13,280 --> 01:22:14,200
Speaker 5: The world deserves.

1599
01:22:14,479 --> 01:22:18,360
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, we definitely rented it. Got it from Atlanta's

1600
01:22:18,360 --> 01:22:22,000
Speaker 1: own video drome. They're still renting films there at Atlanta's

1601
01:22:22,120 --> 01:22:24,800
Speaker 1: last video rental place. But if you're not in the

1602
01:22:24,840 --> 01:22:27,160
Speaker 1: Atlanta area, you can still get in on the fund

1603
01:22:27,160 --> 01:22:30,120
Speaker 1: with their merchandise. You can find them at videodrome dot

1604
01:22:30,160 --> 01:22:35,040
Speaker 1: tv in their main website is videodromeatl dot com. As

1605
01:22:35,080 --> 01:22:39,160
Speaker 1: for US, Weird House Cinema will continue. We're gonna do

1606
01:22:39,240 --> 01:22:42,200
Speaker 1: this every Friday. We're gonna celebrate some sort of a

1607
01:22:42,240 --> 01:22:44,360
Speaker 1: weird film. We may talk a little bit about science

1608
01:22:44,400 --> 01:22:45,800
Speaker 1: and culture in it, but for the most part is

1609
01:22:45,800 --> 01:22:48,880
Speaker 1: the celebration of the film itself. Our core science and

1610
01:22:48,920 --> 01:22:52,160
Speaker 1: culture episodes will continue to air on Tuesdays and Thursdays,

1611
01:22:52,320 --> 01:22:54,480
Speaker 1: and then we have, of course some other content sprinkled

1612
01:22:54,520 --> 01:22:57,439
Speaker 1: around throughout the week as well. You can find all

1613
01:22:57,479 --> 01:22:59,479
Speaker 1: of that in the Stuff to Blow your Mind feed.

1614
01:23:00,080 --> 01:23:02,800
Speaker 1: You can find that wherever you get your podcasts. We

1615
01:23:02,920 --> 01:23:04,720
Speaker 1: just asked that you rate, review and subscribe to help

1616
01:23:04,800 --> 01:23:07,080
Speaker 1: us out and of course get in touch with us.

1617
01:23:07,120 --> 01:23:09,439
Speaker 1: Tell us what you thought about robot Jocks. You have

1618
01:23:09,520 --> 01:23:11,200
Speaker 1: memories of seeing it back in the day, if you

1619
01:23:11,240 --> 01:23:15,160
Speaker 1: rewatched it recently, did you rewatch it for this episode,

1620
01:23:15,360 --> 01:23:17,360
Speaker 1: we want to hear from you, and we also want

1621
01:23:17,400 --> 01:23:19,160
Speaker 1: to hear from you about the general direction that we've

1622
01:23:19,200 --> 01:23:21,400
Speaker 1: been taking the Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Feed Do

1623
01:23:21,439 --> 01:23:23,240
Speaker 1: you like what we're doing? Do you not like what

1624
01:23:23,280 --> 01:23:25,800
Speaker 1: we're doing? Do you have some critiques to share? Let

1625
01:23:25,880 --> 01:23:26,960
Speaker 1: us know we'd love to hear from you.

1626
01:23:27,280 --> 01:23:30,080
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth

1627
01:23:30,160 --> 01:23:31,000
Speaker 2: Nicholas Johnson.

1628
01:23:31,280 --> 01:23:32,280
Speaker 5: If you would like to get.

1629
01:23:32,160 --> 01:23:34,240
Speaker 2: In touch with us with feedback on this episode or

1630
01:23:34,240 --> 01:23:36,320
Speaker 2: any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or

1631
01:23:36,360 --> 01:23:38,839
Speaker 2: just to say hello, you can email us at contact

1632
01:23:38,960 --> 01:23:47,720
Speaker 2: that's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

1633
01:23:47,920 --> 01:23:50,840
Speaker 4: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1634
01:23:50,920 --> 01:23:53,719
Speaker 4: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1635
01:23:53,880 --> 01:23:57,120
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