WEBVTT - Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Robot Jox 0:00:04.320 --> 0:00:07.280 Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema rewind. 0:00:07.560 --> 0:00:10.520 This is Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today's 0:00:10.560 --> 0:00:13.119 Weird House Cinema rewind is It's got to be one 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:15.520 of my all time favorite Weird House Cinema episodes. It's 0:00:15.560 --> 0:00:18.880 the one we did on the Robot Jocks, originally published 0:00:19.120 --> 0:00:21.279 on December twenty fifth, twenty twenty. 0:00:21.520 --> 0:00:23.720 That's right, Yeah, this one was a lot. This movie 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:25.400 is just a lot of fun and it was super 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:28.440 fun to discuss it, and I think, weirdly enough, it 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:32.400 was our Christmas Day episode in twenty twenty, so you know, 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:34.440 it feels good as well that this will be the 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:38.000 final episode that we air in the year twenty twenty one. 0:00:38.200 --> 0:00:39.919 I don't remember if we mentioned this at the time, 0:00:39.960 --> 0:00:42.120 but it's strangely appropriate in that a lot of the 0:00:42.520 --> 0:00:45.520 characters in the movie wear clothes of a color scheme 0:00:45.560 --> 0:00:48.280 that's kind of Santa Claus, very like red and white. 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:48.479 Sort of thing. 0:00:48.600 --> 0:00:51.600 Yeah, a lot of red and white. And it feels 0:00:51.680 --> 0:00:55.160 very surgical in a way that some depictions of Santa 0:00:55.200 --> 0:00:59.800 Claus's headquarters and his workshop are are created. You know, 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:02.160 this idea that it is this place, it's magical but 0:01:02.200 --> 0:01:04.080 also a little sci fi. 0:01:04.600 --> 0:01:08.000 Yeah, the ones that are operated by the technical elves 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:11.039 that have that have like computers and machines. Yeah, you 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:13.280 mean the machine elves, the machine elves. 0:01:13.400 --> 0:01:15.560 Yes, all right, let's dive in. 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:22.120 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:01:28.959 --> 0:01:32.680 Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name's Rob Lamb. 0:01:33.080 --> 0:01:35.640 And I'm Joe McCormick. And I think this episode is 0:01:35.680 --> 0:01:38.880 going to be publishing on Christmas Day, which is quite 0:01:38.959 --> 0:01:42.560 apt because, if I'm not wrong, one of the biggest 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:47.200 toy crazes of the Christmases of yesteryear were Transformers toys, 0:01:47.720 --> 0:01:52.360 and I think Transformers also probably partially inspired the movie. 0:01:52.120 --> 0:01:54.320 We're going to be talking about today, So it's. 0:01:54.280 --> 0:01:57.480 Very much like a like a toy robot Christmas celebration, 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:01.480 except imagine those toy robots were fighting it out for 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:06.320 the fate of Alaska, trading between the clutches of some 0:02:06.480 --> 0:02:11.160 like evil capitalist empire and a harsh Soviet future state. 0:02:11.600 --> 0:02:15.160 That's right. Yeah, we're gonna be talking about nineteen nineties 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:18.480 robot jocks, which, yeah, I am to understand that the 0:02:18.520 --> 0:02:21.799 Transformer craze helped inspire this but I think you could 0:02:21.800 --> 0:02:27.680 also pretty fairly compare this to the boxing robots, you know. 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:29.840 The other Rockam soccer robots, Rockham Sock and. 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:33.560 Rogue of Robots. Yeah, this is basically big league rock 0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:35.200 Em Socker Robots of the future. 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:36.080 Yeah, I imagine. 0:02:36.160 --> 0:02:39.680 So it's rock em soccer robots, but to settle territorial 0:02:39.720 --> 0:02:46.360 disputes between post nuclear apocalyptic superpowers and they're like one 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:47.200 hundred feet tall. 0:02:47.520 --> 0:02:50.840 Yeah, this is It's not a Christmas movie. We thought 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:52.680 about doing a Christmas movie, but then this came up, 0:02:52.680 --> 0:02:56.120 and this was perfect. I will say that it is 0:02:56.240 --> 0:02:59.919 rated PG, and some of the people that made it 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:03.400 talked about how it is for children. I did not 0:03:03.480 --> 0:03:05.920 watch this with my son. I guess I could have, 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:10.600 but I'm ultimately glad I did not. There's just, you know, 0:03:10.639 --> 0:03:13.560 there's a little bit of language in there that you know, 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:16.040 I'm sure a TV cut of this stuff that could 0:03:16.040 --> 0:03:19.280 easily be edited out. I'm sure. But still it's a 0:03:19.400 --> 0:03:21.639 very enjoyable picture and I'm excited to talk about it. 0:03:21.800 --> 0:03:23.959 This is one of those movies that is it's I 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:27.880 don't think it's for children, it's for it's for adults, 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:30.320 in whom the child inside never died. 0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:34.680 Yeah, I think so that's probably a better way of 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:35.240 looking at it. 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:36.640 Should we hit that trailer audio? 0:03:36.960 --> 0:03:39.360 Let's do it. 0:03:39.360 --> 0:03:44.240 It's a new age of combat, human beings poltically engineered 0:03:44.280 --> 0:03:48.560 to be the best fighters in history. Two champions. It 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:56.920 isn't over until someone wins at war with each other. Good. 0:03:58.080 --> 0:04:03.200 I have already kulled you invincible men, Fish and Alexander. 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:07.080 Here now the ultimate killing machines. 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:10.400 I'm gonna get in this sec and I'm gonta jig. 0:04:15.120 --> 0:04:16.960 I really love this one. This is one of those 0:04:17.000 --> 0:04:21.920 with the I'm gonna kick your explosion sound bets, which 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:24.760 I think has been used in various other cinematic trailers 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:26.480 as well, but to great effect here. 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:28.040 Yeah. 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:31.599 So this was actually directed by somebody you might not expect, 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:37.200 by Stuart Gordon, who is mainly known for Lovecraftian adaptations. 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:40.200 This is not in any way connected to Lovecraft. This 0:04:40.240 --> 0:04:41.799 is a giant robot fight movie. 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:44.240 That's right, and again it is. It is rated PG, 0:04:44.480 --> 0:04:47.960 which which certainly some of Stuart Gordon's most famous works 0:04:48.000 --> 0:04:52.160 are not. He's probably best remembered for directing nineteen eighty 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:55.559 five's re Animator and then nineteen eighty six is from 0:04:55.600 --> 0:05:00.280 Beyond both just wonderfully weird adaptations of HP Lovecraft else 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:03.560 that went off in their own, crazy, fleshy directions. 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:09.360 He also made a Lovecraft adaptation confusingly called Daygone, which 0:05:09.400 --> 0:05:11.120 came out in the year two thousand and one, which 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:13.640 is the name of a Lovecraft story, but it's not 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:16.560 really an adaptation of that story. It's more an adaptation 0:05:17.000 --> 0:05:19.920 of The Shadow over Ensmouth, which is a different Lovecraft story. 0:05:20.680 --> 0:05:24.760 And that movie I remember kind of liking, even though 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:26.520 I don't know if I would say it's good. 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:29.960 Right, I remember at the time when I watched it, 0:05:30.400 --> 0:05:33.359 I remember thinking, wow, this is not an accurate, you know, 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:37.360 depiction of an HBU Lovecraft story. But especially now, I'm 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:39.800 kind of like, well, good it went off into all 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:41.680 these films. It's good that they went off in their 0:05:41.680 --> 0:05:44.640 own directions and became their own crazy weird thing. Like 0:05:44.680 --> 0:05:46.839 I think it takes place in Spain and it's a 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:51.599 modern day and like sexuality exists in it, that sort 0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:53.080 of thing. Yeah, I would say that's one of the 0:05:53.120 --> 0:05:58.520 major contributions that Stuart Gordon's Lovecraft films, and also you 0:05:58.560 --> 0:06:01.599 know the work of Brian Yazna who worked with often 0:06:03.000 --> 0:06:08.640 they inject sexuality into these horror worlds, the other rather 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:09.960 sterile originally. 0:06:10.200 --> 0:06:13.640 Yeah, the kind of barren, hateful landscape of the original 0:06:13.640 --> 0:06:18.040 Lovecraft is a little bit enlivened by the Gordon touch. Yeah, 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:20.279 there's another thing I really like about Dagon, though. I 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:23.760 remember thinking it's just merely a visual touch, which is 0:06:23.760 --> 0:06:26.479 that the color palette of the film is very like 0:06:26.680 --> 0:06:30.240 blue and green everywhere, but the main character wears an 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:33.239 orange sweater throughout the movie, and I just remember thinking 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:36.640 that was a great visual decision and it really looks 0:06:36.680 --> 0:06:37.279 fun throughout. 0:06:37.320 --> 0:06:41.000 The whole movie had some cool monsters, as I recall too, 0:06:41.040 --> 0:06:44.840 they went with the like the double finned mermaid type creature. Yeah, 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:47.680 all right, well let's see. So these are some of 0:06:47.720 --> 0:06:50.960 the most I think noteworthy Stuart Gordon films. But he 0:06:51.000 --> 0:06:53.599 also did a lot of other stuff, and I did 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:56.880 mention already, but he did pass away earlier this year. 0:06:56.920 --> 0:07:00.640 He lived nineteen forty seven through twenty twenty. But yeah, 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:02.320 he directed a lot of stuff. He did science fiction, 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:06.479 such as nineteen ninety six as Space Truckers, and with 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:10.040 Brian Yasna and Ed Naha, he created Honey I Shrunk 0:07:10.080 --> 0:07:13.920 the Kids for Disney. They were the original creators, and 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:16.480 you know they have scriptwriting credits on that project and 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:19.960 any subsequent projects. So when you see the next Honey, 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:23.200 I Shrunk the Kids reboot or what have you, you're going 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:24.200 to see their names again. 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:28.239 Okay, I don't think I've seen any recent Stuart Gordon stuff. 0:07:28.560 --> 0:07:30.920 I haven't either. He seemed to have branched out a 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:34.280 lot later in his career, getting further away from some 0:07:34.320 --> 0:07:37.760 of the really like obvious genre stuff, such as a 0:07:37.960 --> 0:07:41.560 two thousand and five drama film titled Edmund starring William H. 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:44.920 Macy and written by David Mammett. So you know, he 0:07:44.960 --> 0:07:47.480 really ultimately had a very i think, a varied career 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:49.600 and worked on a lot of different types of stuff. 0:07:50.600 --> 0:07:53.680 Though horror fans I think are always going to remember 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:57.720 him best from some of those those early gory nineteen 0:07:57.760 --> 0:07:59.240 eighties Lovecraft adaptations. 0:07:59.480 --> 0:07:59.880 Yeah. 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:03.440 Now, one thing that must be said about Robot Jocks 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:09.800 is that it is a very zany, cliche written robot 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:13.760 slugfest that is in many ways just excellent and delightful, 0:08:13.840 --> 0:08:17.600 but it's also I don't know, you could make many 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:21.240 extremely legitimate criticisms of the script, and yet it was 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:24.280 written by a like revered science fiction author. 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:29.160 That's right, Joe Haldeman, the author of the Hugo Award 0:08:29.200 --> 0:08:34.480 winning nineteen seventy four military science fiction novel The Forever War. Now, 0:08:34.520 --> 0:08:37.240 I had not read this one before, but I picked 0:08:37.240 --> 0:08:40.640 it up after watching watching Robot Jocks last week and 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:43.120 I've been reading it. I haven't finished it yet, but 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:46.280 it's a very interesting book, very much a book of 0:08:46.320 --> 0:08:49.760 its time in many ways, especially concerning you know, various 0:08:49.840 --> 0:08:53.199 sort of like gender ideas and so forth. But it's 0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:57.400 essentially a Vietnam story, a Vietnam memoir, even written by 0:08:57.400 --> 0:08:59.839 an author who, having just received a bachelors in a 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:02.800 in physics and astronomy, was immediately drafted in the US 0:09:02.920 --> 0:09:06.000 Army in nineteen sixty seven as a combat engineer. That's 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:10.760 Haldemann's story, and he was subsequently wounded, received a purple Heart, 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:14.079 and The Forever War it seems to reflect all of this, 0:09:14.480 --> 0:09:18.880 except dealing with futuristic warriors cast into an armed conflict 0:09:18.920 --> 0:09:21.360 in a distant star system of a slew of different 0:09:21.720 --> 0:09:25.640 star systems against an unknown alien enemy, and the main 0:09:25.760 --> 0:09:28.800 character in that a gentleman by the name of Mandela 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:32.080 is also a physicist who finds himself drafted into a war, 0:09:32.679 --> 0:09:35.400 only this time it's against the so called Tarans, who 0:09:35.400 --> 0:09:38.720 are these aliens that nobody really has a clear picture 0:09:38.720 --> 0:09:43.360 of or understanding of as they're starting out. So it's 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:46.679 again very much a product of its time, quite interesting, 0:09:46.760 --> 0:09:51.559 quite influential. It's a solid power armor military science fiction yarn, 0:09:51.720 --> 0:09:54.520 very much in the same in keeping with stuff like 0:09:55.600 --> 0:09:59.480 starship troopers and so forth, but it has a focus 0:09:59.520 --> 0:10:02.240 on first of all, the physics of other worlds and 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:04.880 the physics of space travel, as well as of course 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:08.880 the psychology of the soldiers experience and afe. The interesting 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:11.760 things have very popped up in it. He touches on 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:15.560 the perils of fighting around frozen hydrogen on other worlds. 0:10:16.280 --> 0:10:19.280 There's discussion of how time dilation impacts war. So you 0:10:19.400 --> 0:10:23.840 encounter the enemy one day and your technology is superior 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:27.160 to them, but then the next encounter you have with them, 0:10:27.160 --> 0:10:30.960 their technology is yours ahead of yours because of time 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:34.440 dilation and travel at speeds approaching light. Because you were 0:10:34.480 --> 0:10:37.560 a creature now of their past and they are denizens 0:10:37.640 --> 0:10:39.360 of what was your future. 0:10:39.840 --> 0:10:42.880 That's very interesting. So, like every time you travel to 0:10:42.920 --> 0:10:45.200 meet your opponent, they get a leg up on you 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:47.440 because they have more time to prepare than you do. 0:10:47.920 --> 0:10:50.880 Yeah, so that's really interesting. He gets into the use 0:10:50.920 --> 0:10:57.280 of hypnotic suggestion to invoke xenophobic hatred and soldiers. But 0:10:57.360 --> 0:10:58.719 on top of that, he seems to spend a lot 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:01.559 of time focusing on what it means to be enveloped 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:04.240 by the war machine, how it changes your life, how 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:07.200 it affects your psyche, and how in the Forever War 0:11:07.480 --> 0:11:11.079 it also co opts sexuality as well as individuality. It's 0:11:11.120 --> 0:11:13.800 just kind of like this all consuming force on your life. 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:16.160 This is interesting because I feel like what you're just 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:18.600 talking about comes through, maybe not so much in the 0:11:18.640 --> 0:11:22.640 original novel, but in the Paul Verehoven movie adaptation of 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:23.840 Starship Troopers. 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:24.600 Yeah. 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:28.240 Yeah, I understand that the Forever War is often brought 0:11:28.320 --> 0:11:32.760 up as kind of a counterbalance to the largely pro 0:11:32.800 --> 0:11:36.920 war narrative of the original novel Starship Troopers, which I 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:40.120 have also read, but I honestly don't remember much about 0:11:40.160 --> 0:11:44.840 it other than some of the cool power armor battles 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:45.800 that were going on in it. 0:11:46.280 --> 0:11:50.280 So, how do Haldeman and Stuart Gordon get teamed up 0:11:50.320 --> 0:11:53.240 to make this ridiculous robot slugfest movie. 0:11:53.760 --> 0:11:56.600 All right, So apparently what happened is, let's say, Haldeman 0:11:56.880 --> 0:11:58.959 wrote this book and it was a huge success and 0:11:59.440 --> 0:12:03.600 critically a claimed and Haldeman and Stuart ended up chatting 0:12:03.640 --> 0:12:06.640 with each other and working on putting together a film 0:12:06.640 --> 0:12:10.000 adaptation of the Forever War, and they were both really 0:12:10.040 --> 0:12:12.440 excited about it, but it never came together. I think 0:12:12.640 --> 0:12:15.080 the way they described it is like Reagan was elected 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:17.200 and then kind of like things changed. There was less 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:20.560 funding for the arts, and therefore the project never came together, 0:12:21.400 --> 0:12:24.760 but it led to this project with Haldeman working on 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:28.880 the script that would ultimately become Robot Jocks, directed by 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:32.839 Stuart Gordon. Now, apparently there was a fair amount of 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:36.760 disagreement between the two as the project rolled on, which 0:12:36.800 --> 0:12:39.240 has been summed up at times as Haldeman wanting to 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:42.040 create a movie for adults that kids could also enjoy 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:44.800 and Gordon wanted to create a movie for kids that 0:12:44.920 --> 0:12:48.040 adults could enjoy, and. 0:12:47.960 --> 0:12:50.320 They ended up creating not exactly either one. 0:12:51.240 --> 0:12:54.520 Right, Yeah, it's kind of a hybrid of the two, 0:12:55.280 --> 0:12:58.800 which is again perfectly enjoyable, but it's more more of 0:12:58.920 --> 0:13:01.920 a film that the inner child and the inner adult 0:13:02.000 --> 0:13:04.280 can both enjoy or kind of fight over. 0:13:04.559 --> 0:13:05.000 Yeah. 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:08.000 So here's a bit from Haldeman's blog where he talked 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:11.960 about this. He said, I wanted the mechanics he's talking 0:13:11.960 --> 0:13:15.800 about as a title. He Stuart Gordon insisted on robojocks. 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:18.600 He finally wound up being robot Jocks after the people 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:21.120 who did RoboCop asked whether we wanted to spend a 0:13:21.160 --> 0:13:24.280 lot of dreary time in court. I would try to 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:27.040 change the science into something reasonable. Stuart would change it 0:13:27.040 --> 0:13:30.520 back to Saturday morning cartoon stuff. I tried to make believable, 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:33.520 reasonable characters, and Stuart would insist on throwing in cliches 0:13:33.559 --> 0:13:36.560 and caricatures. It was especially annoying because it was a 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:39.439 story about soldiers, and I was the only person around 0:13:39.559 --> 0:13:42.560 who'd ever been one. In fact, he was right and 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:44.559 I was wrong, But it wasn't until we were actually 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:46.800 shooting the movie that that became clear. 0:13:47.200 --> 0:13:50.480 That's interesting. I mean, you can absolutely feel this tension 0:13:50.840 --> 0:13:53.240 in the movie when you watch it, because it will 0:13:53.320 --> 0:13:57.960 alternate between moments that almost kind of actually work as 0:13:58.679 --> 0:14:02.040 as thoughtful science fiction. There'll be like moments of dialogue 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:04.160 that are kind of thoughtful and interesting, and then it 0:14:04.240 --> 0:14:09.560 just immediately like throttles back into hilarious, absurd, cliche sci 0:14:09.559 --> 0:14:10.160 fi mode. 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:12.560 Yeah, you can get whiplash at times from it because 0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:15.000 you're like, oh man, that was really beautiful, and then 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:17.400 and then something else happens and you're like, that was goofy. 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:21.040 But but then again, like I started, I started thinking, 0:14:21.040 --> 0:14:23.600 I tried to sort of divide these two possible films 0:14:23.640 --> 0:14:25.200 in my head, and I was thinking, all right, what 0:14:25.280 --> 0:14:27.960 if what if this character was played by a different 0:14:28.000 --> 0:14:29.880 actor and it was a more of a serious role, 0:14:29.880 --> 0:14:32.360 it was more of a soldier role, like Haldeman would 0:14:32.360 --> 0:14:35.080 have written. You know, maybe maybe you bring in some 0:14:35.200 --> 0:14:38.480 like Michael Ironside to play in instead of a cartoon cowboy. 0:14:38.560 --> 0:14:41.440 We'll get to that in a bed. And I was thinking, well, 0:14:41.440 --> 0:14:43.240 that would be good. But but then again, it wouldn't 0:14:43.240 --> 0:14:47.040 be Robot Jocks, Like there's the ultimate form of the picture. 0:14:48.040 --> 0:14:51.320 Like the absurdities and the contradictions are one of the 0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:52.440 most notable things about it. 0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:54.920 Oh no, no, I wouldn't change a thing about Robot Jocks. 0:14:55.040 --> 0:14:57.560 Robot Jocks is exactly the thing it should be. I 0:14:57.880 --> 0:15:00.360 absolutely would not change it. I mean, Robot Jos is 0:15:00.400 --> 0:15:03.920 the kind of film for which weird house cinema exists, 0:15:03.920 --> 0:15:08.240 something that that cannot just be praised as a normal 0:15:08.400 --> 0:15:13.360 kind of successful movie that is in some sense absurd 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:16.480 or a failure, but is absolutely worth talking about and 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:18.280 has things to be appreciated. 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:18.920 Yeah. 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:21.880 And I think just on the serious end of the spectrum, 0:15:22.160 --> 0:15:24.360 on the Haldamn end of the spectrum. Even though I 0:15:24.360 --> 0:15:27.080 think he ultimately like considered it a you know, a 0:15:27.120 --> 0:15:32.000 disappointing child from a creative standpoint, I feel like there 0:15:32.400 --> 0:15:34.600 are elements that totally arrange to you. You get the sense 0:15:34.600 --> 0:15:38.120 of the absurdity of war, a vast war machine, you know, 0:15:38.160 --> 0:15:42.480 a military industrial complex that just sucks everything in and 0:15:42.680 --> 0:15:47.840 in this film co ops reproduction. So yeah, there's lots 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:48.520 to talk about here. 0:15:48.600 --> 0:15:50.760 And one more thing I will say about it is 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:53.720 that the ending of this film I think is a 0:15:53.880 --> 0:15:57.560 genuine triumph in both senses in which the movie works. 0:15:57.640 --> 0:16:02.480 It actually is a surprise narrative conclusion. 0:16:01.960 --> 0:16:04.400 That I was kind of like, Wow, it's amazing. 0:16:04.080 --> 0:16:07.440 They did that, but it's also hilarious in an unintentional way. 0:16:07.720 --> 0:16:10.960 Yeah, absolutely, like it seems to like if it seems 0:16:11.000 --> 0:16:15.000 like there are two different films competing for coexistence. At 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:17.880 the end of the film, those two visions come together 0:16:18.120 --> 0:16:20.040 and fist bump each other and it works. 0:16:20.720 --> 0:16:22.600 So maybe we should talk about the cast. 0:16:22.840 --> 0:16:26.680 All right. Well, our main character in this is Achilles, 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:30.320 played by Gary Graham. I think a lot of people 0:16:30.320 --> 0:16:32.120 will recognize Gary Graham out that he's been around for 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:34.800 a long time. The main place I knew him from 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:38.880 due to all my time watching the Sci Fi Channel 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:41.280 back in the day, is that Graham was on the 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:46.240 Alien Nation TV series. He played Detective Matt Sykes on that. 0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:50.280 Yeah, I don't know what I recognized him from, but 0:16:50.640 --> 0:16:54.560 he looks like a sort of combination of other existing actors, 0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:58.000 so that kind of helps him seem very familiar to me. 0:16:58.200 --> 0:17:02.400 He was a three way if they of Scott Glenn, 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:06.399 Mick Jagger and Billy Bob Thornton put those three in 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:07.480 a blender and that's him. 0:17:07.800 --> 0:17:10.840 That's yeah, that's him. And you know, I don't know 0:17:10.880 --> 0:17:12.800 a lot about about him and his work, but in 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:15.159 this particular film, he does a good job. I have 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:19.800 no complaints about his acting. He's perfectly serviceable as the 0:17:19.880 --> 0:17:21.080 lead in an action film. 0:17:21.400 --> 0:17:24.520 I would say, his name, Gary Graham is so close 0:17:24.560 --> 0:17:27.199 to the name Garrett Graham, of who of course was 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:30.720 in Chopping Mall and who played Beef in Fantom of 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:34.120 the Paradise, And this movie could only possibly have been 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:37.040 improved by swapping him for Garrett Graham. 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:40.920 Oh, that would have been interesting. Yeah, And I feel 0:17:40.920 --> 0:17:42.800 like Garrett Graham would have had to lean into like 0:17:42.840 --> 0:17:45.320 a sleazier version of Achilles, like he has, like he 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:48.919 has a natural sleezy era and a lot of the 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:49.760 roles that he has. 0:17:50.119 --> 0:17:53.040 So Achilles Achilles is the hero of the movie. And 0:17:53.119 --> 0:17:56.560 he is the titular robot jock. He is one of 0:17:56.560 --> 0:18:00.280 these pilots who drives around these giant mech robots and 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:02.560 fights it out. And I guess we'll get into more 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:04.760 of the plot mechanics and setting when we do the 0:18:04.760 --> 0:18:08.040 full plot breakdown. But imagine this guy we're talking about, 0:18:08.320 --> 0:18:11.400 like sitting in the pilot's seat of a giant mech warrior. 0:18:11.760 --> 0:18:14.879 Yeah, and he is the best. He is the best 0:18:14.960 --> 0:18:19.919 robot jocks jock that this particular faction has at their disposal. 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:23.080 Right, But there are some up and coming robot jocks 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:26.960 who maybe could rival his greatness and probably The most 0:18:27.000 --> 0:18:31.399 promising of them is a young robot jock named Athena. 0:18:31.320 --> 0:18:34.960 Right, and she's played by Anne Marie Johnson. She was 0:18:35.640 --> 0:18:37.560 in the Heat of the Night TV show that I 0:18:37.640 --> 0:18:39.879 mainly remember as being a show that my grandfather watched 0:18:39.920 --> 0:18:42.119 all the time, and I don't think I ever watched. 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:46.280 But Amory Johnson, she's been around forever. She's done a 0:18:46.280 --> 0:18:48.719 lot of work, and I understand she's also been heavily 0:18:48.760 --> 0:18:52.959 involved in the Screen Actors Guild. So yeah, a major name, 0:18:53.040 --> 0:18:55.320 especially if you're an actor, you probably are familiar. 0:18:54.960 --> 0:18:56.040 With her now. 0:18:56.440 --> 0:19:00.520 I think there are a couple of roles that make 0:19:00.640 --> 0:19:04.320 this movie by adding in a level of cartoonishness that 0:19:04.440 --> 0:19:09.240 I think clashes with whatever serious thing Holdoman may have 0:19:09.280 --> 0:19:11.480 been going for. And I would say that the one 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:15.399 of the two main super cartoony characters is the villain 0:19:15.480 --> 0:19:19.679 of the film, Alexander, who is I think supposed to 0:19:19.880 --> 0:19:22.080 be Ivan Drago from Rocky four. 0:19:22.880 --> 0:19:24.880 Yeah, you get a strong sense of that. 0:19:26.400 --> 0:19:26.800 He is. 0:19:26.960 --> 0:19:30.520 He is our Russian villain, our Russian superman that that fights, 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:33.119 I should say, in a in this giant mech that 0:19:33.160 --> 0:19:37.000 has an amazing design but is interestingly less human, in 0:19:37.119 --> 0:19:41.240 form less humanoid compared to the mech used by our hero. 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:44.520 So even though it's not I forget what the factions 0:19:44.520 --> 0:19:46.720 are even called, but it's not called the US versus 0:19:46.760 --> 0:19:49.119 the Soviet Union. This is supposed to all take place 0:19:49.200 --> 0:19:52.280 after warfare or a comet or something something that's wrecked 0:19:52.280 --> 0:19:52.639 the world. 0:19:52.680 --> 0:19:55.160 There was a nuclear war. Yea, there was a nuclear 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:57.920 war that like wiped out huge parts of humanity. And 0:19:57.960 --> 0:20:01.440 then after the nuclear war, your two main superpowers, which 0:20:01.480 --> 0:20:04.399 again are just apparently basically the United States and the 0:20:04.440 --> 0:20:07.720 Soviet Union. But the United States is called the Market 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:12.040 and the Soviet Union is called the Confederation or the Confed. 0:20:12.280 --> 0:20:15.480 That's right. Yeah, so these are the two main main factions. 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:18.720 But yeah, they're essentially the US future US versus future 0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:25.160 Soviet Union. And this particular robot jocks Jack played by 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:28.440 Paul is played by Paul Koslow, who lived nineteen forty 0:20:28.440 --> 0:20:32.080 four through twenty nineteen. He was a German Canadian actor 0:20:32.320 --> 0:20:34.080 who was in a lot of TV back in the day, 0:20:34.080 --> 0:20:36.960 but also some key seventies cult films. He had a 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:40.679 supporting role in nineteen seventy one's The Omega Man oh Okay, 0:20:41.400 --> 0:20:42.879 which is a wonderful film. 0:20:43.000 --> 0:20:43.640 Yeah. 0:20:44.280 --> 0:20:49.119 His Russian accent in this is so awful. Every time 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:53.040 he talks, I couldn't stop laughing. It's on the level of, like, 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:57.000 you know, he like meets up his opponents in the 0:20:57.040 --> 0:20:59.240 bar for a drink. Why is that happening? By the way, 0:20:59.240 --> 0:21:01.040 we should talk about the when we get into the plot. 0:21:01.080 --> 0:21:03.520 But like so he and Achilles are drinking at the 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:07.119 bar together and he's like, your drink It makes me 0:21:07.280 --> 0:21:08.639 think of blood? 0:21:09.600 --> 0:21:14.040 Yeah yeah, I mean again, he was German Canadian, he did, 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:16.600 you know? And this is not his natural accent. I 0:21:16.640 --> 0:21:17.840 had to look him up because he's been in some 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:20.879 other like key film, like The Vanishing Point from seventy one. Okay, 0:21:21.000 --> 0:21:23.000 I was looking at it something that claimed to be 0:21:23.040 --> 0:21:27.560 his reel on YouTube, and yeah, he's he seems good 0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:30.159 in things, but he's he's never using a Russian accent 0:21:30.200 --> 0:21:33.399 except in this film, where it comes off as a 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:38.600 like a Saturday Night Live or World Wrestling Federation level 0:21:38.720 --> 0:21:39.680 of believability. 0:21:40.040 --> 0:21:42.359 Yeah, yeah, he would be like a wrestler called the 0:21:42.400 --> 0:21:44.679 Czar played by a guy from New Jersey. 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:47.600 Now that being said, he's he's very fun in this role, 0:21:48.080 --> 0:21:50.560 but that accent is not believable. 0:21:50.840 --> 0:21:52.920 I literally think the one I just did to make 0:21:52.960 --> 0:21:54.640 fun of it was better than the one he uses 0:21:54.680 --> 0:21:57.439 in the movie. Okay, but then we got to get 0:21:57.440 --> 0:22:00.320 to our other main cartoon character from the movie. This 0:22:00.359 --> 0:22:03.800 one is the character of Texts text Conway, played by 0:22:03.840 --> 0:22:05.960 an actor named Michael Aldridge. 0:22:06.440 --> 0:22:11.080 Yeah. This, Oh my goodness. So this character Tex Conway. 0:22:11.520 --> 0:22:14.920 He's our heroes trainer, he's his mentor. He's a former 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:18.159 robot jocks champion in his own right who won some 0:22:18.280 --> 0:22:20.760 key battles in the past. But man, he is a 0:22:20.840 --> 0:22:23.400 root and toot in text and stereotype with a cowboy 0:22:23.480 --> 0:22:25.919 hat but a futuristic jumpsuit. 0:22:26.320 --> 0:22:26.560 Yeah. 0:22:26.560 --> 0:22:30.679 So he's Buck Strickland in a red and white jumpsuit 0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:31.520 talking about. 0:22:31.640 --> 0:22:33.680 You can't get the lasers calibrated. 0:22:34.160 --> 0:22:39.560 And he so he specifies that he was a former 0:22:39.680 --> 0:22:41.879 like you say, he was a former robot jock himself, 0:22:41.880 --> 0:22:44.280 like one of the greatest that ever lived, and that 0:22:44.600 --> 0:22:49.920 his jock, his jocking, his robot piloting won the area 0:22:49.920 --> 0:22:54.359 of Campuccia, which I guess is Cambodia for the market. 0:22:54.520 --> 0:22:57.679 So you got to imagine, Okay, they're capitalists now and 0:22:57.720 --> 0:22:58.840 it's all because of texts. 0:22:59.280 --> 0:23:02.560 Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's He also reminds me of the 0:23:02.680 --> 0:23:06.240 rich Textan character from The Simpsons. Yes, pops up from 0:23:06.240 --> 0:23:09.119 time to time. Yeah, so it's it is a very 0:23:09.160 --> 0:23:13.840 cartoony role, but a richly enjoyable role. It's it's every 0:23:13.880 --> 0:23:17.760 time he's on the screen, it's it's it's wonderful. And 0:23:17.880 --> 0:23:21.040 Aldrum himself is as an actor who was just a 0:23:21.080 --> 0:23:23.480 regular TV player back in the day, Like you just 0:23:23.560 --> 0:23:26.760 you scroll through his IMDb page and it's just everything 0:23:26.800 --> 0:23:30.720 that was on television with with some notable titles to 0:23:31.080 --> 0:23:34.240 call out, like Murder she wrote, Dallas of course the 0:23:34.359 --> 0:23:38.200 A team. He was on that mini series V So, yeah, 0:23:38.240 --> 0:23:39.920 he was in tons of stuff as well, and he's 0:23:39.920 --> 0:23:40.240 great in. 0:23:40.280 --> 0:23:43.200 This as we as we go on, we should also 0:23:43.240 --> 0:23:45.440 be thinking about like who should be cast in each 0:23:45.520 --> 0:23:48.679 role for our twenty twenty one remake of Robot Jocks. 0:23:48.960 --> 0:23:50.760 And I think there's a pretty obvious choice that you 0:23:50.840 --> 0:23:52.760 landed on for the new casting of Texts. 0:23:53.000 --> 0:23:54.600 Oh I think this was this was you? 0:23:54.720 --> 0:23:54.840 Right? 0:23:55.200 --> 0:23:57.480 Oh? No, no, well you brought up Buck Strickland, who 0:23:57.480 --> 0:24:00.480 was voiced by Stephen root Right and Steve and we 0:24:00.480 --> 0:24:02.680 would be perfect for this role because you know, he's 0:24:02.680 --> 0:24:06.879 great at yucking it up, but also is superb at 0:24:07.080 --> 0:24:09.439 also having this kind of streak of darkness which plays 0:24:09.440 --> 0:24:11.800 into Tex Conway's characters as well. 0:24:12.119 --> 0:24:15.480 Right, all right, let's see, who else do we want 0:24:15.480 --> 0:24:17.840 to talk about in the in the connections. 0:24:17.280 --> 0:24:21.680 Here, Well, let's see, there's a character named doctor Matsumoto 0:24:21.760 --> 0:24:24.919 played by Danny Kamikono, part of the He's part of 0:24:24.920 --> 0:24:27.399 This character's part of the tech team. This is a 0:24:27.400 --> 0:24:29.760 solid performer who did a lot of a lot of things, 0:24:29.800 --> 0:24:32.280 most notably The Karate Kid. He was in that, but 0:24:32.320 --> 0:24:36.360 he also appeared in nineteen ninety threes Robot Wars, directed 0:24:36.359 --> 0:24:38.919 by Albert band We'll get to him in a minute. 0:24:39.080 --> 0:24:43.800 Same production company also Giant Robots, sometimes marketed as a 0:24:43.840 --> 0:24:47.400 sequel to this film, but not directly related to Robot Jocks. 0:24:47.920 --> 0:24:51.000 One was not enough. People needed more robot jocks. 0:24:51.400 --> 0:24:54.879 We always do. There's a fun cameo in this We 0:24:54.960 --> 0:24:59.919 mentioned Reanimator earlier and the Beyond well, Jeffrey Combs, the 0:25:00.080 --> 0:25:03.440 love Crafty and Lothario himself the B movie Icon shows 0:25:03.520 --> 0:25:08.040 up as just one of the robojocks. Robot Jocks fans 0:25:08.600 --> 0:25:10.400 that are cheering on what's happening. 0:25:10.560 --> 0:25:14.439 Oh yeah, Occasionally we get some shots of the proletariat, 0:25:14.600 --> 0:25:18.200 you know, just the regular society and what they think 0:25:18.240 --> 0:25:21.680 about the ongoing They treat the Robot Jocks battles. It 0:25:21.760 --> 0:25:25.320 basically is a sporting event rather than a major geopolitical conflict. 0:25:26.000 --> 0:25:26.119 Uh. 0:25:26.560 --> 0:25:29.320 And and there is a great scene where we're watching 0:25:29.359 --> 0:25:33.320 a couple of the proles watch the robot Jocks announcements 0:25:33.359 --> 0:25:36.560 on TV, and for some reason they're wearing the hats 0:25:36.600 --> 0:25:38.480 that members of House Frey wear. 0:25:38.960 --> 0:25:41.400 I don't know where that comes from. 0:25:41.880 --> 0:25:44.680 Yeah, that is an interesting wrinkle in the show though, 0:25:44.680 --> 0:25:49.280 where it's geopolitics as pure entertainment to a large section 0:25:49.640 --> 0:25:53.360 of the populace. So yeah, there again another area where 0:25:53.359 --> 0:25:55.760 this show gets. Uh, this movie gets a bit meaty 0:25:56.280 --> 0:25:57.520 before it gets goofy again. 0:25:58.440 --> 0:26:00.080 Now, one thing we see in the credits of the 0:26:00.080 --> 0:26:02.520 beginning of this movie is that it is definitely a 0:26:02.680 --> 0:26:06.639 Charles Band production, and that name. If you have watched 0:26:06.680 --> 0:26:09.560 a lot of trashy eighties movies, that name shows up 0:26:09.600 --> 0:26:10.080 a good bit. 0:26:10.520 --> 0:26:11.280 Yeah that's right. 0:26:12.160 --> 0:26:12.360 Yeah. 0:26:12.480 --> 0:26:14.440 I almost hesitant to spend too much time on him 0:26:14.440 --> 0:26:17.320 here because I know we'll come back to some pictures 0:26:17.320 --> 0:26:21.399 that are actually directed by Charles Band or Albert Band. 0:26:21.440 --> 0:26:25.320 But briefly, we're talking about the Band family here. Their 0:26:25.440 --> 0:26:29.480 history begins with artist Max Band, who lived nineteen oh 0:26:29.480 --> 0:26:32.440 one through nineteen seventy four, born in Lithuania, lived in France, 0:26:32.680 --> 0:26:35.960 and then made the move to California. His son, Albert Band, 0:26:36.080 --> 0:26:38.160 who lived twenty four through two thousand and two, became 0:26:38.200 --> 0:26:40.879 a filmmaker. He was assistant director on John Houston's The 0:26:40.960 --> 0:26:44.239 Asphalt Jungle in nineteen fifty and then went on to 0:26:44.240 --> 0:26:47.080 direct a bunch of genre films, including I Bury the 0:26:47.119 --> 0:26:50.760 Living from fifty eight, Dracula Dog from seventy eight, and 0:26:51.040 --> 0:26:54.360 Gooli's Too from in nineteen eighty seven. So he's already 0:26:54.480 --> 0:26:58.119 be Cinema loyalty. But then his son is Charles Band, 0:26:58.160 --> 0:27:00.560 who again we've mentioned before on the show. So he's 0:27:00.600 --> 0:27:03.840 the man behind first Empire International Pictures that put out 0:27:04.000 --> 0:27:07.399 Robot Jocks and then Full Moon Features, and he directed 0:27:07.440 --> 0:27:10.159 some really awesome eighties and nineties sci fi horror films 0:27:10.280 --> 0:27:15.800 before going increasingly in the evil bong direction, which isn't 0:27:15.840 --> 0:27:18.440 quite my thing, but you know, you can't argue with success. 0:27:18.680 --> 0:27:21.320 Oh he does like demon Bong movies. 0:27:21.560 --> 0:27:25.080 Yeah, yeah, the evil Bong like one through however, many 0:27:26.720 --> 0:27:28.400 Ginger dead Man that that sort of thing. 0:27:28.880 --> 0:27:30.640 Yeah, yeah, okay, but. 0:27:30.720 --> 0:27:34.560 I can't stress enough that his earlier pictures are are 0:27:34.600 --> 0:27:37.440 often a lot more serious and are really interesting. Will 0:27:37.480 --> 0:27:40.480 definitely come back to something Charles Band directed in the future, 0:27:41.200 --> 0:27:43.600 but again, evil bong direction seems to have been very 0:27:43.600 --> 0:27:44.960 successful for Full Moon. 0:27:45.440 --> 0:27:45.800 Okay. 0:27:46.640 --> 0:27:49.919 Charles's brother, by the way, is Richard Band, a composer 0:27:49.960 --> 0:27:52.119 who worked on a lot of Full Moon pictures. And 0:27:52.160 --> 0:27:55.280 then Charles Band's son is Alex Band, the lead singer 0:27:55.320 --> 0:27:57.440 of a band called The Calling, which I'm not that 0:27:57.520 --> 0:28:01.000 familiar with but exists, so like the the Band family 0:28:01.359 --> 0:28:02.520 is still going strong. 0:28:02.760 --> 0:28:04.320 They are a schlock dynasty. 0:28:04.640 --> 0:28:08.280 And another connection to Robot Jocks is that Charles Band 0:28:08.280 --> 0:28:11.040 had a nineteen ninety film called Crash and Burn that 0:28:11.200 --> 0:28:14.120 was marketed in Europe as Robot Jocks two. But again 0:28:14.160 --> 0:28:17.119 there's another one where it's not actually related to Robot Jocks, 0:28:17.359 --> 0:28:19.680 but it does feature a cool giant robot plus Bill 0:28:19.760 --> 0:28:21.280 Moseley as a killer cyborg. 0:28:21.320 --> 0:28:22.200 Oh, I'd watch that. 0:28:30.000 --> 0:28:30.240 Now. 0:28:30.400 --> 0:28:33.520 One thing I will say about this movie that I 0:28:33.560 --> 0:28:38.240 do just totally unironically enjoy is all of the robot fights, 0:28:38.280 --> 0:28:40.960 including I think there's some stop motion animation, and I 0:28:41.000 --> 0:28:45.600 think there's probably also some people in suits, some puppetry. 0:28:46.280 --> 0:28:48.200 I get the feeling that both are at play at 0:28:48.200 --> 0:28:51.720 different times. I could be wrong about that, but whatever 0:28:51.760 --> 0:28:54.880 they were doing, I really enjoyed the robot effects. It's 0:28:54.920 --> 0:28:57.840 not like they look realistic. They don't, but they're that 0:28:58.000 --> 0:29:03.640 kind of non realistic, highlight stylized, great old school practical 0:29:03.640 --> 0:29:05.200 effects that I just adore. 0:29:05.640 --> 0:29:08.560 Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And so it's not surprising that you 0:29:08.640 --> 0:29:10.240 have some you have it at least a couple of 0:29:10.280 --> 0:29:13.560 big names in this one that stood out was this 0:29:13.600 --> 0:29:15.880 guy Steve Berg, who was a conceptual designer. He went 0:29:15.920 --> 0:29:18.440 into work on the art department on a number of 0:29:18.760 --> 0:29:22.800 big films, big sci fi properties like Chronicles of Ritick, 0:29:22.840 --> 0:29:27.920 Alien Three, Leviathan, The Martian, Interstellar, Prometheus. 0:29:27.920 --> 0:29:28.880 Oh, Leviathan. 0:29:29.560 --> 0:29:32.320 You've seen Leviathan, right, Oh, we've talked about it. Yeah, 0:29:32.320 --> 0:29:34.000 that's right, we've talked about it on the show before. 0:29:34.320 --> 0:29:36.680 That was one of the nineteen was it eighty nine? 0:29:36.800 --> 0:29:39.960 Was it that the year when like five different underwater 0:29:40.080 --> 0:29:41.120 terror movies came out. 0:29:41.200 --> 0:29:43.200 I think that was the underwater terror year. Yeah, we'll 0:29:43.200 --> 0:29:45.120 have to come back to Leviathan because there's a lot 0:29:45.120 --> 0:29:46.640 of fun stuff going on in that picture. 0:29:46.760 --> 0:29:48.640 Oh, we should do a whole series of weird house 0:29:48.680 --> 0:29:52.040 cinema where we just do one after another. We do Leviathan, 0:29:52.120 --> 0:29:54.240 Deep Star six, Lords of the Deep, we were like 0:29:54.320 --> 0:29:55.480 round up the whole crew. 0:29:56.000 --> 0:29:58.520 But it's like diving deeper into the ocean, Joe. The 0:29:58.800 --> 0:30:02.320 deeper you go on that play list, the greater the pressure, 0:30:02.360 --> 0:30:06.800 the harder it is to come out without doing harm 0:30:06.840 --> 0:30:10.440 to your body. Because Yeah, they're the underwater films that 0:30:10.480 --> 0:30:12.200 come to mind, and they are the ones you have 0:30:12.240 --> 0:30:14.400 to sort of hunt for from that same year, and 0:30:14.440 --> 0:30:16.280 they just get progressively harder to watch. 0:30:17.280 --> 0:30:18.520 I remember the Lord's of the Deep. 0:30:18.640 --> 0:30:20.800 Really not much happens in it, Like most of the 0:30:20.840 --> 0:30:23.200 movie is just watching people sit in a chair and 0:30:23.240 --> 0:30:24.560 say like they're coming for us. 0:30:24.760 --> 0:30:24.960 Yeah. 0:30:25.040 --> 0:30:27.800 Lords of the Deep is probably the point in anybody's 0:30:27.800 --> 0:30:30.040 attempt to watch all the underwater movies of eighty nine 0:30:30.040 --> 0:30:32.480 where they realized that their eyes were bigger than their stomach. 0:30:32.680 --> 0:30:34.040 Yeah. 0:30:33.680 --> 0:30:37.360 But oh, one of the huge names on this picture 0:30:37.360 --> 0:30:42.240 on robot jocks that helped create these wonderful stop motion effects, 0:30:42.600 --> 0:30:46.400 David Allen, who did stop motion animation and visual effects 0:30:46.400 --> 0:30:51.560 director credits on this. So this is the I think 0:30:51.600 --> 0:30:54.080 this is the real star of the movie. He's an 0:30:54.080 --> 0:30:57.120 awesome name in the stop motion animation field. He sadly 0:30:57.160 --> 0:30:59.520 died in nineteen ninety nine at the age of fifty four. 0:31:00.080 --> 0:31:04.240 He worked on The Howling on Willow, Ghostbusters Too Young, 0:31:04.280 --> 0:31:07.120 Sherlock Holmes, you know, all the all films that had 0:31:07.160 --> 0:31:10.360 some wonderful stop motion work in them, I believe, And 0:31:10.400 --> 0:31:13.360 then he did a ton of Charles band Full Moon productions, 0:31:13.600 --> 0:31:16.240 providing the store to sort of stop motion work that 0:31:16.360 --> 0:31:18.760 really sets some of those films apart. So he's the 0:31:18.800 --> 0:31:21.880 man behind the cool animation in Laser Blast, in Q 0:31:22.080 --> 0:31:26.040 the Wing Serpent, and in various other films like where 0:31:26.280 --> 0:31:29.280 oftentimes films where there's not much else notable about it, 0:31:29.400 --> 0:31:32.440 but just has some real eye catching stop motion effects. 0:31:33.120 --> 0:31:35.720 Uh yeah, I would say that that's probably true about 0:31:35.760 --> 0:31:38.680 laser blasts, except that Laser Blast is pretty funny. Q 0:31:38.880 --> 0:31:41.080 the Winging Serpent that's a little bit different. I mean, 0:31:41.080 --> 0:31:44.480 that's got that that that Cohen energy like, there's a 0:31:44.560 --> 0:31:47.880 there's a pretty fun script underneath that one. 0:31:47.960 --> 0:31:49.920 In addition to the great stop motion effects. 0:31:50.240 --> 0:31:53.520 Yeah, so when David Allen died, he was still working 0:31:53.560 --> 0:31:56.800 on a picture called The Prime Evils and it was 0:31:56.800 --> 0:31:58.360 was never finished and this was going to be just 0:31:59.320 --> 0:32:04.800 like an old school stop motion animation fest. But yeah, 0:32:04.800 --> 0:32:07.120 he died before he could finish it. But around twenty seventeen, 0:32:07.240 --> 0:32:10.240 Charles Band announced that it would be completed and released 0:32:10.280 --> 0:32:12.600 in twenty nineteen, and I think that got pushed back 0:32:12.640 --> 0:32:15.400 to twenty twenty, and then, of course most things in 0:32:15.440 --> 0:32:19.040 twenty twenty were pushed back or released in a weird fashion. 0:32:19.120 --> 0:32:21.280 So I don't think it's actually come out yet. But 0:32:21.440 --> 0:32:24.840 if you look around for information about the Prime Evils film, 0:32:24.880 --> 0:32:27.120 you'll see some clips from it, and it looks really awesome. 0:32:27.160 --> 0:32:29.480 So I do hope that finally comes to light. 0:32:30.240 --> 0:32:32.440 Well, are you ready to jump into a full breakdown 0:32:32.480 --> 0:32:34.600 of the plot and then maybe talk a little bit 0:32:34.640 --> 0:32:37.160 of weird science and the ideas in the movie. 0:32:37.360 --> 0:32:37.880 Let's do it? 0:32:38.120 --> 0:32:39.720 Okay, Well, I guess we got to start with the 0:32:39.760 --> 0:32:43.080 opening credits, which really set the scene. So the very 0:32:43.480 --> 0:32:47.920 first thing, you are panning over a snowy field of 0:32:48.040 --> 0:32:51.120 dead robots and mechanical debris, and I remember I was 0:32:51.160 --> 0:32:52.920 watching this with Rachel. She was like, is this a 0:32:53.000 --> 0:32:56.600 Christmas movie? Because it very much seems like a combination 0:32:56.760 --> 0:33:00.680 of the Terminator and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and 0:33:00.840 --> 0:33:06.200 the voiceover narration. While you get the Terminator font credits, 0:33:06.520 --> 0:33:09.640 the voiceover says, it has been fifty years since the 0:33:09.720 --> 0:33:16.640 nuclear holocaust almost destroyed mankind. War is now outlawed. Oh 0:33:16.720 --> 0:33:20.280 good idea, nobody ever thought of that before. Just make 0:33:20.320 --> 0:33:25.840 it illegal. And so they specify, well, with war outlawed, 0:33:25.840 --> 0:33:29.040 how do you settle disputes between these superpowers between the 0:33:29.080 --> 0:33:33.120 Market and the Confederation, While they say that territorial disputes 0:33:33.160 --> 0:33:36.960 are now settled by single combat, and they go on 0:33:37.040 --> 0:33:41.360 to explain here at the Confederation playing field in Siberia, 0:33:41.560 --> 0:33:45.320 and they recount that these robots that are piloted by 0:33:45.400 --> 0:33:49.720 robot jocks fight it out and whichever robot and they're 0:33:49.760 --> 0:33:53.880 corresponding jock wins the you know, to the victor go 0:33:54.000 --> 0:33:56.520 the spoils. So like you might be fighting over who 0:33:56.560 --> 0:34:01.080 gets control of Campuccia, and the winner in this case 0:34:01.120 --> 0:34:04.840 apparently was the Market with the old tex Conway piloting 0:34:04.880 --> 0:34:07.800 his mech and so they get control of the land 0:34:08.600 --> 0:34:11.399 and then you immediately cut to the present from here, 0:34:11.920 --> 0:34:16.960 where there is an ongoing fight between Alexander, who we 0:34:17.000 --> 0:34:22.080 mentioned before, the villain the Russian robot Jock, and a 0:34:22.600 --> 0:34:25.719 market robot Jack who I think is maybe named Ajax. 0:34:25.800 --> 0:34:27.040 I could be wrong about. 0:34:26.760 --> 0:34:29.080 That, but he's a guy in a red and white 0:34:29.160 --> 0:34:32.000 jumpsuit with a black guy and a bloody lip, lying 0:34:32.600 --> 0:34:35.160 in the cockpit of his robot. His robot has been 0:34:35.200 --> 0:34:38.160 destroyed and he's trying to throw in the towel. He's 0:34:38.239 --> 0:34:39.360 like pleading for mercy. 0:34:39.400 --> 0:34:43.560 He says, Alexander, you win, Alexander. I can't move. I 0:34:43.600 --> 0:34:44.560 think my back is. 0:34:44.520 --> 0:34:49.160 Broken, and Alexander just coldly says judgment. 0:34:49.600 --> 0:34:52.359 I would like judgment. It's very very much. 0:34:52.600 --> 0:34:56.200 If he dies, he dies Ivan Drego thing and then 0:34:56.280 --> 0:34:59.239 he just stomps on him. He uses his robot to 0:34:59.360 --> 0:35:02.480 stomp on Ajax and kill him, and it's victory for 0:35:02.560 --> 0:35:03.279 the Confederation. 0:35:03.840 --> 0:35:06.799 Fun behind the scenes fact is that I believe that 0:35:06.880 --> 0:35:09.160 the stop motion animation we see in this ultimate this 0:35:09.280 --> 0:35:14.799 opening encounter was actually originally test footage that was used 0:35:14.800 --> 0:35:17.400 to convince Charles Band that they could make the picture. 0:35:17.640 --> 0:35:20.120 Oh that's interesting, So maybe that's why it's in a 0:35:20.120 --> 0:35:23.360 different setting than the rest of what goes on in 0:35:23.440 --> 0:35:27.520 the movie. So the battle is a victory for the Confederation. 0:35:28.040 --> 0:35:30.520 I'm not sure exactly what they're fighting over in this case. 0:35:31.080 --> 0:35:34.680 And again, yeah, Ajax is like, I yield mercy and 0:35:34.760 --> 0:35:38.279 Alexander's like, too bad, and he just smashes him. And 0:35:38.320 --> 0:35:43.480 then Alexander looks into the camera and says, you're next Achilles. 0:35:44.000 --> 0:35:46.480 He's you know, he's got it out for Achilles. I 0:35:46.480 --> 0:35:47.960 guess because Achilles. 0:35:47.600 --> 0:35:49.640 Is the best and he wants to defeat him. 0:35:49.920 --> 0:35:54.920 Yeah, he's all about just superiority and proving himself in battle. 0:35:55.719 --> 0:35:59.960 And so next we cut to the market robot Jocks commands. 0:36:00.440 --> 0:36:04.280 It's like mission control for robot jocks, where the Allied 0:36:04.360 --> 0:36:07.600 robot jocks and their friends watch in horror as Ajax 0:36:07.680 --> 0:36:10.440 is stomped by the bot and we find out that 0:36:10.520 --> 0:36:15.239 Alexander has killed nine of their guys. Now and it 0:36:15.280 --> 0:36:17.719 is and there's immediately talk about why this is. 0:36:17.960 --> 0:36:21.080 It's because there's a spy, and. 0:36:21.080 --> 0:36:22.840 I feel like this is great. You know, set this 0:36:22.920 --> 0:36:25.000 up right at the beginning that there's a betrayer in 0:36:25.040 --> 0:36:29.879 their ranks. Somebody keeps giving the Confederation advance information about 0:36:29.920 --> 0:36:34.120 the new weapons systems that they bring online in their robots. 0:36:34.080 --> 0:36:37.560 Right, and of course you only have what five characters 0:36:37.640 --> 0:36:40.399 with names that matter, so so you know, you don't 0:36:40.440 --> 0:36:42.600 have have that many choices here to go on, but 0:36:43.160 --> 0:36:45.239 you easily can see one of them is a spy, 0:36:45.400 --> 0:36:46.640 and part of the fun of the film is going 0:36:46.680 --> 0:36:48.399 to be trying to figure out who that spy is. 0:36:48.840 --> 0:36:53.840 Right, So they are, So there are various people hanging 0:36:53.880 --> 0:36:55.560 out and you get to meet some of the characters. 0:36:55.600 --> 0:36:58.000 One of them, of course, is Tech Conway, who've talked 0:36:58.000 --> 0:37:01.399 about before. Techs is a kill he's trainer and he's, 0:37:01.640 --> 0:37:04.399 as we said, a former robot jock himself who had 0:37:04.400 --> 0:37:08.200 been very successful and ultimately victorious. Now I guess he's 0:37:08.239 --> 0:37:13.960 retired and he's he's the burgess Meredith teaching Rocky how 0:37:13.960 --> 0:37:16.920 to fight. Oh and we also find out that they 0:37:16.920 --> 0:37:21.520 are fighting over Alaska. They're fighting for control of Alaska. 0:37:22.040 --> 0:37:23.920 I'm not sure why they want it so bad, but 0:37:24.520 --> 0:37:26.840 that's what the dispute. 0:37:26.440 --> 0:37:28.799 Is, right, Yeah, Like maybe it's the first step and 0:37:28.840 --> 0:37:31.760 then subsequently conquering other areas that belong to the market. 0:37:32.680 --> 0:37:36.239 But I guess we find out that Achilles is the 0:37:36.280 --> 0:37:40.680 only robot jock left that Alexander has killed all of 0:37:40.719 --> 0:37:43.959 the other market robot jocks. It seems like they should 0:37:43.960 --> 0:37:46.399 have had more, but eh, and I guess they. 0:37:46.280 --> 0:37:48.080 Are making more. We'll get to that in a second. 0:37:48.400 --> 0:37:51.239 So then from mission control you cut straight to a 0:37:51.280 --> 0:37:55.839 sparring scene where they've got Achilles fighting a circle of 0:37:55.880 --> 0:38:00.239 people all around him. All these people in pads surround 0:38:00.320 --> 0:38:02.080 him and attack him one at a time so he 0:38:02.120 --> 0:38:04.720 can fight them off. It's kind of like that scene 0:38:04.760 --> 0:38:07.719 in The Chinese Connection where Bruce Lee goes to the 0:38:07.840 --> 0:38:10.480 Japanese martial arts school and is surrounded by people in 0:38:10.520 --> 0:38:12.279 the circle and they all come in one at a 0:38:12.320 --> 0:38:12.719 time and he. 0:38:12.719 --> 0:38:13.600 Has to fight him off. 0:38:15.120 --> 0:38:17.800 Except everybody here is wearing goofy looking red pads. 0:38:18.160 --> 0:38:21.160 Not only pads, though, Joe, They're also wearing jumpsuits. Because 0:38:21.480 --> 0:38:25.640 this film is a celebration of futuristic jumpsuits. They're like 0:38:25.800 --> 0:38:28.440 multiple different varieties of jumpsuits, and they seem to be 0:38:28.640 --> 0:38:31.040 whoever is in charge of jumpsuits did a good job 0:38:31.320 --> 0:38:34.320 of putting them together and making them look quality and 0:38:35.200 --> 0:38:37.839 keeping track of who should be wearing what, which I 0:38:37.880 --> 0:38:40.920 love because I realized more and more watching this film 0:38:41.080 --> 0:38:43.480 that it's something I love about science fiction films. I 0:38:43.560 --> 0:38:47.239 love a good jumpsuit, be it a jumpsuit in something 0:38:47.280 --> 0:38:51.120 like Mystery Science Theater three thousand or any other science 0:38:51.120 --> 0:38:53.920 fiction film. Like in the future, there will be jumpsuits 0:38:53.920 --> 0:38:57.520 and you will be assigned to jumpsuit. And so everybody's 0:38:57.560 --> 0:39:01.240 got one, even Text Conway's wearing this big, diculous bright jumpsuit. 0:39:01.360 --> 0:39:03.120 Yeah, they're red and white jumpsuits. 0:39:03.120 --> 0:39:03.719 That's so. 0:39:03.920 --> 0:39:07.879 The market wears red and white jumpsuits and the Confederation 0:39:08.000 --> 0:39:10.480 wears I think yellow and black jumpsuits. 0:39:11.239 --> 0:39:11.919 I think that's right. 0:39:12.360 --> 0:39:16.000 So we see Gary Graham the Achilles fighting all these people, 0:39:16.040 --> 0:39:19.080 and he does quite well, except there's one fighter who 0:39:19.160 --> 0:39:21.960 really puts up a good fight against him. And it 0:39:22.080 --> 0:39:26.160 turns out that this fighter is Athena, who at first 0:39:26.200 --> 0:39:28.960 I thought her name was Pathena the way they were 0:39:29.000 --> 0:39:31.880 saying it. But we find out that a lot of 0:39:31.880 --> 0:39:35.600 these fighters, or maybe all of them, are something. This 0:39:35.640 --> 0:39:37.640 is again something I couldn't understand what they were saying 0:39:37.640 --> 0:39:40.160 at first, but it becomes clear they are what the 0:39:40.239 --> 0:39:44.600 characters refer to as two bees. In this scene, Text 0:39:44.760 --> 0:39:47.960 makes his prejudice against multiple types of people. Clear, it's 0:39:47.960 --> 0:39:50.840 clear that he does not like two bees. And he 0:39:50.960 --> 0:39:55.040 also states his opinion that women will never be jocks, 0:39:55.239 --> 0:39:57.560 so there will never be a woman robot jock. 0:39:57.960 --> 0:40:02.080 Yes, he also doesn't seem to like Japanese people. 0:40:02.200 --> 0:40:04.359 Yes, text is just full of prejudices. 0:40:04.840 --> 0:40:08.600 Yeah, and so you then but then so you're wondering, 0:40:08.600 --> 0:40:10.680 what are these two bees? Why doesn't text like the 0:40:10.719 --> 0:40:14.920 tubs and what are they? Professor Laplace shows up and 0:40:15.040 --> 0:40:17.839 I love her. She is all business. 0:40:18.320 --> 0:40:18.920 She shows up. 0:40:18.960 --> 0:40:23.160 She's this uh, this small older lady who is apparently 0:40:23.280 --> 0:40:27.080 like the the market's greatest geneticist, greatest scientist, and she's 0:40:27.120 --> 0:40:30.760 there to collect DNA samples from all of the great 0:40:30.880 --> 0:40:34.320 robot jocks. So she like gives these tubes to U 0:40:34.680 --> 0:40:37.560 two Achilles and texts and is like, I need your 0:40:37.680 --> 0:40:43.640 genetic material because she's developing what she calls gen jocks, which, 0:40:44.280 --> 0:40:46.759 as far as I can tell, these are, uh, these 0:40:46.760 --> 0:40:52.360 are eugenically created perfect robot jock soldiers that are that 0:40:52.400 --> 0:40:56.600 are created through in vitro fertilization. And there is there 0:40:56.680 --> 0:40:59.640 is like there's a twobe race in this movie. The 0:40:59.640 --> 0:41:02.520 people they're calling tubs are these people who are who 0:41:02.520 --> 0:41:05.280 are a product of in vitro fertilization, which they regard 0:41:05.719 --> 0:41:09.359 in the film as this like bizarre futuristic thing, even 0:41:09.360 --> 0:41:10.920 though it was it was already being done at the 0:41:10.920 --> 0:41:12.000 time the movie was made. 0:41:12.320 --> 0:41:14.080 Yeah, it's in it. So first of all, not a 0:41:14.120 --> 0:41:17.200 lot of detail is really provided about how they're supposedly 0:41:17.800 --> 0:41:20.839 doing this, Like are they are they growing two bees 0:41:21.239 --> 0:41:25.400 at the rate one would actually create you know, you know, 0:41:25.440 --> 0:41:27.600 reed new people through a process like this, or is 0:41:27.600 --> 0:41:30.680 there some sort of sci fi speeding up of the process. 0:41:31.080 --> 0:41:34.200 You know, is this Boys from Brazil? Or is this 0:41:34.280 --> 0:41:36.160 attack of the Clones? I can't tell. 0:41:36.080 --> 0:41:38.799 Well, the way it seems like in this movie the 0:41:38.880 --> 0:41:43.960 concept of two bees is invoked because it's it sounds futuristic. 0:41:44.000 --> 0:41:46.440 It's almost as if it's being written about by someone 0:41:46.440 --> 0:41:49.719 who didn't maybe didn't even know what was actually involved. 0:41:49.760 --> 0:41:52.719 I'm not sure, right, Yeah, Like I'm one hand on 0:41:52.719 --> 0:41:55.279 the Haldeman level, I think it works perfectly as this 0:41:55.360 --> 0:42:00.000 idea that like the military industrial complex ends up absorbed 0:42:00.160 --> 0:42:03.160 being co opting reproduction itself, you know, like that makes 0:42:03.160 --> 0:42:07.759 sense within his seeming worldview of of the military engine. 0:42:08.360 --> 0:42:11.839 But yeah, it also hearkens to a time when when 0:42:12.120 --> 0:42:14.200 there were a lot of headlines and certain a certain 0:42:14.200 --> 0:42:17.000 amount of fear mongering and even moral panic about the 0:42:17.040 --> 0:42:21.000 idea of test to babies. Yeah, so, perhaps some of 0:42:21.000 --> 0:42:23.640 our listeners remember that hysteria, because I feel like we 0:42:23.680 --> 0:42:26.040 see less of it now specifically. 0:42:26.360 --> 0:42:26.840 Yeah. 0:42:27.040 --> 0:42:31.120 Yeah, I mean, I think it's this movie is weirdly 0:42:31.200 --> 0:42:36.000 projecting into the future a kind of temporary, irrational stigma 0:42:36.120 --> 0:42:38.839 that arose from culture at a particular. 0:42:38.320 --> 0:42:40.760 Time, like in the late eighties or early nineties. 0:42:41.120 --> 0:42:44.000 Yeah, because again, what Test two Babies refers to is 0:42:44.040 --> 0:42:47.400 in vitro fertilization, and in vitro means within the glass. 0:42:47.680 --> 0:42:50.120 But the process doesn't actually take place in a test tube, 0:42:50.120 --> 0:42:53.080 but rather in a Petrie dish. The egg is fertilized 0:42:53.120 --> 0:42:55.960 in a in a Petrie dish, and when it is 0:42:56.000 --> 0:42:58.360 three to five days old, it's transferred to a uterus. 0:42:58.880 --> 0:43:02.160 And today this is mainstream, granted expensive, but it's a 0:43:02.200 --> 0:43:06.640 mainstream reproductive choice. The term itself, however, this is interesting. 0:43:06.840 --> 0:43:10.279 Test two babies was coined in the nineteen thirties to 0:43:10.400 --> 0:43:14.799 refer to artificial insemination. Huh, So in both cases, we can, 0:43:15.080 --> 0:43:18.439 you know, just taste the moral panic regarding some sort 0:43:18.440 --> 0:43:22.080 of new reproduction trend. And in both cases these are 0:43:22.120 --> 0:43:25.160 things that you know, for the most part, quickly, it 0:43:25.280 --> 0:43:29.880 quickly became normalized. It is also interesting that there's like 0:43:30.640 --> 0:43:34.400 a brief gag in the film about just the idea 0:43:33.600 --> 0:43:36.759 of sperm donation as well as Oh yeah, in and 0:43:36.800 --> 0:43:40.359 of itself, is this ridiculous, like yuck it up kind 0:43:40.400 --> 0:43:41.239 of scenario. 0:43:41.480 --> 0:43:44.719 Yeah, text goes like, there ain't here's my DNA to 0:43:44.719 --> 0:43:45.920 make no tubes. 0:43:48.160 --> 0:43:53.799 Yeah, that's exactly how it went. So Yeah, anyway, another 0:43:53.840 --> 0:43:56.200 case of science fiction doing what science fiction often does. 0:43:56.600 --> 0:43:58.600 But it certainly seems a bit silly now given the 0:43:58.640 --> 0:44:00.080 mainstream acceptance. 0:43:59.600 --> 0:44:01.800 Of ib Yeah. 0:44:01.400 --> 0:44:04.920 But the two bees remain a major theme in the film, 0:44:04.920 --> 0:44:10.080 and as I said, Laplace announces to everybody that there 0:44:10.160 --> 0:44:14.560 is basically a two B race between the between the superpowers, 0:44:14.600 --> 0:44:18.320 and each one is creating their own robot jock super soldiers, 0:44:18.680 --> 0:44:22.080 and so there's like a constant escalation back and forth. 0:44:23.000 --> 0:44:25.000 Let's see, so we meet some of the two bes, 0:44:25.040 --> 0:44:27.719 and if you watch this movie, they will say the 0:44:27.719 --> 0:44:30.759 word two b's until it loses all meaning. There is 0:44:30.880 --> 0:44:33.720 just so much talk about two bees in this movie. 0:44:34.560 --> 0:44:37.120 But we meet some of the young young soldiers, and 0:44:37.400 --> 0:44:40.080 of course Athena, the one we were talking about earlier, 0:44:40.120 --> 0:44:42.960 who's a major character in the film. And then we 0:44:43.000 --> 0:44:46.520 see Alexander doing a threat video for Achilles. It's kind 0:44:46.520 --> 0:44:49.799 of like those wrestling promos where the wrestler would come 0:44:49.800 --> 0:44:52.200 out and say, like next week, I'm going to destroy 0:44:52.360 --> 0:44:56.040 you in the cage. But then after that we get 0:44:56.080 --> 0:44:58.960 a view of the populace at large, just people hanging 0:44:58.960 --> 0:45:02.360 out in the street, watch on big public TV screens 0:45:02.440 --> 0:45:07.440 the ongoing saga of the robot jocks conflict, and so 0:45:07.520 --> 0:45:09.160 this is where we see the dudes in the house 0:45:09.200 --> 0:45:12.719 fray hats. But also most people we see in this 0:45:12.800 --> 0:45:16.719 movie who are outside at any point are wearing masks, 0:45:16.800 --> 0:45:19.360 which was kind of strange to watch this year. I 0:45:19.400 --> 0:45:22.520 don't think they're wearing masks for any disease control reason. 0:45:23.040 --> 0:45:25.520 My best guess is that so it's part of the 0:45:25.560 --> 0:45:28.440 setting that the world they live in is after a 0:45:28.520 --> 0:45:31.680 nuclear war has taken place. So my guess is it's 0:45:31.680 --> 0:45:34.480 supposed to be that there are radio nuclides everywhere and 0:45:34.600 --> 0:45:37.480 that the masks are to help prevent people from inhaling 0:45:37.600 --> 0:45:40.360 radioactive particles. I don't know if that would be effective 0:45:40.360 --> 0:45:43.120 in reality, but I think that's at least the reason 0:45:43.440 --> 0:45:45.359 that they're shown wearing them. 0:45:45.680 --> 0:45:47.959 Yeah, it is interesting to watch that this year because 0:45:48.000 --> 0:45:50.439 so many films and TV shows I've watched this year. 0:45:50.480 --> 0:45:53.280 I'm just constantly thinking to myself, why are they standing 0:45:53.320 --> 0:45:55.239 so close to each other? Why is no one wearing 0:45:55.280 --> 0:45:55.640 a mask? 0:45:55.840 --> 0:45:56.320 Huh? 0:45:56.360 --> 0:45:59.400 You know, as illogical as it is to expect that 0:45:59.480 --> 0:46:02.480 in a film from ten twenty years ago, as opposed 0:46:02.520 --> 0:46:05.200 to out in the normal world, where it is perfectly 0:46:05.239 --> 0:46:06.279 reasonable to expect that. 0:46:07.560 --> 0:46:09.680 So it's coming down to the big fight, right, It's 0:46:09.680 --> 0:46:12.400 going to be Achilles versus Alexander. So we see Achilles 0:46:12.440 --> 0:46:14.560 get into his robot and it's like getting ready for 0:46:14.600 --> 0:46:17.480 a rocket launch. There's like a launch platform and there's 0:46:17.560 --> 0:46:20.719 all this staff getting everything ready. He's wearing his jumpsuit 0:46:20.800 --> 0:46:24.080 and his helmet and everybody, instead of break a leg, 0:46:24.239 --> 0:46:27.320 they say crash and burn. That's the good luck saying. 0:46:27.360 --> 0:46:29.279 And in fact, they specify in the movie that it 0:46:29.360 --> 0:46:31.399 is bad luck to say good luck, just like. 0:46:31.280 --> 0:46:31.800 In a theater. 0:46:32.640 --> 0:46:34.640 While we were watching it, Rachel made some good joke. 0:46:34.880 --> 0:46:37.600 She said something like, we call it the confed play 0:46:38.680 --> 0:46:41.680 might have gotten that wrong on the delivery. But anyway, 0:46:42.080 --> 0:46:46.000 Achilles gets into a giant Optimus Prime, and of course 0:46:46.280 --> 0:46:48.520 there are a bunch of kids who call Achilles on 0:46:48.560 --> 0:46:50.719 a video phone before he goes into battle. I think 0:46:50.719 --> 0:46:55.640 they're his brother's many children and or his brother in law, 0:46:55.840 --> 0:47:00.000 maybe his sister's husbands. Anyways, a bunch of people call 0:47:00.120 --> 0:47:01.839 him on a video phone and they wish him good luck. 0:47:02.640 --> 0:47:04.680 And then so he goes into battle, and then we 0:47:04.719 --> 0:47:07.960 get one of the first big like full stop motion 0:47:08.200 --> 0:47:11.840 animation fight scenes. We get to see what the robots 0:47:11.880 --> 0:47:15.120 do when they fight, and I love the effects. 0:47:14.719 --> 0:47:15.440 In this scene. 0:47:16.120 --> 0:47:18.719 You get these these they sort of like go down 0:47:18.760 --> 0:47:21.120 the list of trying out each of their weapons on 0:47:21.200 --> 0:47:23.759 each other, like they're like try that new green laser pair. 0:47:24.560 --> 0:47:27.560 And this scene I thought is just great. Like it's 0:47:27.600 --> 0:47:29.959 not like it looks realistic, but that's not the point. 0:47:30.040 --> 0:47:31.240 It looks excellent. 0:47:31.520 --> 0:47:35.160 And I have to say the animation style that they use, 0:47:35.160 --> 0:47:37.799 the stop motion animation and the suits as well. They 0:47:37.800 --> 0:47:42.600 create a very clunky sort of movement, which I think 0:47:42.719 --> 0:47:45.080 really works well in the film because we're used to 0:47:45.120 --> 0:47:48.160 seeing some giant robot battles and more recent things like 0:47:48.160 --> 0:47:51.600 the Pacific Rim movies and so forth, and there's a 0:47:51.600 --> 0:47:55.319 lot of like fluid modern action in those films. But 0:47:55.600 --> 0:47:59.200 I feel like the clunky action in this works works 0:47:59.239 --> 0:48:03.479 really well because it does feel like colossal machines doing 0:48:03.600 --> 0:48:06.920 very specific things, and the stakes are really high, like 0:48:07.520 --> 0:48:10.759 there's no wasted movement. And we'll get into some of 0:48:11.200 --> 0:48:14.960 the physical challenges of the idea of giant machines battling 0:48:15.000 --> 0:48:17.319 each other in a bit, but I ultimately really like 0:48:17.360 --> 0:48:19.800 the kind of clunky and deliberate motions that happen in 0:48:19.840 --> 0:48:20.440 these battles. 0:48:20.600 --> 0:48:24.600 Yes, and so the battle ends with a horrific tragedy. 0:48:24.760 --> 0:48:26.720 So they sort of fight each other to a draw. 0:48:26.840 --> 0:48:30.840 But then then Alexander tries to do something dirty and 0:48:31.120 --> 0:48:34.200 fire a fire a projectile weapon and a part in 0:48:34.239 --> 0:48:36.400 the match when he's not supposed to do that, and 0:48:36.440 --> 0:48:39.120 it looks like it's going to hit the stands of spectators. 0:48:39.160 --> 0:48:41.480 I don't know why there were stands of live spectators, 0:48:41.520 --> 0:48:42.040 but this. 0:48:42.040 --> 0:48:44.800 Is it's a power claw. It's like a power punch, yeah, exactly, 0:48:44.880 --> 0:48:47.800 like he launches the fist of the robot. 0:48:47.600 --> 0:48:52.160 And Achilles is like, no. The people to reference Superman 0:48:52.239 --> 0:48:54.480 four he goes no the people and he dives in 0:48:54.520 --> 0:48:56.320 front of it before it can hit the stands. 0:48:56.760 --> 0:48:57.480 But I don't know. 0:48:57.560 --> 0:48:59.920 I guess he should have anticipated this. The power claw 0:49:00.120 --> 0:49:03.279 hits him and knocks him back, and he falls on 0:49:03.480 --> 0:49:07.160 the stands, crushing tons of people and killing them, and 0:49:07.200 --> 0:49:09.640 there is I'm not sure I was trying to put 0:49:09.680 --> 0:49:12.160 my finger on what exactly is so funny about this, 0:49:12.560 --> 0:49:16.040 but the staging of the horrific mayhem that we see 0:49:16.080 --> 0:49:19.640 in the aftermath of him falling on the stands is hilarious. 0:49:20.160 --> 0:49:23.480 There are all these like bloody bodies all over the place, 0:49:23.520 --> 0:49:26.200 but for some reason it looks so funny. And I 0:49:26.200 --> 0:49:29.200 think maybe it's because the bodies are all kind of 0:49:29.239 --> 0:49:33.360 like perfectly evenly spaced apart from each other. It just 0:49:33.440 --> 0:49:35.439 looks staged in a really funny way. 0:49:35.719 --> 0:49:38.480 I didn't get that as much, but I was thinking, well, like, well, 0:49:38.560 --> 0:49:40.959 I don't think the boy needed to see this. It's best, 0:49:40.960 --> 0:49:44.080 so we didn't watch it. One kind of neat bit 0:49:44.080 --> 0:49:46.919 of trivia about that scene, though, is apparently audio from 0:49:46.920 --> 0:49:49.200 it is used in the creation was used in the 0:49:49.200 --> 0:49:51.919 creation of the nine Inch Nails track. The becoming off 0:49:51.920 --> 0:49:56.040 of the downward Spiral huh okay, which I'd never picked 0:49:56.120 --> 0:49:59.880 up on that before. But as it turns out, like 0:50:00.000 --> 0:50:01.719 that album. As much as we might think of the 0:50:01.760 --> 0:50:05.680 Downward Spiral as just you know being this this industrial, 0:50:05.960 --> 0:50:10.919 you know, deep gothic, phallic oriented, you know, plunge into 0:50:10.960 --> 0:50:15.440 the psyche, it's ultimately a celebration of science fiction films 0:50:15.440 --> 0:50:18.880 from the day because you've got samples from Robot Jocks, 0:50:18.880 --> 0:50:25.280 but also from THHX eleven thirty eight, from Leviathan, Angel Heart, Texas, Chainsaw, Massacre, Alien, 0:50:25.320 --> 0:50:26.520 The Elephant Man, and. 0:50:26.760 --> 0:50:28.440 Sorcerer, the Truck movie. 0:50:28.920 --> 0:50:33.279 Yeah, the Truck movie, the remake of Wages of Fear 0:50:33.800 --> 0:50:37.440 that had the awesome, I mean just amazing Tangerine Dream soundtrack. 0:50:38.000 --> 0:50:39.239 You had me at Leviathan. 0:50:41.080 --> 0:50:43.000 So next thing in the movie, we get to see 0:50:43.000 --> 0:50:46.239 what their international Criminal Cord or whatever it is looks like, 0:50:46.320 --> 0:50:50.759 and it's just dudes in referee outfits, which like, so, 0:50:50.920 --> 0:50:55.279 these these referees are now settling international disputes. Who appoints them? 0:50:55.320 --> 0:50:56.879 Where do they come from? I don't know. 0:50:57.840 --> 0:51:00.400 I assume it's supposed to be some sort of Unitedations 0:51:00.400 --> 0:51:04.560 type thing, But yeah, they have this cool floating vehicle, 0:51:04.719 --> 0:51:09.640 this like hover hovering referee vehicle that they use, which 0:51:09.680 --> 0:51:10.279 is pretty cool. 0:51:10.640 --> 0:51:14.480 But they're wearing literally the black and white stripe referee outfits, 0:51:14.600 --> 0:51:18.759 and they're they're like justices. They're like judges presiding over 0:51:18.800 --> 0:51:21.879 a trial in which both sides are presenting arguments about 0:51:21.920 --> 0:51:25.080 why they technically won this match in which a bunch 0:51:25.080 --> 0:51:28.279 of people got crushed. And it turns out the referees 0:51:28.320 --> 0:51:31.080 decided is inconclusive and there will have to be a 0:51:31.160 --> 0:51:35.600 rematch in one week, And of course Alexander loves this. 0:51:35.800 --> 0:51:39.120 He cries out in the trial. He says, yes, one week, 0:51:39.239 --> 0:51:43.360 I kill you dead. And Achilles is very sad because 0:51:43.400 --> 0:51:45.799 he does not want to fight anymore. He says, I 0:51:45.880 --> 0:51:48.600 did my contract ten fights. 0:51:48.680 --> 0:51:49.200 That's it. 0:51:49.800 --> 0:51:53.799 So he's like, I won't do anymore. I retire, and 0:51:53.880 --> 0:51:57.480 Alexander calls him out. He says, coward, you lost your nerve. 0:51:58.000 --> 0:52:00.360 Well, he's also really torn up about all the people 0:52:00.400 --> 0:52:04.320 that died when his robot fell into the stands right, yes, 0:52:04.640 --> 0:52:06.640 so I think it's understandable. Like he's like, I'm done, 0:52:06.680 --> 0:52:08.279 I don't want anymore of this. Let the tub's handle 0:52:08.360 --> 0:52:10.520 and the tubs of course are like yes, yeah, let 0:52:10.600 --> 0:52:12.920 us in there. This is all we've been raised to do. 0:52:13.000 --> 0:52:15.799 Oh, they're so excited that the tub's are loving it. 0:52:15.880 --> 0:52:17.880 One of them is going to get to fight. So 0:52:17.960 --> 0:52:20.600 one of the toob boys says Achilles is a coward 0:52:20.680 --> 0:52:23.960 for retiring, but Pathena is not having it. She stands 0:52:24.040 --> 0:52:27.560 up for Achilles, and Athena is like, he's not a coward. 0:52:28.600 --> 0:52:31.799 And then we get an argument with the market commissioner. 0:52:31.880 --> 0:52:35.240 I guess he's like Achilles's boss. I'm not sure exactly 0:52:35.239 --> 0:52:38.319 what he's supposed to be, but he's in charge of 0:52:38.320 --> 0:52:40.359 the robot jocks for the market side, I guess. And 0:52:40.800 --> 0:52:44.080 he tries to argue. We get like squabbling over what 0:52:44.120 --> 0:52:47.120 the contract means. He's like, you haven't actually finished your 0:52:47.120 --> 0:52:50.200 contract because you didn't finish ten fights. The last one 0:52:50.239 --> 0:52:54.040 was inconclusive and it isn't over until someone wins. And 0:52:54.080 --> 0:52:57.160 then Achilles response, I don't know what this line means. 0:52:57.320 --> 0:52:59.640 He responds by saying, you sound like one of your 0:52:59.719 --> 0:53:00.800 damn two bees. 0:53:02.520 --> 0:53:04.520 What what? What is the meaning of that? 0:53:06.360 --> 0:53:07.919 I don't know. I guess it's just that the two 0:53:07.960 --> 0:53:12.319 bees are utterly indoctrinated into this this idea of. 0:53:13.840 --> 0:53:14.360 Warfare. 0:53:14.600 --> 0:53:18.600 Okay, you know like the new generation has raised for 0:53:18.680 --> 0:53:21.480 it and knows nothing else and has and just in 0:53:21.480 --> 0:53:24.600 a way, it's kind of like they represent like youthful 0:53:24.880 --> 0:53:29.120 vigor for in almost innocence before the battle. And of 0:53:29.120 --> 0:53:31.319 course he is the veteran. He's been through it, he's 0:53:31.320 --> 0:53:34.440 come out the other end, uh and and knows that 0:53:34.520 --> 0:53:35.640 warfare is horrible. 0:53:35.840 --> 0:53:38.879 Right, So I guess the next thing that we get 0:53:38.920 --> 0:53:41.719 to is this really amazing scene. It's it's like there's 0:53:41.760 --> 0:53:45.320 a dance party in a bar that includes text dancing 0:53:45.400 --> 0:53:49.080 with a woman and it's hard to describe it. You 0:53:49.160 --> 0:53:51.680 just need to see this scene. It's like the scene 0:53:51.840 --> 0:53:55.200 in Message from Space where they have their canteena equivalent 0:53:55.320 --> 0:53:58.880 the it is a party that must be witnessed. 0:53:59.200 --> 0:54:00.840 Yeah, it's a fun atina scene. 0:54:01.160 --> 0:54:03.000 And so while this dance party is going on in 0:54:03.000 --> 0:54:06.360 the background, Achilles, now depressed, is in the bar getting 0:54:06.400 --> 0:54:09.560 blackout drunk. He's doing this thing where he's drinking the alphabet. 0:54:09.640 --> 0:54:11.880 So he's going down the alphabet, drinking a drink for 0:54:11.920 --> 0:54:14.920 every letter, and I think he's made his way to 0:54:15.040 --> 0:54:17.880 J and the bartender suggests a julop. 0:54:18.280 --> 0:54:18.520 Wow. 0:54:18.600 --> 0:54:21.160 Wow, this is an interesting concept that I kind of 0:54:21.520 --> 0:54:26.640 glossed over watching the film. Certainly not advisable for a 0:54:26.680 --> 0:54:28.799 single evening, though, But I wonder what would be the 0:54:28.800 --> 0:54:30.680 proper way to drink the alphabet. It would be kind 0:54:30.680 --> 0:54:33.080 of interesting to make that list and to pick out 0:54:33.120 --> 0:54:35.640 a particular cocktail for each one. 0:54:36.239 --> 0:54:40.960 What starts with a give me one alcohol please. But 0:54:41.040 --> 0:54:43.439 so then he's sitting there and then all the two 0:54:43.440 --> 0:54:46.120 b's come in, and they're young and full of excitement 0:54:46.120 --> 0:54:48.560 and vigor, and they try to cheer Achilles up, talking 0:54:48.600 --> 0:54:51.480 about how the. 0:54:50.320 --> 0:54:51.600 They this was great. 0:54:52.480 --> 0:54:54.120 The way they try to cheer him up is they 0:54:54.120 --> 0:54:57.719 talk about, Hey, the audience members in the stands signed releases. 0:54:57.840 --> 0:54:59.719 You know, they agreed to be there, they knew what 0:54:59.719 --> 0:55:01.720 the You shouldn't feel bad. 0:55:02.040 --> 0:55:05.160 Yeah, the two b's have just bought every line that 0:55:05.200 --> 0:55:07.480 the market has told them. Yeah, I just believe it 0:55:07.520 --> 0:55:09.000 all absolutely, Like. 0:55:09.080 --> 0:55:11.920 They actually read the fine print and they love it. 0:55:12.040 --> 0:55:14.920 They're all on board with every bit of the contract. 0:55:15.760 --> 0:55:18.560 And then Alexander shows up and this is one of 0:55:18.760 --> 0:55:21.640 multiple scenes in the movie where the characters are drinking 0:55:21.800 --> 0:55:25.000 in this bar that they share with the opposing side. 0:55:25.440 --> 0:55:28.360 And I don't know how to so, so the premise 0:55:28.520 --> 0:55:32.399 that's going on is that the Confederation is constantly winning 0:55:32.480 --> 0:55:36.400 these fights because of info security leaks on the market side, 0:55:36.440 --> 0:55:39.560 like there are spies and everybody's concerned about how people 0:55:39.640 --> 0:55:42.200 are finding out about the new weapons systems on the 0:55:42.200 --> 0:55:45.880 market robots. But then at night, the two different sides 0:55:45.920 --> 0:55:48.680 just go get drunk together in the same bar. That's 0:55:49.239 --> 0:55:50.440 that seems not secure. 0:55:50.840 --> 0:55:53.759 Yeah, absolutely, it seems like a terrible idea, but it 0:55:53.840 --> 0:55:57.160 works really well to move the plot along because it's 0:55:57.160 --> 0:55:59.280 one of those things. Anytime you have giant robot battles 0:55:59.360 --> 0:56:01.600 or giant monster suit battles or whatever, you got to 0:56:01.600 --> 0:56:04.000 have a lot of human interaction to pat out the movie. 0:56:04.360 --> 0:56:05.960 And this works well for the most part. 0:56:06.040 --> 0:56:09.880 Right, So, one of the kids, so Alexander shows up 0:56:09.880 --> 0:56:11.839 at the bar and he's just being a bully. He's 0:56:11.880 --> 0:56:14.280 just swinging his weight around, just being me and everybody, 0:56:14.640 --> 0:56:18.160 and one of the kids challenges him and he and 0:56:18.239 --> 0:56:19.520 he scoffs. 0:56:19.560 --> 0:56:21.960 He's like, I do not fight poo bees. 0:56:23.239 --> 0:56:27.440 So apparently Alexander is also prejudiced against the two bees, 0:56:28.040 --> 0:56:31.960 and Alexander starts twisting this kid's fingers and then Achilles, 0:56:32.000 --> 0:56:35.759 still drunk, intervenes and that they start to fight, but 0:56:35.800 --> 0:56:39.319 then Alexander says he will not fight him. Now he says, I. 0:56:39.400 --> 0:56:42.399 Do not fight for fun? What do you fight for? 0:56:43.040 --> 0:56:45.799 Which is a strange moment where the movie suddenly like 0:56:46.000 --> 0:56:48.120 asks you to be thoughtful in a way that it 0:56:48.200 --> 0:56:51.320 hasn't maybe so far, or certainly not for a while, 0:56:52.040 --> 0:56:54.960 because it appears that Achilles does not actually know. He's 0:56:55.080 --> 0:56:58.080 maybe like, huh, I've spent my life becoming a soldier, 0:56:58.120 --> 0:57:00.480 but I really don't know if there's a good reason 0:57:01.360 --> 0:57:03.040 for any of the fighting that I'm doing. 0:57:03.280 --> 0:57:06.440 It feels like an artifact of an earlier version of 0:57:06.440 --> 0:57:08.960 the script, but it's also an energy that we come 0:57:09.000 --> 0:57:09.600 back to later. 0:57:09.760 --> 0:57:14.520 Right, So, Athena carries the drunk Achilles home. He she 0:57:14.560 --> 0:57:17.080 apparently she takes his clothes off, and then the next 0:57:17.120 --> 0:57:21.000 morning they have this long, like naked hangover conversation where 0:57:21.000 --> 0:57:24.720 he's like dragging his sheets around and arguing with her 0:57:24.840 --> 0:57:29.160 about arguing about what they're fighting for and who should 0:57:29.200 --> 0:57:34.200 be fighting, and Athena gets mad at him, I guess 0:57:34.200 --> 0:57:37.040 because he's retiring, and she's like, I was bred not 0:57:37.200 --> 0:57:37.920 to have fear. 0:57:38.080 --> 0:57:42.200 I was bred for a purpose. You you just happened, And. 0:57:42.200 --> 0:57:45.320 So it's clear actually that the prejudice kind of goes 0:57:45.360 --> 0:57:48.840 both ways. Like the two bees apparently disdain non two 0:57:48.920 --> 0:57:52.480 bees because they exist for no particular reason. 0:57:52.840 --> 0:57:56.880 Yeah, just random existence. Yeah, so it's interesting. There's a 0:57:56.880 --> 0:57:59.480 fair amount of cool world building going on in this film. 0:57:59.560 --> 0:58:02.360 Yeah, and so she's like one of the things in 0:58:02.400 --> 0:58:04.240 the scene I think is she's trying to figure out, like, 0:58:04.280 --> 0:58:06.520 what are the secrets of how he always won his 0:58:06.560 --> 0:58:09.240 battles and he was and he's like, I don't know, 0:58:09.280 --> 0:58:12.160 a lot of it's just luck. And she doesn't like 0:58:12.240 --> 0:58:14.360 this answer. So she gets really mad at him, and 0:58:14.400 --> 0:58:16.160 she says, I wanted to learn the secret of the 0:58:16.200 --> 0:58:19.040 Great Achilles, but you just talk about luck and fear. 0:58:19.360 --> 0:58:22.240 There's nothing you can teach me except how to lose. 0:58:24.040 --> 0:58:26.600 So there's another scene where we see like the the 0:58:27.080 --> 0:58:30.880 youngsters training, they're they're doing their their their to B exercises, 0:58:31.000 --> 0:58:34.240 and Text reiterates to Achilles. He says for the second time, 0:58:34.320 --> 0:58:36.600 you know a woman can never be a robot jock. 0:58:37.040 --> 0:58:37.280 Yeah. 0:58:37.360 --> 0:58:40.760 Yeah, he's again the old the old fashioned attitudes of 0:58:40.920 --> 0:58:41.439 text here. 0:58:41.560 --> 0:58:45.000 Yeah, so text is quite the sexist and he and 0:58:45.040 --> 0:58:46.640 he makes it clear over and over. 0:58:47.120 --> 0:58:48.000 But this does not. 0:58:48.600 --> 0:58:51.000 This does not discourage Achilles from retiring. I think maybe 0:58:51.040 --> 0:58:53.720 he's trying to talk Achilles into staying on. He's like, look, 0:58:53.760 --> 0:58:55.400 you know, you're the only one who can do it. 0:58:55.880 --> 0:58:59.200 But Achilles retires anyway, and he becomes a sivvy. Uh 0:58:59.240 --> 0:59:02.040 So you see him suddenly going around the city. He's 0:59:02.080 --> 0:59:05.600 not at mission control anymore. He sees a mural on 0:59:05.640 --> 0:59:08.080 a wall somewhere. I think that has his picture on it, 0:59:08.160 --> 0:59:12.160 and someone has written the word coward but misspelled it's 0:59:12.240 --> 0:59:12.959 cow erd. 0:59:13.440 --> 0:59:15.000 Now, how do you know that's not just how they 0:59:15.000 --> 0:59:15.800 spell in the future. 0:59:15.840 --> 0:59:18.360 Go, that's true. Spelling changes over time. That's a very 0:59:18.400 --> 0:59:19.000 good point. 0:59:19.160 --> 0:59:22.200 It's just like how in the future the word jox 0:59:22.280 --> 0:59:25.440 plural is spelled with an X instead of cks. 0:59:25.680 --> 0:59:26.200 Yeah. 0:59:26.240 --> 0:59:29.360 But so now the market's got a problem. Achilles, their 0:59:29.400 --> 0:59:31.800 greatest warrior, has retired. So they've got to put one 0:59:31.840 --> 0:59:34.200 of these two b's in the robot to fight Alexander. 0:59:34.480 --> 0:59:37.560 So they go through some rapid two B training and 0:59:37.640 --> 0:59:41.640 the way this shakes out is that Athena and the 0:59:41.680 --> 0:59:44.920 other two bees have to climb the Agrocrag. There's this big, 0:59:45.640 --> 0:59:49.000 rattling jungle gym of death and they're all fighting each 0:59:49.000 --> 0:59:51.160 other to get to the top first and climb through 0:59:51.160 --> 0:59:54.480 this hole in the ceiling, and Athena is victorious. She 0:59:54.640 --> 0:59:56.840 is the greatest of the two b's, so she's going 0:59:56.920 --> 1:00:00.000 to become the new jocks, and as a newscaster declared, 1:00:00.280 --> 1:00:04.800 she is the first female robo jock. But Achilles, now 1:00:04.960 --> 1:00:07.600 at home, sees this on TV and he's like, no, 1:00:07.800 --> 1:00:11.400 I can't let her go into battle, so he goes back. 1:00:11.600 --> 1:00:13.920 He goes back to Jock's control, and he's like, I 1:00:13.960 --> 1:00:17.360 will be the jock, and he trains with Texts, and 1:00:17.560 --> 1:00:22.040 then there's a scene where doctor Matsumoto and Text begin 1:00:22.160 --> 1:00:25.640 to argue about how to best keep the new robot 1:00:25.760 --> 1:00:30.160 system a secret from spies. Doctor Matsumoto has taken measures 1:00:30.200 --> 1:00:32.160 to keep it secret in a way that Text does 1:00:32.200 --> 1:00:35.800 not approve of. And so there's more drinking at the bar. 1:00:35.960 --> 1:00:38.439 Of course I mentioned that would come back. Alexander sits 1:00:38.480 --> 1:00:41.640 down next to Achilles, and he declares that you make 1:00:41.720 --> 1:00:42.640 my drink. 1:00:42.440 --> 1:00:46.720 Taste like blood? Thinking, is that an expression? What does 1:00:46.720 --> 1:00:49.280 that mean? Do you know what he's getting at there? 1:00:49.520 --> 1:00:52.040 I can think of no way that that makes sense. Yeah, 1:00:52.120 --> 1:00:54.640 unless because he is he saying I can't tell. He's 1:00:54.640 --> 1:00:56.919 saying it in a way where he's like, my drink 1:00:56.960 --> 1:00:59.120 is better because it tastes like blood, or is it 1:00:59.160 --> 1:01:01.280 worse because it tastes like blood. It's really hard to 1:01:01.280 --> 1:01:03.880 get a read on what exactly floats Alexander's boat here. 1:01:04.000 --> 1:01:07.480 Yeah, so we're ramping up to the final confrontation between 1:01:07.480 --> 1:01:12.120 Achilles and Alexander. But then before that, there is a 1:01:12.160 --> 1:01:14.800 great scene where I think maybe we shouldn't reveal what happens, 1:01:14.840 --> 1:01:18.440 but there is a confrontation about who is actually the 1:01:18.520 --> 1:01:21.160 spy on the market side, who's been leaking the new 1:01:21.200 --> 1:01:25.200 technology secrets to the enemy. There's a great show down 1:01:25.240 --> 1:01:28.480 there that has some good dialogue in it, actually, well 1:01:28.520 --> 1:01:31.600 some like good dialogue that changes almost mid sentence to 1:01:31.600 --> 1:01:33.240 become hilariously cliched. 1:01:33.560 --> 1:01:38.440 Yeah, it's punctuated by hilarious cliches, but has some nice 1:01:38.480 --> 1:01:39.080 lines in there. 1:01:39.160 --> 1:01:39.400 Yeah. 1:01:39.480 --> 1:01:41.680 So it's it's a very interesting scene, and of course 1:01:41.760 --> 1:01:42.520 the spy is. 1:01:42.520 --> 1:01:44.360 Revealed, but we won't spoil it for you. We're not 1:01:44.400 --> 1:01:45.600 going to tell you who the spy is. 1:01:46.240 --> 1:01:49.360 But then anyway, so Athena comes to Achilles room the 1:01:49.480 --> 1:01:52.280 night before the big battle, and you think maybe this 1:01:52.440 --> 1:01:54.680 is going to pan out to be like a love scene, 1:01:54.680 --> 1:01:57.880 but instead she tricks him and shoots him with a 1:01:57.920 --> 1:02:01.680 sedative and locks him in his apartment. Because her angle 1:02:01.800 --> 1:02:04.600 is no, I will be the robot jock, I will 1:02:04.600 --> 1:02:05.520 fight Alexander. 1:02:05.960 --> 1:02:07.640 I don't mean to harp on the film, because the 1:02:07.640 --> 1:02:09.960 film looks great and I love I love the way 1:02:09.960 --> 1:02:12.800 the sets look, I love I love the props, I 1:02:12.840 --> 1:02:17.040 love I love everything. But in this scene when she 1:02:18.200 --> 1:02:21.360 uses an injector gun on him, it's it's fairly obvious 1:02:21.480 --> 1:02:26.360 that in the wide shots she's using a hot glue gun, 1:02:26.640 --> 1:02:28.640 like a hot glue gun that's been painted silver, and 1:02:28.680 --> 1:02:31.920 then on close ups it's like an actual injection gun 1:02:32.000 --> 1:02:34.760 or something that looks more, far more believably like an 1:02:34.760 --> 1:02:37.520 injection gun. So it's just something interesting. I noticed. They 1:02:37.520 --> 1:02:39.400 didn't really take me out of the film, And again 1:02:39.480 --> 1:02:42.280 I don't want to harp on it, like this is like, yea, 1:02:42.360 --> 1:02:45.040 you know, the cheapness of the movie, because for the 1:02:45.040 --> 1:02:46.680 most part it looks wonderful. 1:02:46.920 --> 1:02:50.320 The effects budget went mainly into the robot battles, I think. 1:02:50.720 --> 1:02:53.000 And jumpsuits too. Jumpsuits and robot battles. 1:02:53.160 --> 1:02:55.960 Yes, but I think you're right. In the close ups 1:02:56.040 --> 1:02:58.480 it's it's a regular prop gun. So it makes me 1:02:58.520 --> 1:03:00.560 wonder why they couldn't use the regular prop gun in 1:03:00.600 --> 1:03:02.480 the wide shots too. But in the wide shots it's 1:03:02.520 --> 1:03:04.160 a thousand percent of hot glue gun. 1:03:04.360 --> 1:03:06.920 Yeah, maybe something that changed pretty late in production. 1:03:07.160 --> 1:03:07.880 Yeah. 1:03:07.880 --> 1:03:11.640 So anyway, the next morning, Athena goes in to take 1:03:11.680 --> 1:03:14.640 Achilles place inside the robot. She's got her visor down 1:03:14.680 --> 1:03:16.680 so nobody can see who she is. She's pretending to 1:03:16.680 --> 1:03:21.200 be him, and she's going to go do the fight herself. Meanwhile, meanwhile, 1:03:21.280 --> 1:03:24.840 Achilles escapes his apartment and he runs to the battlefield, 1:03:25.120 --> 1:03:27.200 and we get this final showdown. And I don't know 1:03:27.240 --> 1:03:29.840 how much we should say about the final showdown or 1:03:29.840 --> 1:03:32.320 how exactly to talk about it, but it's a pretty 1:03:32.320 --> 1:03:36.920 great robot battle that involves flying into space and different 1:03:37.000 --> 1:03:41.120 interesting weapons get deployed. I don't know, it's a lot 1:03:41.120 --> 1:03:41.480 of fun. 1:03:41.760 --> 1:03:44.400 Yeah, I mean, there's one way I will spoil one 1:03:44.440 --> 1:03:48.160 weapon that they use, that is the Bolo saw, which 1:03:48.200 --> 1:03:51.360 I remember from watching part of this, I think probably 1:03:51.400 --> 1:03:54.440 on Sci Fi Channel back in the day. But even 1:03:54.440 --> 1:03:56.680 in the rewatch, it was just a wonderful moment because 1:03:56.680 --> 1:03:59.440 I've never seen a sci fi weapon quite like it. 1:03:59.440 --> 1:04:02.440 It's this device it like shoots a chain around the 1:04:02.440 --> 1:04:05.880 limb of another robot and then that that boloed chain 1:04:06.040 --> 1:04:10.120 like locks into place, allowing rotary motion of the chain. 1:04:10.200 --> 1:04:12.680 So it works kind of like an inverted chainsaw then 1:04:13.160 --> 1:04:16.000 to saw off the limb of an enemy robot. And 1:04:16.040 --> 1:04:20.760 it's wonderful. It's great. I'm surprised it's not. I don't 1:04:20.800 --> 1:04:22.840 know that I've seen it ripped off in any subsequent 1:04:23.120 --> 1:04:25.800 giant robot movie or anything, but they should because it's 1:04:25.840 --> 1:04:27.200 a it's a fabulous weapon. 1:04:27.400 --> 1:04:28.040 Yeah, totally. 1:04:37.320 --> 1:04:39.720 Maybe we should just focus on the big robots for 1:04:39.720 --> 1:04:42.360 a minute before we get to the glory of the ending. 1:04:42.680 --> 1:04:45.120 Yeah. So again, the robots look pretty awesome in this 1:04:45.280 --> 1:04:48.400 a combo of awesome old school stop motion, and I 1:04:48.400 --> 1:04:51.760 think some old school man ensued effects and the battles 1:04:51.800 --> 1:04:54.280 may not feel as dynamic as something you get nowadays 1:04:54.440 --> 1:04:57.400 or even in mech fiction of decades past, but it 1:04:57.440 --> 1:04:59.680 all has a feeling of authenticity to it, and I 1:04:59.680 --> 1:05:02.439 think one of the main reasons, and this is something 1:05:02.480 --> 1:05:05.720 that I think ties in well with you know, some 1:05:05.760 --> 1:05:08.760 elements you see in the forever war. These are big 1:05:08.840 --> 1:05:13.040 weapons and mass and gravity. These are perpetually your greatest 1:05:13.040 --> 1:05:17.080 threat and your enemy's greatest weakness. As such, one of 1:05:17.080 --> 1:05:19.840 the worst things that could possibly happen to you in 1:05:19.840 --> 1:05:23.760 one of these robot jocks max is that you might 1:05:23.840 --> 1:05:25.320 fall over or be pushed over. 1:05:25.720 --> 1:05:28.800 Yeah, and this is actually, I think really smart, Like, 1:05:28.800 --> 1:05:32.160 if you're going to take the premise seriously, it's good 1:05:32.200 --> 1:05:34.360 to think about physics in this way. And I guess Holdeman, 1:05:34.520 --> 1:05:36.720 did you know he knew a lot about physics, and 1:05:36.760 --> 1:05:39.520 so he did actually have this in mind. And I 1:05:39.520 --> 1:05:42.200 think this is a great monster science connection because it's 1:05:42.240 --> 1:05:46.920 worth keeping this in mind about biology. Evolutionary design problems 1:05:47.000 --> 1:05:51.440 are not symmetrical across great differences in scale. One of 1:05:51.440 --> 1:05:54.360 the examples of this offen sided is, you know those 1:05:54.440 --> 1:05:57.280 like articles we've probably said things like this in the past, 1:05:57.680 --> 1:05:59.560 being you know, being kind of loose when we talked 1:05:59.560 --> 1:06:02.960 about you say, like if a flea were the size 1:06:03.000 --> 1:06:05.720 of a car, it could jump the height of the Empire, 1:06:05.720 --> 1:06:08.920 state building or something like that. Except the problem is, 1:06:09.760 --> 1:06:11.880 in a way that could be true just as a 1:06:12.040 --> 1:06:14.840 matter of you know, scaling up the distance of a 1:06:14.840 --> 1:06:18.040 flea's jump. But it's also not literally true, because if 1:06:18.040 --> 1:06:20.240 a flea were the size of a car, it wouldn't 1:06:20.280 --> 1:06:23.360 be able to do that anymore. It's like athleticism would 1:06:23.440 --> 1:06:26.960 not scale up proportionately. It's because it's the size it 1:06:27.200 --> 1:06:29.760 is that it can make that jump proportional to its 1:06:29.800 --> 1:06:33.680 body length. So depending on the size of your body, 1:06:34.200 --> 1:06:39.240 you actually face vastly different threats and different constraints from 1:06:39.280 --> 1:06:42.480 the physical world. And one of my favorite examples, which 1:06:42.480 --> 1:06:46.480 I think people rarely think about, is the amazing difference 1:06:46.520 --> 1:06:49.880 that body size makes when you're thinking about the dangers 1:06:49.960 --> 1:06:53.920 posed to you by water. So there's a classic article 1:06:54.040 --> 1:06:57.400 by the great scientist JBS hall Day and who was 1:06:57.920 --> 1:07:01.240 behind a number of extremely important biological concepts in the 1:07:01.280 --> 1:07:05.320 twentieth century. He wrote this article called on being the 1:07:05.400 --> 1:07:08.080 Right Size, And this is a paragraph that I remember 1:07:08.120 --> 1:07:11.680 when I first read this, this really did blow my mind. 1:07:12.160 --> 1:07:13.160 So think about this. 1:07:13.280 --> 1:07:16.800 Haldane writes, A man coming out of the bath carries 1:07:16.840 --> 1:07:19.640 with him a film of water about one fiftieth of 1:07:19.680 --> 1:07:21.000 an inch in thickness. 1:07:21.440 --> 1:07:21.920 This way is. 1:07:21.960 --> 1:07:26.320 Roughly a pound. A wet mouse has to carry about 1:07:26.400 --> 1:07:30.680 its own weight of water. A wet fly has to 1:07:30.760 --> 1:07:34.600 lift many times its own weight, and as everyone knows, 1:07:34.880 --> 1:07:38.040 a fly, once wetted by water in any other liquid, 1:07:38.360 --> 1:07:41.880 is in a very serious position. Indeed, an insect going 1:07:41.920 --> 1:07:44.520 for a drink is in as great danger as a 1:07:44.520 --> 1:07:47.680 man leaning out over a precipice in search of food. 1:07:48.280 --> 1:07:50.680 If it once falls into the grip of the surface 1:07:50.720 --> 1:07:53.640 tension of the water, that is to say, it gets wet, 1:07:54.120 --> 1:07:57.800 it is likely to remain so until it drowns. A 1:07:57.800 --> 1:08:01.360 few insects, such as water beetles, control to be unwettable, 1:08:01.640 --> 1:08:04.520 the majority keep well away from their drink by means 1:08:04.520 --> 1:08:07.720 of a long prebosis. So it's amazing to think about 1:08:07.720 --> 1:08:10.200 how like getting wet doesn't bother us at all, but 1:08:10.240 --> 1:08:13.840 for much smaller animals because of the difference in the 1:08:13.880 --> 1:08:15.920 mass of your body and the strength of your muscles 1:08:15.920 --> 1:08:18.240 compared to the surface area of your body and the 1:08:18.240 --> 1:08:21.559 properties of water at that scale, water could be like 1:08:21.680 --> 1:08:25.280 this horrifying slime that takes a grip on you, and 1:08:25.520 --> 1:08:29.080 like you can't get away from. But a lot of 1:08:29.120 --> 1:08:31.640 these asymmetries, not all of them, but a lot of 1:08:31.640 --> 1:08:34.800 them are based on the force of gravity and the 1:08:34.920 --> 1:08:37.439 ratio of surface area to mass, as an object, it 1:08:37.439 --> 1:08:40.120 gets bigger. And this brings us back to the robot jocks. 1:08:40.400 --> 1:08:42.960 So to read a section from that same JBS Halliday 1:08:43.000 --> 1:08:46.320 in article, he's talking about the dangers of falling. What 1:08:46.600 --> 1:08:49.840 falling is as a threat to animals of different size 1:08:50.360 --> 1:08:53.200 quote to the mouse. In any smaller animal, it presents 1:08:53.240 --> 1:08:56.560 practically no dangers. You can drop a mouse down a 1:08:56.640 --> 1:08:59.879 thousand yard mind shaft, and on arriving at the bottom, 1:09:00.120 --> 1:09:03.320 it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that 1:09:03.360 --> 1:09:06.880 the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a 1:09:06.960 --> 1:09:12.320 man is broken, a horse splashes. For the resistance presented 1:09:12.360 --> 1:09:15.719 to movement by the air is proportional to the surface 1:09:15.760 --> 1:09:19.360 of the moving object, divide an animal's length, breadth, and 1:09:19.479 --> 1:09:22.439 height each by ten. Its weight is reduced to a 1:09:22.560 --> 1:09:25.960 thousandth but its surface only to one hundredth So the 1:09:26.000 --> 1:09:28.639 resistance to falling in the case of a small animal 1:09:28.680 --> 1:09:32.439 is relatively ten times greater than the driving force. And 1:09:32.479 --> 1:09:34.600 I think this would absolutely be the same kind of 1:09:34.640 --> 1:09:37.439 concern if you were considering mech battles. So if you 1:09:37.479 --> 1:09:41.160 were to have something like the autoloader and aliens, you know, 1:09:41.240 --> 1:09:46.920 like these roughly slightly bigger than human sized mechs. Fighting 1:09:46.960 --> 1:09:51.040 in those things would be entirely different a proposition than 1:09:51.120 --> 1:09:53.760 fighting in these hundred foot tall or two hundred foot 1:09:53.760 --> 1:09:57.200 tall giant robots, where in the case of the larger robots, 1:09:57.600 --> 1:10:01.320 gravity itself is an immense threat to you, like just 1:10:01.479 --> 1:10:04.439 falling over will will very likely destroy you. 1:10:04.880 --> 1:10:06.400 So yeah, in this film, you get you do get 1:10:06.400 --> 1:10:09.160 the impression that most of these robot jocks battles end 1:10:09.520 --> 1:10:14.080 when the first combatant is is knocked over or made prone, 1:10:14.360 --> 1:10:16.080 Like it seems like most of the time there's no 1:10:16.160 --> 1:10:19.360 getting up from that, right, And it's interesting to think about, like, 1:10:19.600 --> 1:10:21.200 like how did they get here? How did they get 1:10:21.200 --> 1:10:24.120 to the point where they're basically each battling in a 1:10:24.160 --> 1:10:27.880 skyscraper on legs? Yes, and I'm guessing there's there would 1:10:27.920 --> 1:10:30.040 have been an arms race over time, So maybe they 1:10:30.080 --> 1:10:33.160 started smaller, like just kind of like power armor sort 1:10:33.200 --> 1:10:37.360 of a situation maximize the individual for one on one battle. 1:10:38.000 --> 1:10:40.840 But then over time, like what do you do do 1:10:40.960 --> 1:10:43.120 You start getting bigger suits, Like my suit's bigger than 1:10:43.160 --> 1:10:45.479 yours and has bigger weapons, so now you've got to 1:10:45.479 --> 1:10:48.080 get bigger too, And so now we see like the 1:10:48.200 --> 1:10:52.160 end results of that where the combatants are absolutely as 1:10:52.280 --> 1:10:54.960 large as they could possibly get and are you know, 1:10:55.000 --> 1:10:58.519 and they have all of these weaknesses based on that size, 1:10:59.000 --> 1:11:01.240 but there's just no scaling back at this point. 1:11:01.320 --> 1:11:04.000 Yeah, that's interesting. It's almost one of those like prisoner's 1:11:04.080 --> 1:11:08.120 dilemma type problems where like the incentives for the individual 1:11:08.320 --> 1:11:11.479 are different than the incentives for like both parties when 1:11:11.560 --> 1:11:13.400 they look at things together, and if you could just 1:11:13.439 --> 1:11:16.160 get them agreed to both agree to scale back down, 1:11:16.520 --> 1:11:19.040 that would be better for both. But they but you 1:11:19.080 --> 1:11:20.840 can't get them to agree to that, so they just 1:11:20.920 --> 1:11:24.519 keep getting bigger. And that also brings me to another 1:11:24.600 --> 1:11:28.000 interesting question. This movie raises some things about it that 1:11:28.360 --> 1:11:30.479 you wonder if they would make sense in reality, and 1:11:30.520 --> 1:11:35.759 that is the very concept of symbolic warfare through single 1:11:35.840 --> 1:11:39.160 combat or champion combat. So the premise of the film 1:11:39.600 --> 1:11:42.799 is that you've got these superpowers, they are in violent 1:11:42.920 --> 1:11:45.719 conflict with one another, but they can't go to war. 1:11:45.880 --> 1:11:48.240 They don't go to war on the whole. 1:11:48.360 --> 1:11:51.559 Instead, they pick one person from each side to get 1:11:51.560 --> 1:11:54.000 in the robot fight it out, and then the winner 1:11:54.080 --> 1:11:55.559 gets whatever it is they wanted. 1:11:56.000 --> 1:11:59.040 Yeah, yeah, you know it works in the in this 1:11:59.120 --> 1:12:01.480 film and of course you all see this in mythology, 1:12:01.520 --> 1:12:06.160 when mythological characters are used to embody whole nations or peoples, 1:12:06.160 --> 1:12:09.280 et cetera. It does remind me a bit of something 1:12:09.280 --> 1:12:11.120 that we discussed in our stuff to Blow your Mind 1:12:11.160 --> 1:12:14.439 episodes on the ant Wars earlier in the year, where 1:12:14.479 --> 1:12:17.200 we talked about the various tournament tournament battle that you 1:12:17.240 --> 1:12:21.559 see in ants, but also in certain small armed groups 1:12:22.200 --> 1:12:26.800 historically in human civilization, and the idea here being like, 1:12:26.840 --> 1:12:30.280 if you're if you don't have large armies that are 1:12:30.320 --> 1:12:33.400 combating each other, sometimes it makes more sense for a 1:12:33.479 --> 1:12:36.720 select few individuals to engage in sort of you know, 1:12:36.800 --> 1:12:39.360 less high stakes combat, to sort of feel each other out, 1:12:39.400 --> 1:12:41.519 to see which way the battle would go and then 1:12:42.080 --> 1:12:45.559 act accordingly. But in these cases we're still not talking 1:12:45.560 --> 1:12:51.120 about like one soldier fighting one soldier champion versus champions. 1:12:50.920 --> 1:12:53.200 Right, And this brings us back to something that we 1:12:53.240 --> 1:12:55.880 also talked about in the ant Wars episode, which are 1:12:55.960 --> 1:13:00.640 these models. Again, these these are not perfect descriptions of 1:13:00.680 --> 1:13:03.719 what actually happens in battle, but they are somewhat accurate 1:13:03.760 --> 1:13:08.440 descriptions for modeling casualties in conflict, and they're known as 1:13:08.720 --> 1:13:12.360 Lanchester's square laws and Lanchester's linear laws, and so the 1:13:12.439 --> 1:13:14.840 main idea there is more complicated than this, but the 1:13:14.840 --> 1:13:18.400 main idea is that as you approach a situation that 1:13:18.560 --> 1:13:21.240 is a war of all against all, so the more 1:13:21.400 --> 1:13:26.200 your battle resembles something where any soldier can engage any 1:13:26.240 --> 1:13:28.719 other at any time, so maybe like a shooting war. 1:13:29.040 --> 1:13:32.000 As it approaches that instead of the type of battle 1:13:32.000 --> 1:13:35.160 where one soldier can only fight one other soldier at 1:13:35.160 --> 1:13:38.639 a times a big series of duels, as it becomes 1:13:38.640 --> 1:13:43.000 more of a war of all against all, than the 1:13:43.080 --> 1:13:47.920 advantages provided by having superior numbers go up, not just 1:13:47.960 --> 1:13:50.519 in a linear way but in a squared way, so 1:13:50.680 --> 1:13:54.920 that having superior numbers is much more important than having 1:13:55.200 --> 1:13:58.280 better individual fighters in a war of all against all. 1:13:58.760 --> 1:14:02.439 And that's be because like the force with superior numbers 1:14:02.520 --> 1:14:05.799 can quite quickly reduce the numbers of the other forces 1:14:05.800 --> 1:14:07.760 so that they can't really put up a fight of 1:14:07.800 --> 1:14:11.720 any kind. And so anyway, in a world with technology 1:14:11.760 --> 1:14:14.160 that enables, you know, a war of all against all, 1:14:14.200 --> 1:14:19.440 like a basic shooting war scenario, the side with superior 1:14:19.600 --> 1:14:24.080 numbers is almost always at an extreme advantage. And that 1:14:24.160 --> 1:14:27.240 makes me think about how It's hard to imagine in 1:14:27.280 --> 1:14:31.960 a modern context, with modern technology, that champion warfare would 1:14:31.960 --> 1:14:35.640 ever really emerge unless it were like imposed by an 1:14:35.680 --> 1:14:39.479 outside force. Like, for champion warfare to be the way 1:14:39.520 --> 1:14:44.439 that you would settle geopolitical conflict, it would require the 1:14:44.640 --> 1:14:49.720 side with more with numerical superiority to agree to the 1:14:49.800 --> 1:14:52.680 champion warfare and to say, yes, we will honor the 1:14:52.720 --> 1:14:57.240 outcome of this duel. But champion warfare necessarily improves the 1:14:57.280 --> 1:14:59.600 odds for the weaker force and hurts the odds for 1:14:59.640 --> 1:15:02.160 the strong young force. So why would the stronger force 1:15:02.200 --> 1:15:02.840 agree to it? 1:15:03.320 --> 1:15:03.559 Yeah? 1:15:04.000 --> 1:15:07.200 Now, if in this film, if the judges, if the 1:15:07.280 --> 1:15:11.960 referees were aliens representing say a technologically advanced species that 1:15:12.000 --> 1:15:14.639 could just simply wipe out either side without thinking about it, 1:15:14.800 --> 1:15:16.519 like that would potentially make more sense. 1:15:16.600 --> 1:15:18.160 Yeah, but it did. 1:15:18.200 --> 1:15:20.040 Well, But I was gonna in that case though, Why 1:15:20.080 --> 1:15:22.400 not just have a trial where like you argue about 1:15:22.439 --> 1:15:25.280 who actually has the correct claim to the land, rather 1:15:25.360 --> 1:15:27.840 than people just both say they want the land and 1:15:27.880 --> 1:15:28.840 you settle it with a fight. 1:15:30.479 --> 1:15:33.120 I wish I could have, you know, seen more what 1:15:33.439 --> 1:15:35.599 Haldeman had in mind for this, like what his read 1:15:35.680 --> 1:15:37.800 on it, would it would have been, you know, because 1:15:37.800 --> 1:15:40.400 I mean, certainly it worked, there's the symbolic level at 1:15:40.400 --> 1:15:43.360 which it works. But I wonder what the world building 1:15:44.600 --> 1:15:45.559 arguments would have been. 1:15:46.200 --> 1:15:48.840 Yeah, I mean I think obviously it would be better 1:15:48.960 --> 1:15:51.719 for the soldiers and better for the people on both 1:15:51.760 --> 1:15:54.240 sides of a conflict if it could be settled without 1:15:54.320 --> 1:15:57.320 massive bloodshed, whatever whatever that method is. I mean, even 1:15:57.360 --> 1:16:00.519 if it's single combat between robot jocks, that's better than 1:16:00.560 --> 1:16:02.679 just having an all out total war where you send 1:16:03.040 --> 1:16:06.479 people into the meat grinder. But the the you know, 1:16:06.640 --> 1:16:09.679 you hit the war pigs problem, Like leaders setting military 1:16:09.720 --> 1:16:11.759 policy are going to want to win. They're not usually 1:16:11.840 --> 1:16:14.760 the people who themselves have to die in battle. So 1:16:14.880 --> 1:16:17.719 while the weaker force may very much want to settle 1:16:17.720 --> 1:16:20.360 things with robot jocks, it just seems like the side 1:16:20.400 --> 1:16:23.759 with the numerical and weapons superiority would tend to just say, no, 1:16:23.760 --> 1:16:24.639 now we'll have a war. 1:16:25.080 --> 1:16:25.559 Yeah. 1:16:25.600 --> 1:16:27.920 But you know, ultimately, this is this is not a 1:16:27.920 --> 1:16:31.919 picture that celebrates warfare. It's it has has a message 1:16:32.160 --> 1:16:35.160 of you know, an anti war message, which which I 1:16:35.240 --> 1:16:35.840 ultimately like. 1:16:35.880 --> 1:16:38.040 Well, let's talk about the ending, the very ending, which 1:16:38.160 --> 1:16:43.200 is both actually sort of transcendently excellent and hilarious. 1:16:43.560 --> 1:16:43.760 Yeah. 1:16:43.800 --> 1:16:45.920 So basically they just battle the hell out of each other. 1:16:46.000 --> 1:16:48.360 So this is this ends up being like the main 1:16:48.400 --> 1:16:52.759 event in which robots do get up after being knocked 1:16:52.760 --> 1:16:56.719 prone through the use of superior tactics, but also lots 1:16:56.720 --> 1:16:59.880 of tricky weaponry, because again it all comes down to 1:17:00.040 --> 1:17:02.200 what secret weapons do you have that your enemy doesn't 1:17:02.240 --> 1:17:04.760 know about. So they engage in a lot of this 1:17:05.400 --> 1:17:07.760 and they end up going up into the stratosphere. They 1:17:07.800 --> 1:17:10.480 end up coming back down again. They end up destroying 1:17:10.520 --> 1:17:15.280 each other's suits, and there's some clever twists and turns 1:17:15.280 --> 1:17:17.920 in that battle, but it ends up with them both unsuited, 1:17:18.040 --> 1:17:22.880 both of them just on amid the rubble, trying to 1:17:22.920 --> 1:17:26.280 bash each other with like pipes and pieces of metal, 1:17:26.360 --> 1:17:30.880 like reduced to you know, almost like paleolithic battle. 1:17:31.000 --> 1:17:34.320 Yeah, yeah, literally trying to bash each other with sticks 1:17:34.320 --> 1:17:34.839 and rocks. 1:17:35.320 --> 1:17:38.080 And they reach a point where, okay, it looks like 1:17:38.760 --> 1:17:41.639 Achilles is going to be victorious, you know, it's one 1:17:41.640 --> 1:17:44.360 of those those moments where is he going to finish 1:17:44.400 --> 1:17:48.240 off his adversary, But no, Achilles has another option that 1:17:48.280 --> 1:17:51.240 he presents, and they have this wonderful little back and forth, 1:17:51.439 --> 1:17:54.640 which I quite like the dialogue, you know, and the 1:17:54.640 --> 1:17:57.880 way that they ended this because Achilles says to him, 1:17:58.200 --> 1:18:01.519 you can live, and Alexander says, yes if I kill 1:18:01.560 --> 1:18:03.599 you with this, and it's the pipey thing that he's 1:18:03.600 --> 1:18:04.080 holding or. 1:18:04.040 --> 1:18:04.479 Was it a rock? 1:18:04.520 --> 1:18:06.240 I thought it was a rock, but I could be wrong. 1:18:06.120 --> 1:18:08.519 Okay, And then Achille says we can both live, and 1:18:08.520 --> 1:18:12.280 then Alexander says we are already dead. We are robot jocks, 1:18:13.479 --> 1:18:16.280 which which I think is a line. I think it 1:18:16.360 --> 1:18:19.320 works here, but I also have to remind myself that 1:18:19.400 --> 1:18:22.519 Haldeman's original working title for this was The Mechanics. Yes, 1:18:23.000 --> 1:18:25.160 so so that would have been a more interesting line. 1:18:25.160 --> 1:18:27.760 And he's like, no, we like we're mere mechanics, you know, 1:18:27.800 --> 1:18:31.200 like we're not even really controlling these things, these things 1:18:31.240 --> 1:18:34.120 and this this military engine. We're just caring for it 1:18:34.120 --> 1:18:35.519 and making it run, right. 1:18:35.439 --> 1:18:38.920 I mean, in a weird way. It's an exchange that, 1:18:40.160 --> 1:18:42.960 with a little bit of like verbal tweaking, could have 1:18:43.040 --> 1:18:45.960 been very powerful and is in some way as powerful, 1:18:46.520 --> 1:18:50.880 but because of the phrase robot jocks, it it absolutely 1:18:50.920 --> 1:18:55.120 spills over into absurdity, you know. So like if he 1:18:55.160 --> 1:18:58.360 had said we can both live, and Alexander said, no, 1:18:58.520 --> 1:18:59.519 we are already dead. 1:18:59.720 --> 1:19:00.640 We're soldiers. 1:19:01.600 --> 1:19:03.720 I think the idea would be driven home there that 1:19:03.880 --> 1:19:06.960 like their their fates are not up to them, you know, 1:19:07.080 --> 1:19:11.640 their fates are decided for them by forces beyond their control. Uh, 1:19:11.840 --> 1:19:14.839 And that does seem to be the theme. But instead 1:19:14.840 --> 1:19:17.000 he says, you know, we can live. 1:19:17.200 --> 1:19:20.519 No, we are robot shocks yeah. 1:19:20.840 --> 1:19:22.920 But then ultimately, like this is the spoiler for the 1:19:22.960 --> 1:19:26.439 end of the film, but but he wins. Achilles is 1:19:26.479 --> 1:19:30.080 able to convince Alexander that yes, we can live. We 1:19:30.160 --> 1:19:32.200 don't have to fight, we can stop fighting, and they 1:19:32.240 --> 1:19:35.280 stop fighting and then they do that awesome fist bump 1:19:35.680 --> 1:19:37.640 at the end, and that closes the picture, and you 1:19:37.720 --> 1:19:40.000 end up with this message of hope, that you know 1:19:40.040 --> 1:19:43.400 that we can resist, that we can move beyond like 1:19:43.640 --> 1:19:48.599 senseless battle. And I love it. I thought it ended perfectly, 1:19:48.680 --> 1:19:49.679 ends on a great note. 1:19:49.840 --> 1:19:52.360 It ends with the hero and the villain agreeing not 1:19:52.479 --> 1:19:53.760 to kill one another. 1:19:53.880 --> 1:19:55.840 Right, And they didn't do that thing that they often 1:19:55.880 --> 1:19:58.759 do in films where the hero appeals to the villain's 1:19:58.800 --> 1:20:02.080 humanity and the villa villain seems to say yes, but 1:20:02.120 --> 1:20:05.439 then goes for a double right then yeah, and then 1:20:05.479 --> 1:20:07.400 you know he shoots him dead, and then it's like, oh, well, 1:20:07.439 --> 1:20:09.599 he did kill the villain, but he tried. He gave 1:20:09.640 --> 1:20:12.400 him a chance, he gave him a chance to be good. No, 1:20:12.520 --> 1:20:15.240 instead they do something different, and I think it works that. 1:20:15.400 --> 1:20:17.439 I mean, so many movies use that. 1:20:17.560 --> 1:20:19.600 It is a plot device that I have come to 1:20:19.760 --> 1:20:23.160 absolutely despise just because of how common and how in 1:20:23.160 --> 1:20:26.400 a way, how cheap it is. Because what it's trying 1:20:26.479 --> 1:20:29.120 to show you is that it's trying to have it 1:20:29.160 --> 1:20:32.000 both ways. It's trying to have the hero show mercy 1:20:32.240 --> 1:20:35.400 and not be vindictive and cruel. So the hero gets 1:20:35.400 --> 1:20:37.720 the upper hand, gives the villain a chance to like 1:20:37.800 --> 1:20:40.360 walk away or to live or whatever, and then the 1:20:40.439 --> 1:20:42.360 villain tries to stab them in the back and then 1:20:42.360 --> 1:20:43.840 the hero kills them. 1:20:44.160 --> 1:20:45.840 Yeah, it's trying to have it both ways. 1:20:45.840 --> 1:20:48.200 So you get to see the villain killed and punished, 1:20:48.400 --> 1:20:50.799 but you also get to see the hero have mercy. 1:20:51.160 --> 1:20:53.559 I think it's it's better to just choose one or 1:20:53.560 --> 1:20:53.880 the other. 1:20:54.320 --> 1:20:54.759 Yeah. 1:20:54.840 --> 1:20:58.240 Yeah, I don't know what kind of arguments may have happened, 1:20:58.280 --> 1:21:00.280 or maybe there weren't arguments over this part, but I 1:21:00.360 --> 1:21:01.680 like the way it turned out, So I don't know 1:21:01.680 --> 1:21:04.439 if this was ultimately the way Halman wanted it, or 1:21:04.479 --> 1:21:06.240 if this was more of a Stuart Gordon direction, or 1:21:06.280 --> 1:21:08.960 maybe this is just the way it feels. Is like, 1:21:09.000 --> 1:21:11.080 this is where the two visions come together and they work. 1:21:11.360 --> 1:21:14.639 It is a weirdly transcendent way to conclude this utterly 1:21:14.720 --> 1:21:15.679 ridiculous film. 1:21:17.600 --> 1:21:20.040 All right, and well, speaking of concluding, it's time for 1:21:20.120 --> 1:21:22.519 us to conclude. You may be wondering, though, where can 1:21:22.560 --> 1:21:26.160 I see robot Jocks? Unfortunately this is a tough one. 1:21:26.720 --> 1:21:31.320 You can buy some at times crazy overpriced DVDs, vhs 1:21:31.320 --> 1:21:34.160 and Blu rays of robot Jocks, but the Shout Factory 1:21:34.280 --> 1:21:36.599 edition of this from twenty fifteen is currently out of 1:21:36.600 --> 1:21:38.600 print print. I think it went out of print in 1:21:38.640 --> 1:21:42.280 October of twenty nineteen, so hopefully it'll become more widely 1:21:42.320 --> 1:21:46.360 available in the future. No one seems to be streaming it, like, 1:21:46.439 --> 1:21:49.599 not even for rent or or digital purchase right now, 1:21:50.000 --> 1:21:54.200 say for the odd unauthorized like highly unauthorized version. Joe, 1:21:54.200 --> 1:21:56.320 didn't you find this one on Facebook of all places? 1:21:56.720 --> 1:21:58.439 Well, I didn't watch it there. I ended up watching 1:21:58.560 --> 1:22:02.719 the version that you rented lent me, but dig around 1:22:02.720 --> 1:22:03.679 for it if you desire. 1:22:03.840 --> 1:22:05.559 But yeah you should also. 1:22:05.720 --> 1:22:08.400 I mean, I would say, start a letter writing campaign 1:22:08.439 --> 1:22:10.880 to the Criterion Collection and get them to put out 1:22:10.920 --> 1:22:13.280 their own edition of robot Jocks, which is what. 1:22:13.280 --> 1:22:14.200 The world deserves. 1:22:14.479 --> 1:22:18.360 Yeah. Yeah, we definitely rented it. Got it from Atlanta's 1:22:18.360 --> 1:22:22.000 own video drome. They're still renting films there at Atlanta's 1:22:22.120 --> 1:22:24.800 last video rental place. But if you're not in the 1:22:24.840 --> 1:22:27.160 Atlanta area, you can still get in on the fund 1:22:27.160 --> 1:22:30.120 with their merchandise. You can find them at videodrome dot 1:22:30.160 --> 1:22:35.040 tv in their main website is videodromeatl dot com. As 1:22:35.080 --> 1:22:39.160 for US, Weird House Cinema will continue. We're gonna do 1:22:39.240 --> 1:22:42.200 this every Friday. We're gonna celebrate some sort of a 1:22:42.240 --> 1:22:44.360 weird film. We may talk a little bit about science 1:22:44.400 --> 1:22:45.800 and culture in it, but for the most part is 1:22:45.800 --> 1:22:48.880 the celebration of the film itself. Our core science and 1:22:48.920 --> 1:22:52.160 culture episodes will continue to air on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:22:52.320 --> 1:22:54.480 and then we have, of course some other content sprinkled 1:22:54.520 --> 1:22:57.439 around throughout the week as well. You can find all 1:22:57.479 --> 1:22:59.479 of that in the Stuff to Blow your Mind feed. 1:23:00.080 --> 1:23:02.800 You can find that wherever you get your podcasts. We 1:23:02.920 --> 1:23:04.720 just asked that you rate, review and subscribe to help 1:23:04.800 --> 1:23:07.080 us out and of course get in touch with us. 1:23:07.120 --> 1:23:09.439 Tell us what you thought about robot Jocks. You have 1:23:09.520 --> 1:23:11.200 memories of seeing it back in the day, if you 1:23:11.240 --> 1:23:15.160 rewatched it recently, did you rewatch it for this episode, 1:23:15.360 --> 1:23:17.360 we want to hear from you, and we also want 1:23:17.400 --> 1:23:19.160 to hear from you about the general direction that we've 1:23:19.200 --> 1:23:21.400 been taking the Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Feed Do 1:23:21.439 --> 1:23:23.240 you like what we're doing? Do you not like what 1:23:23.280 --> 1:23:25.800 we're doing? Do you have some critiques to share? 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