Robot Jox (1990)
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It started as an attempt to film Homer. The hero is named Achilles. The woman he loves is Athena. Stuart Gordon, who had just made Re-Animator, wanted to do the Iliad as science fiction.
He hired Joe Haldeman to script it. Haldeman had won the Hugo and the Nebula for The Forever War, a book he wrote after being wounded as a combat engineer in Vietnam.
The two men could not agree on what they were making. Haldeman wanted serious science fiction. Gordon wanted, in Haldeman's words, Saturday-morning cartoon stuff. Years later Haldeman said the finished film was like a child who started out fine and then took brain damage.
In ROBOT JOX (1990), two nations settle their wars by having chosen champions fight to the death, one on one, while the world watches. Celebrity pilots control fifty-foot machines and punch each other to pieces.
It cost a fortune by the standards of Charles Band's Empire Pictures. The movie bankrupted the company mid-production, and crept into theaters three years late, almost unnoticed.
Twenty-three years later, Pacific Rim tried something similar and made over half a billion dollars.
About the Film
The ultimate killing machine. Part Man. Part Metal.
- Directed By
- Stuart Gordon
- Runtime
- 85 minutes
- Released
- November 21, 1990
- Certification
- PG
- Country
- United States of America
- Starring
- Gary Graham, Anne-Marie Johnson, Paul Koslo, Robert Sampson, Danny Kamekona
More Credits
- Genres
- Science Fiction, Action
- Language
- English
- Origin
- US
- Studios
- Empire Pictures, Altar Productions
- Written By
- Joe Haldeman, Stuart Gordon
- Produced By
- Charles Band, Albert Band
- Cinematography
- Mac Ahlberg
- Music
- Frédéric Talgorn
- Also Starring
- Hilary Mason, Michael Alldredge, Jeffrey Combs, Ian Patrick Williams, Jason Marsden
- Budget
- $10,000,000
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Oh my god!! Forget this shit. Watch Macross or Gundam or something!
Sam Clegg Don’t remind me that Leo DiCaprio was shopping doing a live action Robotech eons ago but nothing came of it.
The disconnect between the visions of its writer and its director is definitely a significant problem for this movie, but its ultimate undoing is that it just does not have enough robot action in it. The beginning and ending fights are absolutely incredible, thanks to David Allen’s outstanding stop-motion work, but there is an extremely tedious and dry hour in-between, which feels extremely uninspired. That’s where the mismatch of vision definitely drags it down, and the terrible lead performance doesn’t help.
It’s a fun watch, kind of, in a campy b movie kind of way, if you’ve had a lot to drink and very little sleep, and the remote control is broken and you can’t change the channel.
we lo this movie so much, we made a song about It https://youtu.be/O1qSzvx6tfU?is=3zNDNaVbAeIcrkkc
Pacific Rim and Robot Jox are of two entirely different branches albeit of the same genus.
I rather watch Robot Jox than Pacific Rim. 🤷🏻♂️
I think it’s a pretty good movie!
This movie is a guilty pleasure of mine.
PAC rim basically had giant robot punching Godzilla. That’s why it worked
Stupid name robot underwear
Closest we ever got to a Battletech movie.
Chad Ryan Precisely why it had my attention during its production. Starlog had coverage on it.
This needs a reboot.
Haldeman may have thought that, but he didn’t realize how fantastic a film it really was.
WE CAN LIVE
They had this as an option at the bootleg DVD store on our base in Iraq but it sold out quickly. Brits, Australians, Poles, Romanians, Iraqis also love this movie.
I remember it from ’90s cable tv. The cheese was strong with this one!
Absolutely awesome movie!!!
I paid to see it 🙂
Crash and burn!
It’s shocking. Haldeman taught writing at M.I.T. and he should have known better.
Classic movie, much fun
I recall another one, titled ‘Robo Warriors’.
I saw it in the theater, years after reading about its production in Starlog. Cheese, but, fun.
TIL – reminds me of Robot Wars (1993)
Joshua Bradshaw If I remember correctly, Robot Wars was the sequel to Robot Jox, set in the same world but with different characters.
This movie was awesome.
crash and burn!
One of the best movies ever made. Yeah I said it.
This needs to be real! *Before* nuclear war FUBARs the planet as in the movie!
Cheaper, and less collateral damage and economic disruption, than wars as currently fought. And every nation is forced to hone its skills at building humongous mecha.
Anyone second this?
This movie is a classic.
Pacific Rim rocked! But PR: Uprising was kind of a letdown by comparison (which may not necessarily be PRU’s fault, the original PR was a tough act to follow…where do you go from up?), and sadly it didn’t make enough money to continue the franchise to a third movie that may have told more tales from the Kaiju War.
The novelization of Pacific Rim was extraordinary by movie tie-in book standards; it had a lot of little add-ins and extras like a “Why We Fight” editorial, combat dossiers of the various Jaegers (which, taken at their sum, you can chart a significant amount of the Kaiju War with battles, locations, dates, participants)(both Jagers and kaijus), and a lot of stuff that fleshes out the PR universe much more than a lot of movie novelizations do. I highly recommend it.
Jeff Sichta I don’t quite get the hostility toward PR:Uprising. It wasn’t as good as the original, but at least it got the Jaegers out of the rain!
Anywhere But Hollywood That’s true, seeing the jaegers do their thing in broad daylight was quite nice!