Stuart Gordon's 1989 Cult Classic Robot Jox Gives Us the Giant Robot Fighting Action We Crave
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In the mid to late 1980s, frightmaster Stuart Gordon found inspiration in an unlikely source. Cinema’s preeminent interpreter of the dread-choked work of H.P. Lovecraft was fascinated by the Japanese Transformers toy line.
Gordon said of the cinematic possibilities of big robots fighting each other, “While there have been animated cartoons based on these giant robots, no one has ever attempted a live-action feature about them. It struck me that it was a natural fantasy for the big screen and a terrific opportunity to take advantage of the special effects that are available today.”
The Re-animator auteur did not have the rights to the Transformers, however. So Gordon hired Joe Haldeman, a respected science fiction author he had been collaborating with on a film adaptation of Haldeman’s Nebula and Hugo Award-winning novel The Forever War that never came to fruition, to write a screenplay based on his idea of giant robots fighting.
Haldeman, a Purple Heart-winning Vietnam veteran, saw the script as an opportunity to say something substantive about the nature of warfare. He wanted to make a serious science-fiction film of ideas. Gordon, on the other hand, wanted to make a fun movie for children chockablock with robot-on-robot action.
The cult filmmaker and cult science fiction author butted heads over the direction of the film before compromising on a goofy comic book movie for kids about giant robots squaring off that’s filled with subversive touches and cartoonish satire.
In that respect Robot Jox feels like a popcorn, bubble-gum version of Paul Verhoeven’s wildly divisive adaptation of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. It feels like Starship Troopers lite, with a fraction of the budget and a restrictive PG rating.
Haldeman’s The Forever War was written as a response to Starship Troopers but it was also highly influenced by Heinlein’s work. Haldeman was anti-war and anti-Fascist, whereas Heinlein famously though both were groovy.
Watching Robot Jox, I couldn’t help but fantasize about Gordon making an actual Transformers movie with a giant budget, a major studio and an army of technicians tasked with helping him realize his dreams and someone like Kurt Russell in the lead.
Then again, the bigger and more commercial a movie becomes, the less control an idiosyncratic filmmaker like Gordon is likely to have over it. When you’re collaborating with a toy company like Mattel they have final say and ultimate control, and I suspect they wouldn’t be too impressed by the reviews Gordon received for micro-budgeted shockers like The Re-Animator and From Beyond.
Instead of a large budget from a major studio Gordon and his collaborators got what was a very large budget for Charles Band’s Empire Pictures and Alien Nation star Gary Graham as an adequate, if underwhelming star.
Empire Pictures was running out of money and going out of business when Robot Jox was being made so its release was delayed for years.
Everything about Robot Jox seems designed to lower expectations except that it’s a Stuart Gordon movie about giant robots fighting in a post-apocalyptic future. That feels like a can’t miss proposition but if my twenty-five years of writing about pop culture have taught me anything, it’s that there’s no such thing as a can’t-miss proposition.
Robot Jox opens with narration explaining that in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, global superpowers have chosen to resolve their conflicts not through war but rather through giant robot fights operated by hotshot pilots known as Robot Jox.
Gary Graham plays Achilles, a hotshot Robot Jox who has won nine fights and is consequently a superstar in a field that combines boxing, armored warfare and a popular children’s toy that predates Transformers, Rock’Em Sock’Em Robots.
When Haldeman complained about Gordon filling the film with goofy, cartoonish caricatures he was referencing characters like Achilles’ mentor/coach, who wears a giant cowboy hat indoors, speaks in a thick Southern accent and, for good measure, is nicknamed “Tex” in case there’s any doubt about which state/region he hails from.
Tex and Achilles represent the macho, hedonistic history of warfare, while the future of robotic fighting lies in a race genetically engineered to be Robot Jox, most notably Athena (Anne-Marie Johnson), an ambitious product of science slated to be the first female robot operator.
In a fight against arch-nemesis Alexander (Paul Koslo), a scowling Russian and off-brand Ivan Drago, Achilles attempts to protect hundreds of spectators from Alexander but ends up killing them instead.
A mortified Achilles retires but, being a dedicated chauvinist, changes his mind when faced with the prospect of Athena squaring off against Alexander in her first match instead of himself.
There’s an unmistakable kinkiness as well as brutality coursing through Robot Jox that makes it unfortunate that the filmmakers chose to make a PG-rated family film instead of a hard R rated cult movie for adults like Gordon’s previous films.
Robot Jox gave Gordon another opportunity to indulge in his obsession with stop-motion animation, that most time and labor-intensive of art forms. There’s something about stop-motion animation that brings out the kid in us. It’s true movie magic executed with an artisan’s unerring eye for detail.
Unfortunately Gordon had to be stingy in doling out stop motion animated fight scenes between robots because of his limited budget.
In a scene overflowing with sexual undercurrents, Achilles and Athena’s war of wills explodes into an extended fight scene that favorably recalls both the epic, endless, iconic battle between Keith David and Roddy Piper in They Live and the fetish-friendly inter-gender wrestling matches of Andy Kaufman.
Athena eventually tries to steal Achilles’ place inside his giant robot of destiny before they eventually team up to fight a common enemy.
Robot Jox concludes with a battle Royale between futuristic Americans and Soviet-style oppression that continues even after both men have left their robots.
Gordon reportedly told Haldeman that the difference in their approaches to Robot Jox was that Haldeman set out to make a movie for adults that children could enjoy while Gordon wanted to make a movie for kids that adults could enjoy.
Gordon’s approach seems to have won out, in that Robot Jox is a fun, goofy kid’s movie with a satirical adult subtext. I wish that Gordon had made a movie as extreme and uncompromising as his first two masterpieces but he wanted to make a movie children could watch and enjoy as well as adults.
The film was not a success with audiences or critics at the time of its release but it has subsequently gone on to attract a small but devoted cult following.
Robot Jox is an eminently worthy addition to the pantheon of movies about giant robots fighting. If nothing else, it’s a much better Transformers movie than any of the officially licensed adaptations, with the possible exception of Bumblebee, but that’s because the Transformers spin-off is closer in spirit to Robot Jox than Michael Bay’s massive monstrosities.
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