Gunhed/Robot Jox/Robot Jox 2 Review

GunHed/Robot Jox/Robot Jox 2  A comparative review

Okay, so to switch it up a bit I am going to be doing a review on a movie that I liked, well loved. But in the search for this film, I also came across one classic Charles Band film, and one piece of shit. Seeing as they are all quite similar, and members of a genre ( Live action mech films.) which has about 6 entries, I thought I would compare and contrast all three films. 

To give a bit of a landmark, a lot is going to be a sliding scale, with Gunhead at the top and RJ2 at the bottom. And the review, is going to be a bit more focussed on Gunhead. So, let’s go.

General Rating

Gunhed- 7/10 assuming you aren’t really into cyberpunk and awesome bulky mechs, 8/10 if you are.

Robot Jox – 5/10 assuming you aren’t a Charles band fan, 6.5/10 assuming you are.

Robot Jox 2 – 2/10 if you aren’t a mech fan, and 1/10 if you are. And the only reason it gets a one, is because, yes there are 2 mechs in the film.

Audio

Gunhed – 7/10. The movie has a pretty cool soundtrack, at times reminiscent of videodrome, others it seems like a weird fusion of 80’s action music and Animeish toons. One of the weirder parts of this is that the copy I have is dubbed, but if you watch closely, you can see that all of the characters almost are speaking English. This is further weirdened by the fact that the female lead actually is not dubbed. And that further weirdening, is made even weirder when you take into consideration that other American actors are still dubbed. Personally I would have liked to hear the actors original voices, complete with any accent. That is my biggest gripe in regards to the sound in this film, far from screwing with it, I feel that a bit of accent would have made it more atmospheric

Robot Jox – 5/10, with maybe 2 extra points for nostalgia if you’re a huge full moon fan. Charles’s brother doing his almost Danny Elfman thing, like in every fucking full moon movie. It isn’t bad per sae, and if you want to be really generous remember this was made before Richard put the same 2 note fucking song in every movie Chuck decided to do, so at the time it was probably able to kinda compete with what Elfman was doing.

Robot Jox 2- Shit/10, same thing as Robot Jox, but worse. Seeing as how bad the movie was, you think they would have put effort into the easiest thing, but no.

Visuals

Gunhead – 9/10 adjusted for era, 7/10 legitimate.  Okay, so we are dealing with Toho, for those that don’t know, the Godzilla people. So they know their way around a miniature set. And this works really well for the giant, sluggish types of mech’s they use. Sometimes the mechs themselves are a bit on the “obviously a toy” side, during a couple of the longer shots, but even this has the sting taken out of it by the fact that they are immaculately done toys.

Now the world in general is just great, to get your expectations around the right level for atmospheric stuff, think alien, in terms of quality. That being said, again Toho comes through with very detailed sets, that, most of the time, blend seamlessly ( again, for the time. But still pretty decent not giving it an age handicap.) into the sequences, there is very little of the old Godzilla “Yep, that sure is a miniature city.” Vibe. I think this is increased by the fact that the pointy cyberpunk architecture , is foreign, and therefore you can’t really nitpick details. All and all good use of what they had.

The character effects, and combat effects, are again, awesome for the time, good for current times. The characters all have a distinct feel beyond just “Cyberpunk #3”,  nothing epic, but really works to suspend disbelief.

Robot Jox – 5/10. This is actually an area where I feel Robot Jox excels beyond Gunhed, while I loved the miniatures in Gunhead, the stop motion in Robot jox, I found captured the movements of mechs much better. It managed to convey the intent of the person in the mech very well, and in general, just gave a more modernish feel to the film.  Oh yeah, and the dick chainsaw was pretty awesome, both because it was a dick chainsaw, and because I have always thought the crotch was an underrated place to put a weapon on a mech. Farthest away from the cockpit, and with the most armor between point a and point b, the heat build up wouldn’t be so bad. But enough of me nerding out, lets get to the shit.

2 major problems that shat upon the visuals.

Not nearly enough mech fighting, seriously, this movie is pretty much a recipe for constant mech on mech action, it is international fight club, mech edition. So why in the hell do we only get 4-6 actual mech fights?

Instead we are treated to a whole shitload of people walking around in cramped corridors, talking about the fights.

Which leads into the second major flaw, everything but the mech fights was shit. The costumes were shit, the backgrounds were shit, it was shot on shit island, with a Shitmaster 2000 video camera.

The big problem with this, is that Robot Jox borrows heavily from the Battletech series ( and when I say borrow heavily I mean, pretty much just takes what it wants.) , which gives it quite the range of interesting stuff to do with the character’s costuming , accessories, and the world itself. But , it does everything so half assed, that it just ends up making the mechwarrior fan angry, and someone who isnt, just confused.

And that is also a huge part of the visuals of the movie, and why they get tossed into the realm of mediocrity. I don’t know how else to explain it, but they expect you to have read the mechwarrior books in order to actually understand a lot of the stuff going on. Which is the main reason why you will probably find the visuals even worse than I did. I may know the premise of a cooling suit, the atmospheric conditions in a mech cockpit, etc. But if these aren’t things that you have been reading for 10 years, it’s just going to look stupid without any exposition.

Robot Jox 2- shit-1/10. Okay, so again, the mechs are pretty decent looking… both of them.

It takes all the faults of the first movie and makes them go super sajin. I am going to spoil the fucker for you right now, and your going to be glad I did. There are 2 mech fights in the entire thing, both of which are the mech equivalent of schoolyard brawls, quick, unimpressive, and leaving you with a bitterness for both combatants. No one wins these fights, there are just 2 losers, and maybe that is the film’s message.

The rest doesn’t even give as much of a shit as Robot Jox 1 did. The costumes aren’t value village, I’ll give it that, but they are most certainly in the “Whatever the fuck we had left from other movies we did.” Category.  And as such do nothing to establish an environment.

And the environment itself, hope you like sand and sets made to look like passenger mechs, because there is a whole shitload of that hanging around.

Plot/characters

GunHed – 7.5/10. Gunhed isn’t an epic, don’t come in here expecting citizen cain, or fight club. But what it does, it does well.

The general gist is that the world has gone to shit and folks are scavenging good technology from ruins, a well treaded plot, to be sure, but again, not as much at the time.

From there we have our group of main characters, all with typically cyberpunk pingeonholed roles ( think G.I. Joe.), who discover the most badass mech ( actually a mech specifically made to kill other mechs, which while cool as hell, seems a tad of overkill to me.) ever, and want to get it out of a secret facility.

Along the way they encounter an army ranger ( the film’s female lead) who sometimes helps sometimes hinders them. It filled out the plot a bit to have this adversarialish relationship, though I still wonder why she is the only character that isn’t dubbed.

So, the bulk of the film is kind of like the last hour or so of any resident evil game. The giant structure is going to explode, a few of the main character’s friends have died, and generally shit is hitting the fan. It makes for a tense, situation that kind of feels like a mix between a chase scene and a huge battle. I whole heartedly approve.

As far as characters, we get a decent variety, creepy pilot (that doesn’t like to fly.) guy ( the main male character.) , medic missing parts of her, a nice combination of robot/Jason/Kung Lao ( you’ll have to watch to get it, but trust me that is spot on.) chasing the main character down, and of course Gunhed him/it/her ( they use all three designators in the film.).

Yes, like a lot of mech stuff, the mech has a personality. One of the interesting things I found was the way the personality unfolded. At the start they can only communicate with Gunhed through a keyboard, kind of like MSN messenger for automated killing machines. But as they repair him/her/it, it can eventually talk. They really managed to give it a “Robot” personality, while still making it not just Microsoft sam.

Robot Jox – 5/10. Again, robot jox could have blown Gunhed out of the water, the premise of a fighting tournament esque thing ( no wars, everything is decided by mech on mech combat.) is pretty much the best possible idea for a mech movie, it gives a constant source of characters and conflict, as well as giving the director the ability to work in every sports movie cliché, without being called on it because it isn’t a sports movie ( Yeah, that is right, I am looking at you Real Steel). But Charles just fucks this premise into oblivion.

I want to give my summation of what the production meeting for this film would have went like, to give you a bit of an insight as to why exactly it was such a letdown.

Executive -  Hey, Chuck, you seem to be able to make anything turn a profit, robots are kinda big right now, do you have any ideas?

Charles – Well actually, yes. You see there is this series of books, about giant mechs, called battletech, and if you read them, there is actually very little mech fighting, but they are insanely popular. I know I can make a mech movie with a lack of mechs, and apparently that is what people want.

Executive – Are you sure you know what your doing here Chuck? I mean, far be it for me to say, but it sounds like a mech movie with few mechs would kind of suck.

Charles – Listen, did you make Puppet Master? Did you pull one of the most iconic horror films out of your ass for about $3.50? Did you make you enough money to pay for that gold plated toilet seat? No, I didn’t think so, how about you let ol’ Chuck worry about making the movie good.

What chuck failed to realize, is that if your going to not just focus on mech fights , you have to make damn sure the politics of the world, and characters are interesting. And it might be a good idea to not take the one aspect of the universe you are ripping off that would require a movie full of fights ( in many Battletech cultures certain large things, like taking over another group of people, are decided with one on one mech fights.) , and try and make a movie with as few fights as possible out of it.

Any mechwarrior fan can tell you the minutia of the Jade Falcons lineage, the technical specs of a hunchback, and why house Steiner seems to have gotten rebooted more than batman. And that is because , in the books these things were interesting to figure out. But in Robot Jox, you find yourself just not giving a shit, especially when they try and make characters comic relief, or overly wacky. Think of watching A Game of Thrones, but half of the characters come off as the three stooges, not conducive to a deep political drama.

Robot Jox 2- Plot, what plot? Characters, what characters? ?/10.

The movie has a plot, but it never really gets off the ground till the last few minutes, and when it does all you find yourself thinking is “ I waited an hour and fifteen minutes for this?”. Short story shorter, they want to find the last cool mech, which ends up sucking because it has been sitting in a bunker for years. Maybe they should have taken the same precautions the team that stored Gunhed did.

The characters, I find myself hard pressed to even remember them. The main male character Drake ( yeah that pisses me off on a whole different level.), seems kinda cool in a Bruce Campbell esque way, for about 5 minutes , then his tough guy thing just gets annoying. We have two women of questionable sexuality searching for the giant mech ( shouldn’t be too hard, it is the only giant fucking robot in the place.), two more characters ripped straight out of battletech, but made into goons ( the Japanese gents who are the maguffins to keep the film going.) , and the annoying sidekick. As far as annoying sidekicks go, he isn’t bad, actually he is probably in the higher echelon of annoying sidekicks, too bad he got stuck in this fucker.

Overall review

Gunhed – Great film, it aged as well as anything before CGI could, and it just really delivers on it’s promise of being a mech movie. We have robots, mechs, cyberpunks, advanced technology involving common daily electronics, and a kinda sarcastic robot that is eventually fueled by whiskey ( seriously, not making this up.).  You really feel like you’re in the Gunhed universe,  it takes time to put polish on everything, and not just laugh in your face because it is one of 6 mech movies, and you have to watch it.

Robot Jox – I may have been pretty hard on this movie, but it is still worth a watch. And this goes double if you really are a Battletech fan, they may be sparse , but we do get an okay number of mech fights, and it is actually kinda cool to see a lot of battletech premises actually play out on screen. Then again, if your not a battletech fan, you probably want to watch this one only if the choices are other 5/10 movies. It isn’t terrible, but unless you know what your getting into, it is not going to be the most enjoyable film.

Robot Jox 2- Avoid this fucker. Seriously, even if you have loved every movie that Charles Band has ever done, just avoid it. It is literally nothing , if you really want to get the feel of this movie, there is an easier way to do it than watching this fucker.

Go find a friend that really loves battletech, and get him shit faced drunk, just before the point of passing out. Now get him to talk about battletech, he will miss all the intricacies , and well weaved plots, and forget to talk about any of the key battles, probably just mentioning the odd bit of a fight scene , “ Oh man, and then, steiner hits the Falcon with a PPC, right, and it melts its arm right fucking off…wait what book was I talking about, fuck, well then there was this hot chick in book 4, right…” , not only will this avoid you wasting valuable porn bandwidth on downloading this, but it will probably gain you some favor from your friend, as no one has had an opportunity to talk about battletech in real life in the past 15 years.