Robo Warriors

Suppose you ask the average 10 to 12-year-old boy about ideas for an action movie, what do you think he would come up with? Robots, right? Giant and robust robots that must battle each other with rocket launchers, laser guns, and big iron fist-smashes! Oh, and aliens. Alien with bizarrely wrinkled faces that nevertheless look and talk like angry human beings. Yeah!

So, I reckon "Robo Warriors" was written by a 10-year-old boy. It's a sort of unofficial sequel to the cheesy late-80s Sci-Fi hit "RobotJox" (director Stuart Gordon is even credited) but less entertaining. James Remar is a fantastic and underrated actor, in my humble opinion, but he clearly also wasn't very motivated to play the hero in this infantile piece of junk full of horrendous 90s cliches and stereotypes (heroic kids, likable grandfathers, insignificant women, Asian fighting mentors, ...). The special effects are poor and borderline laughable, there's nothing "futuristic" about the allegedly 2036 sets and locations. Apparently, in 2036, people still drive ordinary cars and live in typically 90s houses.

In the future, the Earth and mankind live under the brutal totalitarian rule of an alien race called the Teridaxx following the humans loss in a contest of giant robots. Young technical prodigy, Zach Douglas (Kyle Howard) has grown up with stories of legendary Robo Warrior Ray Gibson (James Remar) as told by his grandfather Charlie Walters (Bernard Kates) who once engineered the giant robots. When Zach inadvertently alerts the Teridaxx of his activities looking for Gibson via the Info Web, Zach is forced to flee and sets out to find Ray Gibson in the hopes that he can enlist his help to find the long hidden Earth Bot and free Earth from the Teridaxx.

Stuart Gordon is quoted as saying had Robot Jox been successful enough to have a sequel, the follow up would've featured the characters squaring off against aliens. Despite Robot Jox's troubled production and release history, the movie maintained enough presence in the home video and international market for former head of Empire Pictures, Charles Band, to produce the low budget follow ons Crash and Burn and Robot Wars via his new company Full Moon Entertainment. Unlike those however, Robo Warriors is more directly tied to Robot Jox as its produced by Eduard Sarlui's Epic Entertainment who bought out Empire Pictures and its assets following their bankruptcy including several in production films at the time including Robot Jox. The movie also has a screen credit for Robot Jox's director Stuart Gordon with a "characters created by" credit, even if there's no direct ties to Robot Jox such as the Market, Confederation, or Achilles. An international co-production among several companies such as Paramount British Pictures, Premiere Entertainment, and Republic Pictures, the movie was filmed out of the Philippines under the direction of Aussie director Ian Barry (who's since become a prolific director of Australian TV programs). The movie despite being the least well known of the Robot Jox "cannon" is also the most spiritually faithful follow-on.

This time around the movie more or less is the same framework of the original structurally speaking with the movie featuring three set pieces involving the Robots and Ray Gibson's journey of self-doubt and burnout from the Robot fights falling pretty well in line with the arc Achilles had in Robot Jox, the movie doesn't have any of the commentary on the nature of warfare or soldiers as political pawns that writer Joe Haldeman's script. While that does excise a lot of the charm the first film derived from its blatant Cold War themes that were delivered with the "subtlety" of Rocky IV, the movie despite incorporating Robot Jox's familiar structure still manages to make it its own with its fun take on an "alien invasion resistance" narrative. The Teridaxx despite not being particularly deep in terms of antagonists are well realized and brough to life well by future Academy Award winning make-up artist Barney Burman whose work can be seen on everything from X-Files and Galaxy Quest to J. J. Abrams 2009 Star Trek reboot and the Matrix films. Robo Warriors is also the first film in the Robot Jox "series" not to use David Allen's stop-motion and instead using a mixture of models, costumes, and animatronics courtesy of effects house Stargate Films (now known as Stargate Studios) and thanks to the nature of their effects work, the robot fights are no longer limited to barren desert landscapes and are allowed to fight in other environments such as the jungle. The Robots are beautifully constructed with a nice level of detail put in the craft, function, and destruction of these behemoths, and watching these creatures pummel and blast each other is the same kind of fun you get from one of Japan's many kaiju films.

The movie's characters are pretty decent. While Kyle Howard's Zach Douglas is undeniably inspired by Edward Furlong's take on John Connor from Terminator 2 which inspired a host of technological wunderkinds seen in everything from Spielberg's Jurassic Park to forgotten bombs like Lawnmower Man 2, Howard's performance isn't overly precocious and doesn't go to that level of annoying like some of these 90s archetypes reached. Most of the other human characters are just kind of "there" with Terry Markwell's Molly Douglas basically being this movie's Adrian Balboa whose only purpose is to complain about how it's "too dangerous" and plead with both Zac and Ray not to do it, but they do try and give the character some more weight beyond the archetype, there's also a character who serves the same purpose as Tex Conway did in Robot Jox, but unlike Tex Conway there's no real build up to this character doing what he does and it's basically there because it's there. But then we have James Remar who is hands down the best lead ANY of these movies have had to this point. Remar is a fantastic actor who like Lance Henriksen makes good movies better and bad movies watchable. Remar does a good job playing a world weary burnt out soldier in self imposed exile whose only goal at this point is to be forgotten. Remar has some good exchanges with Kyle Howard with the two forming a kind of father/son dynamic that made me care about them as characters with Remar's cynicism well placed against Howard's naive optimism and drive. Remar is undeniably the "core" that makes this movie work as well as it does and helps give Robo Warriors that extra something that was lacking from Crash and Burn or Robot Wars and makes up for the excising of Joe Haldeman's attempts at socio/political subtext in Robot Jox.

Robo Warriors is fun high concept nonsense anchored by strong tradecraft and a strong performance from James Remar as the lead. While the villains aren't especially interesting and certain elements are a little too transparently lifted from Robot Jox without fine tuning them (such as the traitor subplot), Robo Warriors delivers on the action and fun seen in Robot Jox while still giving a new experience. The biggest shame of the movie is in just how hard it is to track down a copy. At the time of this writing Shout Factory has released Robot Jox, Robot Wars, and Crash and Burn on DVD or Blu-Ray re-releases and all three can be viewed on Tubi, but unless you can find the OOP DvDs, many of which are from Germany, you'll be hard pressed to find a convenient way to Robo Warriors. Hopefully someday Robo Warriors gets a proper re-release so it can be enjoyed alongside the other entries in this kind of/sort of/ not really series.

Who remembers Stuart Gordon's original robot-showdowns of "Robot Jox" and then not long after Charles Brand made "Crash and Burn", which was somewhat a loose follow-up which re-used the robot footage. Well supposedly the low-budget action sci-fi "Robo Warriors" is the third sequel (as there was Albert Band's "Robot Wars" which I haven't seen) and probably the best one to follow on from "Robot Jox" and "Robot Jox 2: Robot Wars" even if it really only uses Gordon's central idea. Although the threat this time is coming from an inter-galactic race lead by James Tolkan and James Lew under heavy make-up that has taken over the earth in the not-too-distant future, but if those are looking for a whole bunch of arena robot action might just be disappointed. As these gladiators robot standoffs between these towering creations don't really come into play, until the film's climax and there's one scene early on. Clunky but entertaining. Most of the time is spent focusing on resistant fighter / former robot jox fighter Ray Gibson (played with vigorous energy by James Remar) trying to find the last remaining legendary robo warrior machine with the help of a young boy and his grandfather who created these machines and then preparing for the final showdown for Earth's freedom. A lot of the time the repetitive story spends building up to the inevitable showdown, but it remains enjoyable with some lean action, chase elements and a busy pace with the material crafting out a myth of a heroic figure which would be told for many centuries to come. You can see most of the money went into the special effects and they do come off well enough for a b- grade production. One thing though, Richard Band's music theme did remind me of "Predator". An okay time waster.

"You told me that story 400 times already."