Editorials
Before ‘Pacific Rim’ There Was Stuart Gordon’s ‘Robot Jox’!
This past weekend, the sequel to Guillermo del Toro’s 2013 flick, Pacific Rim, made its way to theaters. Despite finally dethroning Black Panther from the top spot, Pacific Rim: Uprising brought in around $28 million domestic. Granted, it’s already proving itself to be a juggernaut over in China where it was quite literally “engineered” to succeed. That was a Universal exec’s word, not mine.
But long before del Toro brought the crumbling world of Jaegers and Kaiju (not the rubber suited variety) to screens, a little movie from Empire Pictures had already brought the image of awe-inspiring, human controlled battle mechs to theaters. Since that fim’s release, however, it’s mostly loafed around without much in the way of box office or fanfare to make its name known. This specific deep cut of bot-sploitation comes from none other than Master of Horror Stuart Gordon.
In 1987, Stuart Gordon found himself marveling at the rampant success of Transformers. They were one of the most popular toy lines ever, and the concept of giant battle bots struck him as the perfect backdrop for a whizbang, effects laden action picture. Thanks to a failed partnership with award winning sci-fi author Joe Haldeman, Gordon knew who he wanted to bring in to help mold his concept into an full fledged screenplay. The two had met when trying to adapt Haldeman’s “The Forever War” into a mini-series. Funding for that project fell through, but the two were able to repurpose some of it into a stage production. After surviving such a tumultuous trip through development hell together, surely there next production together would be a cake walk? Hmm…
Gordon, who had a wonderful working relationship with Charles Band and Empire Pictures (Re-Animator, From Beyond), felt he could rely on Band to pick up the bill for his Transformers cartoon come to life. Not so fast. Empire was known for pushing out low budget cheapies, and Robojox (as it was originally known) was far from the confined location, quicky horror flick the studio was known for. Gordon’s vision would require extensive effects work at a price tag Band wasn’t comfortable with. It took a series of test shoots featuring stop-motion robot action to convince Empire to come on board. Of course, as thrifty as the company was, that test footage ultimately became the opening scene of the film itself. With a budget locked in around $6 million, Robojox was set to be the most expensive film Empire had ever, or would ever, produce.
With an official greenlight, Gordon and Haldeman began fighting; I mean, writing the screenplay. The story they concocted revolved around a group of elite jockeys, trained to operate giant scale mechs in one on one competitions, tournaments created to settle the disputes of opposing countries. The main point of contention between the two writers was the film’s overall tone. Gordon wanted a satirical, fun take on the material that would still manage to appeal to kids of all ages while Haldeman felt it should be more intelligent, relying upon real science instead of Hollywood hokum. In retrospect, Haldeman has summed up the situation like this, “I would try to change the science into something reasonable; Stuart would change it back to Saturday morning cartoon stuff. I tried to make believable, reasonable characters, and Stuart would insist on throwing in clichés and caricatures. It was especially annoying because it was a story about soldiers, and I was the only person around who’d ever been one.”
Gordon ultimately turned to an uncredited third party to rewrite Haldeman’s draft. When given the chance, the sci-fi author who was looking for his big break in Hollywood set fire to the bridge by writing a scathing critique of the current screenplay. He felt that it piled on all the elements he’d been fighting with Gordon to excise. A couple weeks into the film’s principal photography in Rome, Haldeman got a call. The producers agreed with much of his criticism of their current shooting script and requested he be flown out to Italy in order to help sculpt the film more towards his original concept.
The final film is certainly all over the place. There are moments of real drama interspersed with absurd action sequences (the Jox can apparently fly in space?), and scenes of horrific human casualties. All of this is set to the backdrop of Cold War paranoia. One minute it’s a super cheesy B-movie, the next is ripe with espionage or discussing a widespread infertility epidemic! Still, despite the “too many cooks in the kitchen” scenario, the production went fairly well with all parties wrapping on amicable terms. Before Haldeman left to come back home, he claims Gordon summed up their differences perfectly: “Joe, our problem is that you’re writing a movie for adults that children can enjoy, but I’m directing a movie for children that adults can enjoy!”
The large scale production proved to be too much for Empire pictures, however. The company folded in on itself, filing for bankruptcy. It took two more years for another studio, Epic Pictures, to swoop in and rescue the film. They funded the rest of the money needed to complete the picture (rumored to have ballooned to $10 million). The name was changed from Robojox to Robot Jox due to the threat of legal action from Orion who felt the title was far too close to their own RoboCop. Epic released the film to a quiet audience. It only went on to gross a little over $1 million at the domestic box office. Over the years, the film has garnered quite the cult following and managed to spin off with two Full Moon films (Crash and Burn, Robot Wars) released in some countries as Robot Jox 2 & 3; though outside of giant robots, there isn’t much to link them to Gordon’s original film.
For those who love some Saturday matinee, low-fi/sci-fi realness, Robot Jox is a blast, with impressive effects, a scene stealing maniacal villain (complete with chainsaw dick…you’ll see), and a lighting fast pace. With its focus on giant mech action, it makes a perfect double bill with Pacific Rim. In fact, Gordon has stated that had he the chance to make a Jox sequel, it would have featured the bots going up against evil aliens.
This awesome mashup from Nerd of All Trades imagines a world where the two are one in the same, cut together to form “Robot Jox of the Pacific”…
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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