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”…