Rise of Sorponok

We recently covered (just for fun and not as part of our regular Mystery Science Theater 3000First aired on the independent TV network KTMA, Mystery Science Theater 3000 grew in popularity when it moved to Comedy Central. Spoofing bad movies, the gang on the show watch the flicks and make jokes about them, entertaining its audience with the same kind of shtick many movies watchers provided on their own (just usually not as funny as the MST3K guys could provide). It became an indelible part of the entertainment landscape from there, and lives on today on Netflix. coverage) Robot Jox, the low-budget, cheesy, robot-fighting movie from 1989 (which gave birth to the grand phrase “crash and burn”). It’s a gloriously silly, bad movie that works despite itself, which is the best kind of bad movie. It’s lived on, becoming something of a cult classic, and now here, as part of the 13th season of MST3K, we have one of the two unofficial sequels for the film, Robot Wars, which was released in 1993.

We say “unofficial” because while it was made by similar production teams, there is no shared continuity between this film and predecessor Robot Jox. Yes, both films have a “good” faction that is distinctly team U.S.A. as well as a “bad” team that is aligned with one communist force or another (the Soviets in Robot Jox, China in Robot Wars). However, beyond that superficial similarity, as well as the battling of giant robots, these are two distinct, unrelated films. Still, it’s not like the plot mattered in either movie when all we were really here for was stop-motion giant robots beating the shit out of each other. Sequel or not, that’s what really matters.

The film follows Drake (Don Michael Paul), captain of the MRAS-2, the last surviving giant robot mech (which looks like a scorpion) after the robotic wars that reshaped the face of the world. The North-Hemi is the last great superpower, the ones in control of the robot, and they use it to patrol the borderlands outside their territory in what used to be the U.S.A. The North-Hemi has a treaty with the Eastern Bloc, in hopes of creating trade and improving their economy. The grand scheme is to sell mini-megs, smaller versions of the giant robots, to the Eastern Bloc, which would secure trade and create peaceful relations between the two groups.

Drake runs the MRAS-2 out to Crystal Vista and back daily, running the milk run while tourists get to enjoy the sight of the lands between the countries. Crystal Vista is an abandoned town from the Old U.S., preserved for tourists, letting them see how the world was before the wars. But one researcher, Dr. Leda Fanning (Barbara Crampton), suspects there’s more going on at Crystal Vista than anyone knows. She suspects that the Eastern Bloc may be hiding guns and other tech under the city, just waiting for a time to strike. While she investigates, Drake is taken off the MRAS-2 and a different captain is put in charge. Then the MRAS-2 is taken over by agents of the Eastern Bloc, leaving the North-Hemi defenseless. Without the mech, power shifts in the world, so there’s only one man that can save them all: Drake.

To be clear, Robot Wars is a bad movie. Of course it is, it’s on MST3K, and they’re usually spot on when it comes to picking out a bad movie to heckle. Even in comparison to Robot Jox this feels like a lesser effort. It’s slower paced, less interesting, and even the action feels sub-par by comparison. That’s not to say that Robot Jox was good, as it was pretty cheesy, silly, and dumb, but even on that metric this is clearly a lesser effort. It just doesn’t have the stuff to make it in the world of robot fighting.

A big part of the issue is that there’s so little actual content to the movie. It’s a slight 72 minutes (which means very little of it was edited out for MST3K’s purposes) and much of that runtime is used up doing nothing. People go out in the sands, people come back from the sands, they talk about the sands, and then they do it again. The movie has maybe four main sets and spends a lot of time with its characters going back and forth talking on those sets over and over again. The plot doesn’t really pick up until after the first hour, and by then the movie is practically over.

For anyone coming into this hoping for more robot fighting action, this film also fails to deliver. The scorpion machine isn’t nearly as interesting in a fight as a bipedal robot, being limited in how it can move and what attacks it can perform. When a bipedal robot does show up, the movie gets more enjoyable, but that doesn’t happen until the last five minutes of the film (spoilers for a 30 year old movie) and by then it’s hard to get any interest up for it. The fights we do get aren’t dynamic at all, and everything feels like it moves at a snail’s pace even as the robots battle away at each other.

There’s a certain irony in a film called Robot Wars only having one robot for most of its runtime and barely anything that could even be considered a “war” at all. Robot Skirmish would have been a more accurate title, although that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. I’m sure the robots in the film were limited due to budgetary constraints, this being a direct-to-VHS release from Paramount Home Video, but if you’re going to promise robots and wars you should at least deliver something close to that in the final film.

Nothing about this film is good. The sets are cheap, the costumes are awful looking, and the acting, in general, is sub-par at best. What little script is in the film exists only to keep the film treading water until we can get to the final ten minutes and finally see some robot action. The movie knows what we want, two robots beating the shit out of each other, but it can’t really deliver on that until the end. “Come for the robot fights,” it’s saying, “but you’re gonna have to bear with us before you get what you want.” It’s just so tiresome.

Thankfully the guys are able to do a better job with this movie than with Santo in the Treasure of Dracula. The chemistry between the bots and Jonah is much more strongly felt here than in the first episode of the season, and the jokes and gags while they’re watching the movie provide plenty of laughs. There’s solid one-liners, a few short sung bits, and even elaborate little gags all to keep the comedy flowing. This is much more like the constant laughs you expect from an MST3K episode, and it gives me strong hope for the rest of the season, at least for the episodes featuring Jonah’s crew.

However, I wasn’t wowed by the between-the-movie skits. There was one of the bots and Jonah pretending to be stewardesses for the MRAS-2 that went on too long (even for a short skit) and wasn’t funny at all. A gag about the robots being prize-fighting bots was better, but also felt like a bit of a retread of a similar skit from the previous episode. You get the vibe that many of these were cranked out, one after another, across all the episodes and they tries to economize how many costume changes they had to do at any one time.

Plus, I don’t know what’s going on with the Mads. Their bits haven’t been funny yet across the first two episodes, and that feels weird considering Felicia Day and Patton Oswalt were so funny in the previous two seasons. Their characters have so little to do here, trapped in a single, green-screened room trying to sell the wonders of the Gizmoplex, while all the action happens elsewhere. I hope they become funnier as the season wears on but I already have my suspicions they’re going to be the worst part of this run.

Still, this was an overall improvement in quality for the season. We’re getting back to proper MST3K here and we might just be able to get some real, good laughs throughout the run if they can maintain this quality. The series has always had its highs and lows but Robot Wars is at least closer to the high part of this scale. It might have been smarter to have this as the premiere episode of the season rather than Santo in the Treasure of Dracula. Would have kicked the season off on the right foot.