“You’ve been on that infoweb too much!”

Justin’s rating: This movie has ALL the pew-pews

Justin’s review: Guys, I’ve got some bad news for you. By the year 2036, whatever problems we think we have right now, they’re not going to matter. We’re all going to be enslaved by the Teridaxx, a cruel alien race. That’s a bummer.

But we’ve got some hope, because the Teridaxx believe in one-on-one gladiator combat between giant robot mechs for some reason, and we’ve still got the coolest one in the neighborhood. Well, it’s in a jungle somewhere, nobody knows where. But it’s out there! Probably! Nevermind that both sides still employ a heck of a lot of soldiers with assault rifles. Don’t overthink it — it’s all about mech mayhem! That’s what we’re going with!

So our only hope is in a teenage hacker named Zach, who follows the legend of the “Earth Bot” to become our last, best hope for kicking butt. He partners up with a guy named Gibson, a disillusioned freedom fighter who supposedly used to pilot the mech. So you know what time it is — road trip through the apocalypse! Woo!

Gibson’s the pilot, Zach’s the mechanic, and Earth Bot is the toy that I never knew I wanted for Christmas. There are a lot of obstacles to getting this Transformer operational so that it can eventually fight what looks like a nightmare dinosaur mech from Planet Terror.

And boy is that mech payoff worth it, because this thing is amazing. It’s got machine gun cannons, a spinning plasma cutting disc, and a mean sucker punch when needed. The Teridaxx have their own style, shaping their mechs to look like dinosaurs with bones welded to the sides. Doesn’t make sense, but boy does it look cool.

This all culminates in a 1V1 fight with the highest of stakes — if the humans win, the Teridaxx will leave earth, but if the Teridaxx wins, they’ll completely remove earth’s remaining leaders and dismantle all defenses. Not sure what defenses there are left after the planet was fully occupied, but OK. Let’s do this.

Having seen a few other mech movies from this time period, I was genuinely impressed by how much Robo Warriors pulls out all the stops with its visuals and visions. This oppressive dystopia has a cool cyberpunk-meets-Mad Max aesthetic, and there’s lots of special effects — practical, computer, and miniature — flying around the place. Everything comes across as thoughtfully designed in a way that many other movie studios would have skipped in favor of churning out the bare minimum.

The Teridaxx deserve a special mention, because their makeup is absolutely top-notch (in fact, the makeup lead here, Barney Burman, got an Oscar for his work on 2009’s Star Trek). And I like that we see them as actual planetary overlords who are working to subjugate humanity under the guise of a peaceful partnership (with armed thugs, of course).

“High effort” is the phrase that kept running through my head while watching Robo Warriors. Way too many movies in this budget range skimp on everything, but this film does its best to deliver a full-fledged setting, likable characters, and energetic action.

This is definitely ’90s VHS scifi, and I mean that in a warm, nostalgic way. James Remar lends his considerable talents to shoring up this movie against your sneering critique of its ridiculousness, and by golly, he does the job well.

This may be my favorite mech movie from this era, and that’s largely in part to how the lead-up to the big fight is just as interesting as clobbering robots. Zach and Gibson give us youthful exuberance and jaded heroism, respectively, and it was a blast going on this 90-minute journey with them.

Intermission!

• Robo Warriors is the fourth installment in the somewhat loosey Stuart Gordon’s Robot Jox series, after Robot Jox, Robot Wars, and Crash and Burn.
• Loving these funky schematics credit sequence!
• Seems like hiding your last mech in a jungle would be asking for a lot of mechanical issues
• Our soldiers are really into big clunky headsets in 2036. And teens use big chunky CRT monitors. Maybe Logitech had a sale.
• A giant T Rex mech with a laser cannon in its mouth seems like overkill in this fight, but why not
• If your best friend gets killed, just shout his name over and over again so that you can give away your position
• “Kiss my butt!” on the computer monitor
• “You want company, get a dog.”
• Dude, that quicksand is… quick
• “Those were my favorite sticks.” “Your favorite sticks!”
• Earth Bot coming to life is a really great moment as it rises up from the jungle floor
• Surprised that the Teridaxx would allow the “earth defense headquarters” to stand
• “It’s not just the machine that we fight but the man inside.”
• And suddenly we’re in the middle of a martial arts dojo movie
• “Break this man, quickly.”
• Their work visors are cool in a very ’90s way
• What’s up with red speaker chin guy? He’s obviously not a Teridaxx or human.
• LOW ATTACK MODE