A 1993 post-apocalyptic sci-fi film taking place in what used to be the southwestern United States of America. Drake is a Giant Mecha pilot, whose duties involve taking tourists for rides in his giant-robot-scorpion mecha because, hey, why not? His mech takes fire from members of another faction called the Centros, and he is ordered to engage, despite the fact that he is carrying civilians.
When he isn't piloting his robot, Drake has a habit of wandering the desert landscape, where he comes across the wreckage of the Centros he fought earlier. He discovers that they are using weapons created by the Eastern Alliance. Of course, the Eastern Alliance are allies with our heroes, and in fact a delegation led by Wa-lee is in talks to purchase scaled down versions of their Spider Tank Giant Mecha, so when Drake presses the issue, he is grounded. Shortly after, the Eastern Alliance delegation hijacks the GiantMecha.
It is up to our heroes to find some way to rescue the hostages taken during the Gundamjacking and stop Wa-Lee from destroying their headquarters.
No relation to the TV series that came out later.
For the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode, click HERE.
Robot Wars contains examples of the following tropes:
- Break Out the Museum Piece: The last of the Humongous Mecha (a Spider Tank) is used to ferry tourists across an American wasteland. Then, a Yellow Peril villain does a Gundam Jack and starts using it to lay waste to everything around him. He also holds the tourists hostage. The pilot of the mech goes looking for a weapon, left over from an old war, inside a ghost town and ends up finding an intact humanoid mech. He uses it to fight the spider-mech and free the hostages.
- China Takes Over the World: Implied. It's never stated what country the "Eastern Alliance" is made up of, but the characters who are shown to be from there have Chinese-sounding names.
- Dolled-Up Installment: The DVD release calls it Robot Jox 2. It doesn't take place in the same universe as Robot Jox but has a similar look due to both being handled by the same effects company.
- Giant Mecha: As the title suggests, the movie has two giant robots of the Real Robot variety, one is a Scorpion Tank and the other a hidden relic from a prior war.
- Hidden Depths:
- At first Drake comes off as a hard-drinking, macho jackass. But not only does he protest his boss's business dealings out of concern for peoples' lives, he's surprisingly adept at Kendo when challenged to a match by Wal-ee. He's also a fan of Jackie Gleason.
- Wal-ee comes off as a Sleazy Politician with Bad Boss tendencies, at one point crudely dismissing his minion Sing as "Sing-Sing", the mispronounced version of his name Rooney used by accident. But when he learns that Sing was killed by Drake, he's genuinely sad, as reflected by the music, and takes a personal interest in killing Drake.
- Japanese Tourist: While they avoid any specific nationalities, the representatives from the Eastern Alliance are clearly based on Asian countries. At one point, it's revealed that a camera they were carrying is actually a gun in disguise.
- Ragnarök Proofing: Downplayed. In the film's climax it's revealed that the secret weapon that is buried beneath Crystal Vista is not a powerful laser cannon, but is a Giant Mecha that had previously been thought destroyed. The Giant Mecha in question was buried by the sidekick's grandfather decades earlier. Its readouts even show it isn't at full power, the sidekick even has to manually restart a power transformer for it to finally start up. But once it's up and running it's more than capable of fighting in the Final Battle.
- I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine: Danny Kamekona and Yuji Okumoto played Sato and Chozen in Karate Kid Part II.
- Large Ham: General Wa-Lee, played by frequent large ham, Danny Kamekona.
- Ridiculous Future Sequelisation: There was a background gag where a group of people are walking through an abandoned city, and you can see a theater marquee with Puppet Master 54.
