YMMV / Robot Jox

• Awesome Music: The soundtrack by Frédéric Talgorn is just as glorious today as it was back in 1989. "Alexander vs Achilles" is exactly the kind of music you want playing as two giant robots go head-to-head.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • The final training sequence we see for who will be the next pilot involves the candidates navigating a "Rattle Room", which is a room filled with a giant jungle-gym like field of bars overhead, which they have to climb as the room flashes and shakes and sirens go off, in order to climb through a hole in the ceiling. The bars are also rigged with traps like growing red-hot on contact or falling away when they use them for support. How does any of this test factor into piloting a giant robot? Your guess is as good as ours.
    • It's a stress test. They can train the Genejox but they can't truly prepare them for the stress of combat. It's an abstracted simulation of a Jox battle: disorientation, noise, and shaking are all demonstrated as major hazards in battle. They're testing whoever can navigate the course without getting rattled.
  • The robots fly into space. During the sequence Alexander shoots a missile into Achilles's foot, and he crashes back to Earth with Alexander in tow, even landing back on the field. The sequence takes about two-three minutes and serves no purpose but to have Alexander blow up Achilles's foot, which surely could have been accomplished in any other number of ways with them on the ground. Not to mention nothing up to that point indicated the robots could fly, much less go into space.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The identity of The Mole is not hard to figure out by just paying attention to the Foreshadowing given, some subtle and some not. When a character says that only two people knew the full technical specifications of the green laser, and thus the spy must be one of them, it should definitely be clear by then who it is.
• Cult Classic: At the time it was panned by critics and was a box office bomb. These days, many remember it fondly.
• Evil Is Cool: Alexander is infinitely more memorable and entertaining than Achilles on account of being a Faux Affably Evil Large Ham, while Achilles is a more traditional straight-laced stoic hero archetype.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Alexander finally disables Achilles's robot in the final battle by flipping it onto its back and revealing a chainsaw from his groin, which he uses to cut into the cockpit as he stands over it and kneels. The cockpits of the robots is in the approximate place of the robot's upper torso. In the rise of the internet area and the prominence of video games, we now recognize that Alexander is partaking in the traditional victory ritual of tea bagging over his fallen opponent. Extra funny because, if he knew what the gesture meant today, it would be entirely in character for him to do it.
• Narm Charm: Narm and Humongous Mecha have always had a rather good relationship. A reviewer in 2013 summed it up pretty accurately: "part serious science fiction, part Saturday morning cartoon, and it's one hell of a good time."
• Older Than They Think: Predates Mobile Fighter G Gundam by four years and pretty much had the same premise as well as behind-the-scenes infighting regarding the tone.
• Special Effects Failure: While mostly averted (see Visual Effects of Awesome), given the film's ambition this was inevitable.
  • Most of shots that utilize green screen and optical compositing are painfully obvious, such as this shot of Achilles with Alexander's robot in the background◊. And while most scenes that focus on close-ups of the robots are just fine, in scenes where their entire bodies are shown in motion it doesn't look natural at all.
  • When Achilles fights Athena in his quarters and they knock out panels in the walls, and shortly after when he has his car crash through the wall, it's clear the walls are just a thin wooden frame with cloth stretched over them with nothing behind them. You can actually hear the material rip at one point! Its especially egregious when the point of the two scenes is that Achilles is locked in his room, but these instances make it seem like he could just rip the walls down with his bare hands and climb through.
• Spiritual Licensee: Many BattleTech fans considered this movie as an adaptation of the franchise, which also has Solaris Arena where Humongous Mecha would fight each other as tournament fighters.
• Strangled by the Red String: Achilles and Athena. Achilles has a physical attraction to Athena while she idolizes him, but he becomes a Broken Pedestal to her and spends the rest of the film viewing him as a coward. Despite this, when Achilles rescues Athena from Alexander, they take a few seconds to smooch before he hands her over to medics. Downplayed in that this isn't dwelled upon and isn't a major plot focus up to that point, but it still comes out of nowhere that she suddenly reciprocates Achilles' interest in her.
  • Having just gotten her ass handed to her by Alexander might have hammered home the point Achilles was try to make to Athena and repaired the proverbial pedestal.
• Vindicated by History: The film was a flop on release, but became a Cult Classic over time. In the new millennium when movies like Pacific Rim and Transformers were hitting theaters, and robots as a whole were common in film and usually done through CGI, Robot Jox is often brought up since it was doing what they did twenty years earlier, and it did it with practical effects. While still not seen as a "great" film, it's acknowledged as enjoyable in its own right, its visual effects and the effort put into them is appreciated, and overall it has warmly been given its place in film history as the first live-action film with giant robots.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The movie was made in 1990 before the revolution of CGI in Hollywood, so it was all done with practical effects models and sets. The robots were five-foot tall models variably animated by puppeteers or stop-motion and have a lot of detail put into them to convince viewers they are really staring at a giant mecha hundreds of feet fall. Here's a look at one of the Market robot puppets restored◊. This trope is pretty much what got the film made in the first place; the director made a stop-motion demo reel as a pitch and it convinced the studio to finance a full movie. The demo reel was retained as the intro scene, and it's easy to see how it won over the studio.