IMDB lists the runtime for Robot Wars as 72 minutes with no alternate versions. Which is not dispositive but may indicate there’s no “director’s cut” lying around to save the day.
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I can’t say I’m up for finding out was was deemed cut worthy.
But if you prop open the old viddy balls I guess I’ll watch
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Assuming she was among the hostages who fled the travel compartment into the desert, I would guess she fell for the first male Centro she ran across.
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Maybe the real Centros are the robots we friended on the way.
That sentence makes as much sense as this movie.
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Dale Cooper wants to know, too.
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I once heard Roger Ebert say he didn’t have to understand what was going on in a movie as long as he believed that the characters understood. I definitely apply this principle to watching MST3K. I rarely understand what’s going on in these movies.
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That’s a good way to approach films sometimes. I mean, how many people really understand what happens at the end of Trading Places? You don’t need to, because the good guys clearly do and you can follow it well enough by their reactions.
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Have to disagree about the scene from the movie Battleship. Even assuming the boilers were intact (they aren’t) and that there was any fuel oil on the ship at all (there isn’t) and that there was any live ammunition on a museum ship (there isn’t) the scene of them manhandling a shell for one of the 16 inch guns through the ship broke me. Those projectiles weigh 2200 pounds or the weight of a Volkswagen Beetle. And even if they were somehow able to move a shell the one thousand or so feet from a rear magazine to a forward turret they didn’t bring any of the six large powder bags the gun needs to fire.
That movie didn’t just break my suspension of disbelief. It destroyed it so badly I lost my perception of reality.
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You know, I have a feeling we could turn summarizing Robot Wars into some sort of competitive sport.
Like the Summarize Proust Competition.
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I hear she’s fine.
Or OK, depending on who you ask.
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Michael Jackson said something about a smooth criminal…
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I’m 100% on board with the intense, brain-shattering, capital-d Dumb in that montage. It’s maybe one of the stupidest pieces of “how does machines work lol” handwavium I’ve ever seen…but if you don’t know a thing about decommissioning ships or the intense process of restoring even small, simple machines, or how horribly, horribly, horribly abusive sea air is, or how it takes tens of dozens of big, dirty people doing backbreaking, dangerous work for months on to refit a currently seaworthy ship…it works on an emotional level in a way Mega 1’s rebirth just doesn’t.
At least with the Missouri’s literally miraculous recommissioning you get the satisfaction of the old guys getting to be on camera briefly rather than just sort of described in passing by a doofy sidekick.
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I know it has something to do with bacon, such as you might find in a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.
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My understanding was this:
WWIII happened, and much of it was fought with mega robots. A treaty was signed in 2021 banning the construction of such robots. Now there are three major global powers: The NorthHemis (basically Americans, but with different borders), the Centros (consisting apparently of Europe and the Middle East, but having encroached on NorthHemi territory, as well), and the Asian Alliance (which seems to be dominated by China).
Because of the treaty, Mega One was officially decommissioned. But, secretly, instead of destroying it, they buried it intact and then built a fake town over it. (Our reporter friend spent weeks looking into it. The soil samples in her suitcase are evidence that the soil of Crystal Vista contains a synthetic compound not invented until 20 years after the town was supposedly abandoned.) This violates the treaty and could cause an international incident and, at the least, disgrace the NorthHemis.
Wa-Lee has come to purportedly buy some mini scorpion mechs for entertainment. The NorthHemis are eager to make the sale because secretly the country is in major financial trouble. However, the whole thing is a sham. Wa-Lee has been supplying the Centros with weapons and plotted with them to take over the last remaining mega robot in the world. (Apparently the treaty made some exemption for it which allows it to be used as a transport and as a defensive weapon near the contested NorthHemi/Centro border.)
Drake sees the clues. The Centros making incursions into the wastelands makes no sense, and their weapons are of Asian origin. They’re up to something, and he suspects Wa-Lee has something to do with it. But his boss is focused on making the sale and doesn’t want to hear any problems or objections.
Drake and Wa-Lee do not have personal history. But Drake is apparently well-known as a top pilot and formidable soldier. Wa-Lee sees him as a rival, a potential hitch in the plan, and a worthy adversary (in a country he otherwise disdains as weak, foolish, and decadent). Drake, for his part, suspects Wa-Lee of nefarious intent and betrayal.
So:
The reporter is going to break this big scoop that the western ghost town tourist village is a fake and was built to hide an illegal weapons cache. (The government is very watchful of visiting media and does not allow recordings of the town. But they want to make a big deal of the town as a tourist attraction because that’s the cover story for the whole thing.)
The Centros are in a low-key war against the NorthHemis. The NorthHemis also sell them weapons for use elsewhere, because they need the money, but the Centros still cause trouble at the border. The Centros are happy to work with Wa-Lee to get their hands on the weapons cache and cause chaos and destruction for their enemies, and they’re likely getting paid for it, too.
Wa-Lee wants to hijack the mega robot, which is simultaneously the NorthHemi’s greatest weapon and powerful enough by itself to defeat the rest of their military. I’m not sure whether attacking the pyramid was to release toxic waste on a place he just wanted to destroy or because he thought there was a weapons cache hidden inside and he’d be safe from the toxic waste inside the robot. Either way, his plan was to use the robot and the weapons to burn down the NorthHemi infrastructure and thus pave the way for the Asian Alliance to take over the world.
But it turns out the weapons cache is actually Mega One, and Drake is able to pilot it to destroy Mega Two, thus defeating Wa-Lee’s entire plan. The NorthHemis will have to spin things so that it looks worse for the Asian Alliance’s treachery than it does that Mega One still exists despite the treaty. They’ll also have to find another way out of their financial woes. But none of that is Drake’s problem.
In short, America is flawed but still the best, China is rich, arrogant, and treacherous, and everyone else are just a bunch of patsies and troublemakers who don’t really matter in the bigger picture. Classic jingoism, which sadly did not go away with the end of the 20th century.
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Wow. I came here to make a lame witticism, but I can’t top this.
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Now, as for Trading Places… It’s been years since I watched it, but I do remember the plot:
The evil Duke Brothers have bribed a USDA agent to get the crop report in advance before it’s released to the public. Classic insider trading. They’ll use that advanced knowledge to make a bundle of money. But our heroes found out about this. So they steal the report themselves and give the Dukes a fake one.
The real report says that the crop is just fine. The fake report says that the winter frost has damaged the crop and orange juice will be in short supply.
Based on the fake report, the Dukes put an insane amount of money into buying up all the orange juice before the price goes up. Everyone else on the floor sees them doing it and correctly assumes that this means they have insider knowledge. So they all start buying it up, too.
Our heroes wait for the price to rise and then start short selling it. That is, they sell at the high price with a promise that they’ll buy later. (The stock and commodities exchange is weird, but it does allow you to do that.) Everyone around them is eager to buy, expecting the price to skyrocket even further, so they sell a ton of OJ that they don’t yet own.
Then the real crop report comes out. The juice is fine. The price is bound to go down, especially given the rush of speculation over the last several minutes. At this news, the price crashes. Our heroes now buy up the OJ that everyone is eager to sell. So when it all comes out, they bought at the new low price and preemptively sold it all at the inflated bubble price.
The Dukes, however, find themselves in the opposite situation. They’d bought at the high price, expecting it to go up further, and then sold at the low price as the market crashed. They put more into doing that than they could afford, and thus end up basically going bankrupt. The market closes before they can do anything to alleviate the damage, and they can’t pay their debt.
Of course, our heroes should be investigated by the FTC for insider trading. But the FTC is rather toothless and anyway they’re our heroes. (Notably, Louis is shown at the beginning of the movie to have a habit of pulling illegal schemes to make money for his bosses. No one gets in trouble for that.) Thus, our heroes end up rich and the Dukes end up homeless, at least until Prince Akeem dumps a bag of cash in their laps because Semi didn’t get that Akeem wanted to live the life of a commoner for a while.
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Pretty sure I read this on the back of an Ace paperback.
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WOW
I’m really impressed by your analysis. Your movie is better than their movie, by far!
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I was trying to come up with a better analysis, but I must succinctly just say: ditto!
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I mean, the actual answer is that there were robots because Charles Band loves him some stop motion, there was a '90s ghost town so they wouldn’t have to spend more money on “future” sets and the bad guy was generic East Asian because of jingoism, but that does turn what we saw on screen into a coherent story. Very nice.
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