When it comes to the giant monster movie genre we all know the Japanese don't have the market cornered. They may make the best giant monster movies, sure, but they aren't the only ones: King Kong, THEM, The Beats from 20,000 Fathoms, IT! Came from Beneath the Sea, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Gorgo, The Giant Claw, Night of Lepus, Tremors, Outlander, Troll Hunter, Cloverfield, Mimic, we've made our contributions to the genre.
But what about mecha? When it comes to the subject of giant robots it doesn't seem like we've done that much, and what we have done has clearly been inspired by the Japanese model.
A few examples that spring to mind:
ALIENS (1986) - Ripley donning the exosuit to fight the Queen Alien maybe the only live-action attempt at mecha vs. monsters in a big budget American film I can think of prior to PACIFIC RIM.
ROBOT JOX (1990) - Stuart Gordon's cult classic scfi-fi film set in a post apocalyptic future where all wars are settled via mecha combat. Gordon has stated that the direct inspiration for the film was Japanese super robot cartoons on TV. The mecha in this film were done with stop-motion animation by David Allen.
CRASH AND BURN (1990) - A semi-sequel to ROBOT JOX which I haven't seen.
ROBOT WARS (1993) - Another semi-sequel to ROBOT JOX. I haven't seen this one either.
ROBO WARRIORS (1997) - Another semi-sequel to ROBOT JOX and the last film in the franchise. Also the only one without a DVD release currently. However it appears someone has uploaded the film to YouTube. This movie was reviewed by James Rolfe back in 2010 which is how I found out about it.
LINK: http://cinemassacre.com/2010/10/28/robo-warriors/
UPDATE 6/21/13: I managed to get a hold of ROBO WARRIORS and watch it. It is indeed set in the ROBOT JOX universe and there is a "Based on Characters Created by Stuart Gordon" credit during the opening scrawl. For my money ROBO WARRIORS is actually a much better movie then ROBOT JOX. Set in the year 2036, mankind has been conquered by a race of silver skinned Klingon-knockoffs called the Terridaxx who are suppressing us by taking away all our technology and forcing us to live in quasi-squarer (though the protagonist Zac and his family seem to have it pretty good considering). We're not enslaved or anything, basically just living under the Terridaxx's "occupation" which is what it's referred to as several times in the film.
Anyway the protagonist is a 12-year-old kid named Zac who really wants to be John Connor from Terminator 2. His grandfather is an old mecha mechanic and has lectured Zac at length about how buried deep in the jungle is the last great mecha, the Earth Bot, which if it could be resurrected could stop the Terridaxx. Someone just needs to grow a pair and do it. Also someone needs to find legendary Robo Warrior Ray Gibson so he can pilot it. Zac decides that that someone will be him. So he hacks into the "Info Webs" and tracks down the location of "Gibs" and the Earth Bot rather easily.
He then runs away from home and finds Gibs at a seedy dive out in the desert. He tells Gibs his plan and Gibs tells him to get lost, so Zac decides to go find the Earth Bot without Gibs. Zac's mother comes looking for him and finds Gibs as well and tells him to bring back her son. He agrees. Gibs ends up finding Zac and the Earth Bot in the jungle. They hot wire the mecha and get it back up and running. They are then attacked by a Terridaxx mecha called "the Evil Destroyer" that looks like a cyborg dinosaur skeleton. The two fight and the Earth Bot wins.
Gibs then goes to the Earth Defense Forces (or something like that) and tells them he wants to challenge the Terridaxx to mecha combat for the right to control the planet. They reluctantly agree and then there's some drawn out BS about the military forces being skeptical that Gibs is up for the job, him having to prove himself, Zac needing to debug the Earth Bot, but finally Gibs gets to face off against the leader of the Terridaxx's son in his more humanoid looking mecha whose name escapes me at the moment. The two fight and we learn that the Earth Bot is also a transformer that has a tank mode! Ultimately though the Earth Bot is defeated but not before Gibs is able to jump into the Terridaxx's mecha and set it on fire! Gibs and the Terridaxx warrior then fall out of the mecha which then collapses onto the Terridaxx solider killing him. With Gibs left alive the victory goes to earth!
Unlike the others films in this series ROBO WARRIORS is unabashedly a children's film, as it's child protagonist makes clear. There is no graphic violence, no nudity and very little harsh language that I noticed. The film also is operating under a child's understanding of computers and technology similar to what one would find in Power Rangers or Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad. The whole film is full of lines like this: "If we can bypass the fiber-optic cables and re-rout the power coil through the firewall then I think we can fire the lasers manually using the turbines." WTF???
There are also some pretty halarious gaps in logic here and there. For example we are told that Gibs is a wanted terrorist under Terridaxx law who has thus far alluded capture. However he proves ridiculously easy for a 12-year-old boy to find and the also doesn't seem to have any trouble walking down a city street crawling with Terridaxx officers. Also Zac shouting his name out loud in the streets doesn't cause any problems.
In addition after the Terridaxx find out that Zac has hacked into the "Info Webs" they sentence him and his family to be sent to a "re-education center." However rather then sending the rest of his family right away while they hunt down Zac they instead decide to wait until they are all together again. How sweet of them. They even let Zac's mother leave unaccompanied to go find Gibs and tell him to find her son. Damn, if they had only tailed her they could have had Zac, Gibs and the Earth Bot. Jeez the Terridaxx are incompetent.
Unlike ROBOT JOX and it's two other semi-sequels CRASH AND BURN and ROBOT WARS, ROBO WARRIORS' mecha aren't brought to life via stop-motion animation but rather via full size animatronic puppets and what looks like some suitimation. Either way they move around much better then the mecha in the other films leading to more satisfying action sequences. The film was shot on location in the Philippians and apparently after wrapping the giant full size mechas were just left there and can still be seen today as a kind of tourist attraction.
Overall not a bad kid's film and like I said actually preferable to ROBOT JOX in terms of mecha action and overall plot just being more interesting. Also the ending is nowhere near as silly and naive.
As for TV series there is....
MEGAS XLR (2004/05) - Animated TV series on Cartoon Network, lasted 26-episodes. A super robot from the future is sent back in time where it falls into the hands of gear-head from Jersey who replaces it's cockpit head with a Plymouth Barracuda and makes it his new ride. A parody of Japanese mecha and kaiju shows. Funny at first, until it became apparent the writers on the show only had about four jokes at their disposal.
SYM-BIONIC TITAN (2010/11) - Animated TV series on Cartoon Network from avant-garde Russian born animator Genndy Tartakovsky (Samurai Jack). When the regal planet of Galaluna falls to the evil Mutraddi, the king sends his only daughter Illana to earth to be kept safe. She is accompanied by a young soldier named Lance and a sentient robot named Octus. When the leader of the Mutraddi finds out where she is he send various Mutraddi Mega Beasts (i.e. Kaiju) to dispose of her. Fortunately Octus has been equipped with a program that allows the three heroes to merge into a single giant robot called Titan that they can use to fight off the monsters and protect their new home. Part high-school drama/part robots vs. monsters, Tartakovsky once described the series as Ultraman directed by John Hughes (in fact the show is set in Shermer, Illinois).
Beautifully animated with wonderful characters, action and drama plus monsters designed by Ricardo Delgado (Age of Reptiles) it was criminally canceled after only 20 episodes since, according to Tartakovsky, it didn't have a toy line attached to it and the suits at CN weren't interested in a boy's show that wasn't interested in selling toys.
So can anyone think of any other non-Japanese mecha movies or shows?
