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| Mechanic Mark Landry acquires the top-secret MODAT-5. |
Also Released as: Robotech - The Untold Story.
Original Release Date: July 25, 1986. Running Time: 85 minutes. Home Video Version: 29 minutes. Screenplay by: Ardwright Chamberlain. Story by: Carl Macek. Directed by: Noboru Ishiguro, Carl Macek. Produced by: Ahmed Agrama, Toru Miura.
THE PLOT:
The Robotech Masters have a plan. When the SDF-1 crash landed on Earth, human scientists transferred its data to a "mother computer." The Masters want that computer and its data, but they don't want to risk a frontal assault like Zentraedi Lord Dolza's failure. Instead, they try subterfuge, taking human prisoners for purposes of infiltration.
They find the perfect subject: Col. B. D. Andrews, a highly respected member of the military. They capture him as he attempts to fight off their attack - then kill the original and send a clone of Andrews back with orders to gain access to the computer and transmit its information to them.
Todd, one of Andrews's soldiers, notices the change in the colonel's behavior. He steals the MODAT-5, a mobile database terminal in the form of a motorcycle, and shows it to his friend, Mark Landry, a mechanic and an expert driver. He's midway through telling Mark about his suspicions when three security men show up. Mark gets away on the MODAT, but Todd is unable to escape.
Now it's up to Mark to discover exactly what Andrews has planned. Fortunately, he has help from EVE, the sentient computer whose data is coveted by Andrews and the Robotech Masters. Time is running out, though. Andrews has already begun transmitting his data to a disused satellite, perfect for interception by the enemy. Once the Masters have all the data, they intend to succeed where the Zentraedi failed - by annihilating all life on Earth!
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| Mark is ready for action - with a lot less soul-searching than Megazone 23's Shogo. |
CHARACTERS:
Despite using much of Megazone 23's footage, Robotech: The Movie is an entirely different film. This extends to the characters. Megazone's protagonist, Shogo, spends almost the entire second half processing the secret he discovers. Mark Landry, the Robotech hero, is far less shaken by his encounter with the fake Col. Andrews, being quippy and jokey in several of the following scenes.
Though B. D. serves as the villain in both films, Megazone's B. D. likely believes that everything he's doing is necessary. He even tries to recruit Shogo, clearly impressed at the young man's natural skill with the prototype motorcycle. Robotech's Andrews is a clone - in spy movie terms, a high-placed agent feeding information to the enemy. He's dismissive toward Mark when they meet, actively attempting to fill the young man with enough doubt to avoid further interference.
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| "Too many girls... This is not a Cannon movie." |
BACKGROUND:
Robotech: The Movie had the misfortune to be a Cannon Film. Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, Cannon's owners from 1979 - 1989, were infamous for last-minute budget cuts and post-production tampering. Now, I grew up in the '80s, and I'll admit to having a grudging fondness for some of their schlocky output. But actual good movies released by Cannon were as rare as flecks of gold in the sand.
Carl Macek's intent was to do with Megazone 23 what he had done with Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada: deliver a passably faithful, if Americanized, version, making changes to fit it to Robotech's continuity. When he screened it for Cannon execs, he was told that there were "too many girls and not enough robots and guns," with Menahem Golan declaring that this was "not a Cannon movie."
Macek responded by throwing in almost thirty minutes of Southern Cross footage and reframing the main plot as a conspiracy set in motion by the Robotech Masters. Deep cuts were made to make room, jettisoning most of the character-focused material, and scenes were shifted around to relate what was left to the Southern Cross scenes.
Macek hated the end result, but it please Golan; per Macek, the Cannon co-owner looked at the newly mangled motion picture and declared: "That's a Cannon movie." Which then proceeded to barely get released in a couple of theaters in Texas and (somewhat strangely) in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
The bizarre thing? Megazone 23 has plenty of action. But I suppose Cannon just couldn't help being Cannon...
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| A newly-animated ending sees Mark battling, with plenty of guns and robots. "Now, that's a Cannon movie!" |
CUTS AND ALTERATIONS:
Because of the production nightmare, Robotech: The Movie is radically different from Megazone 23. You can actually watch Robotech and remain unspoiled for Megazone's major reveal and many of its plot points.
This makes attempting to itemize individual differences into a fool's errand - such a list would be longer than the review itself. So instead of doing that, I'm going to group the general categories of changes.
Scene Restructuring: Scenes are shifted around, partially to tie the main story together with the Southern Cross footage, and partially to change the emphasis. Megazone 23 opens with Shogo meeting Yui, establishing their relationship as of equal importance to the science fiction/conspiracy plot. Robotech opens with an extended action prologue that sets up the conspiracy plot. Even when Mark is finally introduced, it's not meeting Becky - It's receiving the motorcycle and fleeing from the armed gunmen.
Col. Andrews Is More Prominent than B. D.: B. D., the primary antagonist of Megazone, only becomes prominent in the story at the midpoint, after Shogo meets him. Robotech makes Col. Andrews important right away. Scenes of him plotting, which occur relatively late in Megazone, are moved up to the first third. The magic of voice over also makes him a major player in the Southern Cross prologue. All of this makes his part seem much bigger - in fact, for the first half hour, he's a larger presence than the movie's actual hero!
Relationship Story Is Cut Back - A Lot: Mark's relationship with Becky is only introduced after the conspiracy story is set in motion. She is already his girlfriend, which allows for the removal of all those pesky scenes in which the two leads get to know each other. Almost all of the relationship scenes are pushed together into a single ten-minute block, and most of these are rewritten so that the dialogue is less about them as characters than about the plot. This makes Becky, the female lead, into a peripheral character to such an extent that viewers unfamiliar with the original might wonder why she's even present.
The Big Reveal: Megazone 23's most memorable scene is the mid-film reveal, which Shogo stumbles across by chance while scouting locations with Tomomi for her movie. In Robotech, Mark is led to this secret when he's contacted by Eve. Kelly (Robotech's version of Tomomi) is not present. Oh, and since a major plot turn would apparently not be suitably exciting on its own, Robotech moves a bunch of the action from Megazone's climax into this set piece so that stuff can blow up real good.
The Slimy Producer Tries to Rape Becky: It made emotional sense for Shogo's character when he blamed Yui for her encounter with the producer, as she fully intended to sleep with the man for a role. Robotech alters the scene so that Becky is blameless: Slimy Producer Guy breaks into her room and assaults her, with her fighting him until Mark comes to the rescue. The problem? Mark still somehow blames her, which mainly leaves him looking like a Grade A ass!
The Ending: Megazone animation studio The Idol Company was commissioned to create a new, closed ending (the footage of which subsequently appeared in some Megazone releases). Mark battles Col. Andrews while rescuing characters from an airfield ambush. This is all extremely cheesy, particularly the final shots, and it doesn't make much sense... but it's also kind of fun to watch, as long as you remember to completely turn your brain off.
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| Rolf Emerson and Anatole Leonard struggle with an alien attack. The viewers struggle with them being in the wrong movie. |
TWO SOURCES THAT DON'T FIT TOGETHER:
The single biggest problem with Robotech: The Movie is the Southern Cross footage. The script makes a decent stab at tying the scenes from the two sources together. However, this very effort makes the Megazone scenes of secondary importance to the story. Because the Megazone scenes are rewritten to be purely reactive to the Southern Cross ones, it's the thread with Mark and Becky that ends up feeling like a subplot.
It's purely in the Southern Cross scenes that the movie: establishes its plot; motivates the Earth government to grant the fake Col. Andrews access to the computer; sets the stakes, with the Masters declaring their intent to destroy the Earth; and even sees the larger threat of the Masters repelled. By the time Mark has his final confrontation with Andrews, the colonel has already been exposed as an enemy agent and the Masters have already been defeated.
Then there are the visual transitions from one source to the other. Discussions of this movie regularly touch on the quality of the film stock, with Megazone 23 utilizing 35mm while Southern Cross was on more budget-friendly 16mm. More jarring to me, however, was the switch between completely different art styles. Megazone's characters have more individuality in their proportions and a wider and subtler range of expressions, and the Megazone scenes are more colorful and dynamic than those from Southern Cross. If you were to downscale Megazone's footage to match Southern Cross's, the stark difference in the basic look of the two titles would still make it impossible to seamlessly cut them together.
I can think of no more damning indictment of the impact of the Southern Cross footage on this film than its own official home video version. By the time the complete Robotech DVD set was released, Harmony Gold had lost the rights to Megazone, so they created a 29-minute edit using only the Southern Cross footage… and it’s arguably less incoherent than the full length movie is! (credit to Gubaba on Bluesky for pointing out that this edit was done by the studio, and not by Macek himself)
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| The Robotech Masters plot the destruction of the planet Earth. |
OTHER MUSINGS:
Robotech: The Movie is a mess.
Sequences don't lead into each other. Instead, each bit is an entity in itself. When Mark investigates a TV station, for instance, the scene kicks off with an internal monologue so that he can tell us why he's doing this. He meets Col. Andrews because EVE leads him there, with very little leading up to that. Even the new ending starts with Mark being led to the site of the final battle. You can split each bit into its own 10-minute short film (give or take), and each individual sequence would make just as much sense as within the larger movie.
The reshuffling of scenes creates continuity errors. A scene of Becky dancing has her footage re-looped, presumably to fit the music, with the same three shots shown multiple times, which I started to find quite funny after a few seconds. Kelly reviews footage for her movie, having recorded the MODAT transforming into a robot form... a couple of scenes before Mark discovers that the bike has that ability!
Finally, this movie doesn't even fit within the larger Robotech continuity. It is set between The Macross Saga and The Masters, with supporting roles for Supreme Commander Anatole Leonard (still an idiot) and Rolf Emerson. The humans directly battle The Masters at multiple points, and by the film's end are relatively easily defeating them in battle.
Now recall The Masters arc. For the first quarter of that arc: the humans have no idea who these aliens are; the battles are almost laughably one-sided, with the humans barely able to land a shot on the enemy; and they know so little about The Masters that they have to send Dana Sterling's squad into a downed ship to gather intel.
In short, the events of the movie have little internal consistency - and even less consistency with the actual series.
Like I said: a mess.
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| Mark basks in the aftermath of his victory. |
OVERALL:
The one backhanded compliment I can pay to Robotech: The Movie is that I found it passably diverting. It has so little to do with Megazone 23 that I quickly stopped even thinking about the source film, let alone being annoyed at its mangling. This enabled me to enjoy the pretty pictures and action scenes on their own merits.
Much of the voice acting is decent, particularly in the Megazone scenes; the Robotech score is reasonably well fitted to the action; and it all goes by painlessly. Turn your brain off - I mean, all the way off - and there are worse ways to burn off 85 minutes.
So in the end, I'd agree with Menaheim Golan. To its core, it can absolutely be said of Roboech: The Movie:
"Now, that's a Cannon movie."
Overall Rating - Robotech: 3/10.
Alternate Version: Megazone 23
Previous Movie: Codename - Robotech
Next Movie: Robotech - The Sentinels
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