That would be much too smart for Harmony Gold. I mean come on they made their fortune by reediting and redubbing Japanese anime shows so hell why not do that for the movie too? Hence the flaming dung heap that was Robotech: The Movie.
To this end the plan was basically to redub a Japanese movie called Megazone 23. Which naturally had nothing to do with the main Robotech story. According to Wikipedia the original idea was that it would be set during the period the SDF-1 was coming back to Earth from Pluto and the main character would be said to be a relative of Rick Hunter.
But that didn't work out because the makers of the Japanese Macross series had their own movie coming out and didn't want people getting mixed up thinking it was related to theirs. So they rejiggered the movie so it would take place between the first and second series. To this end they even spliced in footage from the second series.
When this finally came out in 1986 they decided to test it in the Dallas market. And it bombed so hard that it never was released anywhere else. They can blame marketing and stuff but there were a few obvious reasons why it bombed:
First and most obvious, there's really none of the Robotech characters in it. They spliced in a couple of Southern Cross leaders like Rolf Emerson and Anatole Leonard but there was no Rick Hunter, Lisa Hayes, Dana Sterling, or Scott Bernard. I mean imagine if Marvel said Avengers 5 wasn't going to have any of the established characters, just a bunch of new people no one's heard of? It'd probably bomb just as hard. If you claim it's a Robotech movie, people might actually want some Robotech in it. Crazy, right?
Second and I'm sure it was obvious when they were doing it, they tried splicing together a movie and a TV show. They were apparently on different film stocks and thus blending the two together looked anything but seamless. It's like the Simpsons episode where they're making a Radioactive Man movie in Springfield and Milhouse gets the sidekick role. When he goes missing they try to splice in footage already shot, which looks ridiculous. That's basically what Harmony Gold did and tried to actually pass it off as a movie.
There were also issues with sexuality and graphic violence that stopped parents from taking kids to it or walking out during it. Which just compounded the problems.
Other than a few VHS tapes released overseas there was never a real release of the movie. Like Roger Corman's Fantastic Four you can only see bootleg copies sold on the Internet and at conventions. Hell, I've never seen it.
About the closest I've come is the 20th book in the series, The Masters's Gambit, incorporates a lot of the events of the ill-fated movie. But when I was buying the series on Kindle I don't think they made one of that so you can only get it in paperback. It seems the whole project is jinxed.
Although I'm not sure if I'd rather have a movie with none of the main characters over one like Transformers the Movie that kills off most of the main characters you cared about.
3 comments:
sadly, Robotech is still mired in "development hell" as far as anything new animation-wise. Thirty-five years on and Harmony Gold is still at a loss for new content...I guess they don't have anything left to "re-purpose". They might have to...you know...make something new. The horror! The horror! lol
Aaaaactually they made new animation around 2007, which is tomorrow's entry.
I had never heard of the Robotech movie. And now I know why!
Post a Comment