Nazi Robot Attack.

[MrBern]

nazi-robot-attack/

Heres a clever littl CGI battle. Somewhere in between Iron Giant and Sky Captain.

What do you think, is it indulgent or a fun look at GoldenAge aesthetics?

 

[scotrace]

OK, yeah, that rocks!

 

[jake_fink]

Cool.

 

[carebear]

That was cool.



I wish I wasn't so nitpicky.

 

[MrBern]

Be nitpicky. Discuss.

Actually , I'm wondering why the date June 3 1943 was so specific...

 

[carebear]

It's Pearl in '43. Where did the robot come from? It can't wade across the Pacific.


By mid-'43 the US fleet submarines and air reconnaissance had a pretty good handle on what shipping (or giant robots) were traveling in Japanese-held waters, much less something that had to cross miles of open ocean without any land mass cover in sight. It didn't travel disguised within a fleet or convoy either, as that would have been spotted before it left port and attacked by subs within days.

Pearl after '41 was surrounded by a net of ships and planes at all times, day and night. We're talking a several hundred mile exclusion zone and that thing is a radar magnet. There were bombers and torpedo planes on strip alert in case a Japanese fleet somehow evaded the radar and spotters.

Even given the less than accurate (in timing) intro with the seaplane, they still apparently picked it up on radar miles out, they would have been attacking it in round the clock sorties of 500+ pound bombs and aerial torps within minutes of discovery. Those can destroy battleships, that thing was meat for such an attack.

So the robot would not have gotten anywhere near shore.

Once discovered, all slow and effectively defenseless (its 3 guns were not sufficient to hold off any period-accurate air attack) in the water being attacked by waves of aircraft, they would have then sortied surface ships, from PT Boats on up to the heavy cruisers and battleships at the pier, to engage it with torpedoes and naval gunfire.

Heck, just one shell from a 16" naval rifle (range 25+ miles, designed to hit other ships moving at 20 knots from a moving platform) from a battlewagon still anchored would have blown it into scrap in the water.

The Japanese robot has the same problems.

Heck, even given it somehow walked on in, it was standing directly in line with the stern batteries of all those heavy cruisers and BB's for minutes. All of them shouldn't have had all their gun crews ashore.

As the Mustangs (which probably would have scrambled with rockets or bombs that could have stopped it, not drop tanks) distracted it, just one 16" AP rifle shot would have ended the battle. If the Japanese robot then raised its head, it would have suffered the same fate but even worse, as more than one gun could have been brought to bear from the now fully alerted base and island defenses.

I'm not hammering the movie for not being real-life realistic, it is after all just a story. My problem with it, as with so many movies, is that it isn't even realistic or consistent within it's own internal physics and story.

This is a short tech demonstrator and gets a pass, but when it comes to real movies, the writers need to be working harder.

 

[MrBern]

Heres some CGI, thats quite a bit darker. Sci-fi borrowing from `30s fascist imagery
www.axisanimation.com

Not as much fun , but certainly compelling.

 

[carebear]

I love the overly long, muzzle heavy rifles. They look like the ones in the battle scene vignettes in "Soldier".

There's something very aggressively militaristic about that style.

 

[jake_fink]

Wow. And I thought the (probably) anachronistic use of "Holy Crap" was being nitpickety.

I do wish they'd developed the characters a bit more fully; and didn't the pilot have a Dutch accent or something like it?

Otherwise, I'd play that game.

 

[Nick D]

Here's picking nits: The swastika on the Nazi robot's left arm was facing the wrong way.

That was a very cool movie, but I must admit myself a little puzzled by the ending.

 

[ClayBob]

SWELL thread !!! :fedora:

 

[Lee Lynch]

Brilliant!

 

[Lee Lynch]

Here's picking nits: The swastika on the Nazi robot's left arm was facing the wrong way.

That was a very cool movie, but I must admit myself a little puzzled by the ending.

They probably got the texture mapped backwards and didn't notice until the final rendering was underway, or done...that would be frustrating!

I'd probably just go ahead with it, too, as long as rendering these can sometimes take, lol.

 

[anon`]

Depending on where the creator is based, or where he intended to distribute (host) this, it may not have been possible to use a "correct" swastika.

That being said (and now that I've got sound sorted on my computer), what fun. Who cares if doesn't make logical sense? They're giant mechs for cryin' out loud!

 

[carebear]

It is cool as is.

I guess my question is... Why not spend a little more time in the conceptualization stage and come up with a decent scenario to put the coolness into?

Off the top of my head, hows this.

It's a Nazi robot. Avoid the whole "How'd it get from Germany to Asia" and "How'd it get across the Pacific" and "Why wasn't it dead in the water 10 minutes after discovery?" and set the video in Europe.

Heck, contextually I thought the land in the distance in the intro was the White Cliffs of Dover.

That's a more realistic invasion target. A massive air raid to distract the RAF, maybe sortie the German fleet out of the North Sea ports to draw off the RN and walk that sucker across the Channel at night. It would not be terribly unrealistic in '43 (aside from the engineering, but that's a gimme) for the Germans to hide that thing on the French shore.

Come dawn, voila, one or two of those (with better anti-air batteries) comes strolling up the beach. Now there's a fight. Sure the air would take it down eventually, but there'd be a longer fight as there'd be fewer weapons on hand to stop it. The Brit tanks and artillery would not be quite so effective (accurate and powerful) as naval gunfire.

Stretch a point and let it make it into London before the "Tommy-bot" comes out to stop it. A mecha fight in civilian London, around all those landmarks, where air and naval gunfire would be less allowable due to collateral damage (in the end it can be worth shooting up your own military base to stop an attack) would be far cooler.

Or an Ivan-bot versus Jerry-bot in the ruins of Berlin.

The Pierre-bot fleeing the Jerry-bot through Paris in 1940. At that point, there wasn't the air, arty or tanks in anybody's arsenal to bring down a giant mech easily.

 

[Vladimir Berkov]

My favorite "alternate history" Nazi technology movie is still this one from The Rocketeer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hJUsyEHPGU&mode=related&search=

 

[jake_fink]

My favorite "alternate history" Nazi technology movie is still this one from The Rocketeer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hJUsyEHPGU&mode=related&search=

Yeah, that was well done. (For phoney Nazi propaganda.)

 

[DW Evans]

It may just be me, but the goggles seem to be out of scale.

There I was thinking, "Why doesn't the axis mech just smash things..." And then the US mech comes out and starts pummeling it...haha. Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots!!

 

[thunderw21]

Did anyone else spot the Ark of the Covanent?

 

[griffer]