page_title: Roboshark (film)
section_title: Genre and themes
hierarchical_section_title: Roboshark (film) / Genre and themes
caption_attribution_description: English: Major T. J. "King" Kong (Slim Pickins) riding the bomb in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film, Dr. Strangelove. Nederlands: Majoor T.J. Kong berijdt een atoombom in rodeostijl in de film Dr. Strangelove en activeert daarmee een doomsday device.
context_page_description: Roboshark is a 2015 Bulgarian-Canadian television film directed and co-written by Jeffery Scott Lando. Co-written and co-produced by Phillip Roth, Roboshark is a "gonzo shark film", a "tongue-in-cheek creature feature" which satirically blends action, comedy, and science fiction and which premiered at the start of SyFy Channel's second annual Sharknado week on 18 July 2015.
context_section_description: Richard Scheib remarks that the "gonzo shark film" has become its own "mini-genre" in the 2010s: "the shark film began a move towards the increasingly tongue-in-cheek, something that reached its zenith with the deliberate absurdity of the instant bad movie hit Sharknado (2013)." Scheib lists some twenty titles of shark films in a similar vein, and explains its attractiveness to a filmmaker: "no matter how cheesy and ridiculous the film is, it actually adds to the appeal."
  Indeed, filmmakers seem to be in a competition with each other as to how absurdly over-the-top they are capable of making each film and/or the mash-up the title brings together. From the outset, Roboshark looks set to try and top the cheesiness value. The film is made with the cut-price locations and effects common to BUFO's other disaster and monster movies...  In particular, the CGI animation of the Roboshark is painfully obvious and cheap.
  A recurring theme and object of "sly" satire running through Roboshark is the world of social media and online reactions to current events, something which "sets it apart from its many, many brethren." Scheib speculates that this may have been an attempt to capitalize on the fact that "the Sharknado phenomenon was spawned by Twitter." In the same vein, Roboshark also takes "pot shots" at Microsoft and Starbucks, closely associated with Seattle.
  Finally, there are also many inside jokes and references to science fiction films, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and THX 1138 to name two. Lisa Bowman suggests that the film's penultimate scene of the Admiral's kamikaze-style use of the Space Needle references Slim Pickens riding the nuclear bomb in Dr. Strangelove.
caption: Slim Pickens riding the Bomb in Dr. Strangelove, a possible reference in Roboshark.
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