I wrote a retrospective review for it. I’ll post it here!
I was born in 1984, and around 1988 I was introduced to RoboCop, and from that point on I had little respect for police officers that weren‘t partially robotic, and I was sure that all handguns not drawn from inside the thigh were non-threatening. My life was totally changed for the better. As a child, I grew up watching RoboCop, and even have very fond memories with the sequels (though I’m starting to think as an adult I’d hate the third installment). Looking back with such joy, I decided to rent RoboCop and see how well it would hold up after 21 years. There is a foggy room in my head that stores these memories that aren’t clear as to whether something is good or bad, or if I even really ever understood it, now grown into an adult misunderstanding from my childhood. While talking about the film with some friends, we concluded that we couldn’t really decide if our memories were from the first movie, or the second, or even the third, and that worried me a little because I didn‘t want to watch the first one and remember nothing. I didn’t want to finish it and realize that I didn’t even like the film, that I was solely remembering the sequels or just polishing my memories to fit my current standard for a quality. What’s strange is how as an adult looking back on moments from your childhood, you seem to totally omit certain aspects of movies, and when you go back and watch them you go into total shock at graphic sex or sexually based jokes, nudity, violence, and strong language. Lots of fucking language. As a child you also have no real understanding of an adult-aimed film and consider most movies to be good, regardless of their real credibility. You appreciate them for such a simple reason: they’re “cool”. With RoboCop, I was not only shocked by many aspects of the film I somehow hadn‘t remembered, but I found it to be a really great experience, and now believe it doesn’t get the recognition, as a great science fiction movie, that it deserves.
Before I go any further, on the off chance you’re reading this and haven’t seen RoboCop, it’s about a police officer named Alex Murphy, after being transferred to a precinct in a very dangerous area of Detroit, gets shot-gunned by several men at a laughably close range, reducing him to a one handed, bullet-brained slab of leaking and moaning meat. He is later used in a recently green lit project to make machines into police officers, turning him into what I‘m guessing is the most intricate and complicated piece of machinery ever built, yet somehow still maintaining a digestive track that‘s only capable of breaking down what is essentially mystery flavored baby food. Once Murphy is gathered and becomes the RoboCop, he sets out to not only “Serve the Public Trust”, but after having a bizarre dream-like sequence that’s passed off as a glitch, he sets out to find the men that destroyed his life. His wife and child are gone, his ability to live on his own is gone, he’s a machine with a brain that wasn’t able to be totally wiped clean. It’s an interesting concept to have a man become a machine and look at the records of himself (now filed under deceased) as a regular person, but now being aware all the time that he’s not. It’s a pretty basic plot at it’s core, and it really doesn’t need anything else. It works, and is very well presented. It often follows basic formulas of the cop genre, but that’s not what the movie is really about, and it’s forgivable if you’re willing to quit your needless nitpicking.
The movie has often been passed off as silly, because it does have a fair share of one liners, but I found the humor to be more of social commentary, and a rather pessimistic way of looking at the future, and the desensitization to violence through an overly exposed news station. The one liners are by RoboCop, and I imagine they’re half programmed into him, and half his memory, and playing on that freaks me out to see a personality push itself onto a machine, or have the mechanics pushed onto the person. Whichever way you look at it, it is kind of creepy, since it really flirts with morality in a questionable manner. More humor from the film stems from a television program that shows little more than a man constantly saying “I‘ll buy that for a dollar“. Criminals on the street watch it on store display television, and when we‘re not airing that, it‘s the devastating and utterly hopeless news. It sets a really bleak tone that people are desperate, and want nothing more than a distraction from how horrible their lives really are. I found that the dark tone, strange visuals, and the manner in which gore is presented, is really similar to Videodrome, only less like you’re tripping balls. I felt that some of the buildings and imagery of the city were influenced by Brazil, and maybe even the industrial parts of the city were taken from Eraserhead. It’s a strange group of movies that have obvious influence over RoboCop, and it works really well. But as I’ve said, the movie is often written off as novelty, and maybe it has more to do with poor promotion than anything else.
As for Alex Murphy, the RoboCop, his future was the bleakest. I can’t believe I don’t remember how violent and graphic the film is, and I’m even more surprised my parents were awesome enough to allow me to watch it and desensitize me at such an young and impressionable age. It takes a truly violent movie to have a scene involving a man getting blasted with multiple shot-guns at an extremely close range and still not be the bloodiest scene in the movie. Every gun-shot is followed immediately by movie standard “real” looking body pops, splashing little waves of blood out of torn shirts, and spraying the now popular mist of red into nearby sunlight. Most of the violence I remember was from the second or third installment (faces being smashed into video arcades, heads being crushed), but the actual blood and sheer volume of shock value is something that even now made me tilt my head and say, “seriously?”.
What’s even greater about seeing this again after so many years is finding out the villains are Red from That 70s Show and the eventually-one-armed asshole from ER, playing jerk offs with more and darker hair. Seeing them younger, firing away cops and terrorizing the general public is really something spectacular, and convinces me that they’re probably not good actors outside of the confines of that unpleasant personality type. On the good side of characters, Officer Lewis (the female hottie cop) was assigned to be Murphy’s partner the day he was torn to shreds by a barrage of bullets, and being unable to save him then, she teams up with him after he’s reassembled. Oh yeah, was that motioned earlier? It was his very first day of work. He gets transferred to a new department, and is literally taken apart by shotguns. Anyway, back to Lewis, her involvement works well and doesn’t play too much into clichés. The only memories I had of typical Hollywood cheese was actually from the second or third movie, two films I need to just rent and watch again. But the highlight of the movie wasn’t really even the bad guys, or the hot female cop, or even RoboCop. It was the fucking ED209. A massive biped with giant guns, a jaguar grow and pig squeal, a really scary speaking voice, and an inability to hear guns hit the floor. I supposes on the grand scales he’s really intended to be a good guy, maybe. It’s basic functions are demanding things be done in twenty seconds or less, and scaring the living shit out of children across Detroit with ease. It’s also a suggested and toyed with solution to the police problem, the problem being that the police are sick of being gunned down on a daily basis, and was advertised as being the 24 hour cop. It’s malfunction (which resulted in a man being gunned down in an office building in front of a crowd) was really the reason why the RoboCop project was allowed. Sort of ironic considering the man that said go was eventually taken down by RoboCop himself, because he was in cahoots with the very men that gunned down Murphy. It all played out pretty nicely, and while I have many memories of ED209 from the other movies, it still didn’t disappoint me. It was awesome, and looked good enough for a science fiction movie in 1987.
What I enjoyed the most about the film this time through was how it used so many popular, yet not clichéd, story dynamics for the few genres it transcends. It has the generic cop element, but doesn’t play it on so much you end up wondering if this is something you’d find on Spike at two in the morning. It has the science fiction element, but is toned down to a point that’s somewhat, in a movie world, plausible. It has the bleak future appeal, introducing the inclusion of a robot police officer (like THX-1138, only with machine guns). And it introduces the conflict of “where to draw the line”, in terms of weapons manufacturing, police rights, basic human rights, corporate ethics, and the all-to-familiar “how to feel safe” trap. Introducing a robot police that fails, and another one succeeds. The one that failed has no emotion, the one that make it does. The trade off is having that officer die first. Is it worth it? Alex Murphy might not think so, but everyone else might. Then again being the baddest mother fucker in Detroit, Murphy just might be totally okay with it. It’s a strange blend of style all throughout the film that really gets little respect today from a general audience. I think more people base their opinion solely on the trailer they remember, not the film they saw.
Overall, this movie really stood the test of time for me, and knowing a remake is on the way is very saddening. I fear the RoboCop suit will be GCI, or look like Iron Man (really though RoboCop sort of shares some plot devices with the Iron Man comics), and the violence will be toned down to accommodate a PG-13 rating. One thing that I hate to admit, but can’t help but say, is that I look forward to seeing the ED209 all new and improved, which should end up looking like the kid brother of Metal Gear. Either way, I’ll still cherish the original and thank myself for going back and watching it. If it’s been a long time since you’ve last seen it, rent it. And if you’ve never seen it, then you need to either rent or purchase a copy of it right now. You have twenty seconds to comply.
A great movie
I totally aggree lol must admit when i was a kid i didn’t really understand the violence in the movie my self all i seen was this night in shining armour and in all honasty i didn’t even know they where doing a remake i just hope they keep it as close to the first movie the other spin off’s such as crash and burn were complete and utter crap i just hope the 4th mvie isn’t copying from them if they are then it would be a waste of money and time and effort and i don’t think they wouldn’t change the costume of the robocop that much lol if they did they should call robot that works with police robocop wouldn’t be the same if they changed the duite and not only that the gun all in all i thought it was the best movie ever as i watched it grown up as a kid and enjoyed every minute of it what struck me more about the movie is the way it was set a robot in a normall police station that had alife and mind of it’s own not being controlled by computers unlike ed209 but i like number 4 where ed209 got hacked at the millitary base that kid just goes to show the comedy of it as well
Simply the best. Probably my pick for consummate cinematic statement about 80s America. Best, most successful Verhoeven (though with STARSHIP TROOPERS a close second). Murphy’s death scene contains about as much pathos as I care to ever experience onscreen while other moments of extreme satirical silliness in the movie have me in stitches every time.
Good ancient thread re: ROBOCOP here:
http://www.theauteurs.com/topics/749
lol true it did have some form of comedy to it than any other cifi horror i persnoally believe tho if they make a 4th movie the only way they could change the look of robocop is by giving him a new car lol a guy walking round in a robo suite without the helmit just wuldn’t add up lol
“and knowing a remake is on the way is very saddening”
- i actually had hope for the remake since darren aronofsky was attached to direct it. i could really see him making a statement about the current times the same way the original did about the 80’s. however he left the project and i have a feeling it was because of his promising vision for it, but the studio/producers probably disagreed and wanted to make it into iron-man, but with cops. ah well, to quote bob morton when he referred to that guy who got shot in the board meeting by ed209, “that’s life in the big city”.
if they turn robocop into an irion man type of mvie then it would be absaloutley crap the first two movie were pretty good but when they gave him jetpacks i thought that was wrong and pretty boaring my altho i like the way on number 3 the way they gave him a gun arm which is more robotic like and believebale but the jet pack idiea was pretty crap !!!!!!!!
I haven’t thought about it since the day it opened, when I sat through it.
lol c’mon it’s a classic movie with cops infact the scifi movie based on cops i think theirs also polic acadamey which was based on cops but that was more based on comedy than scifi
“That’s life in the big city.”
God, it does NOT get any better than this…so inhuman and simultaneously so funny. Neumaier was just in top screenwriting form when he cranked out this script.
it has one of my favorite movie quotes of all time. it stuck in my head when i was a kid for some reason, and i repeated it for a million different situations and events throughout life. even after i had briefly forgotten where i got the quote from, then discovered it again when i saw the film again after many years.
“i’ll buy THAT for a dollar!”
trash product, but for a reason…i do like it as sci-fi bonanza for stupidity’s sake.
whatever the case may be, it’s probably the second best attempt of Verhoeven in the United States, ultra violence with a spicy “flesh” study but quite an epidermic approach compared to his first films.
in other words…keep Robocop for a fun Saturday evening and watch his Dutch films for more film research.
as for the term classic…sheesh, why should all 80’s Hollywood cheesy action flicks be classic? get a grip OP.
Lol i’ll by that for a doller pmsl
IT’S ON TV RIGHT NOW AND I AM WATCHING IT.
shantih watching robocop :O)
I like “Robocop” a lot. It’s a tragic and violent repository of the madness and decay of the corporate-centric 80’s, though many of the stuff parodied there is still valid today. The OST by Basil Poledouris is excellent and appropriately heroic. There aren’t many “action flicks” (though this one is also sci-fi) that I deem as classics, but this is one of them.
mike jewell
me personally i loved it :D