Feel old thread of the day: Robocop released 30 years ago today...

[posty 2,296]

http://www.denofgeek.com/us/movies/robocop/233032/robocop-at-30-the-franchise-of-diminishing-returns?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

 

Paul Verhoevens RoboCop is something of a sacred cow among fans. The 1987 film presses so many buttons that its almost impossible to look at it objectively anymore, which is why Jose Padilhas RoboCop remake seemed doomed before it even hit theaters. That's a shame, because it was certainly worth a look on its own.

 

But the original RoboCop is a nearly perfect blend of action film pyrotechnics, horror movie gore, revenge flick angst, and a superhero origin story. Packed with profanity, satire, incredible sound design (good god, this movie is loud), and charismatic villains, RoboCop seemed destined for cinematic immortality and introduced a main character who practically begged for broader exploitation. Over the next 25 years, there were plenty of attempts to maximize RoboCops franchise potential. Whether it was the limitations of the character or the imaginations of the people involved, none of these ever quite managed to put it all together.

 

RoboCop is a product of its time. Fully loaded with Reagan-era cynicism and endless hallmarks from that golden age of action movie excess, theres a razors edge that RoboCop manages to walk. Neither a total nod-wink satire nor an endorsement of the films future of law enforcement tagline, RoboCop effortlessly blends over-the-top violence with disturbingly gory practical effects and a cutting sense of humor about consumerism, corporate culture, and the media.

 

Oh, and those villains! In the course of the film, RoboCop eliminates an endless parade of baddies, from Kurtwood Smiths Clarence Boddicker (whose casually reptilian utterances like Bitches, leave and Just gimme my fuckin phone call are delivered with such effortless abandon that they sound accidental: like the F-word equivalent of that mysterious chord that opens The Beatles A Hard Days Night) to Miguel Ferrers coke sniffing upstart corporate goon to perpetual cinematic nice guy Ronny Cox as the appropriately named Jones. Throw in Clarence's gang of cartoon heavies for good measure and youd be hard pressed to find a more colorful assortment of reprehensible this side of Gotham City. Box office numbers were solid, reviews were positive, and Detroit had a new superhero.

 

Its easy to see how a generation of pre-teens with cable subscriptions and/or permissive parents were able to sink their teeth into this 80s icon. The non-stop violence, nearly poetic use of profanity, terrifying giant robots, and a tragic, man/machine hero who wouldnt be out of place in the pages of Marvel Comics (where he would eventually end up) were like catnip for kids of the era. With all of these elements in place, and a faintly dystopian near-future that with each passing year looks more and more prescient, it seemed like endless adventures for the hero who is part man, part machine...all cop! were all but assured. But many of the films strengths were either unable to translate to more franchise-friendly mediums (and with good reason), or the folks in charge simply missed the point.

 

Things got off to a reasonably good start with 1988s RoboCop arcade game. A fairly standard shoot em up platformer that nevertheless boasted some above average graphics and terrific sound design. With digitized ED-209 sound effects and cast voices, a cool Robo point-of-view target practice bonus level, and what, to the untrained ear, sounds like bad guys saying ! when they get popped, the RoboCop arcade game just feels right. The gleeful violence of the film found a perfect home in this game, which sucked an infinite number of quarters out of the pockets of an infinite number of suburban boys.

 

From the silver screen to the arcade screen, the next logical step for a superhero like RoboCop in the post-Star Wars era was, naturally, Saturday morning cartoons and the toy aisle! RoboCop: The Animated Series and the Kenner toy line RoboCop and the Ultra Police both got going at roughly the same time. Featuring a mix of characters from the original film (Anne Lewis, Sgt. Reed, Dr. McNamara), generic toy-line-by-numbers bad guys sporting code names like Headhunter and Nitro and a few half-assed G.I. Joe rejects like Wheels Wilson and Birdman Barnes, Robocop and the Ultra Police wasnt exactly looking for any kind of credibility or pointed satire. On the other hand, these action figures actually fired caps, because if youve got to get one thing right from the original film, it may as well be its ear-splitting volume. Nevertheless, the toy line did give collectors a rather cool RoboCop figure, complete with removable helmet (that reveals a fairly detailed head-sculpt) and a gun that mounts where his leg-holster would go. The animated series, on the other hand

 

RoboCop: The Animated Series. Where do we even begin? Even the most late night HBO-hardened kid could have told you that in order for RoboCop to make the jump to television, in any form, much of the films appeal would have to be significantly sanitized. Lets remember that this is a superhero who, in one of his first acts as a crimestopper, calmly shoots a would-be rapist squarely in the . While nobody was expecting the over-the-top violence, rapid-fire displays of virtuosic profanity, or even anything resembling subtlety, RoboCop: The Animated Series still fails to distinguish itself as anything more than an attempt to set Robo up for merchandising success. While faithful to a number of elements of the Robo-mythology, its devotion to one particular element proves to be its undoing, and is also one that plagues future RoboCop installments.

 

In the original film, its unlikely anyone would mistake Peter Wellers RoboCop for Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan. RoboCops lack of mobility is primarily out of necessity (Rob Bottins impressive RoboCop suit and makeup weighed 80 pounds), but it also served to emphasize the lumbering, tragic, Frankensteinian nature of the character. That ponderous, slow, methodical approach was driven home by the films sound design, with Robos thumping footsteps as much a signature of the franchise as Darth Vaders breathing in Star Wars.

 

But within RoboCop: The Animated Series multitude of sins, we see the first indication of something which would hamper the idea of RoboCop as a truly effective franchise hero: Robo is slower than a city bus with a flat tire in crosstown traffic, and he gets his shiny metal ass handed to him at every opportunity. When hes not too slow to avoid falling heavy objects, hes powered down, scrambled, remote controlled by the bad guys, or in danger of being replaced by some shinier piece of law enforcement technology (which well also see in later live-action incarnations as well). For a super strong guy made of metal, it doesnt take much to put Robo out of action.

 

Someday, well write a comprehensive article about every irritating little setback that effectively defeats and/or immobilizes RoboCop throughout his career, but...then again, we probably wont do that. There are limits, even at Den of Geek.

 

Ironically, one of the the best episodes of RoboCop: The Animated Series is the one that fucks the most with the continuity of the original movie. Do you realize that the opening title sequence of this show features a cartoon version of Officer Murphys execution at the hands of Clarence Boddicker? Well, here Mr. Boddicker is alive and well, and you see him again in the episode Menace of the Mind. The odd standout aside, most episodes of the show are indistinguishable from any number of other animated TV show plots of the era, from G.I. Joe to C.O.P.S. If it's any consolation, it's far better than the virtually unwatchable RoboCop: Alpha Commando animated series that came around in 1998.

 

We can accept the lack of swear words and the understandable transformation of the films gun battles into bloodless, non-lethal laser gun affairs, seriously reminiscent of that other famous animated toy commercial, G.I. Joe. Then again, G.I. Joe managed to have the occasionally subversive episode, like the one that was a tripping balls homage to The Prisoner featuring Shipwreck, but I digress. In the series, Anne Lewis transformation from tough, gum-popping badass to an occasionally lovestruck bit of window dressing who GOES ON DATES WITH ROBOCOP is enough to send RoboCop: The Animated Series well over the line from sanitized to SNL-style RoboCop parody. On the other hand, RoboCops non-lethal weaponry returned for the 2014 reboot, so perhaps RoboCop: The Animated Series was simply ahead of the curve.

 

By the time RoboCop 2 rolled around in 1990, the franchise had already been confused and diluted. Paul Verhoeven was out, opting instead to direct that summers brilliant Total Recall, and in was Empire Strikes Back director, Irvin Kirshner, with a screenplay co-written by Frank Miller. Given the first films tonal similarities (coincidental though they may have been) to Millers seminal The Dark Knight Returns graphic novel, and the man who directed the very best Star Wars film, what could possibly go wrong?

 

Quite a bit, it would turn out.

 

Much like RoboCop: The Animated Series was the harbinger of Robos many weaknesses as an action character, RoboCop 2 exposed how poorly the franchise could fare when the razor sharp wit of the first film was replaced by more on-the-nose situations and an ultimately tedious drugs are bad message. RoboCop 2s best sequence remains the roll-out of potential "RoboCop 2" models, each one more terrifying and prone to malfunction than the last. The scene is played for laughs, but watching it today, the evil scientists quest to improve on the intangible formula that made RoboCop the character so effective can almost be seen as a metaphor for how the suits desperate desire to turn RoboCop the concept into a viable franchise misfired at every turn. Kurtwood Smith and Miguel Ferrer are sorely missed, as is anything resembling the title characters growth after his breakthrough final word of the first film: Murphy.

 

Which brings us to another issue that has hampered the growth of a RoboCop franchise. The first film deals with Alex Murphys violent transformation from man into machine, and his painful crawl back to humanity, and really, all the rotten bastards he annihilates along the way are just there to give him something to do and keep the audience awake. By his final line in the film, Alex Murphy has appeared to, at least somewhat, regain his soul. But all future iterations of the character conveniently ignore this, either via necessity or plot device, in order to keep Robo as a monotonous robotic law enforcement machine. To keep this in strictly geeky terms, imagine if Luke Skywalker was the same whiny hothead in Return of the Jedi as he was in the original Star Wars, and youre getting to the crux of the problem.

 

While the less said about RoboCop 3, the better, its unavoidable. It's unfair to pick on Robert Burke, the actor tasked with replacing Peter Weller (who felt that David Cronenberg's film version of, of all things, Naked Lunch, was a better career move than getting in the metal suit for the third installment), as the writing was already on the wall for this flick. Monster Squad director Fred Dekker stepped in. I wanted to pay homage to Verhoeven and get back to the roots of what the character was all about, he said. I wanted this movie to be a much broader comic book action-adventure than the previous two movies had been...and because kids seem to love this character, we were also aiming for a PG-13 rating. RoboCop 3 is not as violent or brutal as the other two films."

 

The contradictory nature of this statement, from wanting to pay homage to Verhoevens vision to wanting to make a film suitable for kids, certainly encapsulates many of the problems, not just with RoboCop 3, but with the franchise as a whole at this point. The addition of a jetpack may help with RoboCops mobility issues, and as the remake has proven, making an effective PG-13 RoboCop film is certainly within the realm of possibility, that wasn't the case with this unfortunate entry, ninja robots and all.

 

Interlaced throughout RoboCops career were a number of comic books (of varying quality) from publishers as diverse as Marvel, Dark Horse, Avatar Press, BOOM! Studios, and Dynamite. At least Marvels Judge Dredd-lite 23 issue ongoing series was weirder and more violent than the cartoon it ran at the same time with. Avatar published a comic book adaptation of an early draft of the Frank Miller RoboCop 2 screenplay. Indeed, the only one that truly distinguishes itself is Frank Miller and Walt Simonsons 1992 Robocop vs. Terminator for Dark Horse Comics, which is every bit as awesome as the title makes it sound (and which spawned a decent Sega Genesis game, too!). However, Robos comic history is a tangled web of its own, and you can read more about it here.

 

Still, In six short years, RoboCop had gone from a franchise that started out with such promise to...well...not very promising. It might just be that the character simply wasnt built to sustain the kind of multi-media storytelling that his corporate masters envisioned for him. Robo only fared marginally better in two live-action television versions of his story.

 

The first, RoboCop: The Series, ran for 22 episodes, toned down the violence, and amped up the satire...to mixed results. RoboCop: The Series came from the minds of Ed Neumier and Michael Miner, writers of the first film, and the show borrowed elements from their unproduced sequel, RoboCop: The Corporate Wars. While the show had some reasonable production values for a syndicated show, ratings were poor, recognizable characters beyond Robo were noticeably absent, and the series often took bizarre turns...like the time RoboCop took on a superhero named Commander Cash, played by Rowdy Roddy Piper.

 

The next, RoboCop: Prime Directives, a mini-series of four feature length episodes fares little better, despite being less bashful about the occasional bit of ultra-violence. Just as RoboCop: The Series ignores the events of the sequels, the exact relationship Prime Directives has to the previous TV series or anything beyond the first film is murky at best. While the animated series and comic books couldnt be expected to necessarily agree with the more graphically violent films, the constant shuffling of continuity between the live-action interpretations of RoboCop help to illustrate the insurmountable problems of the first films legacy.

 

So, taking all of this into account, its easy to see how a studio might be willing to take a different road with the RoboCop concept. Jose Padilhas RoboCop remake elicited strong feelings from fans (before any had even seen a single frame of film), simply because the original is such a revered piece of genre filmmaking. And while the RoboCop reboot is a conflicted and not entirely effective film, there is one thing it inarguably did much better than the original: this RoboCop had all of its franchise ducks in a row, right out of the gate.

 

Setting aside the toned down violence and profanity, and the decidedly unsubtle (but still effective) FOX News jabs, Joel Kinnamans RoboCop was a more franchise-friendly character than Peter Wellers RoboCop ever could have been. The film itself even seems to engage in a little meta-commentary on this, as RoboCop is never sold to the public as product but as Alex Murphy, the heroic cop who has been transformed into a machine in order to continue to serve the community that he nearly gave his life for.

 

Other than the films middle act, where Murphys emotions and personality are chemically suppressed in order to make him a more effective fighting machine, theres very little doubt that the man in the machine will eventually emerge. Murphy awakens fully (and horrifyingly) aware of what he has lost and can never regain. While this makes for a far less conflicted RoboCop film than its 1987 progenitor, it did allow the lead actors face and unaltered voice more prominence throughout the film. So, that issue with Murphy struggling to regain his humanity, only to accept that hes as human as hes going to get at the end of the original RoboCop, and then have that all be promptly forgotten in the sequels? Fixed.

 

And then theres the mobility issue. This sleek, tactical Robo was able to run at top speed, leap from high places, and essentially run circles around his Frankensteins monster forebear. Is it possible that previous Robo-incarnations would have taken this route were Rob Bottins incredible prosthetic suit not so cumbersome? Perhaps. Would it have added anything to the story other than some visual pizazz? Probably not.

 

The 2014 movie did manage to slip a few ambitious (although somewhat muddled) messages in that would be worthy of any RoboCop update, reboot or otherwise. But these same themes are equally susceptible to being as completely mishandled by future writers and directors as those in the original. But since it doesn't look like we're likely to get a sequel to this one, none of this really matters.

 

The RoboCop concept is too good not to exploit. The original film will stand the test of time, and nothing that any reboot can do could possibly diminish that legacy more than what the sequels and other attempts to cash in already have. RoboCop 1987 may have to remain preserved as a virtually perfect action film, and it's unlikely we'll ever see anything quite like it again.

[edjr 5,547]

Didn't see it

[patweisers44 697]

Never watched it. Hate this genre of films.

[Sho Nuff 719]

Watched it last week...it didn't hold up well.

Robocops gun was awesome though.

[tanatastic 2,061]

Epic flick then, still is now. Never even heard of a straight man who didn't see this as a kid. Only at the GC.

[Thornton Melon 542]

First movie I brought my wife (then girlfriend) to see. I was a hopeless romantic....

[iam90sbaby 2,120]

I was -3 when this came out.

[Frozenbeernuts 1,652]

Epic flick then, still is now. Never even heard of a straight man who didn't see this as a kid. Only at the GC.

Completely agree. This movie does hold up imo. I actually forgot how good it was since I hadn't seen it since I was a kid. I watched it a few years ago and was thoroughly entertained

[vuduchile 1,940]

I remember thinking it was a surprisingly good story for an action flick. But, that was 30 years ago. I have a hard time believing it holds up all that well. Maybe I'll watch it with the kids.

[SUXBNME 1,322]

Didn't see it

[ROCKFORD 134]

Epic flick then, still is now. Never even heard of a straight man who didn't see this as a kid. Only at the GC.

 

darn, i guess you guys are right ...

 

i am gay.

[tanatastic 2,061]

darn, i guess you guys are right ...

 

i am gay.

No ones judging. We are accepting of all races and preferences here. Some of Drobeskis best friends are ghey.

[Frozenbeernuts 1,652]

No ones judging. We are accepting of all races and preferences here. Some of Drobeskis best friends are ghey.

The buddies that suck his dlck?

[shotsup 831]

Never saw it

[wiffleball 4,631]

http://www.denofgeek.com/us/movies/robocop/233032/robocop-at-30-the-franchise-of-diminishing-returns?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

 

Yup

[DonS 3,063]

Loved the "bitches leave" line. Fun to watch Red from That 70s Show as the villian.

[IGotWorms 3,302]

Paul Verhoeven is one of my favorite filmmakers. Even his sh1tty movies (like Showgirls) are secretly great

[Filthy Fernadez 2,696]

Was and still is a great flick. Judging a movie by today's standard effects, etc.... would have plenty of classic films failing.

 

Robocop (Murphy) should have nailed the brunette that got lipstick on his display.

[ROCKFORD 134]

Paul Verhoeven is one of my favorite filmmakers. Even his sh1tty movies (like Showgirls) are secretly great

 

what was wrong with showgirls?