Skip to main content

Empire Magazine Greatest Movies List - #404: RoboCop


I know a few things about the city of Detroit: it has a world-renowned car industry, it has had economic hard times, it has a great KISS song named after it, and it is the setting for Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 dystopian action movie “RoboCop.” Detroit’s citizens have so embraced the character there was a campaign to build him a statue, which actor Peter Weller endorsed in a Funny or Die video. Appropriate, since much of the film is a satire of society, much of which still holds up today.

Though it came out in the late 80s, I became familiar with the character of RoboCop during the late 90s through various shapes or forms. There was a live-action television series, two inferior sequels, and even an animated TV series, which I used to watch in Spanish while living in South America. I did see bits and pieces of the original film, which at age 14 was somewhat of a clandestine activity considering the level of violence. The scene where Paul McCrane is almost melted by toxic waste was particularly memorable. Then in 2010 I finally sat down and watched the whole thing at a film club at Sherbrooke University when the club president asked me if I had any requests. My brainwave: a Peter Weller double feature featuring his greatest hits, “Robocop” and “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.” I swear that last one is a real movie, check it out.




But lets get back to a dystopian Detroit as seen from a Dutch filmmaker in 1987. In this (I am hoping) worse version of Motor City crime is rampant, the police are talking of going on strike, and O.C.P (Omni Consumer Products), a corrupt corporation has its hands in everything. Said corporation plans to destroy old Detroit and replace it with the utopian Delta City. But first, crime must be taken down a notch in order to secure a contract to run the police force. Senior Vice President Dick Jones proposes to unleash a robot into the streets. The robot, ED-209, is loud, clunky, and hilariously kills a board member during a demonstration. With that plan off the table, lower ranking executive Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer) pitches his plan for a half-human half-robot police officer. All they need is a nearly deceased candidate.

The lucky “candidate” will be turn out to be Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) a veteran officer with a new partner, tough female officer Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen). On their very first day of patrol they chase crime boss Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) and his gang of saddist to an abandoned steel mill. The gang captures Murphy and brutally slaughter him. He should be dead. They have literally riddled his body with bullets; one even hits his head point blank. Yet Murphy slowly awakens, not as a man but as something in between. The only thing left of his body is his head. The rest is steel and microchips.

With a set of prime directives imprinted in his brains and a large pistol lodged in his leg, RoboCop is set loose on the streets to put the fear of God in criminals. But is Murphy still in there? At first no, his thoughts are only focused on doing his job and recharging his batteries, or has corporations would call it, the perfect employee. But one night RoboCop runs into one of the men who shot him to pieces. The encounter brings back memories of his past life, including that of his wife and son, who believe him to be dead. The perfect cop now has feelings, chiefly anger, and he sets off to find the scum responsible for turning him into a tin can.

This is a very challenging role for Weller since the moment he becomes RoboCop, only his mouth is visible. He must speak in a monotone voice until his humanity slowly resurfaces. Yet we can tell there is still a human being in there, one that feels grief at the sight of his empty house. Once his helmet is removed, you can clearly see the anguish on the character’s face.

Then there is the world created by Paul Verhoeven. His film is filled with bloody violence, most so excessive it is borderline cartoonish. In fact, some of the deaths were some excessive my friends and I at the film club had no other option but to laugh when RoboCop shoots a man in the crotch by first shooting through a woman’s dress.

Since Hollywood has been remaking every movie made in the 1980s, there is a of course a remake on the way. I say why bother making a remake? Why not simply do a sequel set 25 years later? Is Detroit really that different from 1987? You could even recast Peter Weller, since RoboCop’s face may have aged, but his body is essentially spare parts that can be replaced. Also, give that man his statue.





Comments

  1. Haha god I miss RoboCop that was such an epic show. No doubt we will see Hollywood remake it but it will be rubbish like all the recent remakes they've done of good old shows!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #49: Evil Dead 2

What do you get when you mix buckets of fake blood, creative camera operators, the humour of the Three Stooges, and a man with the most recognizable chin in Hollywood? You get Evil Dead II (1987), the horror classic that somehow manages to remake the original in the first 15 minutes and yet feel entirely original. Even though it is mostly set in a cabin in the woods, that staple location in the horror genre, it feels like a roller coaster ride. This is especially true once the film's hero, the scrappy Ash Williams, embraces the madness by arming himself with a sawed-off shotgun and attaching a chainsaw where his hand used to be. "Groovy" indeed. This gore-soaked franchise has had a long run, starting off with one low-budget movie directed by a young Sam Raimi and then growing into two sequels, a remake, comic books and a TV show with three seasons. My starting point was the third entry, Army of Darkness, which moves the action to the Middle Ages with the same

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #97: Reservoir Dogs

One of the most surprising things about Quentin Tarantino’s debut film Reservoir Dogs (1992) is the fact that it has never been adapted for the stage. They will make a show out of Beauty and the Beast , Monty Python and the Holy Grail , and even Spider-Man , but somehow a movie in which most of the action takes place in a warehouse has never made it to Broadway? In any case, this was the movie that announced the arrival of the insatiable film fan that could regurgitate everything he had learned watching movies at the video store into stories filled with sudden bursts of violence, sharp-dressed characters, awesome soundtracks, and crackling dialogue.   Since this violent piece of American cinema came out at a time when I was still learning basic math in elementary school there was no way I would watch this on the big screen. However as the years went by it became a cult classic, and even a classic of the independent movies genre, and was re-released on special edition DVD for its

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #102: The Hustler

Robert Rossen’s The Hustler (1961) is proof that any sport can be used for good cinematic drama even if that sport is pool. Although this is not a game that involves a massive sport arena and bloody boxing gloves, things can get dramatically interesting if the monetary stakes are high, and visually arresting if the filmmakers shoot from the right angle. It also helps a lot if the man putting his money on the table is played by a young Paul Newman in a career-breaking role. Prior to watching the film I had a vague idea of the meaning of the word “hustling” and a rather passive interest in the game of pool. It’s a fun game to play if you are having a couple of nachos and chicken wings on a Friday evening with friends, but I didn’t see it as a spectator sport. Watching The Hustler in the classics section of Netflix two years ago was a bit of an education since it shows the sport as a way of life for some people, and a huge source of revenue for big time gamblers. Newman star as