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I love how the Robocop series officially takes place in Detroit. I mean, if you have to pick a major American city to give everyone huge guns and have them fight in abandoned warehouses in ultra-violent generic criminal vs. cop action, well yes. Detroit. Anyway, Robocop 2 starts right off with the whole commercial/newscast angle, with that guy I really like but can never remember his name, the CEO from Gremlins 2 and Scrooged, selling an anti-theft system for cars that straps people in and electrocutes them, then news stories about a nuclear plant in the middle of the rainforest melting down and how 5 cities nationwide actually bought a supply of ED-209s. The accompanying footage is just one of them lying on it's side flailing its legs wildly, because even in-story we're totally admitting it's a terrible terrible product. There's also a bit about some new drug called Nuke, which is probably important as a plot device.
After that, since this is a movie written by Frank Miller, we have some hookers beating up criminals. Just a little of that, just enough to justify a lame joke. Then we switch to some other generic criminals robbing a weapon shop. And when I say weapon shop I mean they steal a rocket launcher that's hanging on a display shelf, fully loaded evidently. Also a bazooka, and what appears to be a tommygun. So...yeah. Anyway, it seems this is a pretty big crime wave because the police are on strike. Wow. Remember that total throw-away plot point where the police were going on strike in the last movie? Way to remember that... after finishing the script, and releasing the movie, and a few years going by, and switching writers, but hey! Anyway, Robocop shows up because apparently he's not in the union, and kills 2 out of 3 of them, before going into the whole "freeze, you're under arrest" sorta deal with the last one. After that it's off to a drug lab he finds out about them, and HELLO? SOMEONE LEFT A BABY. IGNORE ME! Right, anyway, everyone has machine guns and starts firing all over and again, someone working in the drug lab brought their baby along with them. The guy in charge, who appears to be some sort of filthy dirty hippy, just kinda strolls out the back door while this is going on. Oh, and here's Partner again, who is not a cyborg, despite the ending of the previous movie suggesting that pretty heavily. Seriously though, Robocop's voice really is a lot like the Grand Galactic Inquisitor's, and there is a baby present for all this, so it's really giving me flashbacks. Especially since by the end he's trying to talk calmly to deal with someone trying to use the baby as a hostage, but still saying everything in his booming robo-monotone... which it's weird that he has what with his whole mouth/throat type area being pretty much his only non-robotic bits.
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Anyway, we then move on to a new plot point where Robocop's wife from back when he was Regularcop is all freaking out over her husband being horribly pulped and rebuilt as a cold callous robotic killing machine, who keeps angstily driving by her house and looking in the windows. It's the sort of ethical quandry that might be really interesting if we were going for a serious sci-fi story, but this is Robocop here! Nuances emotions have no place here! So yeah, Robocop tells his wife, no really, I'm not your husband, I'm just some robot who they stuck a rubber mask of your dead husband on "to honor him" so you can go on and grieve and get on with your life. Not in so many words of course. In like, 7 words really.
Oh, and now we have another plot point, where the entire city of Detroit has been mortgaged to OCP, and they just missed a payment, so they're foreclosing. How come today's cheesy cyberpunk stories aren't so heavy handed against the big evil corporations and banks anyway? Oh right. Anyway, despite the fact that the whole Robocop deal has really been working out great for them, "It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you, Robocop 2!" Now, I get the point of wanting to stay innovative, but you just built and tested one really successful prototype, aren't you going to try and put that into actual production? No? So yeah, we get a little aborted montage of Robocop 2 prototypes, which are really silly looking stop-motion deals, one of which even has big ol' police lights on the shoulders, the first of which shoots everyone in the room then himself, then next just rips his own head off to reveal a screaming skull, briefly. Apparently the problem here is that most dying cops don't actually WANT clunky new robotic bodies and tend to have total mental breakdowns when forced into the situation, which is understandable. Researchers suggest they really should actually, you know, screen candidates and find someone who'd actually enjoy being a cyborg. Well... yeah. Thanks for having half a brain researcher C.
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Meanwhile, back in our filler, we've got this 10 year old drug pusher dealing with a crooked cop, in an arcade. "ISN'T THIS A SCHOOL DAY?" asks Robocop of the crowd of kids within. Drug Kid by the way has this slicked back 50s greaser hair and an uzi. Also Robocop physically cannot shoot a kid apparently, but sure can rough a dirty cop up. I still love how you never see anyone actually being arrested and taken to holding cells in these movies. Either you're gunned down, or you're beaten up a bit and tossed on the floor, then apparently just left there. Moving on, here's another evil drugs dudes base, run by Evil Texan, which Robocop is, somehow, sneaking into. OK, good, he's been observed and is eing shot at... and... we uh... huh? OK, in the middle of the big abandoned factory, with have the skeleton of Elvis on display in a case, like Lenin. Kind of a non-sequitur. Shortly after puzzling over this, Robocop stumbles across Evil Hippie, at which point Kid uses a really big stationary gun to blow his right hand off, and various people start wailing on him with tasers and a big ol' car magnet. Then they strap him to a table and start wailing on him with Êsledgehammers and a jackhammer... also I am seriously not sure at this point whether Evil Hippy or Evil Kid is the one in charge of this gang, because Evil Kid sure seems to be calling an inordinate number of shots. Eventually, they find something that works, reduce robocop to a pretty cool looking twitching heap of limbs, and dump him in a back alley somewhere. Back at the station, there's a bit of a debate between a lawyer and some researchers and some cops about whether he's in agonizing pain or just bugging out. The researchers are the on the pain side incidentally. The cops are being portrayed pretty positively for being frelling striking police though.
... Dear gods. IS the kid their leader? I'm PRETTY sure it's Evil Hippy, whose name is Cain, or Kain or Cane or whatever spelling we turn out to use here, but the kid is clearly high up there. They end up bailing corrupt cop out of prison apparently, and then punishing him for spilling some beans by vivisecting him. Then we cut to someone screening more Robocop 2 candidates, specifically looking for clinically psychotic people. Seriously. The person in question would be Evil Girl, who apparently is an evil druggie type, AND an OCP researching, and possibly also a cop... you know what? I'm just going to start calling her Duran. By the way, am I the only one thinking if they want to try a new hardware configuration, and they have a totally trashed Robocop, they can just stick his brain in one of their new prototypes? Also, we're now jumping to some corporate types trying to think of good PR options for Robocop, like having him speak out about environmentalism, or visit sick orphans in hospitals. Somehow though when they start fixing him up, with the classic look, we get back into that cyborg ethics bit again, and again I'm kinda tuning out because I know we aren't really going anywhere with this.
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Later, a repaired Robocop is standing around the police station doing the robot and being way more chipper than usual. "Ready for duty partner?" "YOU BETCHA. SOUNDS TERRIFIC." Oh, and now for no reason, here's a little league team robbing an electronics department. Now here comes Partner and newly repaired and reprogrammed Robocop. He's just politely strolling up to the cop saying "I think we need to talk!" and not shooting anyone. Partner is horrified at the lack of violence and shoots him in the head. Robocop then goes and picks up the resulting corpse to read him his rights. Then he goes inside and gives the kids a cheesy speech. They immediately realize something is wrong and run. So yeah, Robocop has been reprogrammed into a Super Friends character. This results in multiple scenes of kids swearing at him and spraying him with graffiti. This eventually transitions to COMPETENT researchers looking at his current 3 Laws style objectives list, which is now like 300 items long, including stuff like "OBJECTIVE 247- Don't step in puddles." I'm still kind of unclear on how this whole programming angle is supposed to work honestly. Eventually though he just figures, nuts to this, and goes and electrocutes himself to solve the problem. Because this is a movie, and it is CLEARLY established in movies that if you want a robot to override its programming and become self-aware, you give it a massive power overload. This TOTALLY WORKS. Robocop is now completely free willed, and takes command of all the local cops to go and kill that Evil Hippie already.
At this point, I notice Robocop kinda has a purple tint going on. I'm assuming that that's always been there and there just haven't been enough daylight scenes to notice, and not that this is someone actually showing awareness of that whole neat thing you get when you run a current through titanium. By the way, did it ever occur to you how titanium is almost as silly as the sort of cheesy intentionally made up sounding resources found in a lot of recent movies, like unobtanium? It's actually sillier than adamantium because adamant isn't in most people's vocabulary. While I've been distracted mentioning this, a big fight scene happened, Evil Hippie hit Robocop with a big armored truck, and Robocop commandeered motorcycle with which to go all Brock, catch up, and ram him head on full speed, so that he goes flying through the windshield to tackle him. Now it's time for a commercial for Sunblock 5000, because in The Future, with no ozone layer, the only way to avoid a sunburn is to totally coat your body in a pint of thick blue paint. Ah, Robocop commercials, I love you so.
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So, Evil Kid is now officially running this gang. He is such a surreal character. With the exception of the one scene where Robocop is hardwired not to execute him because he's a kid, there is every indication that this is a part written for some hardened grizzled 40 year old Machiavellian scumbag, but then he looks like Little Timmy. Anyway, he orders Duran... I think to pull the plug on a hospitalized Evil Hippie and use him as a volunteer to test this whole Robocop 2 project out on. How this works out, I have no idea whatsoever, especially when I'm not 100% sure that any of these modes of Duran are ACTUALLY the same person and not just vaguely similar looking girls. It results in a nice long shot of one of those brain eyes and spine in a big bubbly tube shots though, so hey! ... This is a rather interesting time to spontaneously cut to a telethon, but that's how Robocop editing rolls. We go scene, non-sequitur, new scene. So now we've got evil OCP dudes all MWAHAHA! We need to do something Evil or the city will make its last payment after all and we won't get to foreclose on them and we'll look all silly to our stockholders!
Now here's Evil Hippie, represented as a cutting edge 1990 rendered face on a monitor, that doesn't look QUITE as good as the toy when you start up Super Mario 64, attached to a big ol' robot body, desperately opening its Matrix of Leadership compartment to grasp desperately at a tube full of Drugs being offered if he's compliant. Wow, that's weird. Now we're jumping over to Evil Kid cutting a shady deal with the city to bail them out of their mortgage problem. You just don't get used to the oddity that is this kid. Seriously. I mean, he doesn't quite match the kid from Phantasm 3 for feeling out of place, because it's really just the age thing here, not the tone, but man it is brain hurting to see him on screen. Anyway, he's making the rather interesting point that the drug they're pushing here is actually manufactured locally, seems to have no unhealthy side effects besides addiction, and marketed way less aggressively than, say, cigarettes, so in exchange for the bailout money, it'd be nice if they could legalize it. Honestly, he's making a pretty sound argument, but then in comes Evil Hippie in a big ol' robot body to gun everyone down. Or almost everyone. We've got like, the mayor's aid, the kid, and I'm pretty sure Duran still kicking. What do I call him now though? I could use the actual official name of Robocop 2, or I could say Hippiecop, or I could go for the Phantasy Star Reference and say Androcop... ah! OK, he just popped a big TV monitor out of his head to display the polygonal hippie face, so we'll go with Max Headroom. Duran says he looks great, he offers forth a big nasty claw, because apparently he can't talk. She then tries to seduce him, saying "It'll take some getting used to." Yeah... so then he crushes her skull and heads off after Evil Kid. One of the kid's goons distracts him with that gun that blew off Robocop's hand earlier. Speaking of which, notice how little Robocop is even in this movie? I would say it's weird for the star to be getting so little screen time, but this isn't a movie about Robocop. This movie is all about the origin story of its titular character, Robocop 2. But oh, HERE'S Robocop.
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"Hey," presumably thinks Robocop, "someone pre-killed all these random goons! What gives!" Kid he finds alive and wellthough, hiding in a giant pile of money with a head injury I'm willing to bet is fake. He's totally playing the innocent here to get Robocop on his side, which I suppose is pretty believable because he's frelling 10. Oh, and it was the mayor who made it out it seems. I figured aide because, well, sleaze. Anyway though, OCP is now officially gaining control of Detroit, because this movie, if nothing else, does not forget a plot point. Their plan is pretty much to just demolish the whole city and build... well, a non-underwater version of Rapture. The mayor is pretty ticked off at the lack of any residential zoning in this newly planned city and thus we get some cheesy dialog about democracy and publicly traded stock. Anyway, they end up pulling the model city apart and having Robocop 2 arise from the middle, which leads to a shot which they TOTALLY used to misleading effect in the trailer for this movie. How dare you mislead me on the size of robots! Unfortunately, furthering this press conference with another visual aid, Mr. CEO pulls out a gigantic quantity of Nuke (our drug, I mentioned it by name ONCE right?) and uh... yeah, that's Robocop 2's form of Scooby Snack. So... he goes all kookoo for cocaine puffs, and attempts to shoot everyone and take it. Fortunately, the researcher who stuck his brain in there, who it turns out wasn't Duran after all, making things make way less sense, had the forethought to disarm his weapons. She announces this while holding up the weapon arming remote though and uh, YOINK!
Robocop of course shows up for the obligatory stop-motion-tastic fight scene. It's honestly pretty nifty, and I'm a sucker for this particular flavor of cheese. Actually, this is one of the more amusing fight scenes from anything. Not top 5, but top 20 easy. Many many cartoony sound effects, fun in an elevator shaft, and lots of robo-motor sounds. Plus no dialog at all. Mainly it's the stop-motion though. It's like, Ray Harryhausen presents the opening scene of Terminator here... you know, moreso than you could already say that about that scene. Oh, and R2 manages to carve a Harry Potter scar onto R1's helmet with an arc welder somewhere in there. At one point, Robocop just kinda falls out of the scene, and we just have a whole lot of Robocop 2 blowing up everything in sight. This is so much better of an anti-drug message than that frying pan thing. Anyway, eventually Partner remembers she's in this movie, hops in a tank, and plows him into a wall. Everyone but the soundtrack thinks that's it and starts tending the wounded, but no. Robocop shows back up, having found the Nuke lying around on the floor, and they just go ahead and hand it to him to end the rampage. Now we have a big clunky robot standing around in a euphoric state, which is, again, kinda weird. Robocop tackles him from above though and... yeah, this is totally that scene from The Princess Bride where he fights the giant... except that it ends with pulling out a brain in a jar and smashing it on the ground. For some reason, we see the Max Headroom face totally screaming in agony as he does this... shouldn't that have been turned off the instant the brain was disconnected though? What the heck?
So we're basically wrapping things up here. We've got evil corporate types setting Not-Duran as the fall guy for this whole debacle, which people are talking about like it's evil but... it's totally her fault. And, since he never showed up again, apparently Evil Kid really was fatally wounded by Robocop 2, but wanted to make the most of it. I was really expecting some end of movie gloating out of him somewhere. Weird. He's just such a weird character in general. Anyway though yeah. That was... a fitting sequel to Robocop. It nailed exactly the right weird mix of constant violence, cheesy social satire, and weirdly upbeat, refusing to acknowledge serious moral inconsistency flavored scenes, particularly the ending. Aha! John Glover! That's the guys name from Gremlins 2 and Scrooged. See I can never remember it because there's the significantly more famous Danny Glover already using half of what would otherwise be a highly memorable name.
