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Continuing with the theme of over the top violent 80s action movies, here's Robocop! While it IS still possible to make a movie as ultra-violent as Robocop today, it is NOT possible to aim it at the sort of mainstream action movie audience. Anyway, we start off with a local newscast, with commercials in it. This is the secret appeal of Robocop you see. It has all these tongue-in-cheek sorta-dystopian Evil corporations based TV commercials all through it. Tokyo Gore Police pays some pretty great homages to it... and come to think of it, you could make an argue that the whole point of that movie is to be this movie on steroids.
Moving on to a Totally Generic Police Station, we have Robocop showing up for his first day working for this particular police stat- boobs? OK, I could have sworn I'd seen this movie and would NOT be invoking the boobs-by-paragraph-3 rule, but no, there's a totally random topless female there while we're introducing our main character. Not as part of her uniform or anything, she's just getting trained. Anyway though, as I was saying, Robocop, or, as I suppose we should be calling him at this point, Regularcop, just got transfered to Detroit here by the evil and extremely ambiguously named corporation, OCP. In addition to being an anagram for COP, which I'm sure someone thought was clever, it stands for Omni-Consumer Products. So... one would figure they just make, you know, just about anything you can go buy in a store. What they actually seem to mainly be into though is property development and privatized services normally handled by the government. Not just the cop thing either, right now they're having a big corporate meeting about how they've also taken over the running of hospitals and the space program and such. Today though, we're focusing on the police angle.
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So it's time to introduce their new Robotic Cop replacement- Roboc- oh. A stop-motion robot that's just 2 great big bird legs supporting what looks like a cockpit, with two machine guns attached called ED-209. They decide to demonstrate it for the board of directors by having someone point a gun at someone, which provokes no reaction. It only reacts if you point a gun at it... which prompts it to warn you to drop the gun, or face the consequences in 10 seconds. So the demonstrating megacorp type drops the gun, and rather famously, it fails to recognize that he's dropped it, and totally swiss cheeses his torso. Whoops. So yeah, this opens the door for someone to pitch their ALTERNATIVE robot cop notion, the whole, you know, Robocop thing. The main point of added practicality is that it's just turning a regular cop into a cyborg, so you don't have to worry about buggy AI or sensors, but I can't help but notice that there are a LOT of other problems with the whole ED design here. It can barely move, and the only things it can do besides waddle about are talk, and vaporize torsos with total overkill gunfire. As I recall, later in the movie, or maybe one of the sequels, a big point is made about it being pretty well thwarted by a staircase. So... you can't run people down at all, you can't capture people in any way, not that that seems to be an issue in a movie which treats ANY criminal as an inhuman monster who can be killed with no ethical qualms at all, and even if you're just going to have it march up and kill people, it's a huge target with really limited mobility.
This by the way is probably my last chance to observe that Regularcop has a really weird look. He looks like some sort of elongated stand-up comedian zombie. Like, take Ryan Stiles, or the guy who played Joey on Full House, stretch their face out vertically, and then remove their soul. That's what this guy looks like. Him and his partner are out to arrest this group of bad guys who robbed a bank or something. Both are really lousy cops quite frankly. His partner walks right up to someone, close enough for her gun to easily be knocked out of her hands, and then gives him permission to lower his hands because he was taking a leak when she came up on him. Then Regularcop here, he just kinda blunders right in to an ambush while she's busy being unconscious for a conveniently perfect amount of time. They taunt him for a while before their leader uses a shotgun to make his right hand explode. Flat out. I'm not saying blown off, I'm not saying heavily damaged. I'm saying the prop people for this movie made a blood and meaty chunk filled hand prop and then proceeded to have it explode when shot at. He then stands back up, at which point everyone else starts having fun with their shotguns. It's kinda like those old DOS era games where you have a bunch of tanks on a randomly generated field of terrain, and everytime a shot lands, it vaporizes a chunk of the landscape, and everything falls back down above it. The landscape in this case being Regularcop. They also shoot him in the temple, which you'd think would cost them the brain that was kinda the whole point of this.
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So now we've got this first person shot from Robocop's perspective, as doctors and engineers are installing his scan line covered visual sensors and demonstrate various equipment functions... also every time he starts up it actually has a little command line prompt in the corner saying Loading BIOS and Checking RAM and such, which is amazingly accurate for this sort of thing. I actually really like this scene, with all this time lapsery, talking about how they managed to save his original arm, but then someone saying so? The robo-arm we have is totally better, throw that lame meat one out, and having a drunken new year's party at one point in there... and explaining how full conversion cyborgs need to eat small amounts of what's essentially baby food to sustain their remaining organic bits and not be too hard on the abbreviated digestive system. Honestly, this whole bit set of scenes here is just "We brought a total nerd in to write this part of the script. It's not anywhere near Masamune Shirow levels of putting thought into the whole cyborg concept, but it's still actually rather impressive. So yeah, Robocop. There's actually a fair degree of robotic type AI thrown in there, I guess to compensate for the partially blown out brain. Presumably they mainly just wanted the back end of the brain, to get the whole proper identification of threats problem sorted out, and most of that grey matter and memories we don't really need.
Anyway, his first nice out on patrol, in his totally regular squad car, he goes to a convenient store being robbed, bends the barrel of the robber's shotgun around, tosses him throw a display, and then leaves. Uh... are you going to book him or something? It's weird to just kinda drive off with him still lying there, not even unconscious, just pretty beat up. He then immediately drives off to stop 2 generic punks from raping some girl, getting there early enough in the proceedings that you kinda wonder who called 911. Here, he shoots one of the two in the crotch, robotically informs the girl that a counsellor will be by to help her deal with the trauma, and again, just kinda leaves. Not killing anyone here, which is impressively moral, but again, no arrests, just roughing people up a bit, waving to victims, and wandering off. Crime #3 is a hostage situation where he punches the guy out a window to where some real cops are. Oh, and sudden wonderful commercial for what's essentially the actual Nuclear War card game, done in cheesy Battleship style. The commercials are seriously the highlight of this movie. By the way, you know what really bugs me about Robocop? We've got this fully, thickly armored body, even the eyes are covered by a big ol' visor thing, but then there's this big open area around his mouth so we can see his full pouty lips. It's just WEIRD looking.
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Oh, and now we have an oddly long scene of some generic corporate dudes going to the bathroom. Seriously. It eventually gets into Corporate Dude A chewing out Corporate Dude B for making a way better robot cop than his, griping about how he already totally had a military contract lined up and a parts replacement plan all mapped out, "Who cares if they worked or not!" Well... your prospective buyers I'd assume. I mean, even without an actually functional prototype for an alternate take on the angle, as I was saying before, your other robot project totally sucked. People don't buy things after initial product demos show them to still be massively buggy. Anyway though, later that night, Robocop has a nightmare about the whole getting liquified by gunfire thing that happened while he was still Regularcop. This freaks the scientists monitoring him out a fair bit, particularly when he gets up and wanders off presumably in search of revenge... which, really shouldn't be a problem. People don't seem to mind cop killers getting what's coming to'em. On his way out though, he bumps into his old partner, who somehow manages to recognize him based only on his lips, but... really isn't particularly surprised or otherwise emotive. Just, "Oh hey, is that you Murphy?" She gets really chewed out by this by the panicky dudes in charge for some reason, who you'd figure would be more concerned with following him, as he literally JUST walked out the door. I mean, it's still swinging closed. But I guess it's more important to continue to establish that Evilcorp is Evil.
So here's a random biker threatening a gas station attendant with an uzi to give him all his money and then let him fill his tank. He actually looks kinda like Dane Cook, and has a neat little... what do you call those things they have instead of ties in Texas? Where it's just like a shoelace with a clasp? In this case, a nifty skull clasp. Anyway, this guy is one of the dudes who sorta-killed Regularcop, and again, somehow manages to immediately recognize him on sight. Apparently these are like the world's most unique, unforgettable lips ever. That or the scriptwriters and character designers just WERE NOT on speaking terms, at all. I'm going with the lips thing though. But anyway, Robocop is kinda curious about this encounter, because he was just there doing his job really, so after the biker blows some gas pumps up and flees, he goes back to the station and pulls up the files on this guy, and his accomplices, and their victims. All of this kinda freaks out the various other cops despite it kinda being, you know, standard procedural detective work. It's like, "Dear gods! He's doing his job just like he's supposed to! How is that possible?" Anyway though, yeah, this kinda jogs his memories that, oh yeah, I'm that dude. I should go see what the wife and kid have been up to, they've apparently been told I was dead, that's no good! So he goes to his old house, which is kinda trashed and abandoned and full of flashback triggers, and also on the market. Shocking! Where to next Robocop?
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Why a random techno dance club of course! Kind of surreal seeing that, but apparently it's a known hang out of a member of the evil gang, and he's going to interrogate him. There's some more random nudity here, Ębut, much like the earlier scene, it is WEIRDLY downplayed. It's like, there is no logical reason at all for every 5th girl in this club to be topless, so the only reason to do it is just for the sake of gratuitous nudity, but the camera doesn't focus in on any of'em. It just totally doesn't care. Random incidental background detail, we're here to focus on the plot dagnabit! Anyway, now we've got some fairly random scenes of people using and selling cocaine, and Evil Corporate Guy who designed a really lame robot being generically evil and mailing someone a live grenade. Also, is the leader of the gang from this movie the dad from That 70's Show or something? He looks really really familiar but I can't quite place him, so, characters from shows I'm familiar with only through ad saturation is a good bet.
Eventually though, Robocop wanders in to their evil cocaine lab and decides to arrest everyone. They decline coming quietly, and literally everyone in the room pulls a gun out, mostly shotguns and uzis and assault rifles. Shooting Robocop, a whole whole lot, has no visible effect, but they just keep doing it while he starts returning fire and killing a fair number. Their leader he tries to actually read his rights and properly process though. He roughs him up a bit while he's at it, but he really gives all vengeful cyborg killing machines a bad name by showing restraint, and bringing him in rather than killing him on the spot. Honestly, that is TOTALLY TOTALLY weird by the logic of anything like this. This is not supposed to be the sort of movie where anyone has any respect for the sanctity of life, especially when it comes to, you know, the second-most cartoonishly evil person in the movie. That 70's Dad explains while being arrested though that he totally should be immune to being arrested, because he's an employee of the Evil Megacorp that owns the cops. So, he goes to arrest our terrible roboticist friend. This fails though, since, as was foreshadowed pretty early on, the evil corporation installed a failsafe shutdown to keep him from arresting anyone on their board of directors. So then he sics ED on him. Oh, and when I say emergency shutdown, I mean kinda collapse to the floor all weak and fairly helpless like, instead of, you know, actually shutting down, which would make way more sense. This allows him to stager away from ED though after only being shot at a little, and make a very easy escape because, seriously, ED totally cannot navigate a staircase. Or right itself after falling over. It CAN cry like a baby while struggling to stand though which is... just really really weird. Downstairs though, we've just got the lame-o A.D. Police who've been called in to kill Robocop no questions asked. So... big hail of gunfire, no questions asked. THIS hail of gunfire messes his leg up a bit, but he still kinda manages to slowly and pathetically crawl away from a very very relaxed pursuit, until his old partner picks him up after dropping to a lower level of the parking garage and- SUDDEN Godzilla knockoff commercial with awesome stop motion! Seriously, I love these commercials! They aren't even really all that satirical, they're just random awesome commercials for fictional products. Apparently, as yon commercial transitions us into a news report, we're suddenly tossing in a new plot point that the cops are going on strike.
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This yields a lot of people saying dude, cops can't go on strike. Apparently those wacky NPCs forgot that this is actually technically just a privatized security force, so yeah, they totally can. Meanwhile Evil Corp Guy is chewing out Gang Leader because Robocop kinda has an onboard camera that recorded his exposition, and that's totally admissible as evidence. Gee, not like paying his bail and inviting him to your corporate headquarters could link you to him though, so... I'm pretty sure you're doomed now whether you destroy the records or no. Meanwhile, partner brings Robocop a cordless power screwdriver and some baby food, so he can take off his helmet and reveal a uh... totally intact face, without even really any visible scar from the shotgun blast to the temple. He warns her that she "may not like what she sees" which would be weird what with the undamaged face, but again, he was actually pretty darn creepy looking to start with, so, yeah. He asks what happened to his wife and kid, the answer being "They moved." That's it? Just, "They moved?" I was seriously expecting some kind of murder or kidnapping or threatening action here. What the heck? Anyway, we then cut to Dane Cook smashing the window of an electronics store so he can turn up the volume on the display window TV and watch his bad sitcom with sound. Apparently all the gang members who were arrested off camera are now back on the street, to see their leaders new ridiculously huge gun, which looks pretty darn awesome and just causes hilariously massive explosions. ĘSo they all start playing around with it just randomly blowing up parked cars. The simple joys of life. Seriously, that's the whole scene here: Look what I got! Boom! Cool, let me try! Boom! Wheee! Boom boom boom! OK, back to the movie now.
So did I mention how weird it is that Robocop has totally functioning eyes under his robovisor? Apparently that thing is just a plain ol' HUD. Oh, correction. It's just a visor, the robovision is in his actual eyes. Anyway, he's doing maintenance work on himself, correcting a buggy targeting system mainly. Also, seriously dude, could you put your helmet back on? It's practical and hides your freaky zombie face. Anyway though, the gang members find him, having been giving his personal GPS tracker by Evil Corp Dude. So a uh... random scene occurs, where most of them are climbing around a big ol' mess of walkways and pipes firing their explodey guns at him, but one guy arbitrarily grabs a mail truck to eventually try and ram him once he happens to come down to ground level. This fails, he hits a toxic waste container, which kinda turns him into The Toxic Avenger. But with more pain and less super strength. Also apparently less general structural integrity, because the gang leader, who just kinda got in ANOTHER car and started driving in circles eventually hits him and the effect is like driving into a big bag full of brownish water with a head sitting on top of it.
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He then gets out and shoots Partner in a few Designated Good Guy Areas, his remaining goon drops some random junk from the dump they're apparently in on Robocop with a steam shovel, Leader stabs Robocop in the shoulder with a makeshift spear... why not the face? Then Robo counters by stabbing him in the neck with his fist mounted datajack spike. Did I mention he had one of those? Apparently in the future USB has been replaced with big long spike connectors. Oh, and Partner uses a hilarious gun to blow the cab of the steam shovel away. She's pretty hurt, but he says not to worry, because clearly, the cops can fix up anyone who works for'em just fine.
So then he goes to evil corporate HQ, blows up ED who's outside trying to threaten him, and walks into a board meeting to break the situation down for them. It's just pretty much: "Hello Officer, what seems to be the trouble?" "OK, this guy here is wanted for murder, but my programming doesn't allow me to do anything to anyone on the board of directors here, see, here's him confessing on video, let me upload it to your monitors here with my bloody datajack." "Yeah, that's pretty evil." "I sure am! I'll shoot you all with this gun I snuck in to the meeting if you make a move." "Uh, yeah. That's not kosher, you're fired." Robocop shoots him causing him to fall through the very high window, "Thank you." "Wow, that was some real nice shootin' son, what's your name?" "Murphy." Credits. By the way, those last 3 lines? And that first line for the matter? Those are all the actual quotes.
So... that's Robocop. Crazy over the top violence, wacky commercials, surprisingly well written cyborgery, more crazy over the top violence. It's actually a really really good bad movie all things considered. Now, to move on from here and cover Robocop 2 and 3, that would be totally pointless, right? They're pretty much just more of the same, aren't they? Well yes... but they're also written by Frank Miller. You can't pass up a chance to make snarky comments about things written by Frank Miller. It's pretty much the law.
