RoboCop 2 (1990)

Combining fewer strong elements and even more flaws, RoboCop 2 detaches its hero even further from his partial humanity while providing mediocre thrills, a story that runs too long, and including some downright laughable elements.

The original RoboCop was a criticism of the Reaganomics-driven, capitalist-leaning society of the 1980s. It portrayed the very worst depths that a capitalist society could fall to with an utter lack of regulation and common sense. It was sensationalist propaganda to a point, which makes the main theme of RoboCop 2 all the more amusing. This time around, the titular character is waging a war on drugs, something advocated by Ronald Reagan. This powerful new drug called Nuke is being created and distributed by a man named Cain, who has a messiah complex from too many hits of his own creation. He’s rich, powerful and very well armed.

Behind the scenes, the Omni Consumer Products corporation is still trying to realize their vision of destroying Detroit and building a new Utopian metropolis in its place. Their latest move is to try and push the city to defaulting on its debt, which would allow OCP to foreclose and effectively take full control of the city. It’s an interesting concept, but one that requires some serious suspension of disbelief to make work. To help further the conflict, OCP creates a police strike by canceling the police department’s pension program, another jab at capitalism and one of the few elements in the film that actually still resonates today.

With only RoboCop to walk the streets in the name of justice, OCP moves ahead with their RoboCop 2 program. Instead of using the brain of an officer with strong convictions and willingness to uphold the law, they seek to use the vilest brains imaginable, bent on destruction and power. The RoboCop 2 program is to be used to eradicate civilians still living in Detroit once OCP forces the city into default.

I don’t know if it was done intentionally as a part of the cultural criticism or not, but the inclusion of a foul-mouthed 10-year-old boy who helps sell and eventually lead the drug operation is both laughable and repugnant at the same time. I have a hard time imagining any society that falls apart to the point where an elementary school kid could run a multi-million dollar drug empire. For me, it killed any remaining chance of me taking this film seriously. Though after the first film, how could anyone take RoboCop 2 seriously? What’s worse is that we’re supposed to feel sorry for this little brat when he lies dying in RoboCop’s arms later on.

RoboCop 2 runs longer than its predecessor, which is a major problem because RoboCop 2 has nothing new to add to the series and world of RoboCop. It gives us a few new, hopelessly evil villains and a new plot by OCP to pursue their ends by any means necessary. The flaws in OCP’s plans are quite obvious but the evil rich men are somehow oblivious to it. How can they honestly expect to build a Utopian city and prevent poor districts from springing up and crime from finding a home in an already corrupt idea? These are the sort of things that proof-reading and rewrites help to work out, neither of which must have happened here.

The visual effects are lackluster, even by 1990 standards. When RoboCop inevitably faces off against the RoboCop 2 model, there’s a whole lot of blue screen work and some atrocious stop motion photography. It’s almost amenable because the RoboCop 2 unit wasn’t exactly something that a person could have dressed up in and made a good fight scene with, but they way they tried to make these scenes work didn’t attempt anything cutting edge or groundbreaking. They fell back on tried and true techniques that were already becoming dated.

The biggest affront in my mind came at the beginning of the film. RoboCop was still trying to come to terms with his human past. He was essentially stalking his former wife and family by driving past their house. When confronted by the police department and his former wife, RoboCop abandoned his quest for grasping his partial humanity outright. Some might argue that he was being noble and did it so his wife had closure, but it strips the character of all humanity and allows the film to differ from any weighty character development in favor of violence, explosions and vulgarity.

RoboCop 2 isn’t so bad that it’s not worth watching. It’s just an underwhelming action flick for anyone hoping for more than what was given in the original. Sure, the sarcastic commercials still break up the story line from time to time and RoboCop peddles cheesy lines just like before while dishing out his own brand of police brutality, but there’s little that makes RoboCop 2 feel like its own film. It’s little more than a continuation of all the worst parts of the original. For some, that will be enough, but not for me.

RATING: 2.25 out of 5

Robocop (1987)

For the foul-mouthed, immature man-child, the obscenity and violence in RoboCop make it a masterpiece. For the rest of us, this dystopian future flick comes up a few rewrites short of a well-oiled machine.

In the not-too-distant future, the city of Detroit is a mess. Things are so bad and the city is so far in debt that it has sold its police forces to a private company, Omni Consumer Products. The firm, however, has plans to ransack and raze Detroit and replace it with a new utopian city. With the crime rate high, OCP develops a robotic law enforcer. The first demonstration fails miserably and a volunteer ends up brutally slain by the machine due to a malfunction. An ambitious developer in the firm uses the incident to greenlight his alternative project line, the RoboCop.

The RoboCop enforcer requires a human touch. In order for the RoboCop to function properly, a human brain is needed for some reason to maintain some kind of system balance. With cops getting killed all over Detroit, OCP has plenty of candidates to choose from.

Enter officer Alex Murphy, a determined cop who values justice and service to the city. While making a surprise raid on a dangerous gang, Murphy is captured and tortuously executed by the thugs and their boss Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith- aka Topher Grace’s dad on That 70’s Show). When brought to the hospital morgue though, Murphy is used as the first active host for RoboCop.

With a simple set of directives in his memory banks, RoboCop does a smash-up job fighting crime in the city. He’s virtually bulletproof, a wicked shot and has amazing strength. Then his human brain begins injecting memories from Murphy’s life into his mind. RoboCop struggles with seeing images and nearly remembering the wife and family he used to have and also has flashes of the goons who killed him.

At this point, the film heads in the wrong direction. Instead of RoboCop seeking an identity for himself aside from the steel and wires of his makeup, he instead makes it his personal mission to hunt down and eliminate Boddicker and his minions. RoboCop hits a few snags along the way as Boddicker is secretly working for OCP by raising crime rates to drive people out of Detroit, thereby bringing OCP’s dream of rebuilding the city all the more closer to fruition. But of course, RoboCop rises above the corporate corruption and upholds the law, seemingly bringing an end to all the bad guys.

After looking into the history of the conception and development of RoboCop, I understand that the filmmakers were looking to include heavy doses of dark cultural satire, but the problem with making fun of the culture of your time is that it rarely ever translates well for future generations. Twenty-one years after its release, RoboCop fails to resonate on a cultural level.

In the past, many books and movies had been made about dystopian societies growing out of extreme liberal social policies so I guess RoboCop is the other end of the spectrum. The 1980’s saw the rise of powerful corporations and there were plenty of people in Hollywood that hated it. Ultra-liberal leaning writers and producers were looking for a way to make a statement against what they saw was a conglomorative threat to their liberal ideals. They found it (or they thought they had) in RoboCop. It’s a violent movie that will appeal to young males and supply a subtle dose of anti-corporate subtext.

The filmmakers also include bizarre and random segments of news shows for that dystopian future. These segments fill in gaps while RoboCop is being programmed and between a few major plot segments. They were designed to show even further evidence of the dangers that selfish capitalistic policies pose to civilization if let run rampant, but it all comes across as dated and hokey. There was simply too much time and effort put into refining these anti-corporate extras and not enough time developing a compelling story.

This brings us to the film’s substance. At one point, RoboCop’s memories of Murphy’s family become so frequent it seems as if he’ll try to find them and reconcile with his loved ones and himself about the machine he has become. But, instead of taking an introspective angle, the film becomes a revenge piece. RoboCop goes after the bad guy, which almost makes him a tool really. Sure, in the end his sense of honor and duty help him put a stop to his developers' nefarious plans, but is that really enough of a message?

I don’t think so. Sure, it shows that duty and honor can overcome the most intimate of villains, even those posing as your friends, but that message has been delivered so many times in movies that it’s a cliché. Besides, there was no real conflict for RoboCop to bring down his creators. His programming tried to stop him, but there was no ethical or moral dilemma present.

That’s the big problem- as hard as they may have tried, RoboCop is too far removed from his humanity to even affect us as viewers. They got close, but then shied away for a path that would keep the bloodthirsty adolescents happy. And bloodthirsty it is! Even RoboCop’s methods cross the line on police brutality by today’s standards. I don’t know if this was intended as part of the anti-cultural subtleties or not, but it was jarring nonetheless.

I liked some of the gritty filmmaking techniques that gave a better sense of realism and (in some cases) a quasi-indie feel, but RoboCop is nothing more than an underdeveloped guilty pleasure.

RATING: 2.75 out of 5