The remake of Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 sci-fi classic RoboCop is due out in theaters in a few months, and most audiences, from what I have been able to surmise through unscientifically casual conversations, are not looking forward to it. Why, they ask, remake a movie like RoboCop, which is almost perfect already? RoboCop is well-regarded, well-reviewed, and well-beloved by many sci-fi fans over a certain age.
What’s that you say? Something is well-regarded, well-reviewed, and well-beloved? Why, that sounds like prime fodder for Trolling, the CraveOnline weekly feature wherein we deliberately subvert the dominant paradigms, all to make you mad. Credibility be damned, it’s time to take a piss all over everything you love.
And if you love RoboCop, read on in hatred, because Trolling has found a few ways to gleefully and enthusiastically tear down that one as well. Consider that RoboCop, often praised as a salient satire on ’80s corporate culture and one of the more entertaining sci-fi films of the decade, might actually suck. Let’s look into why.
RoboCop is a poignant satire of corporate rampage, is deceptively sophisticated, and can be seen as an ultra-violent blast of fun. It’s also deeply flawed when you look at RoboCop himself, who is expected to be seen as a hero, but is truly monstrous. The messages of violence are muddled, and it’s hard to see if Verhoeven was trying to lambast violence or glorify it. In certain sequences, it plays like a horror movie. Maybe this movie sucks after all.
Until next week, let the hate mail flow.
Witney Seibold is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can read his weekly articles Trolling, Free Film School and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
RoboCop SUCKS!
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Violence Begets Violence
RoboCop was built from the remains of a relatively peaceful police officer who was violently gunned down by a gang of violent criminals. Violent crime has become so bad in the future, that gangs can wander the streets with hand-held tank cannons and blow away storefronts without any serious or immediate repercussions. Is it me, or does it seem thematically backward to fight this brutal violence with a form of violence that is just as – if not more – brutal? Murphy, a peaceful man, was not really turned into a better policeman. He was turned into a killbot. That’s so sad.
This would be fine if RoboCop were interested in irony or tragedy, but our machine man’s violent acts are depicted as heroic and righteous. The movie’s central lesson is that violent crime can be stopped with more violence. Oh, there’s no way a violent street gang would think to retaliate against such explicit police brutality. No way at all. Just kill everyone, and crime stops! What a bad massage.
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RoboCop is Not a Very Good Cop…
Here’s how many people RoboCop arrests over the course his movie: 1. He is programmed to be a police officer, but he doesn’t really ever act like one. He doesn’t stop crime so much as rough up bad guys. When it comes to actually stopping ongoing criminal activity, he’s worse than Batman. Sure, he discovers a conspiracy amongst the OCP suits that funded his creation, but he still doesn’t arrest the bad guys, preferring to shoot them. How about the first liquor store heist? He gets shot a bunch, and then disarms the criminal. Does he cuff the criminal and bring him in? No. He throws the criminal into a refrigerator.
Also never mind that he can’t run, operate delicate machines, is not indestructible, has no qualms about being shot numerous times, and can’t even draw his gun very quickly, as it’s stored inside his leg. He’s about as tactful and graceful as the Incredible Hulk on PCP.
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…In Fact, He Commits 16 MURDERS!
RoboCop has three directives: Serve the public trust, protect the innocent, and uphold the law. He’s not really seen doing any of those things, is he? Indeed, when it comes to the “uphold the law” part, he’s downright defiant. Like when he smashes that mugger into a fridge. Or when he shoots a potential rapist’s balls off (ouch!). Or when he kills sixteen people. That’s right: RoboCop is seen murdering more people over the course of the film than any single bad guy.
Again: This would be fine if the film saw RoboCop as a dark, out-of-control monster. But again: RoboCop is depicted as heroic. He’s a tragic figure whose conflict is not that he’s been made into a killbot (i.e. an innocent man forced to kill), but that he misses his old life as a father and husband, and who can’t go back to that life because, well, he’s essentially part truck.
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They Can’t Make a Robot that Goes Down Stairs?
OCP's first model of RoboCop was the ED-209, a walking, talking tank monster. It's cool looking, although it serves the exact same function as RoboCop: To murder criminals pretty much indiscriminately. RoboCop does battle with ED-209 in the movie, and is able to outrun it because ED-209's giant feet can't negotiate regular-sized stairs. When it falls over, it can't get back up. I'm sorry, but that's a dumb conceit. OCP can make RoboCops, but they didn't think to make a robot that can walk down a small flight of stairs? It's one of the more notorious villain weaknesses in cinema history.
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Is RoboCop Any Different than ED-209?
One is seen as heroic, and one is seen as evil. I guess because one can “think” and the other can't. I guess. Actually, when you look at the function of the two robot characters, they are nearly identical. They are both nigh-indestructible tank machines intended to be let loose into the streets of Detroit to murder people. RoboCop has a human brain, ED-209 doesn't.
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A Single Gang Dominates All of Detroit?
Detroit is, as of 2013, a city of some 4.2 million people. In the future, I'm guessing that number will only increase. Are you telling me that a city of that size can be kept in a criminal stranglehold by a single badass gangster and a small team of thugs? Sure, there are other criminals around, and surely there are other gangs at work, but it would have been nice if we had seen them. The way the movie plays, it looks like Kurtwood Smith is responsible for every crime in the entire city.
