Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob
Speaker 2: Lamb and this is Joe McCormick.
Speaker 3: And today we are going to be featuring a movie
Speaker 3: that I feel like is kind of a foundational text
Speaker 3: for my adult appreciation of cinema. It is the nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty seven sci fi action satire RoboCop, directed by Paul Verhoven. Rob.
Speaker 3: I'm so excited we're talking about RoboCop today. Did you
Speaker 3: come up? I think I know you. You came up
Speaker 3: with this topic because you recently visited some of the
Speaker 3: original locations featured in the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was on a family trip to Dallas over
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving break. We'd never been before. We went there primarily
Speaker 2: to go to Mao Wolf and then to check out
Speaker 2: various things in the city, museums and you know, restaurants
Speaker 2: and whatnot. And I I had honestly kind of forgotten
Speaker 2: about the RoboCop connection until we were there driving around,
Speaker 2: and then I look out the window and I see
Speaker 2: the Dallas City Hall, and then I remember, this is
Speaker 2: the RoboCop building. This is OCP headquarters, or at least
Speaker 2: the lower portion of it. They did a matte painting
Speaker 2: on top of that to make it into this enormous
Speaker 2: skyscraper that reaches up to the heavens. Yeah, and then
Speaker 2: was just generally impressed by the architecture in Dallas. And
Speaker 2: then once I got back, you know, we started looking
Speaker 2: at RoboCop again, I was reminded, like, just how present
Speaker 2: Dallas is in the background standing in for futuristic Detroit.
Speaker 3: Right, So RoboCop is not actually set in Dallas. It's
Speaker 3: set in near future Detroit at the time the movie
Speaker 3: was made. But some of the architectural landmarks in Dallas
Speaker 3: really communicate the feeling that they were going for in
Speaker 3: the world of RoboCop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's unmistakable even if you're not from Dallas.
Speaker 2: Like there's a car chase earlier in the early the
Speaker 2: film where you see Reunion Tower in the background, which
Speaker 2: is very identifiable structure. It's this concrete pillar, you know,
Speaker 2: jutting up into the sky and there's a sphere up there.
Speaker 2: It's not a perfect sphere, but you know, observation and
Speaker 2: restaurant deck and my family actually went up there. But
Speaker 2: it's pretty fun, has pretty cool history, Like a lot
Speaker 2: of these buildings, but yeah, it's there in the background.
Speaker 2: Anybody who knows anything about Dallas, or even seen the
Speaker 2: opening to the TV series Dallas, would have been able
Speaker 2: to recognize that this is not Detroit.
Speaker 3: This is Dallas.
Speaker 2: But you know, nice stand in lots of neat, futuristic
Speaker 2: looking architecture.
Speaker 3: So when did you first see RoboCop?
Speaker 2: I saw it, like I think a lot of people
Speaker 2: of my generation saw it way too young. I think
Speaker 2: it was playing at a friend's house or kind of
Speaker 2: like friends of the family at their house, and I
Speaker 2: ended up watching part of it. And you know, there's
Speaker 2: plenty there to bring in a young mind, to captivate
Speaker 2: a young mind, you know, robot fighting, crime, firing, all
Speaker 2: sorts of crazy guns. But then you know, it's kind
Speaker 2: of a notoriously violent film. It's got some really grotesque
Speaker 2: moments in it, which we'll discuss. It was not appropriate
Speaker 2: viewing at this at whatever age I was, but you know,
Speaker 2: I still loved it, grew to love it, and I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people have this experience. Someone I
Speaker 2: was talking to in the last couple of years said
Speaker 2: that their mom had rented this for them at the
Speaker 2: store when they were young. They were just like, oh,
Speaker 2: they need a film RoboCop. This looks fun. They didn't
Speaker 2: like look at it closely enough to realize it was
Speaker 2: rated R. And then you know, the violence just washes
Speaker 2: over them.
Speaker 3: And probably a lot of the commentary sort of went
Speaker 3: over their heads at that age too.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. All that ends up sticking with you
Speaker 2: probably is like the cool robot stuff, and there is
Speaker 2: some really cool robot stuff in this film, the violence
Speaker 2: and probably the profanity.
Speaker 3: So I did a little digging to figure out when
Speaker 3: I first saw RoboCop, and I was able to peg
Speaker 3: it to to a year based on a rather a
Speaker 3: greasy marker, so I knew that. And this is also
Speaker 3: a very RoboCop sounding reason to be able to know
Speaker 3: when I saw this. So I first saw it right
Speaker 3: around the debut of the Windy's menu item The Baconator,
Speaker 3: which would place this event in the year two thousand
Speaker 3: and seven, so you know, it was two thousand and seven.
Speaker 3: I was I don't know how old I was. I
Speaker 3: was like twenty or so. I was hanging out with
Speaker 3: some friends and somehow it came up in conversation that
Speaker 3: first of all, I had never seen RoboCop, and second
Speaker 3: I had not yet had one of the new Baconators,
Speaker 3: and they were like, Okay, we've got to fix both.
Speaker 3: So we went to Windy's and then we watched this
Speaker 3: movie and sorry to the Windy's fans out there, the Baconator,
Speaker 3: at least this one at this time, was not good.
Speaker 3: And I'm not trying to be a food snob. I
Speaker 3: totally admit I can enjoy a greasy fast food sandwich.
Speaker 3: But whatever I got that day was just not right.
Speaker 3: It seemed like it had about eight slices of American
Speaker 3: cheese and like thirty strips of bacon on it. Just
Speaker 3: too much, too much bacon and cheese. Maybe those things
Speaker 3: are different now, I don't know. But on the other hand,
Speaker 3: RoboCop was amazing, and this memory I think sticks with
Speaker 3: me because the bacon eat or I had that day
Speaker 3: came to seem like something that you would see an
Speaker 3: advertisement for in RoboCop. It's like an in universe RoboCop
Speaker 3: food item. It's something Emial would be eating while he's
Speaker 3: like pointing a gun at you and asking if you
Speaker 3: think you're smarter than a bullet.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, It's kind of the six thousand Sux of Burgers.
Speaker 3: It sounds like it'll be hilarious if a Wendy's ad
Speaker 3: runs on this episode, by the way, So I was
Speaker 3: struck by how different this movie was than I had
Speaker 3: always assumed because I'd never seen RoboCop, but I was
Speaker 3: aware of it as one of these eighties action movies,
Speaker 3: and I received it the way it had been I think,
Speaker 3: generally culturally metabolized, which was totally missing the point of it,
Speaker 3: shelving it alongside these other gory, r rated eighties action movies,
Speaker 3: maybe on the level of Commando starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. That's
Speaker 3: how I thought of what RoboCop was, and.
Speaker 2: I think it can leave that kind of impression in
Speaker 2: memory if you're far removed from especially in early viewing
Speaker 2: of the film. I mean, the violence is so violent
Speaker 2: that it kind of sticks with you and you might
Speaker 2: forget some of the other stuff. Like I was talking
Speaker 2: to my wife about this when I was about to
Speaker 2: rewatch it. She was very, very supporting of me watching RoboCop,
Speaker 2: but did not want to watch it, and I had
Speaker 2: to remind her say, oh no, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: satire in it. There's more to it than just the violence.
Speaker 2: Though the violence is there and it's sticking with you
Speaker 2: for a reason.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, And at the risk of sounding like
Speaker 3: a sucker, I think RoboCop has a quite genuine soul
Speaker 3: and humanity to it, and amid everything else it is,
Speaker 3: it is a hyper violent action movie, that's true. It
Speaker 3: is a hair raising depiction of a world in the
Speaker 3: hands of a moral egomaniacs. It is also a sort
Speaker 3: of light light sci fi speculation about cybernetics. It is
Speaker 3: definitely a hilarious fun house mirror to American culture. Amid
Speaker 3: all those things, it's about the struggle to keep hold
Speaker 3: of one's own humanity in a situation where there is
Speaker 3: enormous pressure from every direction trying to transform you into
Speaker 3: a soulless machine. So a lot of retrospective appreciation of
Speaker 3: RoboCop mentions the satirical aspects of it. So I think
Speaker 3: you absolutely could look at RoboCop as a satirical vision
Speaker 3: of a dystopian near future from the time that it
Speaker 3: was made, which you know, so the mid to late
Speaker 3: nineteen eighties. And I think one of the main political
Speaker 3: thrusts of the commentary in the movie is if you
Speaker 3: ever heard people say I wish the country could be
Speaker 3: run like a business. The situational premise of RoboCop is
Speaker 3: to say, Okay, let's see what that would be like.
Speaker 3: So it depicts a kind of privatization nightmare where everything
Speaker 3: that used to be thought of as a public interest
Speaker 3: in a public good is sold off to corporations to
Speaker 3: be run for profit. And though that seems to be
Speaker 3: happening in pretty much all domains in the world of
Speaker 3: the film, RoboCop especially focuses on the police department in
Speaker 3: the city of Detroit, which has been bought out by
Speaker 3: a corporation called Omni Consumer Products or OCP, and OCP
Speaker 3: seems to be using it primarily in a couple of ways.
Speaker 3: You get the sense they're looking at it as a
Speaker 3: cost cutting center, so maybe they're taking the money for
Speaker 3: the contract and then just cutting costs down to the
Speaker 3: bone without regard for how this affects people, and then
Speaker 3: keeping the difference. But they're also using it as a
Speaker 3: playground to test out prototypes of new hardware that is
Speaker 3: eventually destined for military use and thus big Pentagon contracts,
Speaker 3: and the lot of RoboCop essentially arises as a conflict
Speaker 3: between two rival OCP executives. You got Dick Jones and
Speaker 3: Bob Morton who are squabbling to get their respective lethal
Speaker 3: robot projects online at the police department so they can
Speaker 3: eventually step them up, scale them up, and secure defense dollars.
Speaker 3: So the things that are happening in the movie are
Speaker 3: happening because of what's going on at the corporate board level.
Speaker 3: These characters squabbling to get their own projects online and
Speaker 3: make bank off of that. And meanwhile, the main good
Speaker 3: characters are essentially just street level cops who are unknown
Speaker 3: and unimportant to these power players, but whose fates are
Speaker 3: controlled thereby.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, they're just struggling trying to do
Speaker 2: their job. Also, you know, there's talk of unionization. There
Speaker 2: are all these other additional elements that are in play
Speaker 2: kind of at the street level, but OCP is not
Speaker 2: at street level. They're they're halfway to Heaven in their
Speaker 2: enormous skyscraper, and and that's where that's where a lot
Speaker 2: of the plotting and a lot of and ultimately a
Speaker 2: lot of the action goes down.
Speaker 3: That's right. So I thought RoboCop was great when I
Speaker 3: first watched it. I've seen it several times over the
Speaker 3: year since then. I've long had an appreciation of it,
Speaker 3: but most recently, when I watched it just this week,
Speaker 3: I sort of think it's better than ever. And one
Speaker 3: thing that struck me on the most recent viewing is
Speaker 3: that in a way, I think the sort of police
Speaker 3: and criminal justice themes are less essential to the spirit
Speaker 3: of the movie then a lot of people would think,
Speaker 3: and certainly than I once thought so, Like the characters
Speaker 3: are cops and some of the villains are career criminals,
Speaker 3: but they could be in any line of work of
Speaker 3: what used to be public service sector jobs, and the
Speaker 3: spirit of the movie would be similar, though I guess
Speaker 3: it would be a lot less high octane if this
Speaker 3: was about like librarians whose branch is bought out by
Speaker 3: OCP and they want to replace sell the books with
Speaker 3: advertisements for the new six thousand sux. But I think
Speaker 3: the deepest idea, like what's at the heart of this
Speaker 3: movie is that it's about people who are doing a job,
Speaker 3: whatever that job is, where their bosses do not see
Speaker 3: them as human beings. They are treated like inanimate tools
Speaker 3: or machines, just to be used to their maximum value,
Speaker 3: exhausted and discarded. And this metaphor is literalized in the
Speaker 3: case of RoboCop himself, and his redemption is in rediscovering
Speaker 3: and reasserting that he is a human being, not just
Speaker 3: a mechanism to be used for profit by somebody else. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, his rediscovery of his humanity, that he is a
Speaker 2: human and not a product. Yeah, I very much agree
Speaker 2: with just the how good the movie is. Like, basically,
Speaker 2: RoboCop shouldn't be this good as I rewatch it in
Speaker 2: my mid forties here, you know, because it's a film
Speaker 2: that again terrified and enthralled me when I was at
Speaker 2: a way too early age, entertained me later on. You know,
Speaker 2: it's a solid, you know, kind of dystopian action movie
Speaker 2: with some laughs thrown in. But yeah, it absolutely delivers satirically,
Speaker 2: It delivers with the action, and you know, it delivers emotionally.
Speaker 2: Like when the film really gets into its its own
Speaker 2: emotional depth, I felt like it those moments still hit
Speaker 2: pretty hard, or I mean actually hit harder than they
Speaker 2: ever had because you know, I, for instance, Murphy's son
Speaker 2: in the film is about the age of my own son.
Speaker 2: So it's it's you know, that resonated in a way
Speaker 2: that it just wasn't going to resonate with me when
Speaker 2: I was a kid, and then of course all of
Speaker 2: this on top of the expected nostalgia rush of watching
Speaker 2: a film like this that, for better or worse, she
Speaker 2: grew up with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. So I see all that, and at the
Speaker 3: same time I accept RoboCop is probably not for everybody.
Speaker 3: This is, to be clear, a hard R rated, hyper
Speaker 3: violent film, So you've got to be in the I
Speaker 3: don't know in the right headspace to accept it, but
Speaker 3: if it is on a wavelength that is amenable to you,
Speaker 3: I think it is excellent.
Speaker 2: All right, Joe, what's your elevator pitch for RoboCop?
Speaker 3: Then Omni Consumer Products has bought out the contract for
Speaker 3: Old Detroit and wants to replace its human police force
Speaker 3: with one of a selection of different gun wielding robots.
Speaker 3: Beat Cop Alex Murphy is killed on the job, and
Speaker 3: his body parts, including the remains of his damaged brain,
Speaker 3: are used as scaffolding for one of these projects, a
Speaker 3: cyborg called RoboCop. Is he simply a tool now controlled
Speaker 3: in full by his corporate masters, or is there still
Speaker 3: a human being inside who can act of his own
Speaker 3: free will?
Speaker 2: All right, let's listen to that trailerati.
Speaker 3: Old Detroit has a cancer. Councer is crime.
Speaker 2: We need a self sufficient law enforcement robot.
Speaker 3: I'm will to take We can go to prototype within
Speaker 3: ninety days. Where are you from?
Speaker 2: Welcome to hell? Are you.
Speaker 3: Better alive? You're coming with me? You're gonna be a
Speaker 3: bad mothers.
Speaker 2: This guy is really good, yes, machine Hobo Cop?
Speaker 3: What is he? He's a cyborg? You idiot? All hero?
Speaker 3: What are your prime directors? Are? Protect Davidson? Let the
Speaker 3: woman go or there will be trouble.
Speaker 2: Hold the law.
Speaker 3: You are under arrest? What justice gets an upgrade? Look
Speaker 3: for me, RoboCop? Thank you for your cooperation. Good night.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, if you want to go out and
Speaker 2: watch RoboCop before proceeding with the rest of the episode,
Speaker 2: go for it. It's widely available as a physical or
Speaker 2: digital release. Joe, you watched it on the older Criterion
Speaker 2: Collection DVD, which I understand is pretty awesome. I watched
Speaker 2: it on the Aero Blu ray which I ran from Videodrome,
Speaker 2: which I really loved. Both are loaded with extras.
Speaker 3: I think I got to upgrade my disc because my
Speaker 3: old DVD now is playing in a rectangle inside my
Speaker 3: TV screen. But nevertheless, Yeah, it was a great rewatch.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get into the people involved induction, starting
Speaker 2: at the top with the director. Paul Verhoven born nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty eight, Dutch director, best known internationally for his string
Speaker 2: of major Hollywood genre films of the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 2: This is our first Behoven film. He started out in
Speaker 2: Dutch cinema and his first full length feature was the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one comedy Businesses Business, followed by seventy three's
Speaker 2: Turkish Delight. That's his first collaboration with fellow dutchman and
Speaker 2: Rutger Hower in his film debut. This was an erotic drama,
Speaker 2: and the film was a critical success and received a
Speaker 2: Best Foreign Language Film nomination at the nineteen seventy four Oscars.
Speaker 2: He did three additional Dutch films with Hower, and a
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty three thriller called The Fourth Man with the
Speaker 2: Jerome Krabby, another Dutch actor of note that he had
Speaker 2: frequently worked with, that went on to international success. After this,
Speaker 2: he transitioned to Hollywood with the Rutger Hower filmed nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty five medieval action adventure film Flesh and Blood or
Speaker 2: It's actually the title often looks like flesh plus.
Speaker 3: Blood equals what.
Speaker 2: Cinema, I guess. And then then comes RoboCop, which was
Speaker 2: a big enough hit, though at the time criticized for
Speaker 2: his violence, certainly that he went on to direct Total
Speaker 2: Recall in nineteen ninety, Basic Instinct in ninety two, Showgirls
Speaker 2: in ninety five, Starship Troopers in ninety seven, and hollow
Speaker 2: Man in two thousand, which was apparently an unsatisfying film
Speaker 2: for Rehoven. It seems in interviews where he's like, well,
Speaker 2: this was the first movie that I made that looking
Speaker 2: at it, someone else could have made it. You know,
Speaker 2: he didn't feel like his touch was there. So after
Speaker 2: this he moves back to Dutch cinema with a string
Speaker 2: of pictures that lean more historical in theme less sci
Speaker 2: fi and so forth. But I believe he is set
Speaker 2: to return to American cinema with a project called Young Cinner,
Speaker 2: which is currently in development.
Speaker 3: Yeah, regarding these other big Hollywood movies, it is a
Speaker 3: weird string of films though you can totally see the
Speaker 3: as different as they are the creative threads that run
Speaker 3: through them, and I would say the thing that they
Speaker 3: all have in common is excess. He was a filmmaker
Speaker 3: who was into depicting depicting a kind of carnal excess
Speaker 3: in terms of sex and violence, but usually to make
Speaker 3: a point of some kind. Whether he was successful or
Speaker 3: not in all of these endeavors, that's questionable, though. I
Speaker 3: think I would single out Starship Troopers in ninety seven
Speaker 3: as another movie that I think at the time a
Speaker 3: lot of people really did not get it, kind of
Speaker 3: like what happened with RoboCop. A lot of people saw
Speaker 3: it as a kind of excessive, mindless, hyper violent sci
Speaker 3: fi action movie that in retrospect a lot of critics
Speaker 3: have looked back and said, this is actually a quite
Speaker 3: sharp satire and works much better than we originally realized.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I still need to go back and rewatch it,
Speaker 2: because I watched it when I was when it first
Speaker 2: came out, just I just didn't pick up on all
Speaker 2: the satire, and so the fascist themes in there that
Speaker 2: are there intentionally, that are being satirized just ended up
Speaker 2: sitting with me in a very weird way. I was like,
Speaker 2: I really don't like the humans in this, and of
Speaker 2: course I don't think you're supposed to like the humans
Speaker 2: at least by the end of the film, So I
Speaker 2: need to revisit it at some point. Now, Rahuvein was
Speaker 2: apparently I've read slow to accept the Rogocop project, apparently
Speaker 2: because he didn't really understand the satire at first. And
Speaker 2: I think it's been said that his wife likes like
Speaker 2: like set him down, was like no, no, no, see,
Speaker 2: this is what it's don't you see what it's doing here?
Speaker 2: And then he was like, Okay, yeah, I see now.
Speaker 2: And I wonder how much of that has to do
Speaker 2: with the excess, you know, because it's like he seems
Speaker 2: like a filmmaker, you know, who is about pushing for
Speaker 2: the excessive violence and or sexuality more the violence in
Speaker 2: this film, but also pushing the satire, like making sure
Speaker 2: that everything's ramped up enough that you can't miss it,
Speaker 2: that even at least subconsciously, it's going to needle your
Speaker 2: brain and make you realize something's not right here or
Speaker 2: something's being sad. There's some additional way I'm supposed to
Speaker 2: interpret this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, though, like I said, I mean, I think, especially
Speaker 3: in the case of Starship Troopers, it seems like a
Speaker 3: lot of people did miss it at the time and
Speaker 3: only got it years later looking back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now, the writers on this we have two writers.
Speaker 2: There's Edward Neumeyer, American screenwriter, producer, and director. This was
Speaker 2: his first big hit alongside Michael Miner, who I'll get
Speaker 2: to in a second. He went on to work on
Speaker 2: Starship Troopers, Starship Troopers two, and Starship Troopers three, which
Speaker 2: he directed. He also co scripted Anaconda's The Hunt for
Speaker 2: the Blood Orchid in two thousand and four, and he's
Speaker 2: actually the writer of the upcoming Young Center project that
Speaker 2: I referenced earlier.
Speaker 3: I have not seen the Starship Troopers sequels, but oh boy,
Speaker 3: that just sounds like, I don't know, reaching into a
Speaker 3: snake hole in the woods. I don't know if that was.
Speaker 3: Maybe they're great.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen him now. As for Michael Minor, also
Speaker 2: director and screenwriter of various projects, this was his first
Speaker 2: big hit as well, which you followed up with scriptwork
Speaker 2: on nineteen eighty nine's Deadly Weapon, which he also directed,
Speaker 2: lownmower Man two, and also Anaconda's The Hunt for the
Speaker 2: Blood Orchid. He also directed nineteen ninety nine's The Book
Speaker 2: of Stars, which looks like I got some good reviews.
Speaker 2: I think it's more of a drama. Early in his career,
Speaker 2: he directed a number of music videos for the rock
Speaker 2: band Y and T.
Speaker 3: I don't think I know them.
Speaker 2: I was not familiar. Look like some sort of a
Speaker 2: rock band or metal band, but I just don't know. Now.
Speaker 2: Our star of this is, of course, Peter Weller, playing
Speaker 2: essentially a dual role Alex Murphy and then the RoboCop
Speaker 2: that Murphy becomes, and then Robocop's attempts to reconnect with
Speaker 2: the Alex Murphy he once was. Weller was born in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty seven, American actor and director who's acting work
Speaker 2: goes back to the early seventies and he's still active today.
Speaker 2: We previously discussed him in more depth in our episode
Speaker 2: on Penos KOs Manto's The Viewing.
Speaker 3: As we go on to discuss Weller in this role,
Speaker 3: a point of comparison that I think is maybe worth
Speaker 3: making is to the actors who play Batman, where there's
Speaker 3: a dual role, where there's like, you know, you have
Speaker 3: your face revealed in one sense as Bruce Wayne, but
Speaker 3: then also for part of the movie you are just
Speaker 3: a mouth and chin.
Speaker 2: M yeah, so you know. Luckily, Peter Weller has a
Speaker 2: very handsome mouth and chin, very expressive. I think the
Speaker 2: other interesting thing that was surely intentional is that, especially
Speaker 2: at the time, he was a very gaunt actor, you know,
Speaker 2: a very thin man, which you know, you need a
Speaker 2: skeleton to go at the in the middle of all
Speaker 2: of that gear that he ends up wearing in the
Speaker 2: RoboCop suit. So I think that that probably was a
Speaker 2: huge factor as well. You need somebody that can literally
Speaker 2: be the skeleton of this thing. Now as Murphy, I
Speaker 2: you know, he's basically just a likable good cop that
Speaker 2: we don't really to know all that much. We learn
Speaker 2: more about him through RoboCop as he tries to reconnect
Speaker 2: with his past, and this results in various moments where
Speaker 2: RoboCop the cyborg is trying to connect with the remnants
Speaker 2: of his own humanity, you know, and his memories of
Speaker 2: his family, and I think Weller does a really great
Speaker 2: job in those moments, like they I kind of weld
Speaker 2: some tears up in those moments myself. And then also
Speaker 2: just as in terms of the action scenes, I think
Speaker 2: it's a very nice physical performance. So there are certainly
Speaker 2: times where the robot movements look silly, you know, walking
Speaker 2: around as RoboCop, and I think maybe they're supposed to,
Speaker 2: but there are also some great flourishes that really bring
Speaker 2: this metallic hulk to life. I think about the way
Speaker 2: that he positions his hands when he's firing that enormous
Speaker 2: pistol of his I don't know if this is something
Speaker 2: that actually makes sense in the use of a pistol,
Speaker 2: but it looks really good when RoboCop does it.
Speaker 3: Well, there's a range kind of ballet to the way
Speaker 3: that he moves, like he doesn't just raise his arm
Speaker 3: to shoot his RoboCop gun, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Rob There are some shots where he can almost kind
Speaker 3: of like he raises both arms, like he raises his
Speaker 3: other arm as a kind of counterbalance. Is that what
Speaker 3: you're talking about?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it does feel very mechanical like this, like
Speaker 2: his upper torso is the turret of a tank, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but also so I see, Yeah, it is mechanical,
Speaker 3: and it almost looks like he's doing a counterweight or counterbalance.
Speaker 3: But it also kind of looks like a dance like
Speaker 3: it like ballet or something where the arms both go out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. If they had not done those things, I think
Speaker 2: RoboCop the character would have been a lot more just
Speaker 2: visually unappealing. So I was noticing a lot of that
Speaker 2: and rewatching the film. Now Weller came back to play
Speaker 2: RoboCop again in the sequel RoboCop two, but by RoboCop three,
Speaker 2: he was played by a different actor, Robert John Burke
Speaker 2: of the best known probably for Thinner Dust Devil I'm
Speaker 2: to understand it well, or was unavailable because he was
Speaker 2: filming Cronenberg's Naked Lunch at that point.
Speaker 3: You know, I've never so RoboCop two is interesting. It
Speaker 3: I think it is quite good, but it's very different
Speaker 3: than the first RoboCop and has a has a different
Speaker 3: kind of mindset. RoboCop three I've never seen, but it's
Speaker 3: on paper seems like it could be hilarious, So I'm
Speaker 3: I kind of want to get into it.
Speaker 2: It has a great cast, and it's and it's interesting
Speaker 2: too in that by three they're like, you know, kids
Speaker 2: love RoboCop. Let's maybe let's make one that's not rated R.
Speaker 2: And so that's what they did. But yeah, I've never
Speaker 2: I've never seen it, but but I would like to
Speaker 2: love robo Cup two. It really ups the ante, especially
Speaker 2: on the stop motion violence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so three has what I know about it is
Speaker 3: that I think it has rocket Ninjas and it is no.
Speaker 3: Its reputation is quite terrible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it has Stephen Root in it, so it's
Speaker 2: kind of got to apply to Stephen Root rule. How
Speaker 2: bad can it be if Stephen Root isn't it? I
Speaker 2: should also note that Weller has returned to voice RoboCop
Speaker 2: in recent years. I believe they put the character into
Speaker 2: one of the Mortal Kombat games. And there's a new
Speaker 2: RoboCop video game that I am not technologically equipped to play,
Speaker 2: but I've read some interesting things about it. Sounds like
Speaker 2: it does an interesting job of sort of drawing from
Speaker 2: all three films to create a like a fourth narrative
Speaker 2: that you can play through. I don't know that the
Speaker 2: satire is there. So if you've played this new RoboCop game,
Speaker 2: right in and tell us what you think.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 2: The next actor of note is Nancy Allen playing the cop.
Speaker 2: Anne Lewis born nineteen fifty American actress who kicked off
Speaker 2: her film career in nineteen seventy three is the last detail.
Speaker 2: She followed this up with supporting roles in a string
Speaker 2: of horror movies, including seventy six Is Carrie, then a
Speaker 2: string of roles in films of the films of Brian
Speaker 2: the Alma seventy nine's Home Movies nineteen eighties Dressed to
Speaker 2: Kill and eighty one's Blowout After Robocops. She appeared in
Speaker 2: both Robo sequels. She was in Polter Guys three in
Speaker 2: eighty eight, she was in nineteen ninety eight Out of Sight,
Speaker 2: She was in Children of the Corn six six six,
Speaker 2: Isaac's return in nineteen ninety nine, and her last acting
Speaker 2: credit was in two thousand and eight, So it sounds
Speaker 2: like maybe she sort of quietly retired from cinema.
Speaker 3: Is Children of the Corn six six six the six
Speaker 3: hundred and sixty six movie in that series?
Speaker 2: It might be. I feel like there are that many
Speaker 2: of them. I've attempted to look. I don't think I've
Speaker 2: ever seen one. I love Stephen King's original short story.
Speaker 2: It's very creepy, but it's hard to figure out where
Speaker 2: to even contemplate beginning with the Children of the Corn movies.
Speaker 3: Why would it take Isaac that long to return?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think maybe he was out for
Speaker 2: a movie or two. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Okay, so I really really love Nancy Allen as Lewis
Speaker 3: and RoboCop. Maybe my all time favorite buddy cop partner
Speaker 3: in a buddy cop movie. So the movie shows kind
Speaker 3: of multiple ways that the police characters react to the
Speaker 3: pressures that they're under in this plot. You know, some
Speaker 3: of the cops in the movie just become unthinking functionaries
Speaker 3: of OCP, Like they just keep their heads down, do
Speaker 3: what the boss says. They don't ask questions, even when
Speaker 3: they are essentially ordered to assassinate RoboCop. Later in the movie.
Speaker 3: Others are shown having emotional crises, like there's one guy
Speaker 3: who just always in every scene seems to be freaking out.
Speaker 3: Lewis is an interesting like she keeps cool under pressure,
Speaker 3: and she thinks for herself and she uses compassion. She's
Speaker 3: the one who's able to understand what's going on, to
Speaker 3: see that RoboCop is actually Murphy when she gets in
Speaker 3: his face and says, it's you Murphy. Yeah, And to
Speaker 3: see that there's some part of him that is still human,
Speaker 3: and to save his life when Dick Jones is trying
Speaker 3: to have destroyed in the third act or second or third,
Speaker 3: I don't know, later on in the movie, and I
Speaker 3: think Nancy Allen does a great job with this role.
Speaker 3: She's she's tough, down to earth, plays it smart human.
Speaker 3: I really like her in this role.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, she's really the heart and soul of this
Speaker 2: movie in many ways, in a very real sense and
Speaker 2: an intentional sense, you know. And she's and it's also
Speaker 2: great that she's not written as a love interest. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, she's a capable action hero in her own
Speaker 2: right in an action movie, but her compassion is really
Speaker 2: her main strength. And that's and without her, if you
Speaker 2: take her character out of this, you don't get any
Speaker 2: kind of a positive resolution for the characters in the setting.
Speaker 3: I agree. I think a lesser movie would have tried
Speaker 3: to have some kind of romantic relationship between the two,
Speaker 3: and it just that's not what this relationship is about.
Speaker 3: And I'm glad they didn't go that direction.
Speaker 2: I watched a featurette on the Arrow Blu Ray where
Speaker 2: they're interviewing her about this role, and Nancy Allen does
Speaker 2: point out it's very interesting how she ended up getting
Speaker 2: the part, and you know, the sort of callback experience
Speaker 2: and so forth. But she said she showed up in
Speaker 2: Dallas and they were like, how about a shorter haircut?
Speaker 2: And because she had longer hair, and she's like, okay,
Speaker 2: she gets it, goes out, gets her haircut, and then
Speaker 2: she's like, oh my god, I got my haircut way
Speaker 2: too short. I've got a terrible haircut for this movie.
Speaker 2: I don't think it looks terrible, but it is very short.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting to think about that. Looking at the character,
Speaker 2: I think it ultimately works really well for the character.
Speaker 2: But at the time I think she was a little horrified.
Speaker 2: She was like, I think I've gone too far.
Speaker 3: I think this was the first movie I saw Nancy
Speaker 3: Allen in, so I just think of this as her
Speaker 3: natural haircut. So when I see her in other stuff
Speaker 3: with longer hair, I'm like, oh, here she has long hair.
Speaker 2: Now, all right, let's get into some of the corporate
Speaker 2: characters here. We'll also come back to a few cops.
Speaker 2: This is we've talked about this actor before, but Dan
Speaker 2: o'hurlehey plays the old Man.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, the villain from Halloween three, shows up as
Speaker 3: a I don't know is he a villain? And yeah,
Speaker 3: he's a sort of unwitting villain in this movie. You
Speaker 3: don't see him. He's not as direct of a schemer
Speaker 3: as some of the other corporate villains. He's more just
Speaker 3: kind of like sitting there presiding over all of the
Speaker 3: wickedness that goes on, mostly oblivious to it.
Speaker 2: I you know, going into this, and perhaps the character
Speaker 2: changes a bit in the sequels, I don't remember. I've
Speaker 2: probably seen Rebel Coop two more than I've seen any
Speaker 2: of them, so maybe he's more of a villain in too.
Speaker 2: But in this one I feel like he is essentially
Speaker 2: God or perhaps Zeus. You know, he's The corporate meeting
Speaker 2: rooms of OCP are in a place where skycris skyscrapers
Speaker 2: touch the heavens, and his appearance at a meeting is
Speaker 2: spoken of in terms of a holy visitation, and we
Speaker 2: never hear his name. He's just the old man. It
Speaker 2: really does feel like he actually comes down for these
Speaker 2: meetings from heaven or from Mount Olympus, carrying with him
Speaker 2: the aloofness and distance of a divine father who wants
Speaker 2: the best for his creations. He wants to create Delta City. Remember,
Speaker 2: he's the idea man. All this robot cop stuff is
Speaker 2: just in service to this grand dream that is going
Speaker 2: to make the world better, at least for some people.
Speaker 2: He wants to fix his creation, but he doesn't really
Speaker 2: understand mortal existence. All that.
Speaker 3: Well, you're right, and I think the comparison dozeus his
Speaker 3: apt because in some ways he is kind of an
Speaker 3: arbiter of justice or a moral authority in some way,
Speaker 3: but he doesn't really seem to have much understanding of
Speaker 3: morality at all. It's like he is like an amorl
Speaker 3: arbiter of justice.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so it's an interesting role to look at again,
Speaker 2: thinking of it's easy to go in and think about
Speaker 2: his role in Halloween three, you know, where he is
Speaker 2: this evil corporate guy, and we also talked about him
Speaker 2: in the last Starfighter episode we did he plays he
Speaker 2: plays a good guy in that he's covered in alien makeup.
Speaker 3: In this I guess I would say he is functionally
Speaker 3: a bad guy in terms of the effects of his behavior,
Speaker 3: but he is doesn't have bad guy energy on screen.
Speaker 3: He's just sort of like an oblivious god who's bumbling
Speaker 3: around destroying people without really realizing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and ultimately he's not a power to be overcome
Speaker 2: by our heroes, but to be appealed to. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: we'll talk about that when we talk about the climax.
Speaker 2: But yeah. Dan O Hurley great actor of stage and screen.
Speaker 2: He lived nineteen nineteen through two thousand and five. Ah,
Speaker 2: but then we are true villain. Are one of our
Speaker 2: true villains on the corporate end of things. Here is
Speaker 2: the character Dick Jones played by Ronnie Cox.
Speaker 3: Dick Jones is one of my all time favorite movie villains.
Speaker 3: I love him, and I love all the corporate villains
Speaker 3: in this movie, but Dick Jones is great and Ronnie
Speaker 3: Cox in this role. Ronnie Cox was simply born to
Speaker 3: play business creeps in Paul Verhoven films. One of my
Speaker 3: other favorites is his role as Coohagan, the villain who
Speaker 3: runs the for profit in Ours Colony in Total Recall.
Speaker 3: And this is a spoiler for Total Recalls though if
Speaker 3: you don't want it spoiled, closure ears for a second.
Speaker 3: But in that movie, if you'll recall, he wants to
Speaker 3: prevent the use of an alien device that will make
Speaker 3: the atmosphere of Mars breatheable because he wants to protect
Speaker 3: his racket selling oxygen to the Mars colonists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, what is scoundrel?
Speaker 3: Though?
Speaker 2: It's interesting. I was digging into it and this movie.
Speaker 2: You know, you now think of Ronnie Cox, you think
Speaker 2: of characters like Jones, But apparently he was playing somewhat
Speaker 2: against type on this one. He'd been mostly known for
Speaker 2: playing pleasant, white collar type characters. He made his screen
Speaker 2: debut in the nineteen seventy two John Borman thriller Deliverance.
Speaker 2: We see him playing the guitar, and he's actually playing
Speaker 2: the guitar in that dueling banjo scene because he's also
Speaker 2: a singer songwriter.
Speaker 3: He is the character in Deliverance who has like the
Speaker 3: strongest moral compass. The others are are more like ruthless
Speaker 3: and practical, and he's like, no, we've got to go
Speaker 3: to the authorities and explain what happened and admit what
Speaker 3: we did and all that, and you know, Bert Reynolds
Speaker 3: has to argue with him and say, no, we got
Speaker 3: to cover it up, which, again, yes, I guess seems
Speaker 3: against type to me because I was more familiar with
Speaker 3: him playing characters like Dick Jones. But yeah, I guess
Speaker 3: you could look at it the other way around as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The same year, seventy two, he also pops up
Speaker 2: in The Mind Snatchers, a sci fi film that has
Speaker 2: a cast that includes Christopher Walken, Joss Ackland, and Tom Aldridge.
Speaker 2: So some interesting names in there, I've never seen it.
Speaker 2: A fair amount of TV work followed, but he popped
Speaker 2: up in seventy nine's The Onion Field, eighty two is
Speaker 2: the Beast within eighty four's Beverly Hills Cop, it's sequel,
Speaker 2: and then he did Robo Cop. Subsequent credits include not
Speaker 2: only Total Recall, but the nineteen ninety Captain America film,
Speaker 2: the TV series Cop rock Star Trek the Next Generation,
Speaker 2: and I don't remember this, but apparently has an uncredited
Speaker 2: role in Deep Blue Sea.
Speaker 3: Is he basically playing Dick Jones in that? Like he's
Speaker 3: a corporate I would have Silver Lord. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's kind of like post RoboCop. That's one
Speaker 2: of the main reasons you're thinking about casting him. I'm like,
Speaker 2: I'm guessing, and you know, basically probably printed money there
Speaker 2: for a while.
Speaker 3: You can imagine the Deep Blue Sea is just in
Speaker 3: the RoboCop universe, like they're making smart sharks. That just
Speaker 3: seems like another thing OCP would do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't think I said his birthday. He was
Speaker 2: born in nineteen thirty eight, and he's still out there.
Speaker 2: I think he still performs as a musician as a musician,
Speaker 2: and I think he may still be active as an actor.
Speaker 2: I don't recall off hand. Oh, but we have another
Speaker 2: corporate character to talk about here, the character Bob Morton
Speaker 2: played by Miguel Ferrer, who lived nineteen fifty five through
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, American actor and son of Jose Ferrer and
Speaker 2: Rosemary Clooney, which of course made him George Clooney's cousin.
Speaker 2: George Clooney apparently showed up with him to a lot
Speaker 2: of these auditions back in the day they were oh
Speaker 2: living together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what if a young George Clooney had been in
Speaker 3: RoboCop Farrera.
Speaker 2: He had a real knack for playing scoundrels started off
Speaker 2: in early eighties television and some forgettable films. Pops up
Speaker 2: as a first officer in Star Trek three after Robocopy
Speaker 2: appeared in nineteen eighty nine's Deep Star six, one of
Speaker 2: the many underwater horror films of eighty nine.
Speaker 3: I think he undergoes a harrowing, explosive decompression in that film.
Speaker 2: Oh man, that's probably right. He was in nineteen nineties
Speaker 2: The Guardian ninety two's Twin Peaks. Fire Walk with Me
Speaker 2: ninety four is the stand the mini series this Man
Speaker 2: did three episodes of Tales from the Crypt I think
Speaker 2: that's commendable. I'm not sure who else did that many.
Speaker 2: He was also in ninety six's Project Alf ninety seven
Speaker 2: is the night Flyer Moulan. In nineteen ninety eight he
Speaker 2: did the voice of the main villain. He was in
Speaker 2: two Thousands Traffic, and he pops up in Iron Man
Speaker 2: three and twenty thirteen. He did a lot of voice
Speaker 2: work late in his career and appeared in the twenty
Speaker 2: seventeen Twin Peaks revival.
Speaker 3: Miguel Ferrer is also great in this movie. Like I said,
Speaker 3: I love all the corporate villains. He's a perfect foil
Speaker 3: to Dick Jones. So Ronnie Cox is older, colder, more calculating,
Speaker 3: and Miguel Ferrera's character, Bob Morton is a young hotshot
Speaker 3: who thinks he's the next big thing, and they play
Speaker 3: off of each other well, but they're like both so detestable.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, Like Morton comes off as more likable in
Speaker 2: some regards, but it's because he's less directly awful and
Speaker 2: also doesn't resort to direct murder, though is also is
Speaker 2: very culpable for human deaths, So it's like they are
Speaker 2: both horrible, but they're different shades and degrees of the
Speaker 2: same awfulness. Yeah, Morton's this ambitious, coked up business bro
Speaker 2: who's definitely going to high five you in the men's room,
Speaker 2: but you know, at the end of the day, he's
Speaker 2: totally gonna sign off on civilian or police deaths if
Speaker 2: it lets him advance.
Speaker 3: Up the corporate ladder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are two corporate characters, one more villainous than
Speaker 2: the other. Both of both I think you could think
Speaker 2: of his villains, but are they're essentially both lawful evil
Speaker 2: to a certain degree. We also have to have a
Speaker 2: little chaotic evil in this and that's where we have
Speaker 2: the character Clarence Bodiker played by kurtwood Smith.
Speaker 3: Yeah. This raises another interesting theme of RoboCop, which is
Speaker 3: it depicts a world of an alliance between sort of
Speaker 3: big capital and big crime, like the criminal bosses and
Speaker 3: the corporate bosses essentially are working together against everybody else.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. Other antagonists in the film, though, are
Speaker 2: very much part of the corporate machine. You know, It's
Speaker 2: like they're to large degrees they can just be like,
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to climb up the corporate ladder here,
Speaker 2: I'm just doing what I have to do. I am
Speaker 2: part of this company. I'm part of OCP. But yeah,
Speaker 2: Clarence Bodicker is very much of the criminal world and
Speaker 2: is just evil. Just doesn't seem to love anything in life.
Speaker 2: It's just full of hate and violence. Even his cronies
Speaker 2: are not safe.
Speaker 3: He does seem to genuinely love crime like he loves
Speaker 3: his work.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now. Kurtwood Smith the born nineteen forty three is
Speaker 2: an American actor of stage, screen, and TV that may
Speaker 2: be best known to many for his role as the
Speaker 2: dad on That seventies show, but this was his big
Speaker 2: breakout film role. And this was another case where, according
Speaker 2: to some of the extras, I was looking at you know,
Speaker 2: was very much against against type. This is not a
Speaker 2: guy who'd done a bunch of villain roles. They were
Speaker 2: thinking about other sort of established villainous actors like Michael Ironside,
Speaker 2: but they ended up liking kurtwood Smith apparently because Verhoven
Speaker 2: liked how he kind of looked like Heinrich Himmler in
Speaker 2: The Little Glasses. He liked the idea of this being
Speaker 2: like a more of a cerebral villain to be to
Speaker 2: be the adversary of RoboCop, who obviously nobody's gonna best
Speaker 2: RoboCop physically, no human is anyway, as we'll see, So
Speaker 2: you need somebody who's more scheming, someone who's more of
Speaker 2: a hyena.
Speaker 3: I can see how this movie would have been again
Speaker 3: diminished if it had gone a different direction, if you
Speaker 3: had the standard boxy, tough guy in the heavy role,
Speaker 3: not Toss Michael Ironside. I mean, I love Michael Ironside,
Speaker 3: but the casting of a slightly nerdy looking but still
Speaker 3: imposing actor like Smith here is really inspired for this role,
Speaker 3: and it makes the character as memorable as he is
Speaker 3: instead of just another violent Hinchman. The Himmler image does
Speaker 3: come through. There seems to be something not just brutal,
Speaker 3: but kind of transcendentally evil about the Bodicker we got,
Speaker 3: and it's also there in his name. He's not like,
Speaker 3: you know, Biff Drago, He's Clarence Bodiker.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's a great performance. He's just so so nasty,
Speaker 2: so sadistic, and like the scene where he's eventually apprehended
Speaker 2: by RoboCop, roughed up and brought in and he's like spitting,
Speaker 2: he spits blood onto the Police Desk just just a
Speaker 2: wonderful performance. He followed up RoboCop with roles in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty eight Rambo, Three Dead Poets Society, in eighty nine,
Speaker 2: Star Trek, The Undiscovered Country, ninety two's Fortress, ninety three's
Speaker 2: Boxing Helena, and ninety five's Under Siege, Too Dark Territory,
Speaker 2: plus lots more.
Speaker 3: Under Siege, Too Dark Territory. That's a movie with hacking
Speaker 3: in it. Yes, if you haven't seen it, it's about hacking,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 2: Getting back into the cop characters a bit. We have
Speaker 2: Robert Dukey in this playing Sergeant Reid With nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: four through two thousand and eight, another mainstay of all
Speaker 2: three RoboCop movies. His acting credits go all the way
Speaker 2: back to the original Outer Limits. In the sixties, he
Speaker 2: worked a lot in TV and film. He did one
Speaker 2: of the voices on the nineteen sixties Harlem Globetrotter's cartoon,
Speaker 2: and he had a memorable turn as the villain in
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventy three black exploitation film Coffee, which starred
Speaker 2: Pam Greer. He acted in three Robert Altman movies, seventy
Speaker 2: five's Nashville seventy six is Buffalo Bill and the Indians
Speaker 2: or Setting Bull's History lesson and nineteen ninety three shortcuts.
Speaker 3: In this he plays the police sergeant who is putting
Speaker 3: up with impossible pressures imposed by OCP as they've come
Speaker 3: in and taken over.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, it's a pretty standard role, but a notable actor,
Speaker 2: all right. Getting back into the criminal world. Here we
Speaker 2: have Ray Wise playing Leon Nash. This is one of
Speaker 2: the criminal henchmen. To Botiker born nineteen forty seven. Wives
Speaker 2: is probably best known for his role of Leland Palmer
Speaker 2: and Twin Peaks, but he also played the doom doctor
Speaker 2: Alex Holland and Wes Craven's Swamp Thing from nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 2: Other credits include eighty two's Cat People, Cheevers, Creepers two
Speaker 2: from two thousand and three, X Men First Class from
Speaker 2: twenty eleven, and Wrong Cops from twenty thirteen. Like a
Speaker 2: lot of these actors, he was apparently going in a
Speaker 2: somewhat different direction here, a little bit against type in
Speaker 2: the casting of this movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he also has a kind of weird energy as
Speaker 3: a henchman that it works.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We also have to mention we mentioned Emil already.
Speaker 2: This is one of the other violent members of the gang,
Speaker 2: has more of a anarchist vibe to him. You know,
Speaker 2: he's got the punk haircut and so forth. He is
Speaker 2: also a spoiler alert, he's the guy who gets melted
Speaker 2: by toxic waste.
Speaker 3: The extent to which RoboCop is a melt movie is
Speaker 3: non zero. There is a melting scene, and Emil is
Speaker 3: the poor soul who melts.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Played by Paul mccrane born nineteen sixty one. He
Speaker 2: made a big splash, you know, unintended because he does
Speaker 2: splash in this movie. But he made a big splash
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty's Fame, and he was also a lot
Speaker 2: later a long time cast member on Er. He doesn't
Speaker 2: melt in either of those films, but he did follow
Speaker 2: up RoboCop with nineteen eighty eight's The Blob, so maybe
Speaker 2: he hadn't had quite enough melting yet at this point
Speaker 2: in his career. I did see in some of the
Speaker 2: exits they were like, oh, he was really down for
Speaker 2: all this makeup. He was down for this melt scene.
Speaker 3: So he both melts and splashes in the same role. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's weird.
Speaker 2: Rewatch this film knowing how horrible this character's fate is.
Speaker 2: And even as we're shown how horrible this character is,
Speaker 2: like he is not a nice guy, but his fate
Speaker 2: is so disgusting that you can't help but feel a
Speaker 2: little bad for him and see him at least as
Speaker 2: some sort of a tragic character. You want to be like, oh, dude,
Speaker 2: you're making all these terrible choices in life, and we
Speaker 2: know where they are leading you.
Speaker 3: Well, his friends are like Bodiker in the gang, and
Speaker 3: they don't. It just shows how unloyal they are to
Speaker 3: each other when the way they react to him, like
Speaker 3: he's melting and he runs up on ray Wise, and
Speaker 3: ray Wise is he goes like help be and ray
Speaker 3: Wise is just like, don't touch me. Man.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now you're going back into the corporate world in
Speaker 2: the midst of all of these villains and all it's
Speaker 2: easy to miss some how great some of these other
Speaker 2: small performances are like you have this character Donald Johnson,
Speaker 2: who's this kind of I guess a corporate OCP, yes man,
Speaker 2: and also just sort of a business goblin. I don't know,
Speaker 2: he's he's always there in these scenes. He's never he's
Speaker 2: never the you know, the central point of the scene,
Speaker 2: but he's he's there, He's attending all these business meetings
Speaker 2: and he makes every scene better.
Speaker 3: Yet he smiles a lot. He just brings a real
Speaker 3: positive energy to these board meetings where robots murder his colleagues.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and he's largely unfazed by it. He's like,
Speaker 2: business has got to keep moving.
Speaker 3: Looks like we hit a snag. Yeah we'll well, we'll
Speaker 3: do better next time. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This character is played by Felton Perry born nineteen
Speaker 2: forty five. He was also in nineteen seventy three's Magnum Force.
Speaker 2: He did a lot of TV, played a lot of detectives,
Speaker 2: and with a cast member on the nineteen eighty series
Speaker 2: The Greatest American Hero.
Speaker 3: Now, RoboCop has a lot of great special effects and
Speaker 3: one notably terrible but in a lovable way special effect.
Speaker 3: So I feel like we got to talk about the
Speaker 3: effects a bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And as always, we can't mention everybody like this
Speaker 2: especially is a film where you had a whole crew
Speaker 2: of very talented artists in different fields and we can't
Speaker 2: possibly cover them all. So we're just going to cover
Speaker 2: I think like three main names that should be mentioned.
Speaker 3: First.
Speaker 2: We've already mentioned the melting and the makeup involved there.
Speaker 2: Rob Botein has special makeup effects credit on this Born
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty nine. A true cinematic gore master, and I
Speaker 2: think this is the first film we've looked at on
Speaker 2: Weird House that has directly involved him. His makeup credits
Speaker 2: include So many Great Things, Squirm from seventy six, The
Speaker 2: Original Star Wars from seventy seven, The Howling from eighty one,
Speaker 2: John Carpenter's The Thing from eighty two, Legend from eighty five,
Speaker 2: Total Recall from nineteen ninety. He also did creature designs
Speaker 2: on nineteen eighties Humanoids from the Deep That's a fish
Speaker 2: Man Movie, ninety seven's Mimic, and nineteen ninety eight's Deep Rising.
Speaker 3: His work on The Thing is especially iconic.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean this is just a master of
Speaker 2: practical makeup effects. You know, these are things that you know,
Speaker 2: you got to throw him into the same conversation with
Speaker 2: names like Screaming Mad George. You know, just an absolute master.
Speaker 2: He doesn't seem to have worked much in the twenty
Speaker 2: first century at all, though, at least in terms of
Speaker 2: being credited on things. And I have to realize I
Speaker 2: don't know. We always stress this, but it's my understanding
Speaker 2: that sometimes affects people's names don't actually make it into
Speaker 2: the final credit some things, So I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 2: he's working in other capacities behind the scenes. But according
Speaker 2: to you know, like the databases outside of a working
Speaker 2: on an episode of Game of Thrones, yea, his his
Speaker 2: work in recent decades has been sparse.
Speaker 3: Do do we know or just assume that Beteen is
Speaker 3: largely responsible for the emial melting scene.
Speaker 2: I didn't double check it. It's probably there's so many
Speaker 2: extras the ero release I didn't get to watch them all,
Speaker 2: but I assume he had to be have played a
Speaker 2: pivot role in that. It's just too disgusting looking.
Speaker 3: Okay, but another main effect. So there are a lot
Speaker 3: of great special makeup effects in the movie. Also, there
Speaker 3: are interesting makeup effects clearly involved in realizing the unmasked
Speaker 3: RoboCop effect when he takes his visor off and you
Speaker 3: can see Peter Weller's face jutting out of this robot exoskeleton.
Speaker 3: I'm sure that took a lot of effects work to
Speaker 3: make it look as good as it does. But there
Speaker 3: is another big thing in the movie which is the
Speaker 3: rival project to the RoboCop project ED two nine, one
Speaker 3: of my favorite aspects of RoboCop, which is achieved largely
Speaker 3: with the help of stop motion effects that look great
Speaker 3: and are some of the funniest special effects I can
Speaker 3: think of seeing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is such a great creation. ED two o
Speaker 2: nine sometimes referred to in the credits as ED two thousand,
Speaker 2: so I guess maybe at some point in production they
Speaker 2: called him AD two thousand.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: ED two o nine is better two nine, if you will.
Speaker 2: But Craig Hayes is credited as as AD's creator and
Speaker 2: designer and also designer and constructor of the large prop
Speaker 2: for ED two nine. So when we see ED two
Speaker 2: o nine in the film, he's either standing there as
Speaker 2: a physical, practical robot that's I think actually made out
Speaker 2: of out of wood and other materials, you know, and
Speaker 2: he doesn't move around much like just basically the top
Speaker 2: half rotates to point guns at you that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: But and then the rest of the time, as we'll discuss,
Speaker 2: he's a stop motion effect. But Hayes was involved in
Speaker 2: designing it. Apparently, you know, looked to various things like
Speaker 2: looked at trains, a little Bit and and other mechanical
Speaker 2: vehicles and robots to sort of design it, but also
Speaker 2: looked at at the Orca that the head of ED
Speaker 2: Tone two nine is apparently partially based on the Orca.
Speaker 3: I can see that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So Hayes did visual effects work on other notable
Speaker 2: films that he worked on Jurassic Park as part of
Speaker 2: Tippet Studio. He also worked on Hollowman, Blade two and
Speaker 2: two thousand and three's The Matrix Revolutions. Now I mentioned
Speaker 2: Tippet Studio. Yes, Phil Tippett is is credited as the
Speaker 2: creator of the ED two nine sequences, more specifically the
Speaker 2: stop motion sequences. If you're not familiar with Phil Tippet
Speaker 2: born nineteen fifty one, he is one of, if not
Speaker 2: the best known living masters of stop motion and monster
Speaker 2: special effects. Somehow, this is our first Tippet film, I
Speaker 2: believe on Weird House Cinema we've mentioned him in passing
Speaker 2: you know, connections on other films, but I don't think
Speaker 2: we've talked about him in depth before. You know, this
Speaker 2: is another situation where we can't list all the classics
Speaker 2: that he was involved in, but his creations have come
Speaker 2: to life in such films as some of the Star
Speaker 2: Wars movies. Nineteen eighty six is Howard the Duck as
Speaker 2: a notable stop motion monster at the end eighteen eighty
Speaker 2: eights Willow both RoboCop sequels, Jurassic Park in ninety three,
Speaker 2: Starship Troopers, and of course his own project, which was
Speaker 2: made over many years. I haven't seen it yet, but
Speaker 2: finally released in twenty twenty one, Mad God.
Speaker 3: Really good stop motion in this film.
Speaker 2: And we'll come back to talk a little bit more
Speaker 2: about ED two nine later on and just how incredibly looks.
Speaker 2: But finally, the music here is by Basil Polodorus, who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen forty five through two thousand and six American composer,
Speaker 2: best known in film for his work with John Millius,
Speaker 2: who he met at USC studying filmmaking and composing. He
Speaker 2: also worked several times with Paul Verhooven. He worked with
Speaker 2: Millius as early as nineteen seventy on a student film
Speaker 2: and then later on seventy eight's Big Wednesday. Nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: two's Conan the Barbarian. Of course, that in my opinion,
Speaker 2: is his master work, like that is such an incredible
Speaker 2: and just perfect score for that movie. But he also
Speaker 2: worked with Milius on Red Dawn from eighty four, Farewell
Speaker 2: to the King in eighty nine, and Flight of the
Speaker 2: Intruder in ninety one. With Verhooven, he worked with him
Speaker 2: for the first time on Plus Blood from eighty five,
Speaker 2: followed this up with RoboCop and Starship Troopers in ninety seven.
Speaker 2: Other scores of note include Renee Cardona Junior's Tintorera from
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four, The Shark Movie or a Shark Movie,
Speaker 2: we should say the Shark Movie in any respect. Also
Speaker 2: the Michael Crichton scripted Extreme Close Up in seventy three,
Speaker 2: The Blue Lagoon in nineteen eighty, Cherry two thousand and
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eight in the nineteen eighty nine mini series
Speaker 2: A Lonesome Dove. So for this movie, you know, solid,
Speaker 2: catchy and sweeping score. I think a highly effective score.
Speaker 2: It has the right bombosity for RoboCop.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I love the RoboCop theme. I think it's perfect
Speaker 3: for the film, and it sonically evokes exactly the feeling
Speaker 3: of the world and the plot like it sounds like
Speaker 3: a doomed attempt at heroism in a bleak world ruled
Speaker 3: by bad men. Yeah, all right, you want to talk
Speaker 3: a bit about the plot, Yeah, let's dive right in now.
Speaker 3: This is one of those where I think it does
Speaker 3: not make sense to do a full scene by scene
Speaker 3: recap of the movie, but rather in this case, we're
Speaker 3: going to discuss a bit about the broad outline and
Speaker 3: some themes and highlights from the movie. One thing we've
Speaker 3: got to talk about is are the media segments in RoboCop.
Speaker 3: RoboCop repeatedly breaks the action with news reports, commercials, and
Speaker 3: clips of TV shows from in universe, as if we
Speaker 3: were characters in the world of RoboCop watching the same
Speaker 3: TV they do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and these are extended sequences. I'd forgotten just how
Speaker 2: long they are, Like you're watching RoboCop world television for
Speaker 2: minutes on end, including right at the top of the film,
Speaker 2: and it does a great job of positioning you within
Speaker 2: the world of the movie, of course, giving you a
Speaker 2: little back for what's going on elsewhere in the world,
Speaker 2: what's going on in culture and media, but at the
Speaker 2: same time, in some ways counterbalancing the violence that we
Speaker 2: see on screen, but also driving home the satire and
Speaker 2: like keeping satire on your radar as you are interacting
Speaker 2: with the gritty details of the plot.
Speaker 3: There's a way that like when you see the news
Speaker 3: reports in the media segments sort of just lightly gloss
Speaker 3: over what sound like actually horrific events that sort of
Speaker 3: makes you see the events of the violent events of
Speaker 3: the plot differently.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, but.
Speaker 3: Anyways, Yeah, but a big part of what they do,
Speaker 3: especially the beginning of the film is just world setting,
Speaker 3: you know, establishing what kind of world is this taking
Speaker 3: place in? And I would say the news segments from
Speaker 3: the world of RoboCop depict a kind of hyper Reaganite
Speaker 3: near future. So there is an idea that there's escalation
Speaker 3: of the Cold War, massive military build up, a lot
Speaker 3: of focus on weapons technology, and a supply side free
Speaker 3: for all where everything is run by for profit corporations
Speaker 3: and cash is king. And the first thing we see
Speaker 3: in the movie after like a sweep over the city
Speaker 3: and the title is a news segment, and so to
Speaker 3: set the scene of this world, it mentions before there's
Speaker 3: a segment about how the remaining enclave of the apartheid
Speaker 3: government in South Africa has unveiled their possession of a
Speaker 3: French made neutron bomb and has announced their willingness to
Speaker 3: use it against the people to protect white minority rule.
Speaker 3: There is another report from the new quote star Wars
Speaker 3: Orbiting peace Platform, and this appears to be a play
Speaker 3: on the so called Star Wars Missile Defense initiative, except
Speaker 3: in the movie the quote peace platform seems to be
Speaker 3: just some kind of like general orbital weapons system which
Speaker 3: they call a peace platform. And then in a later
Speaker 3: news segment in the movie, we find out that it
Speaker 3: quote accidentally fired a laser barrage at Santa Barbara, California
Speaker 3: during attack and that kills hundreds of people, including two
Speaker 3: former presidents who are not named. And then the anchors
Speaker 3: just say the nation mourns for Santa Barbara, and then
Speaker 3: they move on to something else.
Speaker 2: And I mean it's implied that that's Ronald Reagan. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we see Ronald Reagan's body there on the ground. So
Speaker 2: the satire is at times pretty grim.
Speaker 3: But then it cuts straight from these like horrific reports
Speaker 3: to commercials, and the commercials are for things. One is
Speaker 3: for the Family Heart Center, which is a clinic focusing
Speaker 3: on heart transplants with new mechanical artificial hearts. But the
Speaker 3: doctor in the commercial at first he's like, you know, oh,
Speaker 3: it's time for a heart transplant, and then he transitions
Speaker 3: into sounding like he's pitching a customer on jet skis.
Speaker 3: He's like the series seven sports Heart by Jensen Yamaha,
Speaker 3: you pick the.
Speaker 2: Heart, which I guess also positions where we are in,
Speaker 2: like the cybernetic world.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Then there is an ad for a family board
Speaker 3: game called New Coom, a game that looks kind of
Speaker 3: like Battleship, except it's for four players and it seems
Speaker 3: like the way you win the game is if you
Speaker 3: were the first player to use nuclear weapons. The tagline
Speaker 3: of the game is get them before they get you,
Speaker 3: graam grim. Then there are adds for a car. This
Speaker 3: car has a big footprint in the movie. It is
Speaker 3: called the six thousand SUX, So that's kind of low
Speaker 3: hanging fruit joke, but you know, I wouldn't change it.
Speaker 3: This is apparently the hottest new car in the world now.
Speaker 3: It is extremely ugly. It gets eight miles per gallon,
Speaker 3: but it's new, it's huge. You've got to have one.
Speaker 3: The commercial makes the point that the car is bigger
Speaker 3: than Godzilla.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have this nice commercial that has the stop
Speaker 2: motion monster in it, like very much in the Harry
Speaker 2: Housen style. Obviously, created by Phil Tippett here, which is
Speaker 2: a nice nod to those movies that are in a
Speaker 2: very large way and inspiration for the creation of N
Speaker 2: two nine.
Speaker 3: But then also we see the TV TV shows. The
Speaker 3: most popular TV show in the world of RoboCop, which
Speaker 3: we see multiple times, involves a man with glasses and
Speaker 3: a mustache ogling women in bikinis and then turning directly
Speaker 3: to the camera to utter his beloved catchphrase I'd buy
Speaker 3: that for a dollar. So, according to an article that
Speaker 3: I turned up, though it is not mentioned in the movie,
Speaker 3: the name of this TV sitcom is It's not my
Speaker 3: problem exclamation point and it's interesting. So the show is
Speaker 3: portrayed as just insipid trash, but multiple times we see
Speaker 3: characters watching this show, such as there's one moment where
Speaker 3: this sadistic murderer Emil is watching the show on a
Speaker 3: TV through a shop window, and I think he's like
Speaker 3: sitting in his car watching it, drinking a liquor bottle
Speaker 3: or something. He seems to find it marvelously entertaining, and
Speaker 3: then he ends up breaking the glass in the window
Speaker 3: so he can turn the TV up louder and laugh
Speaker 3: along with the laugh track. So something's interesting about the
Speaker 3: way RoboCop depicts this world of cruel, sadistic men who
Speaker 3: kill without a thought and then in their downtime are
Speaker 3: sedated and entertained by mindless, repetitive sitcoms that just seem
Speaker 3: to be looping the same scene and catchphrase over and over.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that a Neil scene especially is interesting, you know,
Speaker 2: because they intentionally took time to show you his enjoyment
Speaker 2: of this show, that this bottom of the barrel misogynistic
Speaker 2: comedy that seems to be everybody's favorite. And I guess
Speaker 2: it also I'd buy that for a dollar like it
Speaker 2: just it also kind of ties into the overall capitalist,
Speaker 2: corporate world of RoboCop. Everything can be bought for a dollar, right.
Speaker 3: It's almost like a mantra delivering the hidden message that
Speaker 3: my trust and allegiance is cheap, Just give me the cash.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, Well let's talk more about the setting here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the media segments are used to establish a
Speaker 3: lot about the broader world. The specific setting of the
Speaker 3: movie is the city of Detroit in Michigan, where it
Speaker 3: seems the situation is there's some overlap with reality that
Speaker 3: the city was a thriving metropolis, but it has suffered
Speaker 3: a lot because a lot of the industry that used
Speaker 3: to be based there has moved offshore or shuttered in
Speaker 3: some way. So the film is just full of abandoned,
Speaker 3: empty factory buildings that continually visually communicate this theme of
Speaker 3: just like the loss of former prosperity and so forth.
Speaker 3: So huge portions of the city have been left out
Speaker 3: of work, impoverished and desperate, and the city is essentially
Speaker 3: on the brink of collapse. So the job of running
Speaker 3: the local police department has been outsourced to OCP Omni
Speaker 3: Consumer Products. But OCP has set its sites higher than
Speaker 3: just running the police. Essentially, they have a plan to
Speaker 3: demolish the existing Detroit and replace it with a new,
Speaker 3: completely privately owned settlement called Delta City, where they will
Speaker 3: run everything. So in a way, you can see how
Speaker 3: it is in OCP's interest for things in Detroit to
Speaker 3: get as bad as they possibly can be so that
Speaker 3: they can buy up all the property cheap and privatize
Speaker 3: all the local government.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but at the same time they need a
Speaker 2: little bit of muscle, and also they are, as we're
Speaker 2: tiled at one point, they basically are the military, so
Speaker 2: they're working on all of these various military projects as well.
Speaker 3: Right, And so amidst this backdrop, we see the OCP Headquarters,
Speaker 3: which is this strange looking building that has a kind
Speaker 3: of inverted triangle architecture near the bottom, but then it
Speaker 3: just goes straight up from there, and so it's very
Speaker 3: weird looking skyscraper architecture. But it does seem on theme
Speaker 3: somehow because it's like all of this concrete that like
Speaker 3: comes down to a point near where it meets the ground.
Speaker 3: So it's the idea of like this corporation just like
Speaker 3: crushing the people on the ground. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Again, the bottom part of this is Dallas City Hall,
Speaker 2: but by creating this mate painting of it rising the
Speaker 2: rest of the way up into the sky, it's like
Speaker 2: it's stabbing into the earth, like it's a sword come
Speaker 2: down from the heavens. And we eventually see multiple shots
Speaker 2: at different points in the film of people ascending or
Speaker 2: descending in elevators and some sort of you know, vast
Speaker 2: atriums of this building, and these are also created with
Speaker 2: matte paintings. And in the extras on the Arrow Blu Ray,
Speaker 2: they mentioned that Forbidden Planet was one of the influences
Speaker 2: here and creating this kind of vast interior space.
Speaker 3: I never would have made that connection, but that's really good. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But anyway, Okay, so we're here at OCP headquarters. We
Speaker 3: coming in this corporate board meeting, which is a great scene.
Speaker 3: We've got OCP Vice President Dick Jones played by Ronnie Cox.
Speaker 3: He is showing off his plan to move on to
Speaker 3: the next stage in their control of the Detroit Police Force.
Speaker 3: He wants to essentially replace the remaining human police force
Speaker 3: with a violent police robot called ED two o nine.
Speaker 3: He brings ED two O nine out for a demonstration
Speaker 3: that turns horrific robot. I don't know if you want
Speaker 3: to describe this scene. It's it's an iconic scene from
Speaker 3: the film, maybe the most remembered part of all of RoboCop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, for starters, it has we have to
Speaker 2: mention that that ED to nine And if you don't
Speaker 2: know what ED to nine looks, to nine looks like,
Speaker 2: do do yourself a favor and find an image surger
Speaker 2: or video clip because it does not look like a policeman,
Speaker 2: looks like a weapons platform is.
Speaker 3: And that's not what a humanoid and shape.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just a weapons platform that they're clearly eyeing
Speaker 2: for a larger military market. It was not created expressly
Speaker 2: with police work in mind. It is a frightening, uh
Speaker 2: bestial machine.
Speaker 3: So Dick Jones is setting up the demonstration. He gets
Speaker 3: one of the one of his colleagues from the boardroom
Speaker 3: here to uh to point a gun at ED two
Speaker 3: oh nine for the demonstration. And there's a little detail.
Speaker 3: A lot of people notice that he hands a gun
Speaker 3: to this guy. He's like, all right, let's see if
Speaker 3: we can make him do his job. And so the
Speaker 3: other guy points the gun at Dick Jones, and ED
Speaker 3: two o nine does not react to this, like of
Speaker 3: like people threatening each other. But then Dick Jones is like, no, no,
Speaker 3: pointed at ED two oh nine. And so then when
Speaker 3: he when he threatens the hardware, then ED two o
Speaker 3: nine comes online and like points his turrets at him
Speaker 3: and says, you drop the weapon. You have twenty seconds
Speaker 3: to comply. So the guy he said, you know he
Speaker 3: is goaged on by Dick Jones. He says, better do
Speaker 3: as you're told. So the guy drops the weapon, and
Speaker 3: then ED two o nine says, you now have fifteen
Speaker 3: seconds to comply it clearly has not registered the loss
Speaker 3: of the weapon. So in a horrifically violent turn of events,
Speaker 3: the robot malfunk and then ends up just liquefying this guy.
Speaker 3: It shoots him like hundreds of times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just notorious graphic scene, and some cuts of the
Speaker 2: film have the extended goification of this this poor dimmed individual.
Speaker 2: But yeah, and it's a frantic affair. He's trying to like, hi,
Speaker 2: you know, run to for cover, and they're pushing him
Speaker 2: back in the way because no one else wants to
Speaker 2: get shot and caught the crossfire. And yeah, and then
Speaker 2: finally an utter failure of the program here.
Speaker 3: So the old Man looks at Dick Jones and says,
Speaker 3: I'm very disappointed in you, Dick, and Dick Jones says, sure,
Speaker 3: it's only a glitch, like completely unconcerned with you know,
Speaker 3: the threat this would pose to people. Is just kind
Speaker 3: of like, ah, yeah, we'll figure it out, don't worry
Speaker 3: about it. But this does seem like a pretty catastrophic
Speaker 3: failure to the old Man. And right there next to him,
Speaker 3: waiting in the wings is Bob Morton played by Miguel Ferrer,
Speaker 3: who steps in with his rival project. He's like, clearly
Speaker 3: ed two O nine is not ready for prime time.
Speaker 3: We've got something ready to go, the RoboCop program, and
Speaker 3: he tells the old man about it. It's ready to
Speaker 3: go as Plan B. All they need is a donor,
Speaker 3: and he thinks they should have one pretty soon. What
Speaker 3: does that mean, We're about to find out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it may not be here. Maybe it's a little
Speaker 2: later that we learned that. Yeah, not only are they
Speaker 2: eyeing donors, but they are making sure that prime police
Speaker 2: candidates are being reassigned to dangerous zones so that they're
Speaker 2: going to be more likely to encounter some sort of
Speaker 2: fatal injury that would deliver their body straight to the
Speaker 2: RoboCop program.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they do. They do like a physical and they're like, okay,
Speaker 3: Peter Weller, he would be a good candidate to go
Speaker 3: in the RoboCop suit. So we're going to send him
Speaker 3: after Clarence Bodiker and deny him back up. Yeah, So
Speaker 3: here we meet our hero Alex Murphy and Peter Weller.
Speaker 3: After OCP transfers him to a new Metro division, he
Speaker 3: gets paired with his new partner Lewis. That's Nancy Allen.
Speaker 3: They get to know each other. They have some nice
Speaker 3: friendly banter, but early on, maybe it's his first day
Speaker 3: at the new division, not exactly clear. They respond to
Speaker 3: a bank robbery in progress and it's Clarence Botiker's gang
Speaker 3: and Botaker is just the nastiest, meanest criminal on earth.
Speaker 3: While Murphy and Lewis are chasing them, there's this one
Speaker 3: part where you see Botiker, just like the gang has
Speaker 3: no friendship or loyalty even to each other. One of
Speaker 3: the gang is injured during the shootout when they're in
Speaker 3: a chase, and Bodaker just like grabs him and goes
Speaker 3: can you fly Bobby and throws him out of the
Speaker 3: van into the police car, which briefly delays them, and
Speaker 3: eventually Murphy and Lewis pursue the gang all the way
Speaker 3: to an abandoned foundry, and while attempting to make an arrest,
Speaker 3: again no backup is available. As usual, Murphy is caught
Speaker 3: and then brutally executed by the gang an awful, horrifically
Speaker 3: violent scene. His body is recovered taken to a hospital,
Speaker 3: but he can't be revived. He is dead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think shotgun dismemberment is worth mentioning in terms
Speaker 2: of Murphy's death because you know, because it's like it's
Speaker 2: that extreme, like like it's another example of the violence
Speaker 2: just ratcheted up to an unbelow to a degree where
Speaker 2: it almost takes some of the punch out of it
Speaker 2: because it becomes an obvious Hollywood gore fest. I don't know,
Speaker 2: everyone's mileage is going to vary on this sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Now, next we get a really interesting sequence in the movie,
Speaker 3: which is we have Murphy's death, but from here we
Speaker 3: start seeing something from some point of view through a
Speaker 3: kind of grainy almost computer or CRT image. We see
Speaker 3: these views of scientists messing with somebody from their point
Speaker 3: of view, like drilling around on their head and adjusting
Speaker 3: his vision. So we're seeing robocops point of view, and
Speaker 3: this is the project run by Bob Morton. Rob do
Speaker 3: you anything you want to identify about these scenes where
Speaker 3: we're like watching Murphy's physical remains become become able to
Speaker 3: see as they are becomingcop.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's almost like he's being he is being
Speaker 2: born again, you know, it's like early memories, childhood memories
Speaker 2: almost that's some sort of sense. As he's watching the
Speaker 2: scientists work on him, as he's eventually seeing you know,
Speaker 2: there's like an office party, a Christmas party or something
Speaker 2: that's underway, and they're interacting with him a little bit.
Speaker 2: But also there are bits of dialogue though on the
Speaker 2: other hand that far from discussing him as a child.
Speaker 2: I think Morton in particular is like he's dead now
Speaker 2: we can do whatever we want with him. Like he's
Speaker 2: no longer a human, he is a product.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he signed the rights to his remains away. That
Speaker 3: was part of his contract to be a cop, and
Speaker 3: we can do whatever we want with them. He's not
Speaker 3: him anymore. Yeah. Also in these scenes, we learn about
Speaker 3: robocops three prime directives. They say, you know, he's guided
Speaker 3: by the directives to serve the public trust, to protect
Speaker 3: the innocent, and uphold the law. And then there is
Speaker 3: a fourth directive that is not spelled out. It just
Speaker 3: says it's classified, but it does flash on the screen.
Speaker 3: They say nothing about that out loud. It's just something
Speaker 3: that RoboCop sees on his own heads up display.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this will become important later on.
Speaker 3: So after this RoboCop is unveiled, they put him out
Speaker 3: on the beat and there are just a bunch of
Speaker 3: scenes of RoboCop out on patrol, intervening when crimes are
Speaker 3: in progress. We see him stop an armed robbery at
Speaker 3: a convenience store. He intervenes when two men are attacking
Speaker 3: a woman in an abandoned lot. He resolves a hostage
Speaker 3: situation at city hall. And in all of these scenes,
Speaker 3: RoboCop is shown to be in some ways highly effective,
Speaker 3: in other ways not like he is successful at stopping
Speaker 3: the crimes, but he does so via the application of
Speaker 3: brutal violence in every case, and he is shown to
Speaker 3: be cold and mechanical in his relations to victims.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we see the media segments of him being celebrated,
Speaker 2: but also, yeah, at the same time, he's not really
Speaker 2: doing the ideal version of police work here. He's just
Speaker 2: like a blunt instrument that reaches through walls to have
Speaker 2: criminals and so forth.
Speaker 3: There's one part where I think they're asking, like there's
Speaker 3: like school children clearly being terrified by RoboCop during some
Speaker 3: kind of outreach program, and they're like, do you have
Speaker 3: any message for the children, And he says, stay out
Speaker 3: of trouble. But all of this builds up to a
Speaker 3: realization Lewis Murphy's old partner sees through the machine mask.
Speaker 3: She sees that it's Murphy underneath, noticing little ticks, little
Speaker 3: sayings and movements that mirror things Murphy did. One giveaway
Speaker 3: is that Murphy was practicing this kind of, you know,
Speaker 3: a cowboy gun holster move that was from a TV
Speaker 3: show that his son liked called TJ Laser, And then
Speaker 3: she sees RoboCop do the same move, so she realizes
Speaker 3: who it is. She's like, that's Murphy in there, and
Speaker 3: she goes up to him. At one point she like
Speaker 3: approaches him in a hallway and says, Murphy, it's you,
Speaker 3: and this causes a crisis. RoboCop is not supposed to
Speaker 3: have a personality or any mimas Bob Morton again, he
Speaker 3: explains that, like, it's just physical scaffolding. They just need
Speaker 3: some brain tissue. Murphy no longer exists, it's just brain
Speaker 3: tissue owned by OCP. That's not a person, it's a machine.
Speaker 3: But nevertheless, RoboCop begins to malfunction by having memories and
Speaker 3: dreams and glitches, and this leads up to a scene
Speaker 3: where he visits his former home that he shared with
Speaker 3: his family, which is now empty and for sale. There's
Speaker 3: like a robotic salesman who starts talking when he comes
Speaker 3: in the door, like, oh, this could be your new
Speaker 3: dream home. And I think some critics at the time
Speaker 3: might have sneered at these sequences of him, you know,
Speaker 3: this machine with these strange, robotic motions, trying to reclaim
Speaker 3: his past life and remember what it was. They might
Speaker 3: have seen that as ridiculous. But I found this stuff
Speaker 3: quite moving. To each their own, I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is one of the segments that really
Speaker 2: hit me in the fields. I liked it. I thought
Speaker 2: it worked.
Speaker 3: Also some in here. There's a scene where Dick Jones
Speaker 3: sends Clarence Bodiker, who works for him by the way,
Speaker 3: to Bob Morton's house to kill him. He's just like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm done with Morton.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, Like Morton really didn't know what he was
Speaker 2: messing with it. Clearly didn't really think that Dick Jones
Speaker 2: would send a goon to his house to murder him
Speaker 2: in cold blood, and that's exactly what happens.
Speaker 3: Then there's an interesting middle section of the movie in
Speaker 3: which RoboCop, in this process of rediscovering that he might
Speaker 3: have been a person at one point and who that
Speaker 3: person was, he starts to systematically solve Murphy's own murder.
Speaker 3: So he like encounters Emil, one of Clarence Bodeker's gang
Speaker 3: in the middle of like robbing a gas station, and
Speaker 3: he encounters him, and from him he traces him to
Speaker 3: other members of Botacker's gang and eventually to Botaker himself.
Speaker 3: And when he captures Bodeker claims that he can't be
Speaker 3: arrested because he has a protection agreement. He works for
Speaker 3: Dick Jones, and Dick Jones runs the police.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this whole solving Zone murder series of sequences is great.
Speaker 2: Like there's the scene where he goes to the nightclub
Speaker 2: to collect Ray Wise's character. Yeah, that one's a lot
Speaker 2: of fun. Yeah, it builds nicely until he's yeah, he's
Speaker 2: already found Bottiker, that this is where there's a He
Speaker 2: roughs him up quite a bit and drags a bloody,
Speaker 2: snarling Boticker into police headquarters.
Speaker 3: But so now he has evidence that Dick Jones is
Speaker 3: behind it all, So he tries to go up the
Speaker 3: chain to arrest Dick Jones and it doesn't work out
Speaker 3: so well. He walks into the office Ronnie Cox is
Speaker 3: sitting there, and Ronnie Cox like holds out his hands.
Speaker 3: He says, sounds pretty serious. You better arrest me. But
Speaker 3: RoboCop is somehow unable to act. He something is preventing him,
Speaker 3: and here we see the activation of Directive four, his
Speaker 3: secret guiding principle, which is that he cannot against the
Speaker 3: interests of OCP, so he cannot will himself to arrest
Speaker 3: one of its officers.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And then this is where Dick Jones, with
Speaker 2: villainous charm, brings out ED two o nine. He's like,
Speaker 2: I going to introduce you to a friend of mine.
Speaker 2: Boardroom doors open and outcomes this glorious stop motion creation.
Speaker 2: ED two o nine is here to finish off RoboCop.
Speaker 3: So yeah, for a bit, there's this fight, the struggle
Speaker 3: where RoboCop is sort of immobilized. It's these two killer
Speaker 3: robots versus each other, but one of them still has
Speaker 3: a shred of humanity inside it and it manages to
Speaker 3: barely escape ED two o nine. And then there is
Speaker 3: a detail in this fight that I've always loved since
Speaker 3: the first time I saw the movie. What how is
Speaker 3: ED two o nine defeated in this confrontation by stars.
Speaker 3: ED two o nine gets to the stairwell and RoboCop
Speaker 3: runs down it and ED to O nine. Clearly, this
Speaker 3: is a contingency that the designers of ED two O
Speaker 3: nine had never thought of. And it is unable to
Speaker 3: navigate going down a staircase and ends up turned on
Speaker 3: its back and unable to get up. And it's hilarious.
Speaker 3: It feels so right, and it's the best possible conclusion
Speaker 3: to this fight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it hits all the right notes and in
Speaker 2: a sense, like it does get into this again sort
Speaker 2: of light sci fi about cybernetics and robotics. The idea
Speaker 2: that ED two nine is a military application that is
Speaker 2: clearly clearly was not designed for police work. It was
Speaker 2: not designed to interact in a human world, and an
Speaker 2: important part of police work is interacting in a human
Speaker 2: world that involves obviously things like stairs, as well as
Speaker 2: other nuances like being able to tell the difference between
Speaker 2: a perpetrator who is an active threat and someone who
Speaker 2: has already surrendered and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so I think that I think part of
Speaker 3: the vision of ED two nine is that it is
Speaker 3: a very dangerous, lethal robot, but in many ways it
Speaker 3: is poorly designed. So it's like it is designed to
Speaker 3: appeal to the people who award defense contracts more than
Speaker 3: to like actually be good at its job.
Speaker 2: Right, But again great great finish to this initial combat
Speaker 2: between RoboCop and ED two and nine.
Speaker 3: But at this point, so RoboCop is he's able to
Speaker 3: get down the stairs. But at this point the OCP
Speaker 3: controlled police Force arrives and they have been ordered to
Speaker 3: destroy RoboCop and so they try, but Lewis saves him.
Speaker 3: She comes to the rescue. She takes him off to
Speaker 3: the abandoned foundry we saw earlier and helps him rediscover
Speaker 3: who he is. And this sequence his mask comes off,
Speaker 3: like he removes the bolts and takes off his visor
Speaker 3: and reveals that Murphy's face is still underneath there to
Speaker 3: some extent, his brain still is Murphy's brain, though it's
Speaker 3: different and there I don't know. There's like a really
Speaker 3: tender scene where she helps him recalibrate his aim and
Speaker 3: it just kind of gives him encouragement. He doesn't know
Speaker 3: what he is, but whatever he is, she's there to help. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this I really liked this part. Also, the part
Speaker 2: where after the mask has come off and he has
Speaker 2: to be left alone, you know, it's it's it's a
Speaker 2: tender moment. That is, it's well acted by it by
Speaker 2: both actors involved here, and you know, I totally totally
Speaker 2: buy into it, and it made me tear up just
Speaker 2: a little bit.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, Dick Jones hooks Bodiker's gang up with some kind
Speaker 3: of military grade weapons that they are going to need
Speaker 3: to destroy RoboCop. Jones of course wants RoboCop dead for
Speaker 3: two reasons. First of all, RoboCop has evidence against Jones
Speaker 3: and his memory banks, and he doesn't want to be implicated.
Speaker 3: But the second thing is, of course, if RoboCop is eliminated,
Speaker 3: that'll put ED two o nine, that that project back
Speaker 3: front and center. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's promising to have an ED two o nine
Speaker 2: like on every street corner. So there are already a
Speaker 2: lot of these in stories just ready to roll out
Speaker 2: into the city in force.
Speaker 3: So Botaker and the gang now armed with these, with
Speaker 3: this heavy artillery, they come to hunt down RoboCop at
Speaker 3: the foundry. But there and this leads to a bunch
Speaker 3: of great action scenes there, like a car chase, and
Speaker 3: there are these shootouts and all that together, RoboCop and
Speaker 3: Lewis managed to defeat Bodiker and his gang This is
Speaker 3: the sequence that includes Emil getting doused with toxic waste
Speaker 3: and eventually melting. So it's incredibly gory action scenes. We've
Speaker 3: said that a million times now, but like you be warned,
Speaker 3: this is an incredibly bloody, violent movie. But as action
Speaker 3: scenes they work pretty great. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I've seen my shriff Gorfest and I've
Speaker 2: seen this film before obviously, but yeah, when I was
Speaker 2: rewatching the Emeeal melting sequence, it's just like I had
Speaker 2: a just like a grimace fixed into my face for
Speaker 2: like a good solid five minutes because it's so grim
Speaker 2: and it's so gross, and it seems to go on
Speaker 2: forever until he's finally hit by a car by a
Speaker 2: Boticker's car and just explodes in a splash of slime.
Speaker 3: It's awful. Yeah. So after all this, RoboCop goes to
Speaker 3: arrest Jones because you know OCP is behind it all,
Speaker 3: working on Dick Jones's orders. So RoboCop comes into a
Speaker 3: board meeting and he turns the old man against him
Speaker 3: by playing a tape of Dick Jones admitting the murder
Speaker 3: of Bob Morton. Now you know, OCP may not be
Speaker 3: very sensitive to the harm they caused to regular people,
Speaker 3: but this is the murder of one of these corporate
Speaker 3: guys themselves, and I think they're unsettled by that. So
Speaker 3: so now Dick Jones actually feels afraid. He tries to
Speaker 3: take the old man hostage to flee the scene. And
Speaker 3: here there's an interesting conflict because RoboCop is still bound
Speaker 3: by Directive four, so he cannot act against OCP. He
Speaker 3: can't act against Jones. But then he he essentially hints
Speaker 3: to the old man what the problem is, and the
Speaker 3: old man then announces that Jones is fired from his position.
Speaker 3: So RoboCop immediately shoots him out of the skyscraper window.
Speaker 3: So that's an interesting And then there is a special effect. Well,
Speaker 3: the special effects generally in this movie are fantastic. There
Speaker 3: is a famously bad one as Jones falls out of
Speaker 3: the window and it looks like he has really long
Speaker 3: arms for some reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a stop motion effect. They use a
Speaker 2: stop motion model of Dick Jones, which I mean, basically,
Speaker 2: I guess you have to think about about stop motion
Speaker 2: a lot with this film, Like stop motion is here
Speaker 2: and used in this film not so much because it
Speaker 2: is loving and well crafted and is like an art
Speaker 2: form all its own. It was the best way of
Speaker 2: delivering this particular effect at the time. And so with
Speaker 2: even with Dick Jones falling out the window, like what
Speaker 2: are your choices? You either don't show it, or you
Speaker 2: use like a Dick Jones lying on a blue mat
Speaker 2: and do like a green scaring kind of a thing
Speaker 2: where he's like, ah, you know, like Mortal Kombat two
Speaker 2: falling into the pit, which can also look pretty bad.
Speaker 2: Or you go for a stop motion, and in this
Speaker 2: case it didn't quite work, like they were trying to
Speaker 2: create something that was too lifelike. But I wouldn't change it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't change it. Still admired.
Speaker 3: I love the long arms that it gives me a
Speaker 3: tickle every time.
Speaker 2: This was a time period too, where like that sort
Speaker 2: of shot I feel like happened a lot. You had
Speaker 2: a lot of bad guys falling to their death, Like
Speaker 2: didn't the Joker go down the same way? Maybe a
Speaker 2: slightly more convincing effect. I don't recall, Yeah, falling off skyscrapers.
Speaker 2: They'll do it well anyway.
Speaker 3: So after this, the old man says, he says something
Speaker 3: like nice shooting son. What's your name? And RoboCop does
Speaker 3: not say RoboCop. He says Murphy. And that's the end
Speaker 3: of the film. And it's an interesting ending because Murphy
Speaker 3: has somewhat reclaimed his humanity, like he has acted against
Speaker 3: the direct interests of his one of his bosses in
Speaker 3: this case, so he has somewhat done the right thing
Speaker 3: despite what he's being told to do by the by
Speaker 3: the organization that controls him. He has to some degree
Speaker 3: recovered part of himself in that like he you know,
Speaker 3: he remembers his family, he remembers his life. Even though
Speaker 3: he's not fully the Murphy he was, he realizes some
Speaker 3: part of him is Murphy, but he's still not completely free.
Speaker 3: And I think that makes the ending more interesting and
Speaker 3: bittersweet than if he just had like a total victory
Speaker 3: over the bad guys. He's still not fully free because
Speaker 3: he's not able to remove directive for he just has to,
Speaker 3: like outsmart it, find a way around it by getting
Speaker 3: the old man to fire Dick Jones so he can act.
Speaker 2: But again, thinking of Dick Jones as kind of a
Speaker 2: God or Zeus figure, it's like he has he has
Speaker 2: scaled at the top of Mount Olympus once more and
Speaker 2: I guess we also have a satanic figure literally falling
Speaker 2: from the from the heights here. But but then the
Speaker 2: old Man has to acknowledge him, and in asking him
Speaker 2: his name, there is kind of like a power there.
Speaker 2: It's like like, this is your chance to reclaim some
Speaker 2: portion of humanity that we took from you, and he
Speaker 2: does reclaim at least part of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but like we said, it's not a complete victory,
Speaker 3: you know, It's not like OCP is completely defeated and
Speaker 3: the world has changed for the better. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: a small, limited victory, but at least it is that
Speaker 3: in this otherwise bleak and horrible world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there's so many great little moments, like
Speaker 2: the final showdown with Botaker, of course, where he stabs
Speaker 2: him in the neck, which apparently they wanted to do
Speaker 2: something grizzlier, and this was this was thing, the less
Speaker 2: grizzly version, you know. And I guess you don't actually
Speaker 2: see him stab him in the neck. You just see,
Speaker 2: like way too blood splashed under Robocop's chest and then
Speaker 2: you see Bodeker stumbling away with blood gushing out of
Speaker 2: his neck. Still incredibly violent, but I'd forgotten that you
Speaker 2: don't actually see it going into his neck.
Speaker 3: The spike that he uses to kill Botaker there is
Speaker 3: not actually meant to be a weapon. It is the
Speaker 3: jack that he uses to interface with the police computer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and when he busts it out again to load
Speaker 2: the incriminating evidence, it's still bloody with Bodiker's blood. But
Speaker 2: but but shortly after that, there's that scene where Lewis
Speaker 2: is all is shot up and you know, they've they've
Speaker 2: defeated the bad guys there, and this is at the
Speaker 2: industrial site, and RoboCop says to her, it's like, don't worry,
Speaker 2: they'll fix you up. They always do, or something to
Speaker 2: those effects, which they fix everything, they fix everything, which
Speaker 2: which ties into this feeling of yeah, the sort of
Speaker 2: the partial victory, like the powers that these are still
Speaker 2: very much in charge and are very much the deciders
Speaker 2: of life and death and resurrection, but some monoicum of victory,
Speaker 2: some some shred of humanity has been reclaimed.
Speaker 3: So that's RoboCop. Would you buy that for a dollar?
Speaker 2: Yes, I would. I would buy it for thirty plus
Speaker 2: dollars whatever the going rate for the Blu Ray is,
Speaker 2: you know, or you know, rent it digitally or physically
Speaker 2: for somewhere in the neighborhood of four or five dollars.
Speaker 2: Well worth it, well worth the time.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's all I've got.
Speaker 2: All Right, We're going to gohea and close out this episode.
Speaker 2: I think we have one more episode before our Christmas selection,
Speaker 2: so you know, keep your eyes open to see what
Speaker 2: we're going to be covering. You can follow the films
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Speaker 2: B O x D dot com. Our user name there
Speaker 2: is weird House, and we have a nice list of
Speaker 2: all the movies we've covered so far and sometimes a
Speaker 2: sneak peek at what's coming up at least in the
Speaker 2: week to follow. We're primarily a science podcast here. It's
Speaker 2: stuff to blow your mind with core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most serious
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Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
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