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“GEOMETRIC”: Rob Bottin, designer of the RoboCop costume featured in the film, numerous sequels, the spin-off, and franchise venues, has stated that this single word was the key to his concept. The costume also had to suggest “speed” and “aerodynamics.” Peter Weller is the actor under all that visually astounding baggage. Courtesy: Orion.
CREDITS
Orion Pictures; Paul Verhoeven, dir.; Edward Neumeier, Michael Miner, scr.; Arne Schmidt, Neumeier, pro.; Basil Poledouris, mus.; Jost Vacano, Sol Negrin, cin.; Frank J. Urioste, ed.; William Sandell, prod. design; Gayle Simon, art dir.; Erica Edell Phillips, costumes; Rob Bottin, special makeup F/X; Robert Blalack, Beverly Bernacki, Ed Harker, optical effects; Kevin Kutchaver, Jo Martin, animation effects; George Muhs, visual effects; 102 min.; Color; 1.85:1.
CAST
Peter Weller (Alex J. Murphy/RoboCop); Nancy Allen (Anne Lewis); Dan O’Herlihy (The Old Man); Ronny Cox (Dick Jones); Kurtwood Smith (Clarence J. Boddicker); Miguel Ferrer (Bob Morton); Robert DoQui (Sgt. Warren Reed); Ray Wise (Leon C. Nash); Felton Perry (Johnson); Paul McCrane (Emil M. Antonowsky); Jesse D. Goins (Joe P. Cox); Del Zamora (Kaplan); Donna Keegan (Rape Victim); Leeza Gibbons (Jess Perkins).
MOST MEMORABLE LINE
He doesn’t have a name. He has a program. He’s a product.
MORTON TO LEWIS
BACKGROUND
A native of Amsterdam, Paul Verhoeven (1938–) first established a reputation on the continent for artistically rendered, intellectually stimulating films filled with so much graphic violence, explicit sexuality, and excessively rough language that observers were forced to redefine any pre-conceived boundaries separating exploitation and/or pornography and art of the most disturbing order. Apparently, Verhoeven relished that debate—even consciously intended it while designing the edgy love story Turkish Delight (1973), the World War II epic Soldier of Orange (1977), and the Hitchcock-like thriller The Fourth Man (1983). After Hollywood beckoned, Verhoeven surprised ardent fans when, with his second U.S.-financed feature, he turned sharply from reality-based (if highly stylized) movies to science fiction. Though RoboCop was produced on a tight ($13 million) budget, its success, critically and commercially, led to ever more elaborate and expensive projects, such as his 1990 classic, Total Recall.
Street crime and economic collapse have brought the city of Detroit to the edge of financial and social ruin. The constant atrocities, which have become a daily way of life for downtown dwellers, cause city politicians to abandon attempts to maintain law and order. Instead, they sign on with Omni Consumer Products, contracting with the mega-corporation to perform such dirty work. Problems arise when Omni’s elderly chairman decides old Detroit cannot be salvaged and plans to level the crumbling downtown. In its place, Omni will build Delta, a city of the future. This creates a conflict of interest. His men-in-suits, who must deal with the urban population, propose genocide of the underclass as a solution. One of these suits, Jones, argues that robot cops are the best option; his competitor Morton prefers to go with cyborgs, half-human androids. When Alex Murphy, a newcomer to the force, is badly wounded in the line of duty, he becomes the subject of an experimental operation to create “RoboCop.”
THE FILM
While studying a coming attraction poster for Blade Runner (1982), screenwriter Edward Neumeier wondered if the logical follow-up might be a movie about a cyborg cop. Blade Runner’s complex scenario suggested that such a conception pre-existed in that film; Harrison Ford’s character, like Peter Weller’s in RoboCop, is forced to face aspects of his own identity not initially obvious even to him. Other sources of inspiration for the RoboCop character, which quickly became a pop culture icon, included the British crime fighter Judge Dredd (1995) and Rom from Marvel Comics.
At the time of its release, RoboCop re-ignited an already heated controversy. A PG-13 rating had been created after a loud and often angry debate about extreme violence in the Spielberg/Lucas “family film” Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). With RoboCop, Hollywood began producing superhero sci-fi that younger kids wanted to see, though the violence and language (if not, in this case, sex) concerned parents, the R rating notwithstanding. In fact, RoboCop might have been damned with an X rating if Orion had not trimmed away some sixty seconds of material that was considered over the top. This missing minute would eventually be restored in the director’s cut.
THEME
Like most dystopian films, RoboCop projects an exaggeration (though hardly unwarranted) of problems already nascent in society. These representations are offered in the hope that heightened awareness of coming dangers might move people to do something about such situations while “there is still time . . . brother,” as the final words in On the Beach (1959) plead. The bankruptcy of Detroit would become a fact in 2013. That robot warriors could be used not only stateside as Dirty Harry replicas but also in overseas combat, a projection here, has become a reality via the use of drones. The replacement of people by robots in the workplace, here specified as to police work, has in a more general sense been a subject of sci-fi since Metropolis (1927).
RoboCop was one of the first genre films to make radical ideology palatable to the mainstream by placing extremist themes in the relatively safe context of a future-world. The cooperation of corporate bigwigs with leaders of organized crime would have been deemed unacceptable within what were considered the respectable limitations of mass-market moviemaking less than a decade earlier. Just as important is the concept of our modern media being held responsible for widespread cynicism, owing to mindless shows: the appropriately titled fictional TV sitcom “It’s Not My Problem!” and the “info-tainment” offered by Leeza Gibbons, incarnating a comedic version of herself as Jess Perkins, an ever-smiling purveyor of bad news presented in ten-second “bites” and sandwiched between feel-good stories.
One unintended theme, which emerges from a plot necessity, is an implied attack on underpaid workers who are going on strike. The total breakdown of order occurs after the police force, fed up with working conditions, walks off the job, allowing agents of chaos to take over. It’s difficult not to take this as a statement against labor unions and the device of striking as a sometimes-necessary ultimatum when workers’ issues aren’t properly addressed. Both screenwriters were aghast when this interpretation was pointed out to them as they consider themselves left-leaning in orientation.
TRIVIA
Cashing in on the initial film’s success were two sequels (1990 and 1993), four TV incarnations (1988, 1994, 1998–1999, and 2001), as well as video games in 1988, 1990, 1993, and 2003. These, along with the home video market, served to alter the popular notion, then in place, that such genre pieces sharply divided between the family market (Star Wars) and a considerably more adult constituency (Blade Runner). Once more, as the result of a single remarkable film, the genre itself would have to adjust to a series of new rules.