Considering how significant the RoboCop movie franchise has been in pop culture, it’s impressive to see just how far from the spotlight Detroit’s future of law enforcement has been in recent years. Not even the ill-fated 2014 movie reboot garnered much attention – positive or otherwise.
Is Robocop gone for good? A cursory look at the cyborg’s performance at the box office might tell us that there’s little hope for our favourite robotic policeman. That said, RoboCop fans are nothing if not loyal to the original movie’s charm – something that even the immediate sequels failed to capture.
Rescuing this franchise from cinematic limbo might be even more difficult than bringing Alex Murphy back to life – but it’s not impossible.
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Back to Basics
It might sound a bit cliché by now, but sometimes, going back to what made a series so cherished in the first place might be the ideal solution to save a waning franchise. In RoboCop‘s case, this would mean a return to the series’ trademark ultraviolence.
One of the core concepts of the original RoboCop had to do with the culture of American corporate violence – taken to caricaturesque extremes, of course. To properly portray the brutality of this dystopian society, Paul Verhoeven didn’t shy away from showing scenes of extreme violence – executed by the criminals and even RoboCop himself.
It wasn’t just an “80’s thing™” – it was part of RoboCop‘s identity as a franchise. This is why the 2014 remake, with its sterilized violence, failed to capture the original’s identity so spectacularly.
Iconic Designs
Let’s face it: some character designs from the 80s and 90s look silly from a modern perspective. Things like Hawkeye’s purple and blue suit or Superman’s mullet wouldn’t fly by today’s fans’ standards.
The RoboCop movie reboot addressed this situation by giving Robo a “tacticool” black suit that wouldn’t look too out of place in a Star Wars film. The issue here is that it lacked the higher meaning behind RoboCop’s original design.
While RoboCop is undeniably an action flick, there’s a permanent sense of existential dread behind Murphy’s situation. RoboCop’s suit doesn’t just strike fear into the heart of any creep he comes across, but it also reminds us that this is a modern version of Frankenstein’s monster that became a cop – not by choice, but by design.
RoboCop’s design was perfect from the very first iteration. It captured the tone the movie was going for right from the start, and it would be unwise to remove Robo’s original look from any future projects. There’s a reason why RoboCop: Rogue City is using Verhoeven’s suit, and not the one from 2014.
Sequels with a Purpose
There’s no point in arguing about it: RoboCop is cool – maybe way too cool for his own good. The fact that Robo was a futuristic cyber cop in the 80s meant that a cavalcade of sequels was in order, which eventually caused the series to fall into the same “quantity over quality” pitfall so many properties of the time descended into.
It isn’t just a matter of rebooting the franchise just because we want more RoboCop flicks: it’s essential to give Alex Murphy a purpose. As fun as it may be to watch him shoot up all kinds of criminal scum, Robo shouldn’t necessarily be seen as a superhero. He’s more of a cautionary tale – but a badass one.
Die-hard RoboCop fans might be awaiting more news about their favourite franchise coming back to life, but it would be best to wait until there’s a good story behind this resurgence, lest we get another flick like the one we got in 2014. We need a Robocop Reboot Movie that honours the original film.
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A Look Back At The Demented Love-Child Of C-3PO And Rambo
Robocop. Part man. Part machine. All cop.
Well, all cop except for how he eats baby food instead of doughnuts. But dammit, the original RoboCop was one cool cat. In a decade of excess, he was the gun-toting heavy metal hero that every red-blooded fan of ultraviolence loved. It didn’t matter that he looked like the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz and moved only half as well, he shot first and asked questions later. Assuming that he left anybody alive, of course, because this film’s version of a police procedural was to shoot and punch bad guys – and to hell with the paperwork. What more could anybody want?
Even the poster for the film says it all. You know it’s going to be cheesy, like watching some demented love-child of C-3PO and Rambo, but you also know that it’s going to tap into that part of your brain that never developed past the age fourteen. Which, as luck would have it, is how old I was when I first saw this film – which had an age restriction way higher than I was technically allowed to see. But then, I hadn’t been allowed to watch Evil Dead 2 or lots of other films I’d seen, and kids will be kids… and please bear with me while I get something off my chest quickly.
The idea of kids watching films above the allocated age restrictions is a big no-no in today’s society. Parents want to protect their kids, and as a parent I understand that. However, I also believe that there’s more outcry from parents who personally perceive things as being offensive, rather than from kids who are genuinely offended. I grew up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, a time when “family films” had genuine attitude, and I turned out just fine. Hell, in Ghostbusters Ray gets an erection (and more) from a ghost, while Venkman swears. As a kid I wasn’t offended, I thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen. In my opinion, kids can handle more than adults think… and they tend to get up to mischief one way or the other.
Me, I got up to mischief and watched RoboCop. And damn, it was hardcore. It was also completely awesome.
The story is simple: Regular cop Alex Murphy gets killed by a group of drug dealers. However, he gets resurrected by some corporate busybodies who now own Detroit’s police force, and they’ve been tinkering around trying to create a robotic police force to replace the overwhelmed flesh-and-blood cops who keep talking about going on strike. And so Murphy is reborn as a cyborg known only as RoboCop, the future of law enforcement. He’s also the future of kicking mass quantities of ass.
Except things aren’t as simple as they seem. RoboCop keeps flashing on the memories of Murphy, which prove that somewhere deep inside that metal body he may still be human – and before long he starts gunning for the drug dealers who killed him. After beating the truth out of enough of them, he discovers that the criminals are in league with Dick Jones, the Vice-President of OCP… the company that made him. Except owing to his programming, RoboCop can’t arrest Jones or harm him in any way. With Jones realising that RoboCop is on to him, he pulls out all the stops to destroy our hero.
As a plot, that may sound rather simple but the finished product is a work of brilliance. Even as a kid I knew that I’d seen something special. There’s a huge amount of snarky social satire in it, some way ahead of its time. It discusses genuine problems like corporations “buying out” bankrupt cities and governments (the setting of Detroit is perfect to reflect this), the criminal undercurrent inherent in a “perfect” upper-class society, and handles the aspect of what it means to be human when you’re a machine as deftly as Blade Runner or Ghost In The Shell. Even the use of violence is so over-the-top that it’s more comedic than offensive.
It wasn’t until I grew up a little that I realised it was even more than I thought. It’s a religious allegory. It’s Judge Dredd, before most people in America realised who and what Judge Dredd even was. It’s a left-wing liberal film which cleverly disguises itself as a right-wing fascist display of might meaning right. It’s a satirical comedy. It’s a cop film. It’s a drama. It’s sci-fi. It’s a 102-minute cyberpunk music video. It’s also probably the only film that pays homage to 1977’s The Incredible Melting Man.
It doesn’t surprise me in the least that it got a decent (but unappreciated) sequel, a dismal TV show, another sequel, a remake, and even a kids’ cartoon series… although that last part is pretty ironic, given that there’s no way any kids like me should have even known about the character. It got turned in to a bunch of computer games too, and I pumped my coins into the arcade machine regularly just to blow up ED-209. I even played the old ZX Spectrum 48k version and loved it, despite it having such bad sound that every time RoboCop said his own name it sounded like “Applecart”.
In spite of all those things though, at heart, Robocop is just a damn fun film.
Watching it again, it doesn’t quite hold up as well as it could have, although it’s debatable if the filmmakers thought at the time that it would ever be considered a classic anyway. Everything from the fashion to the technology reeks of the ‘80s yet it’s still clearly sci-fi, giving it a retro-techno vibe. The story, the performances and the overall presentation truly make it special though, and those haven’t aged a bit. It may not quite be as brilliant as you remember it, but it’s still excellent.
Robocop. Part man. Part machine. Applecart. He’s cool.
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Neill Blomkamp Isn’t Directing Anymore
A few years ago, it was announced that District 9 director Neill Blomkamp would be directing a Robocop reboot movie starring Peter Weller as the titular character. Sadly, after months of build-up, Blomkamp took to Twitter to announce that he is stepping away from the film.
As you can tell from the tweet, it seems that scheduling conflicts are the main cause for the Chappie director’s departure.
Last year, there was quite a bit of sadness around the net when we all learned that Blomkamp wouldn’t be directing an Alien film. This was later confirmed by Ridley Scott whose Alien: Covenant film derailed the project. Now his RoboCop reboot movie has met the same fate.
While Blomkamp’s last film, Chappie, didn’t do so well at the box office, his latest work, a set of self-financed short films by Oats Studios gained a lot of attention. The director seemed a perfect fit for the film and mentioned that both District 9 and Elysium were heavily inspired by the original sci-fi action film.
The synopsis for RoboCop Returns reads, “Anarchy reigns and the fate of Detroit hangs in the balance as RoboCop makes his triumphant return to fight crime and corruption.”
The original R-rated RoboCop from 1987 is considered a classic of the sci-fi genre and went on to spawn many sequels, most of which were disappointing. RoboCop Returns would have been a direct sequel (not a reboot) to the first movie and would have subsequently ignored all the sequels and reboots that followed.
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A RoboCop Prequel Without Robocop?
A while back MGM announced that they were developing a RoboCop prequel series, but the show won’t feature RoboCop at all. Instead, the story will detail the rise of Omni Consumer Products and the company’s Vice President, Dick Jones.
Ed Neumeier, one of the writers of the original 1987 film, revealed the news in an exclusive interview with Movieholen.net.
“I’m working at MGM on it. It has all the cool stuff about RoboCop except no RoboCop.”
“I’m working with these two writers, Dave Parkin and Rob Gibbs, who bought this idea to a TV producer friend of mine, then brought it to me. The first time I heard it I knew it was a cool idea because I could see a lot of things you could do with it.”
The screenwriter went on to explain why he believes a story focusing on Jones will have great potential.
“We’ve been talking about it and I think we have an interesting story. It’s fun to work with a younger version of the Dick Jones we meet in RoboCop. He is an actualized corporate predator in the movie, but nobody necessarily starts out being the bad guy.”
“So it’s going to be about the evolution of Richard Jones to Dick Jones, the story of OCP and how the world moves into the future, how the corporate world behaves.”
The role was made famous by Ronny Cox in the original movie, as the character set out to destroy and discredit the RoboCop program. While Neumeier feels that Cox’s portrayal will be a tough act to follow, he believes the casting of a younger version of the character is an opportunity for the writers.
“He’s great, and to actually know where you’re going with this, to know that’s who he becomes is fun for the writers to work with. They’ve come up with a whole back story I never did.”
RoboCop was a massive hit at the box office and resulted in a host of sequels, spin-offs, video games and comic books. But a RoboCop TV series without RoboCop? What are they thinking?
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Zack Snyder Should Direct A RoboCop Returns Movie
Think about it for a moment, Zack Snyder is the perfect person to direct a RoboCop reboot movie.
Using Twitter, director Neill Blomkamp announced his departure from RoboCop Returns in 2019. It was news that disappointed fans, especially since Blomkamp also lost out on an Aliens film a little while back.
Blomkamp mentioned that MGM couldn’t wait and needed work on the film to start imminently, while he wanted to do another movie. Undoubtedly, this means that the studio will want to go into production before the end of this year in an effort to release RoboCop Returns late next year or in 2021.
With Blomkamp no longer attached to the RoboCop reboot movie, MGM will need to secure a director in the next few weeks/months to meet the production deadline. There are likely to be many candidates for this coveted gig, but there’s a certain someone who fits the bill here. This director, who’s filming a zombie movie titled Army of the Dead for Netflix right now, might be the perfect person to capture the wild, over-the-top violent nature of RoboCop in the same way that Paul Verhoeven first did in 1987.
Yes, we’re talking about Zack Snyder, the filmmaker with all the fans still clamouring for Warner Bros. to release the Snyder Cut of Justice League. Since his time in the DCEU came to a close, Snyder took a breather from big Hollywood productions before jumping back in the saddle for Army of the Dead.
With the film deep into production, it isn’t unreasonable to suggest that it might be hitting the post-production process in the next few weeks. It’s likely that Snyder will still be heavily involved in that, but his shooting schedule should free up if he’s keen on taking a shot at the world’s favourite robot cop.
In many ways, it’s a match made in heaven when you think about it.
It’s no secret that Snyder is a huge fan of Frank Miller and the writer/artist’s style of cynical, violent, crime stories. Miller contributed to the scripts of RoboCop 2 and RoboCop 3, while also penning the memorable RoboCop Versus The Terminator comic book series that featured art by Walt Simonson. RoboCop is typically Miller, and that’s something that’ll appeal to Zack Snyder, who’s adapted the comic legend’s stories in the past.
There’s also no doubt that RoboCop Returns needs to be rated R like the original movie, and that’ll be right down Snyder’s alley. He’s a filmmaker who wants to tackle the dark, gritty and violent, which isn’t always best conveyed in a PG-13 setting. Now, imagine Zack Snyder’s aesthetic in an R-rated RoboCop reboot movie, which will likely share more in common with 300 than the director’s other films. It’ll be brutal, beautiful and everything that a sci-fi action should be.
Let’s be frank here: Snyder deserves another chance at a big franchise. While he’s often blamed for the DCEU’s perceived shortcomings, he ended up being the fall guy for all the behind-the-scenes meddling and drama. A project is the sum of all its parts, and he got left out to dry while others got away unscathed. At the very least, he should get a chance at redemption here.
Hopefully, if Zack Snyder did ever get the opportunity to film this MGM movie, there’d be no need for a Snyder Cut of RoboCop Returns in the future!
Tell us, do you want a RoboCop movie reboot?
How The RoboCop Movie Franchise Can Be Saved Written by Staff Writer for Fortress of Solitude
