The RoboCop Thread

[Silver Nemesis]

I've always wanted to see Peter Weller return as RoboCop, but this wasn't quite what I had in mind.

[Silver Nemesis]

This week marks the 30th anniversary of RoboCop 2, one of the more divisive films to emerge from the superhero genre. It was the final movie from Empire Strikes Back director Irvin Kershner and is arguably the only RoboCop sequel to successfully capture the atmosphere of the 1987 original.

The script was penned by Frank Miller, but was heavily rewritten before filming commenced. His original treatment was later adapted as a comic book by Avatar Press.

I read this a few years ago, but I can't remember much about it other than thinking it wasn't as good as the finished film. Many of the weaker concepts in Miller's script ended up in the movie RoboCop 3 (on which he is also credited as a writer). Miller himself makes a brief cameo in RoboCop 2 as 'Frank':

You can see traces of his earlier comic book work in RoboCop 2. Cain's cult has parallels with the Mutant gang in The Dark Knight Returns. The leader of both gangs issues a chilling message to the city during a television newscast.

The effete mayor tries unsuccessfully to broker a deal between the city and the gang.

There's a scene where the hero raids one of the gang's hideouts, ending with a standoff where the final criminal grabs a baby and holds a gun to its head. The hero shoots the criminal in both stories.

There are also shades of Born Again in RoboCop 2. Both stories feature the deconstruction (literally, in the case of RoboCop 2) and rebirth of the hero. Born Again introduces a drug-fuelled villain named Nuke, while RoboCop 2 features a villain who manufactures and distributes a drug named Nuke.

In both stories there's a powerful organisation that tries to control the mentally unstable villain using drugs, and in both stories he eventually goes on a rampage, firing on civilian targets in a crowded city.

The wealthy villain observes this from a balcony as the hero tries to put an end to the rampage.

One of the most interesting interpretations of RoboCop 2 is that the whole film is a self-aware commentary on bad sequels. The main villain – literally called 'RoboCop 2' – is a committee-planned abomination that fails to live up to its predecessor's legacy and ends up hurting the very people it's designed to protect.

The first RoboCop film was about the indomitability of Alex Murphy's soul, and the second movie is about OCP trying to rid him of it. One of the funniest scenes has a group of corporate busybodies sit around a table to discuss ways the original RoboCop might be improved. They compile a new list of directives which are then programmed into Murphy in such a way that renders him unable to fulfil his original function. He becomes a watered-down family friendly parody of his earlier self. But ultimately his soul transcends this programming once again and he deletes the new directives to reclaim his autonomy. He then goes back to being the violent gun-toting superhero that fans know and love, much to his corporate overlords' dismay. I'm sure we can all think of certain film franchises whose troubled productions have followed a similar trajectory.

There are also some things I don't like about RoboCop 2. The film is mean-spirited and at times excessively vulgar, particularly with regards to its depiction of children. There are a lot of ideas in the script, but few of them are satisfyingly developed. This makes the movie seem thematically unfocused, which I suspect is one of the reasons critics struggled to find meaning in it. There's also a problem with Murphy's character arc, which ends about halfway through the film when he captures Cain. Until then, the movie does a good job of picking up where the first film left off and placing RoboCop at the centre of the plot. But once Cain is captured, and RoboCop is liberated from his dehumanising programming, Murphy's character arc is effectively concluded. There then follows twenty minutes of screen time in which RoboCop doesn't even appear, and he doesn't return until just before the dénouement.

Although there are some very funny scenes and lines of dialogue ("Sir, whether it exists or not, I know I can find it" being my favourite), the script in general is not as sharp or cohesive as what Neumeier and Miner produced for the first movie. There are too many plot strands that don't go anywhere. For example, the subplot about Murphy's wife is very prominent during the first ten minutes of the film, but never mentioned again after that. Likewise the city's outstanding debt to OCP is a major plot point in the second half of the film, but it's never really resolved. We don't find out what happens to the mayor, and the Nuke storyline also lacks resolution. We see the main distributors of the drug get wiped out by RoboCain, but that doesn't alter the fact the city is now crawling with drug-addicted cultists. So the writing, while very funny and astute in places, is definitely a downgrade from the damn-near-flawless script of the previous film. I also miss Basil Poledouris' classic theme music and Bixby "I'd buy that for a dollar" Snyder. But overall, I still like the film and think it has a lot going for it.

If nothing else, RoboCop 2 gave us this memorable moment from WCW history.

And to think, some people believe wrestling is fake.

[thecolorsblend]

The idea of a second RoboCop movie is inherently more interesting than any actual second RoboCop movie. Credit must be given to Miller for making such a thing even semi-worthwhile. But some movies are too good to turn into a series. RoboCop is one. And I would argue that JOKER is another. But that's for a separate thread, I suppose.

One of Verhoeven's trademarks is satire mixed with dark wit. The original RoboCop played to a lot of his strengths where he could do satire in a sort of black comedy type of way. That feeling is not perfectly carried over to RoboCop 2. But it's close. The Magnavolt commercial is a good example of what I'm talking about.

As to the depiction of children, I was a very young child when RoboCop 2 came out. Oddly enough, for as much as Hobb disturbed me as a kid, I still found him a credible villain from the standpoint that I knew a lot of bullies from school. No, none of them were murderers or drug dealers (as far as I know) but the experiences I had facing them showed me that children are hardly the angels they're often made out to be in film. A child as a second tier villain was a pretty original idea back in 1990 and I still find it original even now since it's so seldom ever used.

One aspect of Miller's work that is effective-yet-off-putting is the utter lack of concern for human dignity particularly on display in RoboCop 2:

An old homeless woman (probably a Nuke addict) gets her shopping cart destroyed, somebody (probably another Nuke addict) feigns concern for her safety, steals her purse, the thief himself gets ambushed just a few steps later, he gets maimed and robbed by yet other Nuke addicts who themselves sidestep a mugging and barely manage to avoid getting killed when a storefront is blown up. It's very much a Just Say No type of cautionary tale about drugs but it's pretty brutal. The nihilism is almost inescapable.

Still, some good came out of it. The movie was shot primarily in my city. My parents were friends with people who worked late nights in the downtown area who regularly got the you-know-what scared out of them by the explosions and stunt sequences. These people were mostly ambivalent about political issues. But they became pretty much totally anti-war by the time production wrapped because of how loud the production got at times.

RoboCop 2's idea of the police going on strike is a bit prescient in retrospect.

All in all, RoboCop 2 isn't a bad movie. I think it's main sin is that it's not a GREAT movie. Considering the wit, sparkle, satire and originality of the first RoboCop film, RoboCop 2 being "not a bad movie" is simply not good enough.

[Travesty]

I had no idea about the anniversary, but it's a bit ironic, because I just re-watched this movie last week for the first time in about 10+ years. It's still a fun movie, but yeah, it's not the first one. But hey, at least it's not Robocop3 or the old live action tv show.

[thecolorsblend]

Not sure if this is directly addressed in SN's post but I suppose there's a parallel where the hero of both RoboCop 2 and TDKR suffers a debilitating injury at the hands of the villain. When the hero gets his mojo back, he realizes that the gloves have to come off with dealing with the villain. With Batman, it's becoming "the surgeon" whereas with RoboCop it's erasing literally all of his directives.

In each case, that's the hero being his truest self, in a sense. In both stories, the hero can only overcome the villain by operating "without rules". In Miller's world, one supposes that the only way to overcome utterly lawless chaos is to impose equally ruthless order. And what the mayors in both stories refuse to accept is that order cannot be restored with niceties and diplomacy. When people say that Miller has a literary fascination with one-man fascism*, I can see where they're coming from.

In both stories, the hero's victory is shortlived. Yes, Batman defeats the Mutant Leader. But the tradeoff is an escalation of events leading to the Joker going on a killing spree. Yes, RoboCop arrests Cain. But the tradeoff is that Cain becomes RoboCop 2, who goes on a killing spree**. In both cases, the hero must kill his enemy in order to truly win the day. Final victory thus hinges not only one an absolutely pure will ("taking the gloves off") but also the determination to kill the villain.

* Yes yes yes, I understand that's not actual fascism but that is what the word has come to mean in the lexicon so that's what I'm using here.

** Yes, I interpret Batman's final showdown with the Joker in TDKR as Batman killing his enemy. Those weren't the Joker's dialogue balloons in the carnival.

[The Dark Knight]

Not sure if this is directly addressed in SN's post but I suppose there's a parallel where the hero of both RoboCop 2 and TDKR suffers a debilitating injury at the hands of the villain. When the hero gets his mojo back, he realizes that the gloves have to come off with dealing with the villain. With Batman, it's becoming "the surgeon" whereas with RoboCop it's erasing literally all of his directives.

In each case, that's the hero being his truest self, in a sense. In both stories, the hero can only overcome the villain by operating "without rules". In Miller's world, one supposes that the only way to overcome utterly lawless chaos is to impose equally ruthless order. And what the mayors in both stories refuse to accept is that order cannot be restored with niceties and diplomacy. When people say that Miller has a literary fascination with one-man fascism*, I can see where they're coming from.

If you want to win against such odds, I don't think there's any other way. As Newton said, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The equal and opposite reaction to chaos is strict order. When you have a wakeup call defeat ala TDK Returns or Robocop 2, you either get on your knees and submit to that new status quo, or get angry and decide to end things once and for all. There are only those two options. Which leads to...

the hero must kill his enemy in order to truly win the day. Final victory thus hinges not only one an absolutely pure will ("taking the gloves off") but also the determination to kill the villain.

The Joker kills an entire live audience of people, then kills the carnival kids with poisoned fairy floss - which is absolutely savage. He's done some dark things, but that has to be near the top. Which shows there ISN'T an end point for how far things will go if you let them go. Some people will only stop when they are forced to stop. Otherwise it just goes on and on.

[Silver Nemesis]

Another observation I'd like to make about this film concerns the ending. A cliché common to superhero films is the showdown revolving around a large inner city building that holds some kind of symbolic value. Often the tower in question has only recently been completed or is still under construction, and at some point the hero and villain end up fighting on the roof or one of the upper storeys while the citizens watch from below. Examples of superhero films that invoke this cliché include Darkman, Spider-Man 3, The Dark Knight, The Amazing Spider-Man and The Avengers. It was also subversively referenced in Glass, where the showdown at the skyscraper is teased throughout the film only to be replaced by a brawl in a car park. I think I'm right in saying that RoboCop 2 was the first superhero film to centre its finale around this type of scenario. I know Batman 89 did something similar one year earlier, but that was an old gothic cathedral rather than a pristine skyscraper.

Moving on, I happened to watch Elektra (2005) last night, and while researching its production I discovered some interesting trivia related to RoboCop 2. Apparently Oliver Stone was trying to develop an Elektra film in the late eighties and early nineties. During the making of RoboCop 2, Frank Miller approached Galyn Görg, who played Angie, and offered her the lead role.

"Frank Miller, he was great, I had a really good time with Frank Miller, he signed my The Dark Knight Returns book. I've said this in a couple of interviews lately because I keep thinking it's going to get back to him, but he and I used to meet for dinner and he told me about this part, he said, "You know there's this part, this script I want you to play. I think you should play Elektra; you'd be really good as Elektra.  At the time I thought, OK, that's great, but, you know, they went on and Jennifer Garner did that."

http://www.adamgerace.com/tag/galyn-gorg/

Görg may not have been an A-list star, but shortly after RoboCop 2 she appeared in Point Break and had a recurring role in the second season of Twin Peaks. She also resembled how artists were drawing Elektra in the early nineties.

Would she have made a good Elektra?

Not sure if this is directly addressed in SN's post but I suppose there's a parallel where the hero of both RoboCop 2 and TDKR suffers a debilitating injury at the hands of the villain. When the hero gets his mojo back, he realizes that the gloves have to come off with dealing with the villain. With Batman, it's becoming "the surgeon" whereas with RoboCop it's erasing literally all of his directives.

I love that sequence. In all the earlier shootouts, RoboCop has to wait for the criminals to open fire before he can use lethal force. But in that scene he initiates the violence by pre-emptively shooting the sniper through the eye. Later he steals a motorbike to pursue Cain, which is something else he'd have been incapable of doing with his Prime Directives in effect. The scene where he captures Cain is pure Murphy, uninhibited by OCP's rules.

[Silver Nemesis]

Moving on, I happened to watch Elektra (2005) last night, and while researching its production I discovered some interesting trivia related to RoboCop 2. Apparently Oliver Stone was trying to develop an Elektra film in the late eighties and early nineties. During the making of RoboCop 2, Frank Miller approached Galyn Görg, who played Angie, and offered her the lead role.

"Frank Miller, he was great, I had a really good time with Frank Miller, he signed my The Dark Knight Returns book. I've said this in a couple of interviews lately because I keep thinking it's going to get back to him, but he and I used to meet for dinner and he told me about this part, he said, "You know there's this part, this script I want you to play. I think you should play Elektra; you'd be really good as Elektra.  At the time I thought, OK, that's great, but, you know, they went on and Jennifer Garner did that."

http://www.adamgerace.com/tag/galyn-gorg/

Görg may not have been an A-list star, but shortly after RoboCop 2 she appeared in Point Break and had a recurring role in the second season of Twin Peaks. She also resembled how artists were drawing Elektra in the early nineties.

Would she have made a good Elektra?

Well this is sad. Less than a month after me posting this, Galyn Görg has passed away from cancer at the age of 56.

https://movieweb.com/galyn-gorg-dead/

[johnnygobbs]

Galyn Görg was a very beautiful woman.  It was sad to read of her passing (a day before her 56th birthday) from cancer, at a similar age to Kelly Preston (Space Camp, Twins), who also died from cancer very recently.

Funnily enough, I'm currently listening to the Robocop 2 episode from Reel Comic Heroes Podcast, a podcast that I highly recommend (since it covers many of the type of films we like discussing on this very site): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyaZheOwVnP0fFkeRhj07xw/videos

[The Joker]

Would anyone have a link to the proposed follow up, "Corporate Wars" script by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner?

I am having trouble finding it. I've run up on sites that have details of what was proposed, but unfortunately not the script itself.

R.I.P. Galyn Görg.

Silver dropping knowledge I was completely unaware of seems to be a more frequent occurrence these days, but I had no idea Frank Miller approached Galyn about Elektra during the filming of Robocop 2. Honestly, I actually forgot she was even in Point Break! As far as Elektra goes, I can see why Miller would have thought Galyn would be a good fit. As she was pretty much the physical embodiment of the then contemporary Elektra at that point.

Yet another one of those "what if" proposed film/castings we'll always wonder about.