RoboCop

RoboCop is a 1987 science fiction action movie, directed by Paul Verhoeven, about a cyborg police officer. It is also the name of a comic and television series featuring the same character.

The movie is set in Detroit at an undefined future time when violent crime is rife. The megacorporation OCP (Omni Consumer Products) which has privatizated almost everything (even the police) has the answer: a robot policeman. Secretly, their "robot" policeman is actually a cyborg, built around a police officer killed in the line of duty; this causes problems when he begins to remember who he was.

RoboCop was followed by two more movies, and a number of television series.

The fictional character

RoboCop was a dedicated police officer named Alex Murphy, played by Peter Weller. He was married with one son. He transferred to Detroit in order to help the police deal with the ongoing wave of crime among a spree of cop killings in the Old City.

With his new partner, Anne Lewis, he chased after the head of the local mafia, Clarence Boddicker, after a bank robbery. Murphy was killed in action.

OCP (multinational corporation Omni Consumer Products, which effectively runs the Detroit police force) had a new idea following the failure of its ED209 policebot project. Instead of putting a computer-controller in their robot they would use a human brain to run the system. Because of Murphy's high profile and recent death, his brain was chosen to be the center of the new cyborg. His brain, face, and other organic parts were attached to a life-support system in a human-like titanium body. This cyborg was named RoboCop. His organic right hand had been destroyed when Murphy was killed, which made it necessary to fashion a replacement. While the surgeons were able to save the left arm, OCP officials decided to instead give him an entirely artificial body. The left arm was then removed.

RoboCop's external-skeleton is made out of titanium and is coated with kevlar, rendering him bullet-proof. It can even deflect light explosives under specific conditions. His hands and legs are enhanced by hydraulic motors enable him to crush a human throat with his grip and break through concrete walls. His hands were capable of exerting 420 foot pounds (569 Nm) of torque, which would be enough to crush every bone in a human hand.

RoboCop is equipped with an enhanced Beretta semi-automatic pistol, with .57 caliber and burst mode. When he is not using his pistol he stores it in a retractable holster built into his right thigh. Before his death Murphy would mimic his son's favourite television show hero, TJ Laser, by spinning his gun around his index finger and holstering it, a trait which he continues to use as RoboCop. RoboCop also has an automated targeting system, thus making him an excellent sharpshooter.

RoboCop also has several useful features such as thermal vision, voice recognition and a video recorder. He can also access computers - such as the police department's computers and some of OCP's systems - directly using a retractable input/output jack built into his right hand. The jack is in the form of sharp spike which also makes it a suitable emergency hand to hand weapon.

RoboCop also had a radio transmitter built into him. This enabled OCP and government officials to be aware of his location at all times. It also enabled computerized dispatching programs to communicate with RoboCop and make him aware of situations requiring his presence.

RoboCop is programmed to follow four prime directives:

1. Serve the public trust
2. Protect the innocent
3. Uphold the law
4. Get his freak on.

The fourth directive, which he was programmed to be unaware of unless it became relevant, rendered him physically incapable of placing any OCP employee under arrest. In the first movie it made him unable to act against corrupt Vice-President Richard 'Dick' Jones until Jones was fired. During the second movie he was unable to act against OCP officials even though he knew that they had committed crimes. In the third movie, when RoboCop became a member of the resistance against OCP, the fourth directive was finally erased.

In the second movie, OCP officials had attempted to modify RoboCop's programming by adding over 100 new directives. This seriously impaired RoboCop's ability to perform his duties. RoboCop himself eventually erased the new directives by overloading his electrical systems.

While at first no one outside a few OCP employees knew who RoboCop was, eventually a few clues surfaced that revealed who RoboCop had originally been. Former partner Anne Lewis realized that RoboCop was Murphy after he used his trademark holstering technique. She confronted RoboCop, who had just had a flashback about his final moments with "Murphy - it's you." When Emil - played by Paul McCrane - heard RoboCop say, "Dead or Alive, you're coming with me" he also realized who RoboCop actually was. Emil then yelled back, "You're dead! We killed you!" At the end of the first film, when the OCP CEO asked RoboCop what his name was, RoboCop replied, "Murphy," having regained his identity.

Plot Analysis

"Robocop" is on the surface not that much different from many other high-profile action movies, there's lots of shooting, killing and general violence, and certainly a lot of gore which may convince some people there isn't any greater meaning to the story.

Quite paradoxically, "RoboCop" is skillfully used by director Paul Verhoeven as a carrier for his own fascination for fascism and the Jesus-figure. Looking beneath the surface, one will find there is a rather thick layer of social satire hidden underneath, starting right at the very beginning of the movie when "Media Break" comes on after the title credits. The news show announces, "You give us five minutes and we'll give you the world!", and then follows rather promptly with an artificial heart commercial. Anything worth knowing about the world can be condensed down into a five-minute segment in the world of Robocop, a trend we're certainly seeing in our own as well.

Further along we learn that vital social structures such as the police have been outsourced to the private sector, with less than ideal results. Workers' rights are being compromised, the pay is low and the police force is understaffed.

The incident in the boardroom with the failed demonstration of ED-209 teaches us life is cheap in future Detroit; the concerns of the company head, the "Old Man" (played by veteran actor Dan O'Herlihy) is more focused on the $20 million the company stands to lose if their Delta City plans cannot proceed as scheduled rather than the fact a man was just shot to death in the conference room. This is reinforced by the brief exchange by Johnson (Felton Perry) and Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer) in the elevator afterwards, where the former notes regarding their colleague's gruesome demise, "Too bad about Kinney, huh?", to which Morton casually replies, "It's life in a big city."

The movie's 'savior', police officer Alex Murphy (played by actor Peter Weller), is then tortured and executed by criminals, and then 'resurrected' by ruthless multinational corporation OCP in the guise of RoboCop. During the process of doing this they discuss wether to keep his left arm or not. Bob Morton, who is strongly against the idea, becomes somewhat distressed, not knowing if Murphy will remember him ordering the mutilation of Murphy's body or not. Johnson comes to the rescue saying Murphy is legally dead, enabling them to do pretty much what they want to - including blanking his memory. A procedure whose effectiveness later seems to be somewhat lacking. Anyway, from this we learn that apparantly the definition of clinical death has been changed from the now common brain death to the older definition when the heart stops beating. If Murphy had been braindead, he would have been useless as the basis for OCP's new cyborg.

RoboCop enters duty and performs flawlessly. He shoots with unerring precision, he saves the mayor, he deals with the criminal elements of the city harshly and effectively, yet without harming innocents. However, all is not as OCP would like. A dream during the cyborg's rest cycle triggers old buried memories and he starts to remember his former life. RoboCop/Murphy begins to pursue his killers, which leads to the arrest of Clarence Boddicker and a confrontation with Dick Jones in the OCP corporate highrise. RoboCop is driven off by ED-209, being unable to arrest the executive due to Jones' own Directive Four, a rule that prevents RoboCop from acting against senior officers of the company. Downstairs, a police force awaits to destroy RoboCop, whom Jones now wants to portray as a Frankenstein's monster. It is only with the help of former partner Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen) that he escapes.

Next follows a short period of what filmmakers call 'exposition', or storytelling, something that is dreaded because it can cause an action movie to grind to a screeching halt. Fortunately, the script and direction is strong enough to carry the movie through this sequence. Here is where RoboCop reclaims his humanity again, we see his face such as it is after OCP modified him after he removes his helmet. We recognize his features of course, but it's hard to say what Murphy thinks of his own distorted image as it is reflected back to him in a twisted piece of metal in a parallel of Danish poet/story teller Hans Christian Andersen's story "The Ugly Duckling". Lewis also helps out her friend by aiming his gun for him so that he may calibrate his targetting system again. As targets, he uses bottles of babyfood with a smiling infant's face on them. This has been seen as encouragement of violence against children by some - particulary those that decry any violent movie as a knee-jerk reaction - but is in this case probably rather just used for shock value; one isn't supposed to shoot babies, especially if one is a 'good guy'. Verhoeven is fond of stunts like these, so it should be no surprise.

(This is a work in progress...)

Trivia

• "RoboCop" was Dutch-born director Paul Verhoeven's first American movie.
• He first threw the script of the movie in the trash after giving it a casual look. It was then read by his wife, who convinced him there was a lot more substance to the plot than her husband first thought.
• The oddball TV show with its catchphrase "I'd buy that for a dollar!" seen throughout the movie is called "It's not my problem". This is not shown in the movie, but is rather revealed by script writer Ed Neumeier on the commentaries track of the Robocop Trilogy DVD release.
• The actors of some of the movie's most notable villains, including Dick Jones (Ronny Cox), Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) and Emil Antonowski (Paul McCrane) are all described as being very friendly people in real life.
• "Barbara", secretary of OCP executive Dick Jones, is played by Joan Pirkle, real-life wife of Kurtwood Smith!

Other films

• RoboCop 2 - RoboCop faces a new drug, called Nuke, that is flooding the streets of Detroit City while OCP uses a dead drug-addict dealer, Kane, for the "RoboCop 2" project.
• RoboCop 3 - OCP is on the edge of bankruptcy and set to be sold to a Japanese corporation. RoboCop defends the residents of Old Detroit from a forced transfer by OCP who plans to rebuild the city as its new grand project.
• RoboCop - Prime Directives (4-episode television miniseries) - RoboCop gets a new partner, John Cable, who joined the RoboCop project after losing his baby. OCP decides to shut down the RoboCop project for good, while a former OCP scientist threatens the world with a lethal virus.