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Review of Robocop! · The Recess Bell

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  This production is brought to you by the Resas Gull. Hey everybody, this
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  is justin Greenberg and you were listening to film Reel and today we were talking
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  one of my favorite movies of all time from nineteen eighty seven. It is
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  RoboCop. This guy's really good. He's not a guy, He's a machine.
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  Old Detroit has a cancer. Cancer is crime. Let the woman go.
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  You are under arrest, You your move creepy. RoboCop is a movie
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  that I think on paper, a lot of people just dismiss because of the
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  title. It is a very goofy title. In fact, director Paul Verhoven
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  didn't even want to read the script when it was delivered to him because he
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  just thought the title was goofy. But his wife luckily read the script and
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  said, you gotta read this. This is brilliant. There's so many layers
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  to this movie. RoboCop stars Peter Weller as the titular character that's always a
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  funny word to say. He plays Alex Murphy who turns into Robocops spoiler alert.
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  It also stars Nancy Allen, Ronnie Cox, kurtwood Smith, and a
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  whole cast of just people that really gel together. I think The ensemble cast
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  of this movie is one of the many things that make it and believe it
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  or not, this is my favorite action movie of all time. But again,
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  there's so many layers too. And I watched RoboCop as a kid.
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  I watched it for the action, you know, I watched it for the
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  costume. I love the character design of RoboCop. It's such an iconic design,
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  very simple, but there is a lot of layers to the simplicity of
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  it. I love the action sequences, the explosions, the blood. You
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  know. My parent didn't give a shit as to what I was watching.
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  And again, I don't know if it was the best thing for a three
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  year old to be watching RoboCop. In fact, it was probably a very
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  bad thing for a three year old to be watching RoboCup. But I did,
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  and I turned out perfectly fine. I have no issues with my life.
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  I definitely don't have a lot of mental health issues. Isn't that right,
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  President Lincoln. That's a good point, mister Lincoln. Yeah, so
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  RoboCop as an adult though, watching it, I see that there's themes and
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  and and and things that a four year old to five year old, six
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  year old, you know, wouldn't understand. You know, there's there's allegories
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  to Christ, There's They are poking fun of several different things that were taking
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  place during that time, whether it's the politics, the way news is broadcast,
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  the way big businesses would just throw away any form of compassion for human
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  beings just to put out a good product. There's so many layers, and
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  this movie is a sattire. This movie is a comedy in a lot of
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  senses. I mean I laughed a lot when watching RoboCop, and that is
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  the intent. It's not laughing at the movie because it's so bad. No,
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  it's specifically written to be funny. RoboCop. Who is he? What
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  is he? Where does he come from? He is OCP's newest soldier in
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  their Revolutionary Crime Management Program. OCP spokesman claimed that the Fearless Machine has cooks
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  on the run in Old Detroit. Today, kids at Leiacoca Elementary School got
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  to meet in person what their parents only read about in comic Booksbo excuse me,
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  Robo, any special message for all the kids watching at home, Stay
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  out of trouble. More fighting in the Mexican Crisis today, when American troops
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  participated in a joint grade with Mexican nationals against rebel rocket positions in Acapulco.
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  Now this right, I learned? All right, right, all right,
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  you've crossed my line of dank. You haven't dismantled your MX DOOC file.
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  Pakistan is threatening my border. That's it, Buster, no more military aid.
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  Luka get them before they get you. Another quarterly home game from Butler
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  Brunners. So let's start with the making of the movie. And if you
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  really want to get an in depth detailing as to how this movie was created,
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  there's an amazing documentary that came out last year called Robodoc and it is,
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  I mean, it is an extensive breakdown of the creation of this movie,
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  far more than this podcast is going to be. So if you really
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  want to know a lot of the behind the scenes creations of this film,
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  definitely check out robodoc. But this was a movie that was many years in
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  the making. In fact, the writer of this movie, or one of
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  the writers, ed Newmira. He was on the set of Blake Runner when
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  that movie was released in eighty two, and that's sort of when the idea
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  of RoboCop came to be. I'm gonna quickly break down the plot of the
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  movie. But again, I recommend everybody check this one out because I think
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  a lot of people they look at it and they just RoboCop. This is
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  gonna be some schlocky, stupid eighties film. But it's not. You know,
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  this is a movie that got two thumbs up from Siskel and Ebert,
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  who are very high brow film critics, and the fact that they gave praise
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  to Robocops just shows the brilliance of the movie. Just a quick sidebar.
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  I think a lot of people also hear the band name the Beach Boys,
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  which is my favorite band of all time, and I think they just think,
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  oh, this is gonna be all surfing music or fast cars and girls,
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  and that was the Beach Boy's early work. But I mean, if
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  you never listened to pet Sounds, you know, good vibrations. The Beach
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  Boys have so many brilliant written songs that I think just the band name of
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  I think turns people off. And that's I think, what a lot of
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  people that were gonna be working on RoboCop felt, Oh, I don't know.
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  I don't want to be working on a movie called RoboCop. I bet
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  you. With Star Wars as well, I mean, it's a pretty stupid
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  title Star Wars when you really break it down, but hey, it made
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  a billion dollars, so I don't know. But that's just a little sidebar.
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  But back to Robocops. So let's get the plot out of the line.
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  There's a police officer, Alex Murphy. He's married, he's got a
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  kid, and he joins the Detroit Police Force. And Detroit, I guess
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  this is set in the distant future. It's not really given a year as
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  to when RoboCop takes place, but it's this sort of futuristic but also run
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  down future and I like that. That's why I like Star Wars as well.
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  Everything's not clean, you know. You go to the streets of Tattooin
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  and it's got, it's got, like, Okay, someone's lived here before.
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  It looks like a lived in environment, and that is what RoboCop does.
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  It's very grimy. It's you know, very much like a seventies film.
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  I'm getting a lot of vibes of seventies New York or just you know,
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  Detroit in general, I guess looked like this, but just as a
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  New Yorker, I definitely feel like movies like the warriors or taxi driver sort
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  of has that same sort of city aesthetic mix that in with the futuristic technology
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  that's in RoboCop. So Alex Murphy joins the force. He's sort of this
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  gung ho cop. He's paired up with a partner, Ann Lewis, and
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  on their first mission together, Alex Murphy is killed. He's he's blown away
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  to smithereens. It's one of the most graphic scenes in movie history, and
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  there's even even more graphic version if you watch the uncut version, which I
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  recommend everybody watch. So, yeah, Alex Murphy gets killed, and again
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  this is where the Christ allegory comes in because he gets resurrected. There's other
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  things the movie where there's a scene later on when RoboCop is walking on water
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  again. There's so many layers to this movie called RoboCop that I don't think
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  a lot of people would have thought would have layers. Meanwhile, there's an
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  organization called OCP and they are creating technology for police forces and they create this
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  robot called ED two to nine, which another amazing scene where ED two O
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  nine is introduced and during this board meeting in instead of following the orders the
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  robot destroys this guy, mister Kenny, and again one of the most violent
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  scenes I've ever seen. Put down your weapon. You got forty seconds to
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  comply. I think you'd better do what he says, Mitch Kenny, sense,
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  you know how fifteen required and we'll do it sil You'll have far Especially
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  seeing this as a three year old, I mean, this definitely had to
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  have some sort of effect on me. So there's another young and up and
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  coming guy in OCP who has an idea of creating a RoboCop, taking the
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  brain of a human being, a fallen police officer, and using it with
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  the technology of OCP to create an officer, which we get later on,
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  you know, RoboCop. But there's a lot of backstage politics that are taking
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  place in OCP because this guy, Dick Jones wants to push the two nine
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  robot, but clearly there's defects in it. Its just killed mister Kenny.
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  But then this guy, Bob Morton, he wants to create robocops. So
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  again, there's so many different things that you could focus on in this movie,
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  and when you're a kid watching it, you don't really pay attention to
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  the boardroom politics. But when you watch it as an adult, it's like,
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  oh, wow, is this part's really interesting? The explosion stuff is
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  really cool still, but now there's other things that you could focus on.
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  I also think that's very important. This is just another quick sidebar when you're
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  watching something with your kid. Not that you should be watching RoboCop with your
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  kid, but if you're watching something like Toy Story or Looney Tunes, there
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  should be things that kids can enjoy. Simpsons was a big thing for us.
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  You know, my dad would laugh at jokes. I would have no
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  idea what he's laughing at, but I would laugh at Bart, you know,
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  using a slingshot. I think that's such a smart thing to have.
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  You gotta have something to engage the adult that is also watching along. So
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  back to the story, Alex Murphy gets blown away. They create him as
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  RoboCop. They you know, they perform surgery on him, and the reveal
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  of RoboCop. Again, this movie is so brilliantly shot. Just the shadows
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  and the lighting and again there's technical things that I don't know what exactly they're
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  doing, but it's just a visually the film grain on it. It's just
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  it's such a visually appealing movie to look at, and the reveal of RoboCop.
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  If this was a modern movie. Modern movies today, they have to
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  have, you know, a five minute action sequence to start the movie because
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  people have the attention spans of fleas, so you can't have a build.
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  If this was RoboCop in twenty twenty four, you'd have RoboCop appear within the
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  first ten minutes of the movie. This one has a build. You're introduced
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  to Alex Murphy, but then when RoboCup gets created, you see a first
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  person view of him, so you don't see it. Then you see you
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  know, his arm being assembled, and then when he's finally you know,
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  fully functioning, you just don't show him right away. You see him behind
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  you know, some mesh fence, you see a foot, you see the
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  people's reactions to RoboCop. And I think that's one of my favorite scenes of
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  the movie, is this build up to actually seeing him full on. You
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  hear his gun going off because they're at the police station and they're doing target
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  practice and he has this loud, awesome gun, one of my favorite guns
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  in movie history. That is the brilliance of Paul Verhoven, and I've used
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  that word brilliance and the phone is ringing in the middle of my RoboCop rant.
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  I could edit that out this isn't live, but I just want to
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  get there the real reaction. I don't want to do too many edits on
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  this thing. But yeah, that Paul Verhoven is a really good director,
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  and I think this movie in someone else's hands wouldn't be There's a lot of
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  things that needed to be in this movie to make it the classic film that
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  it is. Whether it's you know, the direction, the casting of Peter
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  Weller in particular as RoboCop and Alex Murphy. That is the perfect casting.
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  Nobody else could have done that because the movements he has. I mean,
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  this guy trained with a mime for months at end to get the right movement
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  for the character. You know, he'll turn his head and then turn his
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  body and it's such subtle shit, but it works so well. The costume
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  design, the stop motion animation in this movie done by Phil Tippett, who
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  you might recognize the name. He did a lot of work with the Star
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  Wars movies back in the day. But Phil Tippett's you know, stop motion
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  of the ED two nine robot is fantastic. I love practical effects. I
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  love the fact that the blood in this movie is in CGI. Obviously CGI
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  wasn't a thing back then that was used for blood. But nowadays you watch
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  modern action movies, the blood looks so fake. But this, you know,
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  they had squibs, they had little explosions put on these actors body and
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  they would blow up in little blood packets would explode and it just looks so
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  awesome. So all this combination of the right music, the right cinematography,
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  the right casting, all of this combined to make the masterpiece that is Robocops.
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  So RoboCop gets made and he sort of starts patrolling the town, but
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  then he runs into one of the people that killed Alex Murphy, and Robocop's
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  memory sort of wiped. At this point, he's more machine than he is
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  men. He doesn't remember his kid, he doesn't remember, you know,
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  his wife. But his partner An Lewis, realizes, Wow, that's Murphy,
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  that's you. How can I help you, Officer Lewis, It's not
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  really what I meant. Don't you have a name? You don't understand?
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  I don't save it, Murphy, it's you. You really don't remember me?
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  Do you excuse me, I have to go somewhere. There is a
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  crime company. So he starts remembering things. There's there's memories deep within his
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  brain that he starts remembering, especially when he runs into one of the criminals
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  that that killed him. And and that's really the basic plot of the movie.
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  It's it's Murphy discovering himself again, all while trying to take down the
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  criminals that took him down. And then there's you know, uh interlayers with
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  you know, the Bob Morton character who created RoboCop and Dick Jones who created
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  at two nine, and he's working with you know, the criminals that took
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  down RoboCop. All this leads to a climactic battle at a it looks like
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  a steel factory or a junk yard. I'm not sure exactly where they're located
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  at the end of this movie, but it's just an awesome action sequence to
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  end a movie that's filled with explosions and actions. And again, like I
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  said at the beginning this movie, as a kid, that's the ship,
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  I'm into the explosion all that stuff. But when you get older, you
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  realize the humanity aspect of this and that whole Murphy, you know, Alex
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  Murphy figuring out that he was once a man, and when he takes off
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  his helmet because if you've never seen the RoboCop design, you know he's wearing
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  a helmet and you just sort of see his mouth. But there's a scene
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  where he needs to get his helmet fixed so he can you know, recalibrate
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  his his aiming mechanism, and that revealed there's so much great prosthetic work,
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  but it's just said. It's a really sad scene where he looks in the
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  mirror and he sees his eyes for the first time, you know, since
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  he's become RoboCop. And that is the flaws I have with the sequel because
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  they didn't follow up on any of this. You know, the end of
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  the movie, and again I need everybody that's never seen RoboCop to watch RoboCop.
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  But the end of this movie has such a great moment where the head
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  of OCP asks RoboCop what his name is because he I don't know what to
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  spoil, but you know the movies. You know, we're thirty five years
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  old. So basically at the end of the movie, RoboCop kills Dick Jones,
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  which he wasn't allowed to do because it was one of the uh prime
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  directives that RoboCop was assigned. Basically, he had something built into him that
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  basically denied him from arresting or prosecuting Dick Jones because Dick Jones was one of
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  the higher ups at OCP, and he had this directive that said he couldn't
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  mess with Dick Jones because he was an employee of OCP. And then the
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  old Man, the leader of OCP, fires Dick Jones, and then immediately,
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  you know, RoboCop blows him away, and the old man asks RoboCop,
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  you know what's your name? Son? And instead of saying RoboCop,
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  he says, Murphy, Now it's time to erase that mistake. I want
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  a chopper. Now we will walk to the very calmly. I will board
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  the chopper with my hostage. Anybody tries to stop me, the old geezer
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  gets it. Dick your far thank you M right? Not shooting sun butt
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  your name, M Murphy. That is such a brilliant ending. They could
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  go in so many awesome directions with us. He's figuring out his humanity.
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  He could reunite with his wife and his son. But they went with none
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  of that with RoboCop too. Now I like RoboCop two. I do.
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  It is a fun movie, but it is it doesn't have Paul Verhoven.
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  I think that's the missing element. You lost the director. And I like
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  the director of the second one, Irvin Kirshner. He directed Empire Strikes Back.
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  But I just think Verhoven, along with many other things, it's really
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  what's missing with that sequel. But the first one was a huge success.
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  It made a lot of money at the box office. At just a thirteen
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  million dollar budget, it made fifty three million dollars worldwide. But it made
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  a lot of its money through home video. This is the time where everyone
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  had VCRs, so you would rent RoboCop. And you know, this movie
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  made hundreds of millions of dollars through its marketing, whether it's from selling action
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  figures, video games. It's weird that this movie was marketed towards kids and
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  a lot of aspects. In fact, they made a cartoon show based off
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  of RoboCop. And again, this is a very hard R rated movie.
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  I mean this is this is extraordinarily violent, with nudity and blood and guts
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  and cursing and drugs, and then they made a Saturday Morning cartoon over it,
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  and they sold you know, toys to kids, and they had Nintendo
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  games. When crime strikes, nothing can stop Rouble Cup. Criminals give up
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  surprize to the cup. Meet your match. RoboCop and Evil Eed two sixty
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  face off with Revid reviese capt firings. Thats it, well, dude calling
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  the robo jailor run away, you will catch us. But the robojailer smash
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  through their hideout. You'll be hiding out in prison now. Figures in the
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  Hitless hold separately, Robo Cups and the Ultra belize. But again, it
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  became such an iconic movie that got many sequels and spin offs and TV shows,
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  but none of those ever captured the brilliance that is the first movie.
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  So I want everybody that's listening that it never gave this movie the chance just
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  because of the stupid title. Watch RoboCup. It is my favorite action movie
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  of all time, and I certainly would buy it for a dollar. Why
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  buy that for a dollar