RoboCop

Barely watching this film, and boy have I been putting it off for too long! I'd buy that for a dollar!

How are the rest of the films?

edited 30th Mar '11 4:22:43 PM by Schitzo

Robo Cop 2 is good but not a masterpiece like the original. Robo Cop 3 is awful.

The remake could suck but with Jose Padilha (director of Elite Squad) directing, it could surprise.

Robo Cop 2 tried too hard to be Darker and Edgier than the first film.

But it's alright. Don't watch 3, though.

3's okay if you don't want plot or decent action. They managed to screw up ninja robots and jetpacks.

edited 30th Mar '11 6:50:18 PM by Deboss

I enjoyed 3, but I saw it in a vacuum, without the context of one or two, on cable. I saw "Frank Miller" in the credits, and got what I expected. An average action movie. Good, but not great.

The first one is quite excellent, there is really very little that dates it as a product of the eighties. The Robocop suit still looks badass and even the ED-109 looks great, even though the stop-motion looks a little silly today. Dick Jones and Boddicker were perfect villains, some of the most pure examples of Complete Monsters you could ask for.

The other two suck, but for different reasons. Robocop 2 had a story that just didn't make sense (why replace the current Robocop just to justify making a new one that would be even harder to control?) and Robocop 3 just didn't have anything memorable (the replacement gun arms were kind of cool, but even the android ninjas were not that interesting). That said 2 did have some memorable, if disturbing, moments (Robocop being disassembled) and 3 at least had a coherent, if bland, story.

Does Robocop count as an Artificial Zombie, since he is clinically dead Alex Murphy reanimated via Cyborgization?

Technically he just has Murphy's face, voice, memories, and digestive tract.

But he is Alex Murphy reborn as far as the first movie and the Prime Directives four-parter are concerned, right?

edited 2nd Jan '13 6:26:03 AM by MarqFJA

Yes. And that was such a good movie. Too bad there weren't any sequels.

So he counts as an Artificial Zombie, then?

I suppose so.

The movie sequels are, IMHO, entertaining vapid movies, but please, please, never watch the TV movies or the series.

What TV movies?

Prime Directives.

... What if I already watched them and liked what I watched, feeling it a more fitting and superior four-parter sequel than those-two-movies-that-we-pretend-to-not-exist-in-canon?

I don't think he really counts as an Artificial Zombie, he was technically dead and resurrected via science but he doesn't have any of the other zombie trappings, which is vital to the trope. Specifically he doesn't have the Zombie Gait, doesn't randomly attack innocents and retained his intelligence (technically smarter, via the hard drive in his head).

Okay, that's fair. Does that mean that we have a missing trope, though?

The only thing Prime Directive had going for it was a darker tone more akin to the original's, but they forgot being smart in addition to being darker and cynical. There are some awful Narm moments, like the bit with the new Robocop struggling to regain his humanity while Murphy was attacked for what seemed like a hour, and some just plain stupid ones, like when Robocop disguises himself by tossing a hood and overcoat on himself and somehow, it works (!?)

I must say, having re-watched the first one, I have only now remembered just how much I love this movie. Pretty much everything about it, from the score to the writing and effects, are all superb. It is one of my all time favorite Cyberpunk works, and really raises some interesting about the nature of humanity, and whether or not our humanity can be destroyed by technology and the directives given to us (the answer the film gives is a triumphant no). Heck, I thinl that it tackles several of the themes that Neon Genesis Evangelion dealt with even better.

The sequels do NOT exist.

I think everything that's great about the original Robo Cop has already been said so I will just say this:

Robo Cop is one of the VERY few movies that if I catch on TV, I WILL watch. Every time.

edited 6th Feb '13 9:08:56 AM by Psyclone

But the second one was actually good!

I loved Robocop 2. Everything about it was what I wanted to see in the sequel. And it had the best evil kid ever to appear in cinema history.

This guy. Hob.

http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0000952/

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0198925/maindetails

Explain please. Because I found 2 to be extremely dull, lacking much of the themes and character development that made the first one a classic.

Mainly because the character development had already been done. It also explained the ramifications of actually having an android as a police officer alongside normals to a better extent than the first film did.