What was the first movie I ever saw at the theatre? This is a question I have long been trying to figure out the answer to. For a while, I thought it might have been the Arnold Schwarzenegger / Danny DeVito comedy Twins... but that movie came out in December of 1988, and I remember seeing Beetlejuice, which was released in March of 1988, on the big screen. So maybe Beetlejuice was the first movie I saw in a theatre. At least, a theatre that had a roof and walls. But what about the memory I have of my father taking me to see a movie at the drive-in one day when my mom was working the evening shift? What movie did we see? I know it wasn’t Road House, because I remember my mom being with us when we saw that movie in 1989. I thought it might have been Batman... but I remember my father reporting back to my mom, “I didn’t think he was going to like it, but he did.” And why wouldn’t a 5-year-old be expected to like Batman? The more I think of it, the more I think he might have taken me to see the ultra-violent sci-fi action movie RoboCop. It was released in July of 1987, prime drive-in time. I was 3 – an age when you might not expect a kid to enjoy an ultra-violent sci-fi action movie. And I do seem to have vague memories of seeing this movie play out on a large screen, possibly a drive-in screen. So maybe RoboCop was the first movie I ever saw at a theatre, drive-in style.
I wasn’t the only kid that enjoyed this movie, either. Despite the fact that RoboCop is packed with disturbing moments, bloodshed, bodies being torn apart by gunfire, vulgar language, and even the sight of a man melting down from getting soaked with toxic waste (and then getting splattered by a speeding car), the film was a hit with children – and even spawned a short-lived animated series that was aimed at kids! Although the content earned the film a hard R rating, it’s essentially a comic book movie. It just wasn’t based on an existing comic book property. (The comic books came later.) This is why it was so appealing to youngsters: RoboCop is a superhero. He just happens to exist in a very nasty, violent world. Which isn’t too different from our own.
Presumably set in a not-too-distant future, the story crafted by writers Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner finds that the city of Detroit, now referred to as Old Detroit, is about to get a shiny new replacement in the form of Delta City. This project is a dream “The Old Man” (Daniel O'Herlihy), the chief executive at a company called Omni Consumer Products, or OCP for short, has had for a long time – and it’s expected to begin construction in six months. The problem is, Old Detroit is infested with crime, and before OCP can get safely put two million people to work building Delta City, they have to eliminate the criminal threat.
OCP dabbles in a lot of different areas. They have a hand in hospitals, prisons, space exploration, and have even secured a deal to fund and run the Detroit Metropolitan Police Department. They’ve had to make some shifts in the Old Detroit tax structure, which has had a negative impact on the police force, with the police union even threatening to strike... but they intend to make up for this and speed up the elimination of crime with a special project. Dick Jones (Ronny Cox), Division President, is the head of this crime management program, which intends to create a 24 hour police officer who doesn’t need to eat or sleep. His vision: a large robot called ED-209, an Enforcement Droid with cannons for arms, which is often brought to life on the screen with stop-motion effects.
Unfortunately, a demonstration of ED-209 goes terribly wrong, ending with an OCP employee getting shot to death, dashing Dick’s hopes of not only putting ED-209s on the streets of Old Detroit but also selling the droids to the military. The Old Man turns to a back-up plan: ambitious, young OCP junior executive Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer) of the Security Concepts division has come up with an idea for a “RoboCop” – he just needs the corpse of a police officer to build the robot around. Which isn’t an issue. Thanks to OCP’s influence on the police force, he has already been able to re-structure the police department to place prime RoboCop candidates in dangerous areas.
This is why good cop Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) has been transferred from a “nice precinct” in the Metro South area of Old Detroit to the hellhole that is the Metro West precinct. Murphy is partnered with Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen) – and on his first day at Metro West, he has the misfortune of crossing paths with crime boss Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith), who is already responsible for the murders of more than thirty police officers, and his gang, which includes a couple fodder characters and some who get more screen time: Paul McCrane as Emil Antonowsky, Ray Wise as Leon Nash, Jesse D. Goins as Joe Cox, and Calvin Jung as Steve Minh. These guys are thieves, drug dealers, murderers, and sadistic scumbags who will joke and laugh gleefully while killing someone. And in an exceptionally disturbing and bloody moment, they murder Alex Murphy, shooting him many times.
Bob Morton has his RoboCop. Murphy’s head is saved. The rest of him is scrapped so his body can be replaced with an armored prosthesis; titanium laminated with kevlar. His head is covered with an armored helmet with a computerized visor. Stationed at Metro West, RoboCop will occasionally need to return to the precinct to go into “sleep mode” for a little while and eat some stuff that looks and tastes like baby food, but for the most part, he’s exactly what OCP was looking to put on the streets. He has three prime directives: Serve the Public Trust, Protect the Innocent, and Uphold the Law. (There’s also a classified fourth one that will come up later in the film.) And with RoboCop on patrol, Bob Morton predicts the end of crime in Old Detroit within forty days.
RoboCop does his job well... but there’s a glitch in his system. He keeps having flashbacks to the life of Alex Murphy, memories of interactions with Murphy’s wife and young son. And he starts to remember who was responsible for Murphy’s murder. With the help of Lewis, who quickly realizes who he used to be, he sets out to bring Clarence Boddicker and his lackeys to justice – and in the process, uncovers a conspiracy that involves Dick Jones and OCP.
Created by special effects master Rob Bottin, best known for his work on John Carpenter’s The Thing, the look of RoboCop is extremely cool, and Peter Weller delivered a terrific performance in the role. Although the armor at times looks a bit clunky and overly bulky, Weller was able to find a way to work and move inside of it that makes it work perfectly, coming up with specific movements and delivering his lines in a great way. He’s a robot, but there’s clearly something more going on in there. The remnants of Alex Murphy... And through his line deliveries and body language, Weller really makes us care for this character. Which is really impressive when you take into account the fact that his mouth and cheeks are the only parts of his face we can see for the majority of the running time, because RoboCop’s helmet covers everything else.
Weller wasn’t the only one who did incredible work on this film. All of the actors did great, memorable work bringing their characters to life. Kurtwood Smith made Clarence Boddicker one of the most detestable screen villains of all time, and his gang was perfectly cast. Nancy Allen makes it clear that Anne Lewis is a good-hearted person. Ronny Cox is a cold-blooded creep as Dick Jones. Miguel Ferrer is awesome as Bob Morton, and it’s a shame we lost him at such a young age. (Ferrer passed away in 2017 at the age of 61.) The late Robert DoQui also stands out as Sergeant Warren Reed of Metro West.
Neumeier and Miner wrote a great script for RoboCop, mixing a simple set-up with some very clever ideas, but the movie wouldn’t be what it is if not for director Paul Verhoeven. Not only did Verhoeven bring the idea of RoboCop to the screen with humor and plenty of gore, but the Dutch filmmaker also brought a unique perspective on American society to the project, adding a satirical edge that’s especially evident in the Media Break news segments we see in a few moments throughout the movie. Verhoeven was used to news reports that would just show one person reading the news in a matter-of-fact way, so he was fascinated by American news reports where multiple newscasters banter with each other while delivering the news with a smile. So in the Media Break segments, we get to see newscasters Casey Wong and Jess Perkins (Mario Machado and Leeza Gibbons) read news reports that give us a glimpse into the crumbling world RoboCop is set in, and they read all of this crazy news with big smiles on their faces. There are also commercial parodies in there for things like a board game called Nuke ‘Em and Yamaha brand hearts for transplants.
When you’re a kid, RoboCop is a fun movie (with some troubling scenes) about a cool-looking hero dishing out justice. Watching it as an adult, it still delivers that brand of entertainment, but you can also see that there are deeper ideas here that just good action and neat robots. I could pick up on the satire when I was a kid, but some of the things it was saying went over my head. Now I get all of it, and see just how brilliant the movie actually is.
I watched RoboCop over and over when I was a kid, and have returned to it now and then over the decades. It has always held up, and still does to this day. This is a great movie, and if this was the first movie I ever saw at a (drive-in) theatre, my movie-going days got off to an amazing start.
“I didn’t think he was going to like it, but he did.” And I still do!
No comments:
Post a Comment