Robocop 2 (1989)

[Neville]

Plot: After the events in "Robocop", Murphy continues to patrol Detroit in his robotic suit. The city is facing even more trouble than before, now in the form of a new drug, Nuke, and the cult around its creator, Cain. The city hall is also heavily under debt that OCP is planning a hotile takeover on the whole city. And at the same time, the "Robocop 2" project gets a new direction when an amoral scientist is appointed as head of the project.

Comments: You knew this was coming, right?   Well, let's get started.

As I already mentioned in the reviews of "Robocop" and "Robocop 3", this is my least favorite film in the series. I've always thought that its main problem was that neither Paul Verhoeven nor Ed Neumeier are back. This is sort of understandable, though. Verhoeven, a Dutch director who was newly arrived to the USA when he accepted to direct "Robocop", had used its enormous success to climb up the ladder. In 1989 he would release the equally succesful "Total Recall" and in 1991 "Basic Instinct" made him one of Hollywood's hotest directors. So we can imagine he either was unavailable for the job or that he asked too much money. Ed Neumeier's absence is harder to understand, though. "Robocop" was, until "Starship Troopers", his only credit as a writer, so he probably was available at the time of this sequel. The people at Orion Pictures hired instead Irvin Kershner as a director, perhaps because he had directed "Empire Strikes Back", a sci-fi sequel that superseeded the original in every aspect, and comic-book writer Frank Miller as the screenwriter. They both were reasonable choices, but they both managed to screw up somehow, and that affects the film dramatically.

Basically, the problems here are two. One, the dumbing down of the original premise. And two, not having a proper understanding of the original film. Starting with one, everything in "Robocop 2" resembles the original, but pales in comparison. Remember those satirical TV ads, for instance? They were quite funny, pretty much because they're not that different from what we could watch on TV, even at the time. Not here. The movie opens with one of those ads, about some device that fries would-be car robbers and, according to the host, doesn't even consume battery. Uhm. Later we have another one about a solar cream to prevent UV radiation and skin cancer that is itself cancerous. Wow. Just wow. Seriously, who thought of this?

Then there's the whole Murphy / Robocop thing. As I mentioned in the "Robocop" review, it's not Robocop. It's Murphy. All along. But here they didn't want "Murphy 2" but "Robocop 2", so they basically ignored the whole deal about Murphy regaining his humanity at the end of the first film. To be fair, there are a few interesting scenes at the beginning of the film regarding Murphy's widow, but it seems to me that their intention is precisely to close the book on the issue of Robocop's humanity once and for all. From then on Robocop becomes quite monosillabic and whatever trace of Murphy is in there is downplayed. See? No more need for the audience to think!

As for poor understanding of the original film, well, that's pretty much everywhere to see. One of "Robocop"'s multiple readings was a spoof of superhero movies. Rather than an unstoppable crime fighting machine, Robo was a clumsy, poorly designed product that didn't exactly fit the needs of police work. Well, not anymore. Now he can do undercover (!), use stealth (he repeteadly walks behind suspects who for some reason can't hear the distinctive thump of his footsteps), ride motorbikes (!!) and defeat robots four times his size. He still walks into ambushes a couple of times, but otherwise...

Gone is also the subtle tongue in cheek tone of the original, replaced by crude humor and ultra-violence. Paul Verhoeven, as any person who has seen "Showgirls" can tell, is a natural born provocateur. Kershner is certainly not, and when he has to serve some of the most outrageous content from Frank Miller's script, he does it dead serious, which ruins it. I mean, are we supposed to take the idea of a 12 year old kid as a mafioso seriously? Hello? Or Cain's messianic, drug-drenched deliriums? Or the scene where Cain performs open surgery on a snitch?

For all it mistakes, though, it has to be said that not all in "Robocop 2" is a failure. It's, mostly, an entertaining film. More on that later. And some of the ideas in Frank Miller's script are so far-fetched they inject the film with some welcome edge. Take the mentioned idea of a 12 year old as a career criminal. His scenes even end up making up sort of a film inside a film, a parody of rise and fall gangster films like "Scarface". Or the scenes where Robocop is reprogrammed by the OCP with allsorts of rubish and starts acting like Ned Flanders. They don't last long, but Peter Weller's body mannerisms themselves are hilarious. And the satire even reaches the concept of sequels: The OCP suits are obsessed with creating a "Robocop 2", but no matter how hard they try they are unable to replicate the idea with success. Is there a better metaphor for this movie? I don't think so. That the people who came up with this idea didn't realise they were telling the joke and becoming the joke at the same time is beyond me.

And finally, as I said, "Robocop 2" is more or less an entertaining film, before ultimately colapsing on the weight of its many miscalculations, of which scaling up the action is probably the worse. Just when you think the film is OK after all, you end up facing like 20 minutes of Robocop fighting against Robocop 2. And fighting. And fighting. And cars blowing up. And more fighting. Duh.

By comparison the cheap and watered down action scenes from "Robocop 3" almost feel like an improvement. And I can't think of a more cruel thing to say about this film than those words.  

[JPickettIII]

I liked the first Robocop.  It was a good original movie.  The second one was a watered down version of the first.  There were a lot on inconsistencies.  The main was is where Robocop is captured by the Cain gang and the 12 year old wants to see if Robocop has a brain, but nothing happens.  This is the same gang that does the open heart operation on the cop.  My other couple of complaints are why was a machine gun able to blow of Robocop's hand, but in the first movie he was able to sustain damage from the other robot and the cops shooting at him?  Also, why did he not break the chains that held him down on the table?  Oh well.  I will say the Cain robot was cool, but how did the doctors get the brain out with the eyeballs and spinal cord attached?  The reason I ask this, they show Cain's head and there was not cuts on the back or by the orbital sockets.  HMMM

Great wright up.

Later,

John

[Torgo]

The first Robocop is one of my top 10 favorite movies of all time. The sequel lacks a lot of the wit and humor that the first one had in spades but still isn't a bad movie. Now don't get me started on Robocop 3 though!