Thread "Robocop 3- A review" in forum "Random Nonsense"

Posted at 3:09PM, Sep. 11, 2009

Robocop is a classic movie.
It has tight story telling, brutal violence, cutting social satire and a powerful story about the loss of the individuals humanity in a world over run by corporate greed and criminal coruption.
Yes, some of the special effects haven't aged well in places, but Robocop himself looks as bad ass now as he always did!

Robocop 2 followed and, like most sequals, completely missed the point.
The violence remained but the story telling and social commentary utterly collapsed.
The films plot was an utter mess and the much hyped new evil Robocop doesn't appear until about the last ten minutes of the film!

And the law of diminishing returns marched on with the release of Robocop 3.
Robo….what have they done to you Robo?
For starters, the fact that the actor who played Robocop (Peter Weller) does not reprise his role should set off warning signals!
Also the movie only get a 15 rating in the UK, as opposed to the 18 the previous films recieved. Yes, Robo has been nerfed.

The plot revolves around OCP (the big corporation from the earlier films) wanting to evict people from their homes so they can bull doze them to build "Delta City".
Building Delta City seems to be going very slowly because they were talking about building it in the first film and no progress appears to have been made.
So OCP has now brought in a bunch of guys called the rehabilitation officers or 'Rehabs' who are Nazis.
No, really! They have everything short of a freaking swastika!
They dress in grey uniforms and spend their time forcing people out of their homes and onto buses, or when that failed, just machine gunning them.
In case the subtlty of the characterisation is going over your head, we later see that on their time off the Rehabs are off visiting hookers and trying to rape innocent virginal looking young girls. We don't see them kicking a puppy…but I think its safe to assume they do!
As if all this evil wasn't enough to let us know that these are the bad guys, they even have a boss whose English! The first time we here this guys filthy limey pronuciations coming out of his mouth, we know that this guy is up to no good!
Racism….its faaaantastic!
If that wasn't racist enough for you, wait till you get a load of how this movie portrays the Japanese!
Remember back in the early 90's, when any near future predictions had to involve evil Japanese mega-corporations? This idea that Japan was going to take over the world fell by the way side after their economy went into melt down for over a decade, but at the time it was very prevelant.
Robocop 3 jumps merrily on this idiotic band wagon, unfortunately doing so after the whole concept had basically already been discredited, making the movie feel dated even at its momment of release.
The evil japs have built their own cyborg to take care of Robo!
Now, bearing in mind how racist I have already mentioned this film is, you should already have guessed that they send out a robot ninja.
Yes, Japanese people dont build robots with guns, rockets or armour. they build them with a sword and karate skills.
The only way this could be more stupid would be if they had built mecha-godzilla!

The Robo-ninjas (more of them show up later, without explanation) are incredibly tagged on to the story and are barely even explained. Are they cyborgs? Or straight up robots? They seem to be able to act very convincingly human if they are just robots. In fact, if the japanese can build robots that look this convincing, you have to wonder why Robocop looks like a armour plated Doctor Who reject?
Fortunately, while these robots may be able to look and act entirely human, they dont seem to have been given the ability to talk because…fuck knows really! They are also incredibly goofy at fighting.
If you thought bringing a sword to a gun fight was dumb before, this film goes out of its way to prove that this is the case!
The robo-ninjas stand around like morons, waving their swords and striking poses constantly. Do the Japanese just program their robots with a built in "fuck around" mode?
Speaking of fucking around, that is basically how I would some up all the battles in this film. Everyone just dicks around in front of each other.
Sometimes they fire their guns, though they rarely hit much. Sometimes they dont even bother to do this much.
Think I'm exaggerating? During the final sequence of the film the evil Rehabs (did I mention they are evil? Good! Just checking!) attack the good guys by walking slowly towards them under a hail of gun fire. If you are thinking they all get mowed down, you obviously dont understand how gun fire works in this film!
Everyone blazes away merrily doing jack shit. If only these guys had been present during WW1! Imagine how many lives could have been saved?
Later the main villain- Evil McEnglish (like I give a fuck what the character is called?) sees two of the good guys using a computer to hack into his roboninjas to make them destroy each other. Does he shoot them? No! That would just be silly! (And judging by the way guns work in this film, most likely completely inneffective anyway!) He does the only logical thing he can do. He shouts at them to stop.
Once again, I am not exaggerating!
Have you ever pretended to have an imaginary gun and pretended to shoot one of your friends, who responded by pretending to be hit in slow motion?
If so, you can officially correograph better action sequences then we see in this film. Well done you!
Considering the awesome battle sequences from the first film ('Drop your weapons, or there will be….trouble!' ) the fights here are a joke, and not a funny one!

So who are the good guys I keep refering too?
Why the plucky rebels of course!
God…is there any phrase that fills me with as much contempt as those two words? Plucky rebels.
Plucky fucking rebels.
Whenever movie makers are running low on imagination they throw in these ass holes as the good guys.
A bunch of generic, uninteresting loses who are getting beaten senseless by the bad guys because they are so fucking pathetic, until the hero comes in and rescues them.
Eragon had em, and if Eragon features something, you know its a shitty idea!
When will film makers figre out that these types of good guys are generic, boring and no one gives a shit about them?
Star Trek - Deep Space 9 had Bajoran resistance fighters in the early series who were talked about less and less in the later series (ie- When the show stopped being so shit!)
If these resistance fighters all got killed, why would I give a shit?
Just saying "they are resistance fighters" does not make the good guys cool or interesting. In fact it makes them generic, boring and shitty.
At least the Rehabs had cool evil uniforms, these losers look like hobos with guns. they prove completely ineffective so I have no idea why the bad guys seem so worried about them.
Certainly the movie makers aren't worried about them as they recieve no characterisation at all. They are literally as generic a bunch of rebels twats as one could hope to meet.
Mind you, no one in this movie really recieves any characterisation, except for cartoonish evil from the bad guys (or cartoonish sexism from lesser bad characters. In this film, if you refer to a woman by talking about her 'cute ass', you are going to get killed shortly afterwards!)
the only rebel who gets any personality to speak of is the sweaty nervous one who always suggest moronic or cowardly ideas.
When I tell you he is the one who betrays them all, try not to act too shocked.
Oddly, after betraying them, he walks into their base to announce this fact just before the bad guys storm in and he gets killed in the cross fire. Why? Well if I was in this movie, I might have considered the suicide option myself!
They also have a cute little girl who is expert with computers. This comes in very handy as every cyborg/ robot in this film can be hacked into using a lap top computerand reprogramed. Gee, who would have guessed it was that easy?
She literally takes over a Robot while it is doing a 15 second count down. She runs up to it, takes a panel off its leg, plugs into it and takes it over.
How does she know the schematics of these machines?
Shes half asain of course! And so being a super genius with computers comes naturally!
Ethenic stereotypes to the rescue!
She is grating and annoying as only child characters in movies can be. Not quite Anakin Skywalker levels of annoying, but pretty fucking close!

Remember watching the first Robocop and thinking how under gunned he was? Didn't you leave the film wishing he had more fire power?
No? Well fuck, the movie makers obviously felt that way as now he can twist off his forearm (yes, light a bottle top or light bulb. I would compare this to Kryten on Red Dwarf, but I dont want to insult Red Dwarf!) and attach a multi purpose machine gun/flame thrower/juice maker/ hunk of useless shit.
He also gets jet pack, allowing him to fly.
I wish I was making this shit up!
These ridiculous gimics and gadgets all appear to be a complete waste of time and money, as rather then making our metallic hero more dangerous, they appear to make him laughably goofy. Robocops deadly accuracy has been replaced with randomly blazing away, bearly hitting anyone. He performs a very A-Team style attack on the Rehab base where he shoots the place up with a flame thrower but fails to actually kill anybody. Nice work Robo, you big useless titanium douche bag!
I can only assume these thigns were added for the toys that came out with the film. Anyone remember owning of Robocop 3 toys? No, me niether.
He does manage to catch a bullet out of the air between his fingers….for fucks sake! Did the movie makers not read that line and think "Wait, this is fucking retarded, lets change it"? Someone involved must have noticed that is was complete shit!
Robocops crowning momment of useless in this film comes early on when he gets out of his car by shooting a circle in the roof and popping out of the hole.
Erm…thats great Robo….but most cars have things called 'doors', perhaps you should try them?
So the bad guys are cartoonish, the good guys are generic and the hero has been reduced to big metallic joke.
And the worst part is?
This was not the greatest humiliation or demasculination Robocop would suffer.
He would return in a TV series, which would remove the violence entirely.
Yes, a Robocop show where he does not shoot ANYBODY.
What the hell use is Robocop if he cant shoot people? That is literally all the big metal cock CAN do!
So I suppose when looked at through that filter, Robocop 3 could be worse.
And that is a thought that should fill us all with dread!

Posted at 11:06AM, Jun. 4, 2010

Hah, spot on. With robocop 2, the original script by frank miller was really good, it's a shame what made it to the screen was so watered down.

Posted at 11:06PM, Jun. 7, 2010

It is a major shame what happened to the Robocop franchise. The first movie was really fantastic, as good as a hyper violent sci-fi can get, with the possible exception of Aliens or Predator. What happened to the second one was that it came dangerously close to being given an "X" rating in the states, so they were forced to make major changes. The end result was a steaming pile of runny horse manure. The third movie drove the nail in even further by erring on the side of "A-team" television violence. There was a strange effort to make it family friendly. No boobs, very tame language, no point-blank blowing off of body parts. The plot was so crappy it was like it was written by a 12 year old. I'm not saying the first one was this cerebral cinematic masterpiece, but all the major elements of a good story are present. Plus co-ed police locker rooms.

All the crappy sequels, television shows, and cartoons aside, Robocop is one of those franchises that I think could be brought back to life. At least one more good movie could be made from the concept.

We should start a movement for that.

"RoboCop Begins" anyone?

Posted at 5:06AM, Jun. 9, 2010

Darren Aronofsky was going to do that but i think the project is back in limbo.

Posted at 9:06AM, Jun. 9, 2010

Cant we just let Robo rest in peace? Or rust in peace…whatever!
The original in a classic, why do we need to keep bolting more shit onto the franchise?
Cant we stop ruining old movies and just start making new ones?