RoboCop 3

Don’t pay attention to those jokers out there, RoboCop 3 isn’t nearly as terrible as its reputation.  Although I don’t think I’d go as far as to call it good exactly.  Look, the first RoboCop is an undisputed masterpiece.  No one’s gonna argue with that.  The second film gets a bunch of flack but is generally liked for exploring the humanity vs machine angle and keeping up the spirit of its predecessor.  It’s goofier (all the delinquent kid enemies, Robo programmed against his will to be comically genial and less violent, the dotted eyeballs and brain floating in a test tube that represent what’s left of the main villain before he’s turned into the next gen man-machine police officer, etc.) and at the same time nastier (killing someone by slicing their chest open with a scalpel, showing the removal of the top of someone’s skull during surgery, etc.).  For part 3 though the powers that be went for a middle of the road strategy.  They had a cartoon series, action figures, an upcoming live action TV show and stacks of other shit aimed at making this creation and universe more appealing to a wider audience.  I genuinely believe they could’ve come up with something decent that would’ve fit within this new framework.  This is one of the most compelling characters ever conceived after all.  Instead what we got was a sorta blah film.

One of the biggest issues is that it doesn’t delve into any new territory.  Once again Robo/Murphy grapples with balancing his previous life and memories as a bona fide human being with being a corporate tool that must obey whatever’s been programmed in his CPU.  But ok, in all fairness they do introduce two new ideas and both deal with RoboCop accessories.  He can now detach one of his arms and lock on a machine gun/mini rocket launcher/flame thrower combo.  Kinda neat actually.  He gets to use it a few times throughout the movie justifying its existence.  The other is a strap on jetpack so he can fly.  The thing is he’s already so powerful though being able to withstand most gunfire, small explosions and high falls.  Plus the new arm cannon is a weapons upgrade so also giving him the ability to fly is a touch too far in my opinion.  However, I’ll give credit to the filmmakers for incorporating its use well enough towards the end of the film that it feels natural and not the crutch it could’ve been to get RoboCop out of every sticky situation.

The flying special effects on the other hand, eeh not so hot.  Interestingly the effects overall are arguably the best in the series with spectacular car crashes, smoother stop motion on ED-209, Robo’s face with his helmet off where it’s stretched over his mechanical cranium looks as seamless as ever, there are these samurai sword wielding androids and their jaws and faces get knocked out of place and it looks fantastic and etc.  Just Robo flying around where they use a mixture of models, green screen and wire work is ragged as hell.  Oh well.

Another considerable complaint folks have (the most egregious it seems) is the reduced carnage and PG-13 rating.  A hallmark of the series is ultra-violence and lewd characters.  And while this installment is certainly more violent than most remember (the body count is less than the other two pictures but still racks up an astonishing 78 according to the wiki fan page) the thing that can’t be missed is the lack of blood and brutality in general.  Almost every death is by gun and all we see is the clothing flare up where the bullets enter the body (with a couple of exceptions).  This was sufficient for some to write off the film entirely which I think is a shame.  Honestly I’m fine with this easing up as long as the story and characters are well done.

Story-wise it ain’t there though.  As mentioned above it’s way too similar to part 2 involving Robo wrestling with his human emotions and programmed orders, fighting with his corporate maker/overlord OCP and eventually going up against a seemingly more powerful battle droid.  He does join an underground resistance who use guerilla tactics to try to stop OCP from bulldozing their neighborhood so they can build a city of the future in its place.  I mean sure, why not?  He regains a little more of his humanity with each outing so I guess that tracks.  But aside from a lot of rehash the plot just feels kinda small for a part 3.  The stakes haven’t been risen to a proper level and Robo doesn’t get pushed to a new low where he has to fight back harder than ever to see that justice is served.  In part 2 he gets completely dismantled at one point and you wonder how the hell he’s gonna recover from that while in this one the worst that happens is his power gets drained and he needs to be recharged.

Sloppy script work and filmmaking don’t help either.  For example the main villain is confronted by RoboCop in a hotel he’s hiding out in and jumps out the window to escape.  At that moment a henchman happens to be driving by in a van loaded with weapons and gear ‘n’ shit so they can combat each other.  Or there’s this little kid in the resistance who’s a computer hacker and somehow knows where RoboCop’s tracking device is hidden on his body so OCP can’t find them immediately.  You know, stupid plot convenience stuff like that.  Or there’s a secondary villain that the movie takes the time to setup as being a big threat but then he ends up killing himself offscreen half way through.  No comeuppance or satisfaction with how the character is handled.  You know, shoddy storytelling stuff like that.  Or in one scene we see RoboCop breathing through his suit which is wrong.  I don’t believe he has any lungs.  You know, careless technical stuff like that.

I said this one isn’t truly god awful though, right?  Ok.  Peter Weller couldn’t return in the lead role cause he had other shit going on but they cast an excellent replacement in Robert John Burke (Safe, Oz).  Not only does he look like Weller but he puts on a great stoic performance and hints at the churning of feelings beneath the surface he’d liked to gain more access to but simply can’t due to his condition.  He moves in an angular fashion like a RoboCop should and delivers his lines in a mostly dry monotone with the right bit of humor when required.  The only real issue is the sound of his voice is pretty different than Weller’s.  It’s more rounded and not as throaty.  And I don’t believe it’s related to the processing they had to do in post production to layer on the metallic shimmer.  Burke’s natural voice is so dissimilar that it becomes an unfortunate constant distraction.  Weller established the timbre of RoboCop’s speech so anyone else isn’t going to sound totally right.  That aside it’s a miracle they got someone as perfect as Burke to fill the role because the filmmakers were forced to reuse the same suit from the previous films so whoever they cast had to have damn near the same exact dimensions as Weller in order to fit in it.  Even still it quickly became painful for Burke after being strapped in for a short while.

Another aspect that’s done well is the pacing.  The story never drags or becomes tedious.  There aren’t superfluous sub plots or tangents that distract from the main plot and I for one really appreciate that.

And yea, it’s shot and edited perfectly fine.  The action and everything that’s going on is completely followable.  Again, I appreciate that and wanna give the film points for things that some others might take for granted.  These baseline qualities aren’t givens for any picture.

So there it is.  The story isn’t exciting but serviceable, the characters aren’t advanced any further but they’re still the familiar ones we know and love, the effects aren’t groundbreaking but definitely well done (except the flying stuff), Burke taking over the lead does a bang up job and the violence isn’t quite as scaled back as people like to complain about (there’s actually a really horrific scene (that I think is supposed to be funny) of one OCP employee who commits suicide by jumping out of a window while on the phone with his wife and then we cut to a shot of ground level where he lands behind a barrier thankfully sparing us the awful impact).

Yes, they teamed up Robo with a little kid in a blatant move to mimic T2 (and get a younger audience on board), the arm gun and jetpack come across as a way to make the film more toyetic (similar to Batman and Robin), there isn’t a true finale, the script needed a few more rewrites, an R rating would’ve been preferred and so on.  But despite all that this still feels like the world of RoboCop.  Detroit is still an incredibly dangerous warzone, Robo still murders bad guys and OCP is still an evil organization that basically runs the city.  It’s not unrecognizable or even that drastically altered.  The pieces are all there.

And for shits let’s take this one step further.  How does this one stack up against other action franchises that went PG-13 with one of their sequels?  While not as fun as Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome or The Expendables 3 I think RoboCop 3 is better than Terminator Salvation, Terminator Genisys, Speed 2 and Conan the Destroyer (in fact rated PG).  Maybe it’s tied with Live Free or Die Hard.