Verhoeven Club - RoboCop

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Starting this one a bit early like the others.
My #1 movie... never gets old for me at least


Movie Of The Month for July 2017... RoboCop.


Don't forget, this month is also the 30th Anniversary of Verhoeven's Sci-Fi Masterpiece.
We're having an all day long, 3 showings for time zones, Celebration for Robo's 30th on July 15th.
Thread for that is HERE
Main thread for all MoFo Movie Weekends and Functions is HERE


Verhoeven Club is found HERE
Master Thread is HERE


I'm currently prepping some stuff for this thread, might be a day or two before I post it.


Welcome to the Verhoeven Club's RoboCop Thread... double celebration, Club Discussion and 30th Anniversary!!!!








I get a kick out of just how accurately prophetic this movie is.
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We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...



Robocop is not just an ‘actioner’ or a sci-fi, or even a futuristic movie of death and destruction. It’s a long close look at where humanity is going.

The movie in a whole is so far ahead of its time that at 20 odd years ago, when the movie was released, it seemed far-fetched with the police uniforms and cars and society’s views, Military tactics involved in the film and a Police Force that resembles a Peace Keeping Army.
These days though, it seems on the tilting point of dated due to being only a few years behind modern day.

An absolute master class in film making, Verhoeven’s take on the future is a spookily realistic and well imagined view of our future. Something that the near-prophetic Paul Verhoeven is a master of.

Weller as the titular Robocop is another master class on the acting scale. Miming robotic bird movements and bringing a human element to a creature made almost entirely of titanium is a wonder. How he does it, is legend.
The suit itself is the reason his movements are so jerky. They were originally going for fluidic movements… but once the suit arrived and Weller spent 11 hours getting into it, they all realised it just wasn’t going to work.
After a 4 day halt on shooting, Weller and his movement coach discovered that they would have to create a new movement, based on French Mime Artists from the 1920s.
Weller has said that moving like that, is the most unnatural thing he has ever had to do. It had to be big and loud, OTT and hammy-theatrical.

Rob Bottin’s creation of the RoboCop armour/suit and makeup, especially when Robo removes his upper mask, is also a wonder to behold.
Even by today’s standards the practical effects look genuinely real and have yet to be bettered in any movie I’ve yet to see.

What really made RoboCop special though was the quiet moments, where Robo is re-experiencing some of his past, his un-erased memories.
It’s something that really brings the audience on a par with Robo’s torn feelings of duty, love, humanity and sheer programming.
Mixed with the haunting soundtrack, the movie will live with you for a long time, if not forever.

Add to that mix some awesome shoot’ em up action scenes, explosions, black humour and melting men in vats of acid and you’ve got a sure fire hit and the music by the wonderfully enigmatic Basil Poledouris blends everything together perfectly. From the thumping march, to the haunting theme that stands out most prolifically when RoboCop is walking around his old home, remembering his family, Poledouris nails the soundtrack for this movie.
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After a re-watched the remake of RoboCop yesterday, and I've twigged on something about the original that I never noticed before.

I’ll get to the main thing in a moment, but for now I’ll just reiterate what I said in ther review I wrote a while back… in the remake, there are a number of problems with RoboCop himself.
He's a regular guy, in a robotic suit. He knows who he is, what has happened... and has to deal with it. RoboCop himself, always referred to as "Alex", being a regular guy in a suit is a bland character played blandly by Kinnaman. He’s basically Batman. Maybe Iron Man? Iron Bat?
Yeah, Iron Bat.
With less character though.

The main thing though is a very, very subtle character device that puts the viewer smack-bang into the mind-set of RoboCop himself that was totally overlooked in the remake.

In the remake, you meet Alex Murphy's family. You get to see their struggle against the corporate big-wigs and their lawyers.
It’s a bit like the revealing scene in the remake, where RoboCop’s outer shell is removed, allowing us to see his inner workings. In my review I called it a question we never asked, and an answer we didn’t need.

What I’m saying is, we don’t need to see Alex Murphy’s family. Ok, they went the route of having Alex a more ‘human’ RoboCop and seeing his struggle to reconnect to his loved ones is probably called for in the remake… but, well… that just isn’t what RoboCop is about.
In the original, RoboCop is completely mind-wiped (at least, OCP thought they had wiped his memory) and he has to figure out what happened to him… and why… and he has an internal struggle piecing together what he has been turned into... and... most importantly... you never meet his wife and son.

All you see are flash memories of them.
A quick memory here, a vague memory there... which allows RoboCop to piece together that he once had a life, that he was once alive.
This disconnection between the viewer and Alex's family puts the viewer bang on par of the mind-set of what is left of Alex Murphy.
He doesn’t know them and neither do you.
In his own words, he even says "Murphy had a wife and son, what happened to them?"

He has accepted he is no longer Alex Murphy... but that he once was Alex Murphy and he has to deal with and accept that loss, and move on with his, well, move on with his “life”.
He then says "I can feel them, but I can't remember them"

The other major thing with this is when Alex/Robo is talking about his family, mask off, in the factory where he died… his voice changes.
When he’s, let’s say “RoboCop”, his voice is powerful, commanding, bold.
While sitting with Lewis with his mask off, being “Alex” his voice softens. It’s quiet, solemn and packed with human heartache. This tells us that, after all he’s been through, Alex is to an extent, still there and he also knows that to the majority, Alex isn’t there anymore.

This, is the major overlooked point of RoboCop in the remake, and a subtle character arc that I never spotted until that God-awful remake actually appeared.... the viewer not ever meeting Alex’s family, means the viewer understands RoboCop's viewpoint... and is connected emotionally, 100%, to his predicament.

What stands out the most with RoboCop, the thing that people always remember it for, is the violence and the gore… but look just below the surface, just in between the horror, the gore, the violence and the gunfire… is, what I would call, a beautiful story of the human spirit, the enduring and endless boundaries of love and pure emotion, of memories and most of all, the story of pain and loss and dealing with that pain.

Verhoeven, mastered these themes of humanity and mortality throughout the entire movie, and then in his unique, inimitable and peerless style laced the whole thing with the ultra-violence, satire and black humour; showing the viewer what they didn’t realise they wanted to see… and also showing the viewer things that they didn’t realise they didn’t want to see.



I'd buy that for a dollar!
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“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!” ~ Rocky Balboa



You mean me? Kei's cousin?
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Look, Dr. Lesh, we don't care about the disturbances, the pounding and the flashing, the screaming, the music. We just want you to find our little girl.



i would say this is the ultimate depiction of social satire and a great action film if not one of the greatest



Dayum... this is the VHS trailers on the UK release of RoboCop... and it contains both Rolf Harris and Gary Glitter


&fbclid=IwAR3zHwGaqtXOQypBxR5zn6lJ1nI9VlmtoJWojJSaJ6NvmNZFUFjz-t8VEdM



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
Am I the only one who liked the Robocop remake? Everyone bashes it but I thought it was a solid popcorn movie and better than some for modern times. It's not as good as the original, but I still think it's good and certainly the second best Robocop movie.,



for me the verhoeven special is, 1983 s the 4th man, and 1992 erotic thriller classic Basic instinct



It's a shame most people just look at it as an action romp or a "guy movie." There's so much more to Verhoeven's films, especially RoboCop.



“Sugar is the most important thing in my life…”
Am I the only one who liked the Robocop remake? Everyone bashes it but I thought it was a solid popcorn movie and better than some for modern times. It's not as good as the original, but I still think it's good and certainly the second best Robocop movie.,

If it was Robotic Cop, Cop Robot, or something else, it's fine. It's just part of the deal when you try to cash in on a franchise, the critique is just a much as the built-in affection.



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
It's a shame most people just look at it as an action romp or a "guy movie." There's so much more to Verhoeven's films, especially RoboCop.
Is there really a lot more to Robocop though? I mean sure it's a satire on a futuristic American society but, it's not like it had a very complex story to tell or anything, and it still decided to end in a shoot em up finale, rather than close with complex themes or anything, did it?



Is there really a lot more to Robocop though? I mean sure it's a satire on a futuristic American society but, it's not like it had a very complex story to tell or anything, and it still decided to end in a shoot em up finale, rather than close with complex themes or anything, did it?

It's more philosophical than that, not always through the storytelling but through the theme.



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
Yeah do you think those satirical themes are not really explored that much? I mean most of the movie is about a cyborg wanting to bring down the gang that killed him, when he was a human.

It's not like they really go into the themes that much I would say, and mostly concentrate on the action scenes more. Not that I am criticizing this, I do like the movie, I just feel that perhaps people are making it out to be something more than it is, or over-analyzing it.



Yeah do you think those satirical themes are not really explored that much? I mean most of the movie is about a cyborg wanting to bring down the gang that killed him, when he was a human.

It's not like they really go into the themes that much I would say, and mostly concentrate on the action scenes more. Not that I am criticizing this, I do like the movie, I just feel that perhaps people are making it out to be something more than it is, or over-analyzing it.
It's something I tend to pick up on more than most people since I watch a lot of philosophical/psychological/religious movies. Basically, RoboCop is much more human than a lot of cyborg movies. It's really about the rediscovery of humanity.



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
But a lot of the movie, especially the climax is him shooting up a bunch of bad guys. So doesn't it feel like the re-discovering of humanity is too under the surface?