Verhoeven Club - RoboCop

If compared to other philosophical movies, yes. When compared to other cyborg movies, no.

That's true. I think Terminator 2 beats Robocop though when it comes to cyborg movies about re-discovering humanity, but that came out after though.

This is something a lot of people get wrong, as I mentioned in my analysis on page 1.
Yes, there's a lot of shooting and stuff, and people seem to only remember those scenes, but there's also other stuff going on.

• Robo walking around his former home remembering his family.
• Lewis connecting with the ghost-in-the-machine when she calls RoboCop "Murphy" directly to his face.
• Robo using the facial recognition program in the data room and Robo's ghost-in-the-machine discovering who Murphy was.
• The quiet scene between Robo and Lewis when Robo removes his upper mask.
• The nightmares he suffers but doesn't fully understand that somehow spurn him on to go out on the streets... which is an interesting scene given that he's angry as hell, but doesn't know why. It's this scene that Lewis appears too and calls him Murphy. The ghost-in-the-machine is subconsciously playing against his programming. Even the scientists are baffled as to what is going on.

There's loads of subtle undertones to RoboCop and many people miss them.

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Oh, I forgot to mention...


The finale... the big shoot 'em up ending and chase through the factory.
That isn't RoboCop going all out to do nothing but get the bad guys.


The police are on strike and Robo and Lewis are in hiding after Robo took a kicking from Jones' abomination ED-209 and the SWAT Team. Hell, even Lewis was shot at during that scene.
Nobody is safe now, so they go into hiding, only to be hunted down by Boddicker and is goons. They go to find him.
Problem for them is that RoboCop is prepared now, and he has Lewis as backup... hence, RoboCop goes on an almost relentless march of victory against a bunch of hapless crims who think they're invincible because they have some powerful weapons.
The actual finale too, RoboCop is buried under all that steel, and it's Lewis who kills Leon, not RoboCop... but Boddicker has RoboCop dead-to-rights... but, being the misinformed, overly confident criminal he is, RoboCop has a surprise for him.

Another point with the action in the film, is that it's not just action for the sake of action.
I'll use the gas station scene as an example.


You could say it's a quick shootout, then an explosion.
But, Robo's ghost-in-the-machine, his subconscious makes him use his "Dead or alive, you are coming with me" line.
Emil recognises RoboCop as Murphy, and blurts out in panic "I know you! You're dead! We killed you!" and Robo's ghost-in-the-machine starts twitching... and after he shoots Emil's bike, causing him to crash, he questions Emil, demanding to know exactly who he is.
This then leads him to the data room's facial recognition machine.


Another would be the fight between Robo and ED-209.
A big robot fight, loads of gunfire... but, Dick Jones blurting out how he killed Bob Norton... RoboCop records it, which gives him evidence to use against Jones in the finale.


There are only two gratuitous violent scenes in RoboCop... one is the killing of Mr Kinney by ED-209, though it is used to set up ED-209's lethality for later when he faces off against RoboCop... and the other is the murder of Bob Morton being so sadistic, but again, it is a needed scene for later developments.
Sure they could have made those 2 scenes less gory and sadistic, but they're still scenes that are used as set-up and payoff in later scenes.


Every action scene in RoboCop apart from those borderline 2, has a purpose and leads to something else.
Each action set-piece leads to a small discovery, and each small discovery is part of a bigger picture.

Oh yeah for sure, it's not just action for the sake of action, but I feel that the deeper themes were under the surface, rather than brought full to the foreground. Not that's bad, I just didn't think it was hugely deep, compared to movies that explore their themes more.

The subtlety of themes in Verhoeven's movies, is the exact reason nobody liked Showgirls.
Nobody understood it.

But do you think that maybe Verhoeven is too subtle with this themes, and perhaps if he brought them into the foreground more and dealt with them more on a direct face to face level, that Showgirls would have been appreciated more? Or no?

I actually didn't like Showgirls, not because of the themes, but because I felt the themes were not explored or dealt with in a good way, cause Verhoeven perhaps keeps them too "bottled up" so to speak.

That's what makes Verhoeven a grown up director though.
I mean, you want movies to spell out everything they're doing? To baby-talk the audience from scene to scene with wooden dialogue? You'd be heading into Uwe Boll and Paul WS Anderson territory if that was the case.


Verhoeven's themes are subtle, and you have to watch the movie to see them... those that don't, just label RoboCop as a gory actioner, Starship Troopers as a violent futuristic war movie... and Showgirls as a badly acted and directed Razzie winner.


As for Showgirls... he was awarded a bunch of Razzies... and he turned up in person to collect them.
He knew people didn't understand the movie, and the fact it got Razzie nominations showed exactly that... so he actually turned up to collect them.
Again, everyone missed the point of his showing up in person... nobody twigged he was giving a middle finger directly at everyone, including the Razzies, who missed the point of the movie.

I'm not saying they have to spell everything out, but I feel that the themes are pushed into the background too much. Just because I want the themes to be dealt with directly, doesn't mean that that is spelling it out, as I feel that those are two different things.

For example, Robocop is about the rediscovering of humanity, it was pointed out, but I thought it was keep that theme into the background to a degree. Another movie that is about the rediscovering of humanity, was Children of Men, or The Truman Show for example. But I thought that the themes were explored much more directly in those examples, compared to Robocop. The themes were brought much more to the foreground, and dealt with directly, which is not the same thing as spelling things out.

It's not that Paul Verhoeven is not willing to spell the themes out, he is just not willing to bring them out of the bottle, and turn them on their ears.

rodent, you should make a verhoeven special: The 4th man, what an amazing film from 1983

i was for sure to get razzie, for that louzy sex scene at the end in the pool lol

Not every day I subscribe to a YouTube channel based on one video... but this guy gets it.
Subbed, liked, and will be watching this dude's vids with great interest.

That's actually a really good in-depth review of the movie. After watching Robocop again, I have to wonder, would it have been perhaps an even better movie if it took an approach like Death Wish (1974),

So I wonder if Robocop might have been even better if it took that approach?

What you described there in the spoiler box, is basically what happens in the godawful 2014 remake.

Nah, In the original, Murphy is taken out by thugs, but they're under the control of an OCP official.
Ok, Dick Jones isn't directly responsible for Murphy's death, but he's controlling the gangs in Detroit.

In the remake, its the corrupt Police that mark Murphy for death. They basically put a hit on him because he was going to uncover their corruption.
Fallon or whatever his name is, and/or his goons, carries it out the bombing.
Once Murphy is RoboCop, he then immediately dispatches Fallon and his gang, leaving the rest of the movie with RoboCop trying to piece together who paid them to do it.

Okay, I've been having these issues for a long time :

1) In some french review of Robocop, the journalist was quoting Verhoeven saying that "it's the story of a caterpillar who recalls having been a butterfly", which I found a very nice description of this movie. But then, the article went on describing the plot as the story of a mere cop "(the caterpillar)" who becomes a super powered robot "(the butterfly)". Which sounded to me as the very opposite of the same article's Verhoeven quote, in addition to being frank miller level of stupid. But I haven't ever found the source of that quote, so I don't know where the mix up was exactly. Was there an error in the quote transcription, did Verhoeven actually see the human as the caterpillar and the tin box as the butterfly, or did the journalist completely miss the point of the metaphor (and the movie) ?

Or did I feel the movie wrong, seeing it as some sort of Frankenstein/EdwardScissorhands tragedy about dehumanization ?

2) Similar issue, possible spoiler but I think (though I assume this is a discussion between people who saw the film already) :

In my views, Lewis dies at the end. I took the "they will fix you, they fix anything" line as somber and ironic, coming from some sort of living dead prisoner of a machine, deprived of his life, victim of corporate greed and politics. Knowing full well that "they" only fix what they see immense profit in fixing, and that all these resources "fixed" him as much as it broke him - robbing him of his identity and memories, turning him into some mechanical monster (if he regained a bit of hos soul, it was against the "fixing" intention). The sentence sounded sarcastic and ominous to me.

And in the sequel, Lewis is there, as if nothing happened, making of this line a cheerful positivist prophecy about how cool "they" are and how marvelous it is that all this great science is there in the benefit of all of the humblest mankind. Which kinda jars with the tone and message of the original movie.

So, did the (so dumbed down) sequels return Lewis "against" the script of the original movie, or had I been reading too much into this sequence ?

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First time I've heard this phrase tbh.
It's a nice equation for the story though.
Caterpillar who recalls having been a butterfly: A robot, bound by its programming and its unchanging body, realising it was once a living being.

I think if the article then calls Murphy the caterpillar, and Robo the butterfly, they've probably confused the phrase later in the article.


Nah, Lewis survives at the end.
Her line is "Murphy, I'm a mess"
Robo says "They'll fix you, they fix everything".
Literally meaning they'll fix her...

... but also, it's a line with a double-meaning. OCP are also a bunch of b*stards.
They fix everything, whether it needs fixed or not.
The meaning behind the word "fix" as well... OCP fixes everything. They cheat, lie, steal, scam, embellish.
It's RoboCop's little dig at the system that has put both himself and Lewis into the predicament they're currently in.

The sequels are a bit meh though, designed to capitalise on the first movie's popularity so you can't really read too much into those movies.

I actually don't like that Lewis got shot several times implying she will not make it, because I felt like the villains had already done enough damage at this point, and it just felt like unnecessay and excessive salt rubbed into the wound at that point. Or is it just me? Still it's a good movie though.