Have a Very Merry (and Patrick Swayze) Christmas!

Movie Trailer: Dick Tracy (1990)

Movie Trailer; Die Hard 2: Die Harder

Mars on Film: Total Recall (1990)

If you came of age watching sci-fi movies in the 1980s and 1990s, one fact was clear: Arnold Schwarzenegger had rapidly become the genre’s most valuable player.

The actor and future governor went from strength to strength in the form of The Terminator (1984), Predator (1987), The Running Man (1987), Total Recall (1990) and T2 (1991). Rewardingly, he rose to the top of the action star pack by embracing the genre rather than shunning it. 

By contrast, Sylvester Stallone didn’t begin making sci-fi based films (like Demolition Man [1993] and Judge Dredd [1995]) until the early 1990s, and by then, Schwarzenegger had all but cornered the market. 

How did he do it?

In particular, Schwarzenegger seemed to have an authentic knack for picking good projects and good collaborators. Some would call this knack his “business” sense, but that isn’t entirely fair. It’s an artistic sense too.

But the actor also seemed to understand another significant fact: that his presence in a film was only one part of the successful movie equation.

The other piece involved serious science fiction concepts (like time travel), mind-blowing twists, and even embedded social commentary (The Running Man).

Total Recall, Schwarzenegger’s 1990 collaboration with Paul Verhoeven -- the auteur of RoboCop (1987) and Starship Troopers (1997) -- represents perhaps the trickiest and most twist-laden of those efforts, and is something of a high-water mark for the actor, post-Terminator.

Loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s 1966 short-story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, the film concerns a man who discovers that his whole life is a lie consisting of implanted memories…a lie which places him at the heart of an interplanetary conspiracy to keep the good people of Mars down, and keep cheap, clean air off the market.

Accordingly, Total Recall might be interpreted two competing fashions.

The film either exactly as it appears to be: a straight-forward (though left-leaning…) action/sci-fi film about a near-future fascist state in which profits matter more than people, and one man discovers the truth…and joins the revolution. 

Or the film is about a man suffering from a “schizoid embolism,” -- a psychological breakdown -- living out implanted memories that have no bearing on reality.

In the film, Douglas Quaid (Schwarzenegger) submits to a memory package called an “ego trip” that transforms him, essentially, into an outer space secret agent.

Afterwards, the adventure we witness is, therefore, a psychotic episode.

Indeed, virtually every development in the narrative from the physical appearance of freedom-fighter Melina (Rachel Ticotin), to the map of Mars’ alien pyramid, to the remarkable notion of “blue skies on Mars” appears both in Quaid’s travel agent/ego trip package and in the ensuing adventure.

Ultra-violent and yet ceaselessly entertaining, Total Recall thus plays with reality in a way that would forecast the decade’s big sci-fi action hit, The Matrix (1999), right down to a scene in a hero is implored to swallow a red pill and see reality for what it is. 

I suppose it’s tempting to witness all the blunt-faced, brutal, over-the-top violence of Total Recall and dismiss the movie outright. Yet even the film’s violence fits into Total Recall’s either/or dichotomy, representing a future of over-militarized police, or, contrarily, a world of the imagination where the death of innocent bystanders (as human shields) matters not…because they are just avatars in a fantasy, not real flesh and blood life forms.

“Take a vacation from yourself.”

On Earth, a lowly construction worker named Quaid (Schwarzenegger) dreams of Mars and a mysterious woman (Ticotin) there. He wants to relocate to the Red Planet, but his wife, Lori (Sharon Stone) doesn’t think it is a good idea.  Instead, Quaid goes to REKAL, a company that can implant two-week’s worth of memories into his brain.

Quaid selects the “ego trip” memory package, in which he visits Mars as heroic secret agent.  But something goes wrong during implantation, and Quaid grows confused about reality.  Is he a secret agent, or isn’t he?

Soon, Quaid’s wife, his best friend on the job, and shadowy pursuers all attempt to kill him.

Before long, Quaid learns that he was once Hauser, an agent working for Coohagen (Cox), dictatorial governor of the Federal Mars Colony.  Now, it is up to Quaid to take Hauser’s knowledge and save the people of Mars from Coohagen’s tyranny.

The only way to do that, however, is to create an atmosphere on Mars using an ancient, alien machine hidden in the sealed off pyramid mine….

“That’s a new one: blue sky on Mars.”

The science fiction films of Paul Verhoeven slyly go after the tenets of extreme right wing philosophy (and the Reagan eighties). There are other science fiction films, of course, which attack precepts of the left such as Statism (see: THX-1138) or communes (see: Zardoz) but that’s not the case here.

RoboCop imagines a world in which everything -- even the police force -- is run as a private business or enterprise and corporations run amok, literally stomping on the little guy on the way to shoveling in the profits. 

Meanwhile, Starship Troopers is set in a world of mindless nationalistic propaganda in which nuance and reason can find no purchase in the head of any pretty (male or female) soldier during wartime.

Total Recall is not far afield of these films in terms of its philosophical underpinnings. The future here is one in which corporate logos dominate the landscape, both on Earth and on the Federal Colony on Mars. 

And wall-sized TV screens constantly report biased news stories (coming from the mouths of beautiful women…) about the “terrorists” on Mars who are disrupting the flow of minerals, and therefore both the Northern Bloc’s war effort, and the flow of commerce.

Cohaagen (Ronny Cox) is the governor of Mars and he is responsible for the business practices that sold “cheap domes” on Mars, and turned a whole sub-set of colonists into genetic mutants or freaks.  Cohaagen reveals terrible disdain for them and notes that the “lazy mutants” think they “own the mine,” when of course…he does.

Even worse, Cohaagen charges money for air, a resource that ought to be free to any living being.  He declares martial law and heavily polices Mars so that business is not interrupted by people demanding more liberty. He also makes the people of Mars work for sub-par wages, so that they can’t escape their economic enslavement. 

The mutant nature of the underclass in Total Recall is specifically designed as a visual allegory for ethnic minorities and the poverty-stricken. The word “lazy” as applied to mutants is a code word often adopted by racists.

Quaid joins the revolution of freedom fighters, led by Kuato (Marshall Bell), and activates an alien generator that will provide free air to everyone on Mars. Make no mistake or misreading: this act represents a re-distribution of resources from those in power to those without power.  The whole corrupt system -- built on cheap domes and expensive air -- is brought down by this act or rebellion, and the worker is the one who benefits.

Again, I seek not to litigate the politics of this issue, or to state that I agree or disagree with the movie’s viewpoint.  I only note the many visual and verbal cues in the film support the philosophical framework I diagrammed above, from the surfeit of corporate logos on the city streets, to the propaganda-heavy news reports, to the many shots of poor-families gathered together, choking to death for lack of free air. 

Indeed, Total Recall fits precisely into the world-view one can detect in both RoboCop and Starship Troopers, where wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of the few at the expense of the masses.  The film knowingly refers to Kuato as both a terrorist and a George Washington figure (fighting for liberty and independence), but it is clear where Arnie’s character falls on that spectrum of thinking.  He takes the side of the rebellion, not entrenched authority, and never looks back.

What I find endlessly intriguing about Total Recall, however, is the “mind fuck” or “ego trip” aspects of this work of art.  Quaid goes to Recall (REKAL) and either learns the truth about himself  and his identity (Story A), or slips hopelessly into delusional psychosis and experiences a “free form delusion” (Story B).

If we consider Story B for a moment, it’s amazing to see how much it makes sense in context.

Quaid goes to REKAL and is offered the “Ego Trip” package by the slick salesman there. He shows Quaid a package in which he becomes a “secret agent” operating on Mars. 

When Quaid is about to be implanted with the “Ego Trip”, the doctor shows him some new upgrades to that package. It includes, explicitly, material about alien civilizations on Mars. A screen nearby toggles through imagery of alien beings and architecture. One such image is of the Air-Generator in the Pyramid Mine. 

Indeed, it is exactly that generator, as we see in the last act of the film. 

So ask yourself, how does REKAL have access to the interior of a closed (and guarded) Martian mine, and know about a top-secret machine that could alter forever the balance of power on the Mars Colony? 

The answer is simple, REKAL couldn’t have that info. Instead, it has implanted this imagery in Quaid’s memory. He then experiences a schizoid embolism, and then his mind takes him on a tour of said implanted imagery. The mine is never real. It exists only in the program, and then in Quaid’s schizoid mind.

In the same scene, Quaid is asked to pick a “type” of lover he would like. He says his orientation is “hetero” and the doctors begin programming a woman for him to romance on his ego trip.  She is not just any woman, we see, but the operating room’s screen actually shows footage of Rachel Ticotin’s Melina.

Again, not a lookalike, not a doppelganger, actually her.  And then, after the embolism event, Quaid encounters her.  But she exists not in the real world, only in the program and in his messed up head.

The mitigating evidence here, perhaps, is that the film opens with a dream sequence in which Quaid and Melina are seen walking on the canals of Mars together.  He slips, she screams and tries to help him.  So it is established that he is thinking of Melina -- a mystery woman -- before implantation, and therefore it cannot be a fiction created by the ego trip programmers. 

Yet it is not impossible to believe that Quaid has already been implanted as the movie starts, but has no memory of it. 

In other words, his trip to REKAL is included, actually, in the ego trip and the “secret agent” package. 

Think about it for a moment: a trip to REKAL is the perfect place for a construction worker to determine that he is actually the savior of the solar system. So REKAL might be incorporated as part of Quaid’s movie-long fantasy, which commences not with the trip to the company in the body of the film, but occurs before the opening dream that awakens the inner secret agent.

By the same token, the doctor informs the salesman that she has not yet “implanted” the secret agent portion of the memory program. But, if the entire movie is an implanted memory, her comment means nothing.  It is simply the mind’s way of rebelling against the idea that it is living in a fantasy.  Remember, when Quaid asks if the memories feel real, he is told that his “brain will not know the difference.”  So, to seem real, perhaps he must believe that he was a secret agent all along and REKAL never implanted anything.

In the same implantation scene, a doctor’s assistant looks at the ego-trip architecture and quips. “That’s a new one…blue skies on Mars.” A highly implausible Hollywood happy ending, right?

Yet the film ends, of course, with blue skies on Mars, the end point of the two-week “ego trip” memory implant. 

A second scene, later in the film, finds Dr. Edgemar (Roy Brocksmith) on Mars, attempting to talk Quaid down, because he is having a psychotic break (schizoid embolism). Notice the visual symbolism of this scene. The mise-en-scene is important. 

Quaid is stationed on the left side of the frame, Edgemar in the middle, and a distorted reflection of Quaid (in a mirror) is on the right. This visualization represents the core of the Story B narrative. "Schizoid" means doubling or fragmenting of the mind, and this image shows us two Quaids, attempting to broach reality, with Edgemar as the mediator.

Edgemar tells Quaid that if he doesn’t ingest the red pill, he will lose all touch with reality. He will be a savior one moment, a betrayer the next. This “free form delusion” will even include “fantasies” about an “alien civilization.” 

He’s a villain and a faker in Story A.  But in Story B, every single one of Edgemar’s theories comes true.

Melina finally trusts Quaid, and then learns that he is actually Hauser, working covertly against the rebels.

And, in the end, Quaid countenances the tools in the pyramid mine, artifacts left behind by an alien civilization.

Total Recall plays drolly with this idea that there are parallel tracks at work in the film (Story A/Story B), and ends with a moment of incredible playfulness that honors both possibilities.

Quaid stands under the blue skies of Mars with Melina and says that the whole experience is “like a dream.”  She replies that he should kiss her before he wakes up. 

At this juncture, Jerry Goldsmith’s score goes into a different mode, one that suggests tension and anticipation, as if Quaid is about to wake up.  The ego trip two-week vacation is ending, and real life -- as a construction worker -- is about to come crashing back down on him.  You can’t miss the menacing quality of the soundtrack at this juncture, as if the carpet is about to pulled out from under us.

The self-reflexive aspect of this ending is plain. We -- the audience -- have been “dreaming” with our eyes open for two hours, watching the film. And now, it too is about to end. 

Back to real life!

So Total Recall may merely be a story of revolution against the wealthy and powerful on Mars, or it may be a story of a man undergoing a hallucination because of a trip to the “brain butchers.”  Either way, it is our dream at the cinema, captivating our attention, and finally, ending with a return to reality.

I remember when Total Recall first premiered, many critics complained about the level of violence depicted on screen. There is a scene here of extreme violence worth mentioning. Quaid is pursued through a train station. He goes up an escalator, and runs into a trio of agents. They shoot at him, but miss, hitting another man on the escalator. Quaid uses the man’s corpse as a human shield, and then kills his attackers. Next, he throws the corpse down the escalator, onto Richter (Ironside) and another pursuer. After they all get off the escalator, Richter steps over the bloody corpse of one of his men without a look back.

This is a pretty bracing scene, for certain, and yet it is not gratuitous. In some ways, it is one of the most important scenes in Total Recall. If we are following Story A, this violence is an indication, like the ubiquitous corporate logos, of the overwhelming fascist state. Militarized police kill citizens without warning, without regret, and without legal repercussions. This is Coohagen’s preferred world, where the little people live and die by his whim.

Contrarily, if we follow Story B -- the “ego trip” -- there is no real violence in the scene at all, and part of Quaid’s mind must realize that. The action is a vacation “.fantasy,” like Call of Duty video-game, and the people who get caught in the cross-fire are not real, mere avatars to make it all seem real.

The screen is covered in blood in the film, and this is an intentional thing. Verhoeven even gives us a scene in which chunky rat blood pools on a view-screen, obscuring Quaid's visage.  The screen then turns to the blood red of the Martian surface. This transition could be the trademark inage of the film (and Verhoeven's Story A/Story B parallel approach.)

Total Recall may be an action film on the surface, but it actually carries social commentary (about the dangers of a fascist/corporate-controlled state), navigates carefully and consistently a science fiction premise concerning the nature of reality, and features probably the best cast of all Schwarzenegger’s sci-fi films. 

Ronny Cox is ruthless and terrifying as Coohagen. And Ironside is perfect as Richter, showcasing the idea that menace comes from attitude and screen presence, not from height or muscle mass. And Sharon Stone absolutely steals the first half of the picture, vacillating expertly from “loving wife” mode to “fierce assassin” mode.  She switches back and forth adroitly, sometimes between breaths.  And she is absolutely physically convincing in the fight sequences. 

Only Rachel Ticotin seems a little out of her depth here, as Melina, and that may be intentional too. She is hemmed in by Quaid’s description of his perfect woman: sleazy and demure. There’s not a big range she can travel between those two adjectives. Her role feels like a commentary on female romantic leads in action films.

Witty and wicked, smart and subversive, Total Recall might just qualify, in Quaid’s colorful terminology: “the best mind-fuck yet” in Schwarzenegger’s sci-fi catalog.

Movie Trailer: Back to the Future Part III (1990)

Cult-Movie Review: RoboCop 2 (1990)

Any viewing of RoboCop 2 (1990) in 2015 is bound to raise one significant question.  

Is this sequel a step further than the original 1987 science fiction film in terms of its embedded social critique, or, quite simply, is it a step too far?

That is the terrain of debate concerning the film and its legacy, and, I must confess, I have been on both sides of the issue over the years.

When I first screened this sequel in theaters when I was twenty or so, I felt that the filmmakers had gone too far with the overt physical violence and gore. The film unsettled and disturbed me, and in my callow youth, that meant I didn’t like it; that something felt wrong about the movie.

On recent re-watch, however, I feel quite the opposite: that RoboCop 2 has actually achieved the near-impossible.

It is a sequel that absolutely honors the anarchic spirit of the original Verhoeven film while delving meaningfully into both the main character’s (Murphy) psychology and the nature of his exaggeratedly pro-business world.

Scenes that once seemed alarmingly graphic and crafted with the intent only to debauch, now stand up as carefully-measured statements about the excesses of a world where money is everything, and decency is on steep decline.

In terms of fidelity to the original film, RoboCop 2 recreates, explicitly, the street crime/board room criminal dynamic and comparison we saw so carefully crafted in Verhoeven’s production. As you may recall, murderer Boddicker and VP Jones in the first film both quipped about “good business” being where you find it. 

This one line of dialogue explicitly connected street level criminals to the untouchable crooks inhabiting corporate offices. They were the same animal. They just wore different clothes, and drew their power from different sources.

RoboCop 2 has a line like that too. It is spoken by both Cain (Tom Noonan), an ambitious and wacko drug dealer, and The Old Man (Dan O’Herlihy), CEO of the incredibly powerful OCP.

That line? 

“Made in America. We’re going to make that mean something again.”

Accordingly, RoboCop 2 keeps raising the bar in terms of its social commentary. It tackles the supposed crack epidemic of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the rising tide of political correctness from the same era. And it ven makes a final, scorching commentary (and moral conclusion) about the direction of a world run for businessmen by businessmen.

In short, RoboCop 2 is a worthy sequel, and a valid, daring work of art...perhaps more so than most critics -- this one included -- have acknowledged.

“I am a machine, nothing more.”

In Old Detroit, the police are striking again for higher wages, and OCP (Omni Consumer Products) nears the launch of its gentrification project: Delta City.

While the scourge of a new narcotic called “nuke” decimates the poor of Detroit, OCP’s Old Man (O’Herlihy) plots to create a new and updated RoboCop model to patrol the streets, and clean them up. An ambitious executive, Dr. Juliette Faxx (Belinda Bauer) spearheads the search for a new candidate.

Murphy (Peter Weller), meanwhile, has been experiencing old memories of his human life. He has even gone to the home of his former wife and child, attempting to understand from them what he is. Naturally, they are upset to see him, and threaten to sue OCP. 

When confronted by his wife, finally, Murphy is forced (by OCP) to acknowledge that he “just a machine,” not a man. He is property, a product...nothing more.

As Detroit is forced into bankruptcy by OCP, a drug dealer Cain (Noonan) and his youthful associate, Hob (Gabriel Damon) continue to sell their illegal product and make a killing.  RoboCop makes it his mission to stop Cain, but is scuttled by Dr. Faxx, who forces the cyborg obey a new set of directives that serve only to muddy his sense of dedication to law and order.

After Cain is arrested and mortally wounded, the psychotic criminal becomes Dr. Faxx’s candidate for the RoboCop 2 project.

An addict himself, the new cyborg will run on a fuel consisting of nuke.  

And on the day of his unveiling, Cain and RoboCop go to war for the future of Detroit.

“If businessmen can buy our rights, like stock….we don’t realize what we’re losing…”

Directed by Irvin Kershner (1923 – 201), RoboCop 2 intentionally and often amusingly pushes the world-view of RoboCop a step or two further. 

Thus the trappings of OCP here begin to resemble something even more nefarious than big business run amok. Indeed, they begin to resemble famous, historical Nazi symbols; representations of militant fascism on the march.  

Corporatism, of course, is a key element of fascism. In a fascist state, wealthy, private business owners or “job creators” hold all the power while workers are disenfranchised and dis-empowered. They lose the right to collectively bargain and serve at the whim of employers who can do whatever they please, often with the blessing of the state.

Here, specifically, the fearsome new RoboCop 2 dons a head-piece that overtly resembles a Nazi soldier’s helmet, and the Old Man is depicted standing before a giant, wall-sized tapestry of scarlet coloring, like a flag from a Nazi Rally in Berlin.

But instead of featuring a swastika in the middle of that sea of crimson, OCP’s corporate logo is present instead on the tapestry. One ideology of fascism has replaced another. But we recognize this evil by its alternate face, don't we?

As I like to note frequently, designs don’t happen by accident in a film of this size, budget and imagination. Everything you see and detect, down to the last color, down to the last decoration, is present by intent.  So it is safe to establish that RoboCop 2 imagines a world in which right wing extremism takes hold, and, over time, transitions into overt fascism. That slope itself -- being pro-business to fascist -- is part of the film’s debate. 

The Old Man goes from sitting behind a desk that features a photograph of him with a figure who very much resembles President Reagan, to standing before the very Nazi-like tapestry or flag of OCP. 

And no, I am not calling President Reagan a Nazi in any way, shape or form, only noting that one quality of good science fiction involves gazing at the present, and extrapolating from that present a possible (imaginary) future.  

Plenty of science fiction films imagine over-bearing Statism for example (Z.P.G. [1973] is one), but the makers of this franchise considered the eighties and imagined how the policies of Reagan’s America might spin out into this “future” world not of free enterprise, but reckless, out-of-control enterprise. Reagan and his America are thus the starting point for that extrapolation in the RoboCop franchise, and the fascism featured in the sequel is the end point. There’s a line or progression there, and reality is one thing, and RoboCop 2’s imaginings a cautionary tale.

Beyond drawing the connection between laissez-faire economic policy, big business, and a fascist state, this sequel also gets exactly right the anti-science, anti-environment aspect of such a world view. 

In particular, these aspects of the culture emerge in the film's funny TV commercials. This too is a direct hold-over from Verhoeven’s vision: the idea that a corporate controlled media can and will say anything as “happy” news (and as advertisements) so long as the rich stay rich and the poor remain poor.

Here, the anti-environment angle comes out in a story reported on Media Break. There’s been a nuclear disaster in the Amazon, with acres of natural forest destroyed in a firebal.  The journalists report that environmentalists are incensed. 

Leeza Gibbons’ blond anchorwoman replies with a guffaw that environmentalists are always incensed.  In other words, an unsafe nuclear reactor has destroyed one of the great treasures of the planet, but the people who are worthy of derision and blame are those who would seek to protect the environment.

Pesky environmentalists! Damn tree-huggers who care more about the planet than about making money!

Another sequence involves a commercial for Sun Block 5000. The advert begins with a vapid model reporting that “ever since we lost the Ozone…” she can’t sit by the pool in California.  At least not without her sun bock, which comes with a warning that it could cause skin cancer.  

Again, the scene perfectly encapsulates the recklessly pro-business nature of this fictional world. It wasn’t a profitable enterprise, apparently, to save the environment and the Ozone Layer, but it could be profitable to sell a product to protect people from sun rays: Sun Block 5000.  Of course, since business isn’t regulated in this world, that product itself comes with a surgeon general’s warning that it could cause skin cancer.

RoboCop 2 ruthlessly makes the point that nothing in this world can be allowed to stand in the way of making a profit. Not safety, not the environment, not science. And the corporate media is just the delivery boy for the pro-business agenda.

In terms of real-life happenings, RoboCop 2, keys on two crucial historical aspects of the George H.W. Bush Years, 1988 – 1992. The first was the so-called “crack epidemic” of the age. Although statistics suggest that cocaine-related deaths in that span were never even close to tobacco or alcohol-related deaths in terms of numbers, the media nonetheless embarked on a feeding frenzy about a “generation” lost to crack.  President Bush and his wife, Barbara, both mentioned holding “crack babies” during important, televised speeches. The media push was so strong that Americans, when polled, believed the war on drugs was more important than the specter of nuclear war.

The overall impression was that the “crack plague,” as it was known, had infiltrated every aspect of American society, when the truth was far different.  RoboCop 2 takes aim at this crack “epidemic” by focusing on a new narcotic, “nuke,” and making one of its’ key villains, a child; not a crack baby, per se, but a nuke (baby) or dealer, named Hob.  And Hob, of course, is a nickname for the Devil. 

Many critics, including Roger Ebert, were infuriated that RoboCop 2 featured a child as a drug dealer and villain, but again, good sci-fi is about extrapolating from the present.  If the late 1980s gave us crack babies, why not imagine that generation a little older, even more addicted and more dangerous to the fabric of America?  That’s exactly what RoboCop 2 proposes.  And though the child is himself an immoral bastard, RoboCop 2 treats the subplot, and the character with humanity and dignity.  

When Hob -- just a child -- is mortally wounded, RoboCop soothes him, and stays with him. Hob may be a “nuke baby” but he is still a human being, and still a child, and he is very afraid of dying.  RoboCop acts appropriately sympathetic towards him, perhaps because he remembers his own son; perhaps because his “humanity” is still a powerful force dictating his actions.

The second aspect of the culture tackled by RoboCop 2 is political correctness. 

Again, this phrase came into common usage during the first Bush presidency, and concerned the idea that people had to watch their tongues, or “the PC police” would come get them.  

In RoboCop 2, our friendly neighborhood cyborg is outfitted with 200 plus confusing and contradictory directives, the vast majority of which seem to be PC in nature. Now, he must lecture kids about staying in school, or about not smoking.  He is, literally, a manifestation of the PC police. One of his prime directives to avoid "premature value judgement."  Another is "to discourage feelings of negativity and hostility." Imagine operating under such dictates and dealing with hardened criminals at the same time!

If RoboCop 2 can be said to be prophetic in a fashion, it is for its central debate, however, about privatization. It imagines a Detroit that goes bankrupt (and hey, that happened in 2013!), but raises questions about how and why. In this case, OCP tells the same old story of City Hall, a place of “mismanagement and corruption,” while positioning itself as “a responsible private enterprise.”

What a nice big -- and real-life -- lie!

The truth is something different. OCP puts a psychotic, stoned nuke-head in the position of protecting and serving the people of Detroit, an absolutely egregious example of mismanagement and corruption.  

But isn’t it odd how society always criticize government for being corrupt and incompetent, while letting big business off the hook for its errors, and simultaneously de-fanging regulations to watch it?  Here, as usual, OCP skates by. The Old Man finds a scapegoat for his errors -- Dr. Faxx -- and moves on trying to destroy the city from another angle. If government has any problem, it is not too many regulations, but a lack of real oversight for bad actors, like big corporations.  But again, corporate media tells us a different story.

In the years since the 1980s, Irvin Kershner’s work in film has become much more highly regarded by film scholars and fans. The Empire Strikes Back (1980) is widely considered the best of the original Star Wars films now, and I certainly prefer the humorous, human Never Say Never Again (1983) to the bloated and interminable Thunderball (1965) by a wide margin. Indeed, the most successful Bond film in history, Skyfall (2012) takes a page from Never Say Never Again’s playbook by acknowledging Bond’s advancing age and mortality. 

Kershner's approach is human in another way too: it is funny. One of Robocop 2's opening scenes depicts a crime wave in Old Detroit. A man robs an old woman of her jewels. That man is then robbed of those jewels by several (fierce) prostitutes. And then the prostitutes walk away, and a group of thieves pull up to rob a gun shop on the same street.  These incidents pile up, and so does the violence, but we can laugh at the moment because a bigger fish keeps taking the prize.  

And of course, that's the undercurrent of the entire film. The biggest criminal of all -- the biggest fish -- is OCP, and it plans to buy the entire city, the whole prize, as it were. That idea is captured visually, in microcosm, from this scene of snowballing petty crime on a street level.

Another funny sequence in the film involves the failed RoboCop 2 candidates. They malfunction egregiously and monstrously. These moments are both disgusting (for what was done to innocent human beings) and funny, because of the designs and malfunctions. Once more, Kershner explores a sense of gallows humor, much in keeping with the spirit of the original film, and the always-malfunctioning ED 209.

The Kershner approach -- to acknowledge humanity even in worlds of fantasy and adventure that don’t normally do so --  is the key to this success, and I believe one can see it at work in RoboCop 2.  The film has an abundant number of close-ups of RoboCop (or actually a kind of spfx puppet of RoboCop).  His face fills the screen many times.

Why?  Not just to showcase good special effects, but to reveal his agony, his pain.  

And in that pain, we register the character’s humanity. 

One crucial scene showcases a meeting with Murphy's wife, and throughout the scene, the two are separated by a chain-link fence.  We see both figures in close-up, but they can't touch each other. Technology (the fence...) separates them in the same way that technology has created RoboCop and separated Murphy from his family.

As was the case in RoboCop, it is the human tragedy -- the story of RoboCop himself -- that truly resonates here. Here, thanks to the Kershner aesthetic, we gain insight into his psychological pain, felt because he is separated from his family. We see how much it hurts him not to be fully human, but to anchored nonetheless to these human desires and emotions.

And we also get a scene that I (personally) found difficult to watch, and which plays, essentially, as a high-tech crucifixion. RoboCop walks into a trap, and Cain dismembers him a piece at a time.  He is ripped apart.  Literally.

The message is plain: RoboCop may be part machine, but he feels pain both emotional and physical.  

That fact, gives Murphy something in common with the rest of humanity. The film’s last scene acknowledges this fact, when Murphy notes that “we” (meaning Lewis and him) are “only human.”  

When I first saw the film, I felt the line was a pat throwaway. Screening the film this time, I registered instead that RoboCop had come to grapple in the film with something very human: his pain. 

And what did he learn? 

Not how to overcome his pain. But the mere fact of it. Since he could feel pain, he still possessed that spark of the human…a soul.

RoboCop 2 is a sequel I never thought I would champion so vociferously, but today -- with the culture moved further down that slippery slope towards corporatism -- it is easy to see how the film explored brave and ambitious directions, and also added a meaningful chapter to Murphy’s quest to reclaim his humanity.