RoboCop 2 (1990)

Any viewing of RoboCop 2 (1990) today 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.

RoboCop (1987)

In addition to being a brilliantly-crafted action and sci-fi movie, the 1987 Paul Verhoeven film RoboCop has also proven itself a forward-looking and trenchant satire of (some) American values in the late 20^th and early 21st century.

The film's use of humor and exaggeration to ridicule contemporary politics is not uncontroversial, either.

To wit, RoboCop is set in a future in which Big Business has finally had its way with the rest of us.

The police force has been privatized. 

A corporate media announces to the world the news that its overlords want disseminated, true or not. 

And raiders in the board room are just as dangerous -- and criminal -- as the thugs prowling the streets by night.  

On the last front, the film makes a clever association. Robocop very explicitly connects two forms of “crook” or criminal.  Both an OCP executive Dick Jones (Ronnie Cox) and drug-dealing, gun-toting murderer Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) recite an identical line of dialogue in the film, thus forging an indelible link between them.

That line?

“Good business is where you find it.”

RoboCop thus asks a significant question about the direction of our country, which was then in the grip of an economic revolution: What gets lost in a society when the accumulation of wealth becomes the ultimate moral value? 

The answer?

Human life becomes cheap, and everything in society is about selling a product, and about making money.

Verhoeven creates an intriguing and effective tension in the film in order to effectively deliver his satirical points. Now-and-again, he cuts to funny TV commercials that are emblematic of the film’s corporate culture and media, and to TV programs that reveal how the masses are distracted by bread and circuses.

One of those programs involves a well-dressed white man surrounded by beautiful, scantily-clad models quipping “I’d buy that for a dollar!”

The insipid joke is itself an indictment of the culture. Everything and everyone is but a product, or for sale. 

Everyone has his or her price.

Verhoeven next contrasts these moments of high but illuminative comedy with RoboCop’s serious attempts to regain his human identity…to reconnect with the qualities that made him Alex Murphy, a loving family man and a dedicated police officer.

In other words, what RoboCop truly concerns is a machine trying to be a human being in a culture that is inhumane, and unbelievably violent. 

The film’s violence has often been criticized by moral watch-guards as somehow being over-the-top or representative of bad taste…and yet I would argue it is entirely appropriate to the film and its thesis. 

In RoboCop’s world, human life is disposable -- bought and sold for a dollar -- and so the film's violence is extreme enough (and oddly, funny enough too…) to make that point.  

Life is cheap, baby! (Unless you're rich and powerful...).

“He doesn’t have a name. He has a program. He’s a product.”

In advance of a major initiative to re-boot Detroit as ultra-modern Delta City, OCP (Omni Consumer Products) prepares to unroll its new product line: an urban pacification system called ED-209, created by Senior V.P. Richard Jones (Cox). 

But when the droid fails, killing a corporate employee in cold blood, a back-up plan is required. An up-and-comer at OCP named Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer), proposes to the CEO (Dan O’Herlihy) his own law enforcement system: RoboCop.  

But for it to work, the plan needs a good “human” candidate…a cop with a sense of duty.

When family man and cop, Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) is murdered by Clarence Boddicker (Smith) and his gang, he becomes that perfect candidate. He is rebooted as the mind of RoboCop, a cyborg police officer possessing at least some of Murphy’s instincts and memories.

Murphy and his partner, Lewis (Nancy Allen) attempt to bring Boddicker to justice, but eventually learn of his criminal connection to Dick Jones. Both are attempting to make a financial killing on the construction of Delta City.

As RoboCop,Murphy attempts to confront Jones and arrest him, but learns that he boass a secret directive that marks him not as a man, but as the property of OCP…

“There’s no better way to steal money than free enterprise.”

RoboCop was crafted in the mid-1980s and it's important that we understand that history, that context, as we consider the film’s satire.

During that span, many big American cities were suffering. Crime was on the rise due to the crack cocaine epidemic. The crime rate peaked in the early 1990s.

And government wasn’t helping much to alleviate the suffering. Here are some statistics to back that up assertion: First, the budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development was cut from 32.2 billion dollars in 1981 to 7.5 billion in 1987-1988, meaning that government aid was less available for the indigent.

Secondly, the number of Americans living beneath the Federal poverty line rose from 24.5 million to over 32 million in the late eighties. 

Additionally, more than two million American citizens were homeless by the latter part of the decade.

While the poor grew poorer, the rich grew richer, and often unethically so. Lest we forget, this was the era of Ivan Boesky, and Michael Milken, businessmen who stole millions of dollars through an unethical business practice: insider trading. In movies, these figures were synthesized as Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street (1987), a corporate raider who believed that “greed is good.”

Meanwhile, the same politicians who cut budgets for social help programs in the 1980s cravenly exploited the average citizen's fear of increased violent crime to win high office, notably with the highly divisive (and highly-effective) Willie Horton TV advertisement in Campaign '88, which made note of a criminal African-American convict robbing, raping and killing a white woman during a prison furlough. First these candidates made life harder for the poor, and then they ran as "tough on crime" candidates, and imposed stiff sentences for first time drug offenders.

In 1986, Hollywood responded to the prevailing Zeitgeist of rising crime, and increased fear about it. A new kind of superhero film gazed closely at all these societal ills. The result was not only a blockbuster action film, but the creation of a popular character that has not yet disappeared from the pop culture terrain, appearing across the decades in films, TV series, cartoons, comic books, and even in a 2014 reboot.

RoboCop was shot in thirteen weeks in the late summer of 1986 on a budget of just ten million dollars, and Verhoeven was reportedly attracted to the material because of its comic-book type of "origin story" as well as the comedic atmosphere and content. The thrust of the satire involved poking fun at American culture and politics, and the course both seemed to be taking during the eighties. 

Indeed, RoboCop accurately and comedically predicted two important facets of our contemporary American life: the corporatization of American culture and the coarsening of the mainstream media.

In terms of its commentary on corporations, RoboCop depicts a company, OCP (Omni Consumer Products) strutting over the whole of Detroit. It has “bought” and privatized the police force, and now its vice-president hopes to introduce military grade equipment for “urban pacification” of the streets. 

This equipment, specifically, involves a giant droid called ED-209.  The only problem is that ED-209 has been already bought and sold...and yet it doesn’t work at all.  As Dick Jones points out.  “Who cares if it works or not?” because he’s already got a contract for it.  The idea underlining all this is that unregulated business, committed to laissez-faire principles, can’t and won't effectively police itself.

The same point is hammered home with the creation of RoboCop. OCP scientists program a police officer -- a cyborg sentry who should protect and serve -- with a secret or classified directive.  The meat of this directive is that RoboCop will shut-down if he attempts to arrest a high-ranking officer in the company. 

In other words, OCP has “privatized” RoboCop so that the members of the OCP board are above the law. He can police others, but not them. “We can’t very well have our product turning against us, can we?” Jones asks.

Meanwhile, Jones is secretly allied with a street criminal Clarence Boddicker, with the goal of turning the “gentrified” Detroit, Delta City, into a drug-riddled hellhole.  And the reason? Again, profit. It’s all for money.  Human suffering isn't even in the picture for these men.

What may be most disturbing about Dick Jones’s behavior in RoboCop is not his sense of entitlement because he is rich and powerful, but his absolute disregard for the life of other human beings. A man is killed in the board room demonstration of ED-209, and Jones says, simply, that it is “just a glitch” that caused this (bloody death). 

Later, he murders his rival, Bob (Ferrer), because Bob dared to attempt to be successful himself, at Dick’s expense. 

And finally, Jones sees himself as above the law, reprogramming a police officer (RoboCop), and announcing that he is (“practically”) an extension of the U.S. military.

Pretty clearly then, RoboCop deliberately paints an unflattering picture of big business. Dick Jones and Clarence Boddicker are defined in the film as two sides of the same coin: men who know how to “open new markets” and exploit the free enterprise system, no matter who gets hurt. 

Sadly, such men as Dick Jones are considered heroes in the universe of RoboCop and one of the more wicked jokes in the film involves “Lee Iococca Elementary High School,” a name which represents the elevation of a businessman (and one who was bailed out by the U.S. taxpayer, to boot…) to the role of national hero and role model.

RoboCop doesn’t go any easier on the corporate media, or television programming. The heavily made-up, perfectly-coiffed glib newscasters of “Media Break” report, without irony, about the “Star Wars Orbiting Peace Platform” as the film starts. 

The conjunction of the words “wars” and “peace” in one title goes unremarked upon. And really, how could it be missed? Quite simply, these aren't journalists, but news readers, reciting talking points to support the agenda of their employers.

In terms of the TV commercials featured in RoboCop, many are quite funny, and yet they deliver the same point about the blasé inhumanity of the culture that the film's violence does. 

One advert concerns a family electronic game glorifying nuclear war (based on Milton Bradley's Battleship), called Nuke'Em!  

The game’s motto: “Get them before they get you!”  

As one can detect from this commercial, every foreign policy challenge is met with the threat of absolute over-kill, a tribute to the blood-thirstiness of the populace, and an example, as noted above, of this future’s society’s inhumanity.

Why a game called Nuke’Em in 1987?  Well, again, one must consider context. The film was made in a time in which President Reagan had made a cavalier joke about outlawing "Russia forever" and even threatened that "we begin bombing in five minutes." (August 11, 1984). He also made the erroneous claim in a presidential debate with the late Walter Mondale that nuclear missiles fired from a submarine could be recalled after launch. So the idea here of a future America where nuclear bombardment was part of the accepted military landscape didn't seem terribly far-fetched.

Even America's endless propensity to drive gas-guzzling, gigantic automobiles (when we know better) is satirized in the prescient RoboCop. Commercials depicted in RoboCop advertise a new vehicle, the 6000 SUX. The 6000 SUX offers a whopping eighteen miles to the gallon, meaning it literally "sucks” gas.  

RoboCop also accurately predicts our nation’s relentless push towards the privatization of municipal and government programs, the wholesale dismantling of the social safety net. Particularly, much of RoboCop involves OCP's funding and running of the Detroit Police Department "as a business" - designed to make money and worried, therefore, only about the bottom line. Is the company in the red? Or is it in the black?  

Of course, the police force should protect and serve the community, not serve the financial interest of a particular corporate interest. Instead, we see with ED-209, how business, police, and military interests all combine to create a fearsome face for law enforcement.  

And again, RoboCop must be considered prescient for making this point. Today, many localities literally have war machines patrolling the streets.

OCP’s irresponsibility towards the police and the protection of the community is contrasted, strongly, by the value system of the police officers actually depicted in the film. A sergeant, at one point, makes an important point when the idea of a strike is broached, noting that they are all police, not “plumbers.”  He feels a responsibility to the community, a sense that is wholly alien to OCP.

Contrasted with this cruel, heartless, money-obsessed society is the human and personal journey of Alex Murphy. He is transformed from a person into a product by OCP, but still possesses the feelings and memories of a person.  

Murphy’s triumph is that he manages to hold onto his humanity through everything (even death), and acts in accordance with his three good and moral directives: serve the public trust, protect the innocent, uphold the law.  

And at film’s end, he reveals his victory aloud, suggesting that he should be referred to by his human name, Murphy, and not by his product name, RoboCop. 

At least in this case, humanity has beaten the corporate culture. The "heart" of RoboCop rests in Weller's performance, and in the character's development.  He re-discovers his humanity after losing it, and ekes out a victory over OCP, at least temporarily.

RoboCop is a splendidly shot, acted, and designed film. Critic Michael Wilmington noted in his review that RoboCop has been "assembled with ferocious, gleeful expertise, crammed with human cynicism and jolts of energy. In many ways it's the best action movie of the year." 

In New Statesman, Judith Williamson praised the film because the "pace is zippy, the script is witty and the political satire is acute."

The film tells an exciting human story, but this is one cinematic effort in which audiences truly can’t separate the satirical message from the narrative details or content. The monster in RoboCop inescapably, is one of man’s own making.  

Intriguingly, the Frankenstein Monster depicted here is not RoboCop, a half-man, half-machine individual, but rather OCP, an organization that has been given legal permission to loot the culture, and determine its direction and health.  

As I’ve written before, science fiction films can lean left or right, and get their points across effectively. I’ve reviewed films positively that espouse each world view if they do so consistently and with wisdom. RoboCop absolutely leans left, and worries about what could happen to a decent, moral culture that allows a money-making organization to become more important than the community itself.

Today, we seldom get movies with such sharp -- nay scorching -- social criticism embedded in their cinematic DNA. Why? Because the same corporations that lobby our politicians for favors also control the news media and entertainment conglomerates. 

So in many ways, we're living in an iteration of RoboCop's world, getting the movies that big business want us to see, or thinks we would like.

And that, quite simply, SUX.

Thundarr the Barbarian in "Wizard Wars"

In “Wizard Wars,” Thundarr, Ookla and Ariel rush to the aid of an imperiled human village.  This time, the evil wizard Skullis -- an over-sized metal head -- is enslaving unlucky humans and using them as cannon fodder in his war against another demonic sorcerer, Octagon.  

This situation riles Thundarr and he notes that “humans shall not be” the “pawns” of such monsters.

Thundarr and his friends then must grapple with “the Desert People” in the ruins of St. Louis and then are finally able to destroy Skullis and his technological war machine.  

When his head is shattered into pieces, the humans are again free from their enslavement…

Once more, a familiar, even rote story is visualized in dazzling fashion on Thundarr The Barbarian.  In “Wizard Wars,” for instance we see Skullis’s impressive “land machine,” a giant weapon of war of convincing design, plus the Wizard himself…who boasts robot arms like those of Spidey’s Doc Ock.

This episode of Thundarr also takes us to the desert of St. Louis, and the world beneath it, which is inhabited by ferocious hobbit-like creatures called “The Desert People.”  

One impressive battle in the episode occurs in an ancient shopping mall and a toy store in particular.  Again -- and much like the playground of death we saw in last week’s installment -- a place of joy has been transformed into a place of terror, and combat.  

And yes, this is pretty heavy stuff for a Saturday morning cartoon. I suspect Thundarr got away with such imaginative juxtapositions of innocence and violence because there is very little dialogue about the actual location in the script, only about the narrative itself.  In other words, the episode doesn’t linger on the ghoulish aspects of a destroyed world, even though we see evidence of it everywhere.

Lastly, there is a funny moment here that doesn’t quite make sense.  Late in the action, Thundarr, Ookla and Ariel become trapped on a high ledge, and the army of Skullis attacks them.  Their backs are to a wall…and a drop hundreds of feet down.  Ariel expresses fear at the possibility of falling. But why would she feel this way given her magical abilities?  She could just put herself and her friends in a bubble and land everyone softly on terra-firma!

In fact, just moments after Ariel makes the fearful comment, she does use her magic, and builds an energy or light bridge to the ground.  She says something like it’s a “good” thing for Thundarr that she can work her magic. 

This is true, but it undercuts her earlier sense of fear, doesn’t it?

Next week: “Island of the Body Snatchers.”

Star Blazers, Episode #26

The first season of Star Blazers (1979) comes to an end with episode 26.  The Argo makes its return trip to Earth as Captain Avatar succumbs to “space radiation sickness.”  

At the same time, Desslok makes a last-ditch attempt to destroy the Star Force, this time using a special cannon.  

The Argo escapes destruction, but Nova nearly gives her life to activate the Cosmo DNA after the ship is contaminated with Desslok’s “radioactive sleeping gas.”

Finally, the Argo sees Earth again…and prepares to come to its rescue.

The final chapter of Star Blazers sees the long-expected demise of my favorite character, gruff but brilliant Captain Avatar.  The series has been building-up towards the character’s death for some time, and the moment doesn’t disappoint now.  In fact, the moment is highly emotional.  Avatar sees Earth for the final time, gazes at a photograph of his wife and son, and then…passes away.  I love how in his last moments he focuses on the things he loved in life, and that were meaningful to him as a human being.  It's a touching moment and one that focuses on humanity, rather than space opera tropes.

With Avatar’s death, Derek Wildstar’s heroic journey is also, essentially, complete.  He is in command of the Argo, he defeats Desslok, and he has learned all the lessons he needed to learn from Avatar.  Still, this episode nearly deals him a major setback: Nova almost dies to save the ship.  In fact, this segment forecasts The Wrath of Khan (1982) to some extent: with a character sacrificing his or her life for the safety of the ship, braving a toxic environment to do so.

The only disappointment here, really, is yet another return engagement by Desslok.  

Once more, the Gamilons get their asses handed to them by the Star Force.  They can’t eke out even a minor victory against a single Earth ship, which makes them -- with their vast resources – a kind of lame villain.  The worst aspects of Star Blazers as a series involve the repetitive plot of Gamilons devising a secret weapon (ultra-menace missiles, reflex guns, Desslok mines, and so on…) and still failing to stop a single Earth ship.  They really do transmit as rather pathetic.  They have a vast Empire and they can muster nothing in terms of credible defense/offense.

The strength of Star Blazers is the emotional impact of the long journey to Iscandar.  It's a journey of loneliness, desperation, and for Wildstar emotional maturity and growth.  

I'm glad I watched the series from star to finish, though in honesty, the same story could have been told far more effectively and judiciously in perhaps eighteen installments.  There are so many stand-out shows in the Star Blazers canon, but also so many time-wasters with new Gamilon weapons being used to endlessly attack the Argo.

Star Blazers, Episode #25

This week on the 1970s animated series Star Blazers (1979), the saga inches closer to its stirring climax.  The Argo has reached distant Iscandar and the crew meets beautiful Queen Starsha, the last survivor of a once-proud race.

Starsha gives the Star Force the gift of the Cosmo DNA, a device that can save the Earth from catastrophic radiation damage.  She also shows them how her world is now a graveyard, having suffered a terrible plague. 

Derek Wildstar also finds a personal surprise on Iscandar.  His brother Alex is alive there, nursed back to health by Starsha.  And since she refuses to leave her planet, Alex also refuses to return to Earth.

Meanwhile, several members of the Star Force mutiny and decide to remain on Iscandar -- and “Diamond Island --” rather than return to Earth.  In the end, the mutiny is put down, and only Starsha and Alex -- “the Adam and Eve of a brand new Iscandar” -- stay behind.

Only 131 days remain until Earth becomes “a silent planet!”

We’re almost in the final chapter of Star Blazers now (just one more episode to go…) and this episode must rank as one of the best and most unique of the canon.  With the Gamilons defeated and out of the way, there’s plenty of time for character development, and many of the season-long plot-threads finally come together.  

For instance, we meet noble Starsha and see the return of Alex, and we also reckon with the idea that some Star Force crew members, exhausted from the laborious trip, don't want to return to Earth.  They actually raise a good point: If the Cosmo DNA device doesn't work and Earth dies, Iscandar can become a colony of humanity in space.

The episode's silliest moment occurs when the turncoats capture Nova (apparently for breeding...) and demand that she remain with them on Iscandar. It's a false and unnecessary threat in an otherwise intriguing and emotional show. And again, why is Nova always treated like the only woman on the Argo (or the universe for that matter)?

The relationship between Alex and Starsha quickly proves one of the most interesting of the series, and provides a powerful contrast to the relationship of Desslok and Starsha.  Alex and Starsha love one another, and care for one another, but Desslok only understands conquest and fear.  I always admire futuristic TV programming that asserts that what makes humanity strong is not force, not tactics, not equipment, not firepower, but its own unique nature: mercy, kindness, loyalty and love. Certainly, Star Blazers might be viewed in that light.  The crew of the Argo have stayed true to human nature on their long journey, and are now at the end of their quest (though the return trip looms...)