With the release of the newest RoboCop reboot trailer which I must say has me intrigued, I wanted to officially revisit the original of which I've seen approximately 413 times.
While the argument can be made for just about any remake, RoboCop is one of the few "old" movies that has more cultural relevance today than it did upon it's release. Big conglomerates, similar to OCP, are basically running the United States; the city of Detroit is bankrupt and probably will snap up any corporate sponsor it can, and between drones and the NSA and everything else we know nothing about, technology seems to be far outpacing our ability to harness it. If it sounds like I am paranoid, I am (not really at least). But basically all of this was foretold twenty-six years ago with arguably Paul Verhoeven's most complex film, excluding Jesse Spano in her Showgirls stage.
Much like many of the age-inappropriate movies I consumed under the age of 10, the themes and allusions of the film went completely over my head. I just liked matte-black Ford Tauruses, RoboCop with his spike finger, the awesomely ineffective body armor the police officers got and the great chemistry and performances by Peter Weller and Nancy Allen. But beneath the surface is a damning look at the callousness of big corporations and the inherent flaw of capitalism (in that someone always gets screwed) as well as the comparisons of RoboCop to Jesus. The latter of these themes struck me as wild when I read it years ago but it makes perfect sense as Alex Murphy was a decent man, killed and then resurrected, and turned on by his "creator."
But aside from all of that fancy stuff, RoboCop is just as sharp and impactful today as it was upon its release (especially the unrated cut). It has all of the standard 80s action staples of well-defined heroes, big baddies, and oodles of violence. While the new RoboCop remake/reboot/whatever will probably not come close to the sheer awesomeness of the original, I feel safe in knowing that RoboCop '87 will survive the test of time to become one of cinema's defining films.
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