It’s almost funny that Irvin Kershner, director of the undisputed best Star Wars movie, was tapped as the director of RoboCop 2. While I can’t say I’ve seen any of his other works, he seems to be the studio-appointed and restrained errand boy as opposed to Verhoeven on the original. So naturally with the law of sequels, RoboCop 2 features most of the same players but with a bigger foe in the titular character.
Stripped of its social and historical allusions, RoboCop 2 is just another sequel that attempts to up the ante with less else new to offer as the evil conglomerate OCP attempts to recreate RoboCop from a psychotic drug dealer. Surprisingly things don’t work out as planned which fortunately leads to one of the best police shootouts on film. But instead of the heroic journey that Murphy endures in the original, here he is sidelined and neutered. Even though the finale of the last film had Peter Weller’s character realizing he is more than simply a corporate product of destruction, there are scenes that contradict that simply to add some sort of character arc as Weller again announces himself as Murphy at the end.
Other than the unnecessary complications with RoboCop’s programming and the quite idiotic creation of a drug-hungry 2 ton machine, RoboCop 2 falls into the trap of a sequel that adds little else. Co-screenwriter Frank Miller reportedly had bigger and presumably better ideas for the sequel that were deemed “unfilmable” so this is the best we got in the three years following the successful original. At least it isn’t as bad as RoboCop 3 to my recollection.
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