RoboCop Movie Breakdown
Wiki Article
When analyzing Paul Verhoeven's Robocop, in which a slain cop is converted into the ultimate crime-fighting machine, it's difficult for me to put my fanboy instincts aside. Robocop kicks ass in every imaginable manner, with loads of action, some excellent sequences, and one heck of a concept.
However, Officer Murphy's story does not stop there!
But is Robocop a machine or will his “human” history haunt him?
Even when Robocop is out on the streets, there are still a lot of thrills. The best parts are when he fights Boddicker and his henchmen. The first night Robocop goes out, he sees Emil, one of Boddicker's men, threatening a gas station attendant with an automatic weapon. Another thing about this fight that Robocop remembers is that Emil is one of the people who killed Murphy, which makes him think back to his own past.
It doesn't matter how good the action is in Robocop. There is a lot more to the movie than just shootouts and showdowns. Robocop's "birth" is shown in one of the movie's best scenes. It's seen from Robocop's point of view (those moments when, early in the transformation process, he regains consciousness). They strap Robocop to a table in Omni labs, and we only see a few brief glimpses of most of what happens. When Robocop wakes up, the technicians and medical workers are celebrating the New Year.
As if this wasn't enough, Robocop even talks about what it means to be human, and how your body can be changed but your memories can't be changed. Verhoeven's film talks about a lot of different things, like corporate greed, rampant crime, and personal identity, which comes up when Robocop / Murphy starts remembering his life before the suit.
If you don't, enjoy the carnage!
This is very funny. Before the MPAA Code and Ratings Administration asked for it to be cut down, I don't know if it was even more funny. It is funny in the same way that the assembly line in Chaplin's "Modern Times" is funny. There is something funny about logic being used in a situation where it doesn't make sense.
The sequence catches us off guard since it occurs in the middle of a film that seemed to be evolving into a serious thriller. One of the finest characteristics of "RoboCop" is that we're no longer sure where it's heading.
He believes integrating robots and human brains would produce better cops. An officer (Peter Weller) is killed in the line of duty, giving him his opportunity. But not exactly. But something remains, and the first "robocop" is built around that human core.
The narrative unfolds in a very normal thriller fashion. But it's not your average thriller. This is Paul Verhoeven's third feature picture. His films defy classification. This film has slapstick humor in it. There is lust. There is a lot of theory about what a guy is. Moreover, there's social satire, as the robocop emulates some of Bernhard Goetz's traits and popularity.
Considering that he spends most of the movie hidden behind some kind of makeup, Weller does a great job of making the character he plays feel like a real person. This makes him seem more "human," though, than when he's just an ordinary human being in the movie. Nancy Allen is good as the determined partner who wants to find out what happened to him. His story is very interesting, and she does a good job.
The majority of thriller and special-effects films are manufactured. You can predict everything that will happen, and you'll almost always be correct. When it comes to suspense films, "RoboCop" is a unique option.
In 1987, RoboCop had a broad North American rollout. On its first weekend, the movie earned $8 million from 1,580 screens, an average of $5,068 per screen, exceeding all expectations. Re-releases of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Jaws: The Revenge, both in their first week of release, were the weekend's second and third highest-grossing films, respectively. With an extra $6.3 million in its second weekend, RoboCop held on to the top spot, beating Snow White ($6.05 million) and Summer School ($6 million) to the top spot. After La Bamba ($5.2 million) and the horror debuts of The Lost Boys ($5.2 million) and The Living Daylights ($11.1 million), RoboCop came in at number four with a take of $4.7 million.
RoboCop never reclaimed the top place, but stayed in the top 10 for 6 weeks. The picture made over $53.4 million throughout its theatrical run, making it a minor hit. After Crocodile Dundee ($53.6 million), La Bamba ($54.2 million), comedy picture and Dragnet ($57.4 million), it was the year's fourteenth highest earning film. No figures regarding the film's performance outside North America are known.
There were largely favourable reviews for "RoboCop." CinemaScore polled moviegoers and found that they awarded the picture a "A–" average rating.
Aliens (1986) action, Frankenstein (1931) story, Repo Man (1984) and the television series Miami Vice were all cited as inspirations by critics. Like Blade Runner did for Los Angeles, RoboCop gave Detroit an unique future image. The film's genre has been described as combining societal satire and philosophy with elements of action, science fiction, thrillers, Westerns, slapstick humor, romance, snuff pictures, superhero comics, and kitsch.
The film's violent nature was addressed by several reviews. For Ebert and the Los Angeles Times, the violence was so severe that it became intentionally humorous, with Ebert saying that ED-209 murdering a CEO defied viewer expectations of an ostensibly serious and simple science-fiction thriller. The violent images, according to the Los Angeles Times, succeeded in evoking feelings of sadness and poignancy at the same time. Other critics, including as Kehr and Walter Goodman, were harsher, believing that RoboCop's satire and criticisms of corporate corruption were justifications for the film's brutal images. The violence had a "brooding, agonized quality ... as if Verhoeven were both appalled and fascinated" by it, according to The Chicago Reader, while critical appreciation for the "nasty" picture revealed a preference for "style over substance" according to The Christian Science Monitor.
Sources
Riffs and Reviews Decker Shado's site
www.themoviedb.org