Robocop 2: The Movie That Was Too Wild For Its Own Good?

when you've managed to catch lightning in a bottle once with one of the most revered beloved exciting brutal and iconic movies as 1987's RoboCop how on Earth do you follow it up well it appears from revisiting the much maligned sequel for this retrospective you make it louder flashier and well a lot Dumber I have the right to remain silent anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law that's not to say that RoboCop 2 is necessarily a bad movie it's just how to add some very Broad and metallic shoulders to follow so that's right we're traveling back to Disturbia in Detroit for the sequel to Paul verhoven's classic original to see what the late great The Empire Strikes Back director Irvin kirschner could pull out of the bag for the much anticipated sequel when trying to replace a director as edgy and formidable as verhoven it was certainly wise to pick somebody who had arguably delivered the Great Star Wars movie ever made with Empire but was it perhaps too safe A Pair of Hands to deliver what fans were hoping for with RoboCop 2. well get ready to save an infant from a crazed gunman dive head first through the glass of an armored truck actually kids do not attempt that one and put out that damn cigarette as we're about to find out here on Revisited thank you for not smoking so unnecessary initially RoboCop producer John Davison was understandably unsure about making a sequel to the original movie feeling that most of them were inferior to their predecessors he also disliked the fact that he wasn't able to shift too far away from what audiences expected from the sequel stating in an article with cine fantastic that what you really want to do is make a completely different movie but if the audience had a good time at the first movie they want to repeat that experience so you don't want to make it too different it's a fine line Davison was also stuck in a dilemma between going full steam ahead on RoboCop 2 or producing Warren Beatties screen adaptation of the Dick Tracy comics in the end he chose to serve the public trust protect the innocent and uphold the law again as he felt that the dystopian world of Robocop was more his domain and that Dick Tracy belonged more to Beaty therefore the key aspect of getting the film into production was locking down a suitable script and in September 1987 RoboCop screen is Edward Nehemiah and Michael Miner began drafting the sequel with a strict and tight deadline of December 31st insisted upon by distributor Orion pictures their script entitled RoboCop 2 the corporate Wars was set 25 years after RoboCop is blown apart by a thief while trying to foil a bank robbery and is revived in one of a new line of plexes made out of former cities by an entrepreneur called Ted licker the script would expand upon the original film's depiction of consumerism greatly with residents of the new high-class plexes eaten at the exclusive Leisure gold where they're catered to by subservient droids there would even be brothels with sex spots to satiate their every desire I'd buy that for a dollar while the media landscape is filled with news blips mood enhancing drugs and an influential rapper from space called Moondog nope really that was the plan however in March 1998 a five-month strike by The rightness Guild of America began and the length of it meant that unfortunately Edward Nehemiah and Michael minor were fired for breach of contract for the sequel to still go ahead Orion had to sign a waiver to develop other RoboCop scripts and before he was fired Nehemiah suggested Alan mua and Frank Miller more passed but Frank Miller Accepted The Challenge and began a writing process that saw him produce four drafts of the script for Orion he'd initially be in hired to write RoboCop 3 before Nehemiah and minus firing and once the pair had left he took on the Dawn and task of following up RoboCop Melissa script was not too dissimilar to the corporate Wars with several aspects remaining the same consumerism entrepreneurs trying to buy governments poor citizens call in the crossfire however Orion rejected the script claiming it was unfilmable and subsequently turned to the screenwriter of violent Western the Wild Bunch Whalen green to step in and assess with the creative process all was not lost for Miller's original vision of Robocop however with the legendary comic book writer using his treatment as a story of his own RoboCop Comics that were published in the early 2000s much like with the first movie producer John Davison had issues with persuading suitable directors to take over from the inimitable poor verhoven with someone keen on following up the Dutch or two style and others simply not wanting to direct a sequel who can blame them despite the original being widely marketed as a kid's movie I mean who didn't have a Robocop lunchbox with near 11 the resultant film was the perfect film in many ways and the idea of messing up the sequel to such an iconic classic must have been daunton oh yeah go get him boy Davison first turned to his friend in 1986 is River's Edge director Tim Hunter Believe In His Dark sensibilities and realistic torn with actors is being perfect for the sequel however Hunter's ultimate vision of the movie being an entirely dark gritty movie like the original with our odds with Miller's intention for the film to be dark but also humorous and as a result the script was totally uneven however eleven weeks before filming began Hunter left the project to be replaced by Irvin kirschner whose massive success in that galaxy far far away was seen to bring some much-needed gravitas to the project however trouble was ruined for the production in the form of the dictatorial Orion pictures who forced the movie into our Rush production going against the advice of kirschner Miller and some of the actors involved according to depart and writers Nehemiah and maina Orion based their decisions and what they believed was best for business first a narrative second returning star Peter Weller has since claimed that the movie did not have a sufficient third act and that Orion stance it was not the monster is going to be enough well played Orion despite completely owning the role of rule book up in the 1987 original Orion were initially skeptical about bringing Wella back for the sequel and the star himself also had reservations about stepping back into the robo suit for the sequel he felt that Nehemiah and minor script was too cartoonish lack sufficient tension and that it didn't really add anything new for the character to see however he eventually agreed to return for Miller and Green's new screenplay and what would unfortunately be a somewhat lackluster if not entertaining appearance as the robotic law enforcer also returning from the original movie with the excellent Nancy Island as Murphy's partner Anne Lewis who undertook martial arts training and spent two months at the Los Angeles Police Academy for the role Allen wasn't the Only Rule of War veteran to return with the old man himself Donald Hurley Felton perius Donald Johnson and Robert dekai as sergeant Warren Reed the most notable cast members to return taken on bad guy duties as the nefarious crime Lord and drug kingpin Kane was manhunters Tom Noonan who despite his best efforts is no Clarence bonica just give me my [ __ ] phone call while production went through several script drafts the plot eventually settles on a return to the near future dystopian Detroit where the killed in action cop Alex Murphy is still struggling to come to terms with being reprogrammed as Roe woke up the police are in danger of being defunded by evil Mega conglomerate Omni consumer products otherwise known as ocp of course while at the same time Noonan's cult near a cane is attempting to take over the streets himself by pushing a highly addictive drug called nuke RoboCop doesn't just have his own struggle with his mortality to contend with but also his own replacement as a rogue ocp member creates a new evil RoboCop 2. as mentioned earlier in this video RoboCop 2 isn't necessarily a bad movie of course it has nowhere near the quality humor and Panache of the original but despite this it's kinda hard to dismiss the movie as Ophelia and to dislike outright sure it's so offers from the dreaded Studio interference that we touched upon earlier and also had to endure a potentially crippling script writing process to boot freeze this is a must however it does feature some genuinely fun sequences that are at least entertaining to watch such as the scene where a couple of the RoboCop 2 prototypes commit suicide in a satisfyingly grisly way the political backdrop of ocp put them to buy control of Detroit so that they can ultimately rip the entire place up and build a longest day and Delta city is also an intriguing if undercooked side plot we also get to see Peter Weller do his best to bring fresh life into the role of Robocop again despite some awfully dumbed down moments isn't this a school day the introduction of Belinda Bauer is the DVS Juliet Fox is a welcome addition to the cast which is lucky as she gets plenty of screen time also a welcome return from the first movie of the sporadic but wonderfully drawn newscasts and TV commercials that while not as clever as those in the original movie still offer some genuine leveled e to the narrative the best example being the malfunctioning Ed 209 and a fun nod to the ad 209 versus stairs incident in the first movie however despite all the aforementioned highlights in the film it's still Falls for straight and short of being the worthy follow-up to verhoven's cult classic that it could so easily have been again this is ultimately due to the aforementioned troubles during the script writing process with a ton of ideas being introduced but never fully explored there could have been real emotional heft and drama to be mined from Murphy's pining for his family especially after this was so well handled in the first movie what we get though is a brief encounter with his wife which does at least answer a few questions but does so without any real meaning for the rest of the film there are so many Loose Ends not sufficiently tied up in the film ocp bankrupt in the city so they can buy it cheap the city-wide police strike that goes nowhere RoboCop even gets torn apart and reprogrammed with hundreds of new directives but almost instantly resolves this by electrocuting himself forcing a successful window style reboot and reset while this is all going on we're still left with her mostly Game Cast but special mention must go to the most annoying character the movie introduces Kane's ten-year-old henchman Hobb probably to try and appeal to that you know totally appropriate younger audience to marketing for some reason appeals to for some inexplicable reason Kane who's a much feared drug kingpin allows a pre-pubescent kid to hang around his gang swearingly he's in a score series movie you look a little out of breath [ __ ] being all edgy when Hobb mercifully gets killed later in the movie are we supposed to feel any sympathy for someone who's being nothing but a loathsome little the entire film also is it really appropriate to have a character such as Hobb appear in the movie the RoboCop franchise doesn't need a gun-taught and kid as a gang member to make it gritty it's just bad writing while RoboCop 2 does have some merits it feels like the studio had nothing but dollar signs in their eyes and delivered a movie with a lucrative franchise in mind and not what should and could have been a meaningful second chapter for Murphy and Co and don't get us started on the most ridiculous moments of robot humor a rolling stone is worth two in the bush golf refrigerator next RoboCop 2 opened as the second highest grossing movie on 14.1 million dollars during its opening weekend at the U.S box office grossing 45.7 million overall it also managed to pull in an additional 22 million dollars from home entertainment video rentals remember them from a critical perspective the movie's special effects and action scenes were widely praised but one of the most common complaints was that the movie did not focus enough on the relationship between Robocop and its partner Lewis with more attention on the violence and less time devoted to the more human story of a man trapped inside a machine writing in the Chicago Sun Times late film critic Roger Ebert took exception to many aspects of the film and especially the introduction of mini gangster hob saying that Kane's psychics include a violent foul-mouthed young boy named Hub who looks to be about 12 years old but kills people without remorse swears like Eddie Murphy and eventually takes over the drug business the movie screenplay is a confused version of Half Baked and unfinished ideas the use of that killer child is beneath contempt the New York Times were similarly scathing of the film saying that unlike RoboCop a clever and original science fiction film with a genuinely tragic version of its Central character RoboCop 2 doesn't bother to do anything new it freely borrows the situation characters and moral questions posed by the first film however not everyone at the time thought the movie was a disaster with the Globe and Mail calling it a sleek and clever sequel for fans of violent but clever action films RoboCop 2 may be the sultry season's best bet you get the gore of Total Recall and the satiric smarts of gronin's 2 the new batch in one high-tech package held together by Modest B-movie strings we want to be civilized I mean you take a look at this sale here just like the first movie Robocop 2 also spawned a video game to coincide with the movies released in 1990 with it again being a platform shooter for the then popular Commodore Amiga and Atari St consoles as well as the classic NES game boy and ZX Spectrum nothing could beat a bit of truck React 2 on the old 48k Spectrum though or is that just me we also got Frank Miller's comic book series as well as the obligatory novelization so despite everything this video has thrown at RoboCop 2 what is your view of the movie did they do justice to the original in any way or was the introduction of characters such as that little hob too much to bear as usual let us know in the comments below also our foray into the dystopian world of Robocop is far from over dear viewers because despite the overall misfire of RoboCop 2 surely Orion pictures learn from their mistakes and delivered a masterful third act to truly send RoboCop out on a high right well that's a story for next time here on Revisited but don't get your hopes up on that lightning being bottled again thank you for watching our show if you like what you see please subscribe to our job law Originals YouTube channel tell your friends who like the sort of content and turn on the Bell to receive notifications for all of our latest videos where an independent company and we appreciate all of your support we'll see you next time here on joblo Revisited goodbye thank you [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music]

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Id: iPvZdZfACD0

Length: 15min 44sec (944 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 13 2023