Poor Robocop. For being one of the toughest characters in pop culture, or at least seen as one by a lot of people, he’s having a pretty bad time in this video since ED-209 and Captain Kirk are both having little to no trouble taking him out. The time paradox he’s stuck in doesn’t exactly help as there’s no real way to understand what he needs to do and why he keeps coming back to the same moment over and over. But obviously his service weapon isn’t enough to take ED-209 out completely, just like it wasn’t in the movie. Given that he’s supposed to be a new breed of cop and able to think on his feet one would almost expect the metal-clad officer of the law to be able to come up with some solution that would put Kirk and ED-209 in their place, but all that really happens is that he gets knocked back again and again. After watching Kylo Ren deal with a red armored guard it almost appears as though Robocop was attempting to use the Force to deal with ED-209, but obviously the Force isn’t strong with Murphy as he was KO’d once again. It might have been a better idea to knock down Kirk and take his phaser since it definitely worked on him, and could maybe work on ED-209.
There is a rumor that’s been going around that there’s a desire to make another Robocop, not a reboot so much as a continuation with the original characters. Bonnie Burton of CNet wrote about this a while back. It’s hard to figure why this would need to happen since the second and third Robocop movies were pretty much a bust and tanked an idea that was fun when it came out but lost traction very quickly. For its time and for what it was, Robocop was a fun movie that turned into a funny idea that didn’t really go much of anywhere. It was turned into a cartoon that didn’t last long, sold a good deal of merchandising, and became a part of pop culture that people still remember fondly since at the time it came out a lot of us were young enough to be taken in by the idea of a cyborg cop that was nearly indestructible. Of course this was back in a time when a lot of people still had some respect left for police officer and weren’t buying into the hype that’s been spread for the past several years too. But in his time, Robocop was definitely someone that wasn’t to be messed with by anything or anyone that wasn’t at his level. Maybe that’s why seeing Captain Kirk beat him with phaser is kind of silly in a way.
If anyone remembers, or wants to remember really, there was another attempt at a Robocop movie in 2014 with Joel Kinnaman playing the role of Murphy, but it was such a hard flop that it would be hard to admit that a lot of people actually want to remember it. The movie tried to bring back some of the magic that the initial version managed to produce but despite better special effects and no stop-motion within the movie it just didn’t resonate with a lot of people. Even Michael Keaton couldn’t bring this movie up to the standards that the fans demanded, and that’s kind of hard to believe. Any attempts that were going to be made after this were dead in the water without question, and fans were disappointed that they didn’t get to see the kind of showdown that they wanted with the iconic cop. That is the risk unfortunately when doing something new with a reboot, that fans are going to be looking to rip it to pieces and do their utmost to dislike it. Sometimes this doesn’t matter since the story tends to be so great that they end up liking the idea anyway and can’t bring themselves to hate it so much. But with Robocop, the differences that really set the original aside from the reboot were like night and day. For one thing in the original Murphy had a reason to be upset at those that had killed him and the faces were buried in his memory since he saw them before they blew him to pieces. In the reboot he was bomb victim, and despite the knowledge of who might have done it there was a greater degree of separation that fans didn’t really care for.
Like it or not, Robocop was out for revenge in the original movie since he wanted justice for his own shooting, even if he was an officer of the law and sworn to do his duty. He’s still regarded as one of the greatest pop culture icons of the 80s, but as of now he’s become more of an amusement than anything else.
Follow Us
