Crapping on My Childhood: Robocop 3

Forgive me.  I know I'm 15 years late on this.   I don't care.   Allow me to set the stage. 

Back in the late 1980s before I had a driver's license or a car, my best friend and I would ride our bikes up to the movie theater every Friday.   We did not care what we saw as long as it was a) violent, b) ultraviolent, or c) hyperviolent and preferably starred one of the holy trinity of Schwarzenegger, Van Damme, or Seagal.  The list of bad movies I paid to see as a teenager is perhaps only exceeded by the number of bad movies those 3 actors have combined to make in the intervening decades.



So in July 1987 when Paul Verhoeven unleashed Robocop on an unsuspecting American audience, my mind was, as the kids say, BLOWN.  It was a perfect storm of dystopia, hyperviolence, adult content and dark, dark humor.   Peter Weller, who I'm pretty sure is just barely human as it is, was perfect as the titular cyborg police officer.  And Kurtwood Smith may still be my gold standard for screen villains.  Ain't nobody been written yet that can fuck with Clarence Boddiker*.   Outside of Robocop and his fellow officers, the rest of New Detroit was inhabited by horrifically unlikeable and compelling douchebags, whether they were the alpha male bottom-liners from OCP, Clarence's posse of felonious freaks (most notably Paul McCrane as Emil), or the random weirdos that dotted the Blade-Runner-Gone-Wild landscape (a hostage-taking mayor and the absurd "I'd buy that for a dollar!" guy).



I could write several thousand words about how completely awesome the original RoboCop is.  But that's not what I came here to do today.  I came here to heap scorn and vitriol upon the back-alley abortion that is RoboCop 3.   I avoided watching this movie for 15 years because I knew in my heart of hearts that it would kill a little bit of my soul.   From the trailer alone, it had 3 strikes against it: 1) No Peter Weller, 2) Rated PG-13, 3) Robocop could now fucking fly.  If only the reasons I hated this move stopped at those three.   What else could possibly go wrong?   How about Robocop's nemesis in this film being a samurai robot THAT ONLY LOOKS LIKE A ROBOT WHEN YOU DISLOCATE ITS JAW? The rest of the time, it's just a buff Japanese dude wielding a sword.  Geigh.   Despite this, he somehow gives a very well-armored and armed Robocop a run for his money. If there's anything I've learned from movies (particularly Raiders of the Lost Ark), when you bring a knife to a gunfight, it is going to be a very short fight unless your name is Morpheus or Neo.



And then there's this stupid kid running around.   I don't hate kids or kids movies, but this is fucking Robocop.  If there are going to be kids in this movie, they need to either be murderous drug-dealing anklebiters or marauding pillaging Little Leaguers like the were in RoboCop 2.  Not moppet programming geniuses who, I shit you not, make an ED-209 "loyal as a puppy."   If I need to explain what an ED-209 is to you, you are not my audience and I hate you for not being angered by the fact that Robocop STROKED A KID'S FUCKING HAIR WHILE MUTTERING SOME MUMBO-JUMBO ABOUT LOVE.   I would quote the line, but I wasn't paying attention because I was too busy cutting myself.  I get the whole machine-with-feeling routine, but that, simply, is not how Robocop rolls.



Oddly, the one place where this movie scores, its casting, it completely squanders any opportunity to be cool.   Only Rip Torn salvages his dignity, but I'm pretty sure that's because he doesn't have much, and he always plays "Rip Torn."   But seriously, look at the illustrious group of character actors that litter the credits: Bradley Whitford (The West Wing), CCH Pounder (The Shield), Stephen Root (News Radio, Office Space), Daniel Von Bargen (Malcolm in the Middle, Oh Brother Where Art Thou?), and ubiquitous Japanese old guy Mako (every movie that needed a Japanese old guy).  And to a person, they chewed scenery like Red Man at a gun show.



And I blame it all on Fred Dekker.   This is his last listed directing credit and let us all thank Christ for that. It pains me to type that.   Mr. Dekker wrote and directed one of my favorite horror movies, Night of the Creeps.   But he took one of the greatest action heroes in cinema history and turned him into a flying (with visible fucking effects wires, natch) joke.   Oh and did I mention that Robocop doesn't even show up for the first 15 minutes of the movie?  That's not suspense, Mr. Dekker, that's hating on the audience.



So, yeah. RoboCop 3 = ass nastiness.   Because I can't find a clip of the stupid wires when RoboCop flies at the end, here's a lame fight sequence between Robo and robot samurai guy. Keeping in line with the abyss of suck that surrounds this film, it of course ends 2 seconds before the aforementioned visible wire sequence which I wanted you to hate in the first place.



*Geek note: My buddy was working on a show with Kurtwood Smith and they were alone together in a trailer where my buddy was cuing Kurt's action. for the scene. So my buddy starts asking him about good directors and Kurtwood starts talking about Paul Verhoeven and how he gave him so much freedom to run with his character in Robocop and then proceeds to re-enact EVERY COOL SCENE FROM ROBOCOP with commentary on how and why he came up with his lines and actions. Geek fucking heaven.