RoboCop 2
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- This article is about the film. For the video game, see RoboCop 2 (video game).
| RoboCop 2 | |
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 Film poster |
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| Directed by | Irvin Kershner |
| Produced by | Jon Davison |
| Written by | Screenplay: Frank Miller Walon Green Story: Frank Miller Based on Characters Created by: Edward Neumeier Michael Miner |
| Starring | Peter Weller Nancy Allen Belinda Bauer John Glover Mario Machado Leeza Gibbons John Ingle Tom Noonan Roger Aaron Brown Gabriel Damon Mark Rolston Lila Finn John Hateley Gage Tarrant Thomas Rosales, Jr. Brandon Smith Wallace Merck |
| Music by | Leonard Rosenman |
| Cinematography | Mark Irwin |
| Editing by | Armen Minasian Julie Offer Lee Smith Deborah Zeitman |
| Distributed by | Orion Pictures Corporation |
| Release date(s) | 22 June 1990 |
| Running time | 117 min. |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Preceded by | RoboCop (1987) |
| Followed by | RoboCop 3 (1993) |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
RoboCop 2 is a 1990 science fiction film set in the near future in a dystopian metropolitan Detroit, Michigan. It is the sequel to the 1987 film RoboCop. The title character is played by Peter Weller, who also played RoboCop in the first film. However, although a second sequel and a television series were made, this was the last time Weller played the role, due to complaints of how cumbersome and exhausting it was to wear the suit and also because Weller found RoboCop 2 to be a very negative and disappointing film to work on. Weller's co-star, Nancy Allen, had similar negative feelings regarding the second film. Frank Miller (who wrote the first draft of the script that was drastically altered in rewrites outside of his approval) became completely disenchanted with the Hollywood system as a whole. Nevertheless, Miller returned to write the script for Robocop 3.
Despite not being directed by Paul Verhoeven, the director of the first film, RoboCop 2 contains many of his hallmarks, such as satirical television commercials (such as for an ultra powerful sunblock to deal with the devastation of Earth's ozone layer) and upbeat news broadcasts, hallmarks which also appear in Verhoeven's later film Starship Troopers. The events in the second film closely follow the events in the first film (the ED-209 unit, for example, is mentioned as being deployed and malfunctioning).
RoboCop 2 was directed by Irvin Kershner from a script by Frank Miller and Walon Green, although Miller's contributions were muted through rewrites. Miller's original script, deemed "unfilmable" by producers, was later turned into a nine-part comic book series called Frank Miller's RoboCop.
RoboCop 2 was followed by its own sequel, RoboCop 3.
Taglines:
- He's back to protect the innocent.
- Even in the future of law enforcement there is room for improvement.
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[edit] Plot
The main plot of RoboCop 2 is the title character's struggle to regain the humanity that many characters in the film felt he lost when he was turned into RoboCop (a cyborg combining the brain and other tissue from the corpse of a murdered police officer, Alex Murphy, with a primarily robotic body) in the first film. Indeed, that motif drove most of the events of the first film, and is a widely used theme (comprising the main theme of, inter alia, Pinocchio, Frankenstein, the Tin Man character in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Edward Scissorhands, and the character Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation). However, in contrast to the dominant main plot of the first film, the story in RoboCop 2 is mainly driven by a number of sub-plots.
One sub-plot, introduced at the beginning of the movie, concerns the consequences of RoboCop's realization of his former identity, and his impotent attempt to reach out to his family. Having found out where they moved after he was killed, he merely drives by their house day after day, greatly distressing his former wife (Angie Bolling). She eventually complains and threatens to sue OCP, so they allow her to see him. Beforehand, Holzgang (Jeff McCarthy), an OCP lawyer, insistently reminds RoboCop that he could never have his life back as Alex Murphy and that he is a machine. Upon seeing his wife, he tells her that the face was placed on him to honor the dead Alex Murphy and that he is just a machine. Though impassive in the face of her sadness and confusion, he watches intently as she leaves his life forever.
The overarching plot of the movie concerns OCP's attempt to cause the old City of Detroit to default on its debt, so that OCP can foreclose, take over the city government, demolish the old city, and put up a planned community (Delta City) in its place. OCP espouses the replacement of government with corporate control; their argument that "anybody can buy OCP's stock, and own a piece of our city. What could be more democratic than that?" can be considered a type of market populism. As part of this plan, it forces a police strike by terminating their pension plan. As RoboCop cannot go on strike, this merely increases his duties as the city sinks further into chaos and terror.
Meanwhile, the Security Concepts division of OCP continues to sink tens of millions of dollars into the development of a more advanced and stronger cyborg — a "RoboCop 2." Each project ends up a disaster; once the transformed officers realize what they've become, they immediately turn suicidal (one shoots the scientists around him before killing himself). Murphy only survived and adapted because of his exceedingly strong sense of duty to the law (and, in the first movie, his desire for vengeance against Boddicker). Therefore, the scientists come up with a new idea — a criminal with a similar overcoming desire: a desire for power and immortality, regardless of the cost.
In this movie, RoboCop's primary mission is to deal with the distribution of a powerful designer drug named "Nuke". The primary distributor, Cain (Tom Noonan), appears to have a messiah complex due to his own drug abuse; he believes that Nuke is the way to paradise, and wants to distribute it to the entire city. He is assisted by his girlfriend Angie (Galyn Görg); a foul-mouthed yet competent ten-year old boy, Hob (Gabriel Damon), whom RoboCop cannot shoot because of his age and the resemblance to his own son; and Officer Duffy, a corrupt police officer who is controlled by his addiction to Nuke.
Having learned of Cain's involvement in the production of Nuke, RoboCop confronts him and his gang at an abandoned construction site, in which he is rendered immobile by a powerful electromagnet and disassembled; the pieces are left in front of the striking officers of the Detroit Police. OCP is reluctant to foot his massive repair costs, and considers shutting him down for good, despite protests from the RoboCop project members and fellow police officers. Later Cain has Duffy tortured to death for telling Robocop where the hideout was.
However, RoboCop is saved when Dr. Juliette Faxx (Belinda Bauer), an OCP psychologist who has taken charge of the new RoboCop team, argues for his importance as a figure of the community; through lobbying a panel of private citizens, she creates a list of over 300 new directives to be added to his program. Though resistant at first, Murphy is ultimately powerless to refuse the new commands, and is rendered unable to take aggressive action against criminals, even to defend himself (except for one instance where he shoots around a man's head to get him to stop smoking). Eventually examined by the original RoboCop team at the police department, a suggestion on how the directives might be cleared leads him to shock himself with electrical current, clearing all the directives (even the initial four). He then declares war on Cain, immediately leading the striking officers off the picket line to attack Cain's hideout.
The plots cross when Cain is badly injured in the battle with RoboCop. Though Angie wants to rescue Cain from the hospital, Hob considers him already dead and moves to take control of the Nuke distribution. Faxx, having decided that Cain has the perfect mindset for the new cyborg, arrives at the hospital and switches off his life support, calling for an immediate brain removal and transplant. Displaying the new RoboCop to the head of OCP, Faxx demonstrates how he may be pacified through a canister of pure Nuke, the only way the pain of Cain's new existence can be dulled.
Meanwhile, Hob, as the new leader of the drug cartel in Old Detroit, arranges a secret meeting with the desperate mayor (Willard E. Pugh), offering to bail out the city's debt to OCP — but only if the mayor agrees to a hands-off policy regarding the distribution of Nuke. Since this would hinder OCP's attempts to take over the city, the corporation sends RoboCop 2 in for the ostensible purpose of breaking up the drug operation, while actually ordering the cyborg to kill all parties involved. While the mayor escapes through a sewer drain, both his and Hob's bodyguards are killed, as well as Angie and Hob themselves. RoboCop arrives late on the scene, in time to comfort a dying Hob and be told of RoboCop 2's actions.
The movie ends with a climactic battle between RoboCop and RoboCop 2 during the unveiling of Delta City and the new cyborg at a press conference. The OCP President unwittingly presents a canister filled with Nuke; Cain escapes control and begins to run amok, destroying the control device that prevents his weapons from firing, then opening fire on the crowd in desperation for the canister of Nuke. RoboCop, arriving just beforehand and watching to see if Hob was right about RoboCop 2, returns fire.
The two cyborgs battle back and forth throughout the building, eventually falling off the roof and into an underground facility; RoboCop 2 attacks with a welder, but RoboCop directs it towards a gas pipe, causing a large explosion. RoboCop pulls himself up to the street through the hole blown in the pavement, and heads back into the OCP building, his intent unknown. RoboCop 2 emerges in similar fashion, engaging the police in a firefight; Lewis rams him into a wall with a tank, but he soon shrugs it off.
RoboCop then emerges with the canister of Nuke from the press conference, saying "Let's give him what he wants." Upon seeing the canister, RoboCop 2 immediately ceases fire and eventually takes the Nuke. While distracted, RoboCop jumps onto his back, punches his way through to Cain's brain, and smashes it onto the pavement.
The Chairman of OCP, executive Johnson, and lawyer Holzgang discuss OCP liability for the massacre, and decide to scapegoat Faxx, claiming that she acted without company support in designing RoboCop 2. Holzgang is confident that he can find evidence against Faxx "whether it exists or not."
In the final scene of the film, Lewis laments how the OCP executives will escape legally unscathed. RoboCop, using a socket wrench on his head, replies: "Patience, Lewis. We're only human."
[edit] Critical reaction
This film was strongly reviled by both critics and fans of the first film. Many found it to be overly mean-spirited and violent, but without the razor-sharp wit and style that Paul Verhoeven brought to the first film. A common complaint was that the film did not focus enough on RoboCop and his partner Lewis and that the film's human story of the man trapped inside the machine was ultimately lost within a sea of bad taste and sadistic cruelty. In his review, Roger Ebert said "Cain's sidekicks include a violent, foul-mouthed young boy (Gabriel Damon), 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's screenplay is a confusion of half-baked and unfinished ideas...the use of that killer child is beneath contempt...".
Additionally, the movie "reset" RoboCop's character by turning him back into the monotone-voiced lawgiver seen early in the first film (despite the fact that by the end of the first film, he had regained the human identity and speech mannerisms of Alex Murphy). Some felt that the change in the Old Man from a morally ambiguous, but harmless character to a cold villain was unnecessary. Many were also turned off by the presence of the sadistic, foul-mouthed child villain Hob and were very offended when the film's storyline expected the audience to sympathize with Hob upon his death. David Nusair of http://www.reelfilm.com stated, "That the film asks us to swallow a moment late in the story that features Robo taking pity on an injured Hob is heavy-handed and ridiculous (we should probably be thankful the screenwriters didn't have Robocop say something like, 'Look at what these vile drugs have done to this innocent boy')." Also, even after RoboCop 2 kills Hob, Angie, and the rest of the Nuke drug cartel, the Old Man mentions that the production of Nuke was still ongoing and that RoboCop 2 would root out and destroy every producer of Nuke in Old Detroit. But in the end, after RoboCop 2 is killed, there is no mention of the fate of Nuke, or if RoboCop would continue his war on the drug. In the next movie, RoboCop 3, there is absolutely no mention of the drug, probably since the producers wanted to make the movie more family friendly, so any drug references were cut out.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- RoboCop 2 at the Internet Movie Database
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