• Robocop does not pass the Bechdel Test.
  • NO. STOP IT. Do not be woke at Robocop. You may not.
  • Just pointing out the fact.
  • Watch it.
  • Shush.
  • It is, though, a deeply masculine film; the one major female character reads as male whether you believe in the death of the author or in authorial intent.
  • The bitches (the ones who are instructed to leave) read as female.
  • One pours cocaine all over her boobies.
  • That is a pointedly female gesture.
  • And it’s all about dicks.
  • The dicks are guns.
  • The cops’ guns are not big enough.
  • The criminals’ guns are long and thick and go THABOOM.
  • Bing! goes the cops’ guns.
  • But now here is Robocop; listen to his gun: BRAAPA! BRAAPA BRAAPA!
  • And then the dad from That 70’s Show gets a bazooka.
  • Is Robocop’s gun powerful enough to withstand a pounding from the dadzooka?
  • Yeah, so: all about dicks.
  • That Paul Verhoeven guy will tell you it’s about Jesus, but the movie’s about dicks.
  • He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
  • (Wikipedia says that the proper spelling of Robocop is “RoboCop” and I’ll be damned. I’ll be tied up tight and plugged just right before I use that heathen orthograph. The man’s mamma called him “Robocop;” I’m gonna call him Robocop.)
  • Robocop was like Predator or Highlander in that every single offering after the original was shit: all the movies, cartoons, comics, teevee shows, reboots, and children’s bedsheet sets.
  • The worst was the sheets.
  • They were actively flammable.
  • They would seek out sources of ignition.
  • No one could explain it.
  • Anyway, Robocop is more like Predator than it is Highlander; first, it is a good movie.
  • Highlander was crap.
  • Go watch it again.
  • I dare you.
  • Second, like Predator, Robocop is only superficially a science-fiction movie.
  • It’s an action flick.
  • There isn’t a massive Robocopiverse to play in.
  • I don’t wanna go back to the Predator’s home planet, and I don’t wanna go on any more adventures with Robocop.
  • What’s he gonna do?
  • Fight a bigger robot?
  • Evil versions of himself?
  • I don’t need to visit the Robocop Extended Universe.
  • I guaran-fucking-tee there exists a story in the REU wherein they scooped Dick Jones up after he got shot and fell out of the building, and then they turned him into a Jonesocop and he and Robocop fought.
  • Or maybe they put Miguel Ferrer in an ED-209.
  • RIP, buddy.
  • If I could, I would have implanted your consciousness within a stair-averse deathmonster, but this was not within my power, Miguel Ferrer, and so you died like the rest of us have or will one day.
  • You snorted cocaine off the bitch’s boobies so darn well.
  • So: if you haven’t seen the film in a while, the ED-209 scene–you know the one I’m talking about–comes waaaaay earlier than you remember it.
  • Right up front.
  • You just settled into your seat, you watched a trailer for The Running Man, or perhaps Teen Wolf, Too, and DAKKADAKKADAKKA there’s a yuppie getting bulletized with great plumes of explosive blood all over the place.
  • Oh, it’s gonna be that kind of movie.
  • And it is: pre CG squibs and actual discharging guns and real vans driving into vats of toxic waste, helpfully labeled “TOXIC WASTE.”
  • This is not a subtle movie.
  • Nor does it bear any scrutiny; Robocop‘s logic is that of a lethal fairy tale.
  • OCP brought the fucking dead back to life.
  • This point is not explored.
  • They’re a company.
  • In it for the bucks.
  • Aren’t there a trillion more lucrative markets for your breakthrough lazarus-tech?
  • Didn’t you just change the fucking nature of existence?
  • Again: this point is not explored.
  • Instead, Robocop shoots a guy in the dick.
  • In addition, you do not adequately recall just how much action there is in this action movie.
  • So fucking much.
  • You’re never more than five minutes from a big boom.
  • Cars, gas stations, town hall, the ballpark, the international arrivals loading zone at the airport, all the laundromats: they went boom, big boom SHVAAM! and it was all rather flustering to me.
  • All the hoopla, my word.
  • It’s a relentlessly simple movie: there are no subplots and there’s no love story.
  • Robocop gets himself made.
  • Robocop kills some motherfuckers.
  • Robocop kills some more motherfuckers.
  • Now Robocop is the motherfucker.
  • That’s it.
  • You got the fake teevee show interstitials with “I’ll buy that for a dollar” and the newscasts, but they’re just window dressing.
  • It’s Robo’s show.
  • If any part of the Robocop character fail, the whole movie dies, but the costume designers and Peter Weller kill it.
  • The guy walked just like a robot.
  • And when he talks?
  • Also robotic.
  • There were several scenes wherein Robocop drove, and I did not spot any cyborgian affect to the driving; it should be said, though, that it was not actually Weller behind the wheel in those shots.
  • He would not fit in the car.
  • And even if he did, the helmet rendered him blind.
  • He also couldn’t hear in there, or poop.
  • And now he’s a professor of art history.
  • Good for you, Peter Weller.
  • Assorted thought:
    • One of the criminals played the sad gay kid in Fame who sang Out Here On My Own in the window, and it was tough to take him seriously when he was holding up a gas station.
  • And that was an assorted thought.
  • Thanks for coming out tonight.