As prophesied in the first part, Robocop is now available in all forms: Cartoons, video games, toys …
And inevitably a new opus was started, Robocop 2, subtitled: “Subtlety, I write your name in letters of blood! “
Forget the first part, here we make a sequel, more direct and more violent, the fault being incumbent on the principal screenwriter, the finesse embodied: Frank Miller. And do not tell me that his scenario was bridled or changed, if we read the original scenario little has changed.
Our film starts with what appears to be an action scene but no, in fact it is an advertisement presented by Daniel Klamp from Grimlins 2.
Again we chained on a newscast that explains that after the threats of the first film, the police strike, the remaining agents facing angry citizens including a John Carpenter look-alike. Of course in his remaining cops we find our new Robocop with new suit that is always team with the … new face Loreal? My god, agent Lewis, but how do you keep this impeccable brushing despite wearing the helmet all day?
The television news also shows us the new scourge of the movie, Nuke, a brand new drug that is raging in the beautiful neighborhoods of a strait reminiscent of the current Los Angeles. Fortunately Robocop is still there to clean up and rid Detroit of his bandits with his new musical theme written by Leonard Rosenman, which has significantly twisted the ears of people watching the movie with me.
I forgot to say that Robocop became super creepy by spying on his wife who had made a new life in the previous movie but here she is still called Murphy, surely to facilitate public understanding?
He thus searches for traces of his past and we discover here the big theme of the film to know if Robocop is a man or a machine.
In the end, Murphy tells his wife that the “real” Murphy is dead and we will not hear about it anymore. His wife will only be seen again in the next film.
We learn that the decline of Detroit is organized by our friends OCP, who want to ruin the city to buy it, while it was enough for them to wait a few years for it to be done alone in real life .
We also discover Professor Faxx who is looking to develop a brand new Robocop. She is venal and sleeps with the boss, basically a typical woman of the world of Frank Miller and all in parallel, we see rising power of the new villain of the film Cain and so we find all the biblical elements of the film . Cain getting closer to Jesus becoming the rival of Robocop, the true Jesus of history. In the original scenario Miller calls the original villain Kong for legitimizing a scene at the end of his story where the villain kidnapped Lewis and took him to the top of a tower … Oh subtlety!
In the film it looks like just a junky hippie performed by Tom Noonan who has been known to be more enthusiastic. And in the rest of the henchmen, we have Catzo, a fan of Elvis, who has his own coffin at home and who does not pronounce a single memorable replica of the whole film, we have Nancy, from Twin Peaks, who is still a venal woman, normal, Miller. And Don the kid, played by Gabriel Damon who had made additional votes for Super Baloo and that’s it. It’s a bit cheap as a casting!
In short, for the rest of the story, Robocop is trying to stop the villain alone, he is chopped, he is destroyed and dismembered, and his new version is shown, I quote in a comic montage … Then they reset, happens to motivate the cops to stop the strike, they then return to Cain, Cain is killed and placed in a robot with a super gore operation, while everything was suggested in the first and it was good. Faxx using Cain’s brain, because she had read Mary Shelley too much.
The new robot, called Robocop 2 is then presented in the new OCP tower, decorated with Nazi flags where the OCP symbol replaces the swastika, and whose guards wear uniforms reminiscent of the Hugo Bosse uniforms of the dark period of german history.
Cain is returned and all is well who finished well.
Robocop 2 represents all the defects of a marketing machine too lapped. Stronger, bigger (the movie is 20min longer than the first), too much excesses, too many stupid scenes, including commercials, just there to shock in all directions, without sub-text to enhance the plot.
If the first film was a reference to the world of comics, here the producer is called to a screenwriter from comics, aka Frank Miller at the top of his ego that makes the film a comic actually. Once again he places all his themes dear, folded to the bone, namely:
- Women are all whores, literally and figuratively;
- the society only works on sex and drugs (the first advertisement to show a robot for sexual pleasure);
- Corrupt cop;
- The perversion of youth (presented by Don, but also by a gang of kids that we see only once, without explanation except that they are bad kids …)
I have nothing against his themes (except the first) but it is sorely lacking in subtlety, everything that does not work in the Spirit of Frank Miller by the way.
If in the first film, we were openly making fun of consumerism here it is the party with product placements! Hello sony walkman and Data East arcade.
The director, Irvin Kershner, who had made Empire Strike Back, who here again wanted to make fun of the fascination of the violence of our society show, but, where did he manage to show that? Personally all I see is that the weapons are toys and that there are even sound effects of cartoons. Yes Robocop has become a cartoon!
There were some interesting tracks, like:
- the reprogramming of Robocop, which … is useless in the film
- The acquisition of the city of Detroit by the OCP.
- The mayor’s attempts to earn money
- Don who also tries to buy the city but he is stuck by Cain in a picture full of subtlety!
- The hit of the Nuke that is all the rage but who is here just to mount a new drug that is all the rage
- Finally there was the reflection on whether Murphy remained a human, but it had been done in the first film
But Robocop here is neither a human nor a robot, it’s just a product.
To be continued…
Nilsa's world 