we had to watch terminator 2 for my childhood movies list so i figured that was a good excuse to watch all of these including the two most recent ones which i haven’t seen yet. and i remembered there being a robocop vs. terminator video game, turns out it was based on a comic book, kinda sad we never got a movie about that! but yeah, figured we might as well do all the robocop movies too given that tenuous, barely-there connection.
… look, it works for alien and predator, leave me alone.
the terminator (movie 1984)
so, t2 is way better, huh?
i remembered it being better but i hadn’t seen the first one in so long (and i’ve only seen it once or twice), so i forgot that the first one just really isn’t on its level.
pretty much all this has going for it is linda hamilton and arnold schwarzenegger and linda hamilton and some decent action and linda hamilton. the second one has all that and more, so yeah. no contest, really. but the first one is still decent!! that last action sequence ruled. just, you know. onward and upward and all that. b-rank
robocop (movie 1987)
look, i know everyone wants to pat this movie on the back so hard, but you just can’t do a critique of capitalism where you read cops as just another group of workers facing the same problems as the rest of the working class and not as the traitorous bludgeon of our oppressors.
cool-looking cyborg, though.
like, seriously, i think the only thing that makes me like these movies at all is that robocop himself is pretty awesome-looking, especially when they change his coloration to make him more blue.
and yeah, i do enjoy all the pulpy action scenes, but the framing of them is so gross. and every time they have him fight a bigger, stop-motion robot, which is supposed to be the like money-shot of the first two movies, it’s just kinda awful-looking. c-rank
robocop (animated series 1988)
this is an extremely late-80s cartoon.
the stock sound effects, the hilariously bad dialogue–my favorite example of the latter being that robocop’s sergeant just kinda says… sports stuff? all the time? for no apparent reason?
my boyfriend said he’s choosing to read it as in-universe propaganda meant to make robocop seem less threatening, and honestly yeah that totally tracks. coming on the heels of the imperfect but certainly graphic and confrontational first movie, seeing robocop being a good guy who’s nice to kids and ocp as a bumbling, well-meaning corporation is pretty hecking jarring.
the stories are also just so broad and… weird? in one episode robocop gets a cold, and his partner gives him some chicken noodle soup and like… how does that even work? he like, doesn’t have a throat or a stomach anymore? he also goes on a date with lewis at one point??? there’s also extremely 90s attempts to address things like environmentalism and racism, and just… yeah, yikes. (the racism episode has some of those hilarious cartoon protest signs, like “humans yes” and “robots are stupid.”)
in Things That Matter to Me news, literally the first action scene in the first episode has an armed robbery on a blood bank (idk), and one of the robbers is unreasonably hot to me? the one with the sunglasses that look kinda like 3d glasses throws me hella enby vibes, and even if they’re not an enby they’re exactly my type. i’m kinda thinking i should start a side blog that’s just screenshots of random background characters i’m gay for.
robocop 2 (movie 1990)
it’s… kind of just the first movie again but with even more viscerally uncomfortable stuff and a lot of just truly weird filmmaking choices. and even more awkward stop-motion, which is, you know… yeah. it sure is a choice!
on top of the continuation of the “cops on strike” nonsense, this one has an extremely straightforwardly reaganistic war on drugs message, and it marries that to an incredibly wrongheaded critique of “political correctness.”
see, there would actually be a point to be had here if the critique were aimed at the harm that can be accomplished by putting a shiny coat of heroic and nonthreatening paint on your fascist murder-machine, but the movie is just rolling its eyes at the idea of him doing any non-murder things and explicitly shows it being a problem because it makes him not as good at doing murders.
literally the only thing i enjoyed about the movie that wasn’t something carried over from the first movie (aside from robocop’s more bluish tint) was the foul-mouthed little kid druglord. (fun fact, that actor was a featured guest star in a star trek: the next generation episode!) c-rank
terminator 2: judgment day (movie 1991)
wow i just had the biggest oblivious crush on john connor as a kid, huh? revisiting this, i’m noticing that he’s just an amazing protagonist for this movie. they try so hard to make him seem like a delinquent early on, but literally every time he confronts a difficult choice he chooses to do the right thing. and like, i highly approve of stealing money from banks, obviously.
i think a big part of the appeal as a kid was how freaking awesome the idea of being protected by an indestructible, time-traveling robot was. i think that’s a big part of why the ending hits so hard. this is the first time i can remember it not making me ugly cry.
every time i rewatch this i’m somehow like… caught off guard by how good it is? it’s just so head and shoulders above anything else on this list, it really sticks out.
miles dyson hits in a very dr. serizawa from godzilla 1954 place of like “wow imagine if the people building these doomsday weapons had a fucking ounce of moral conviction” wish fulfillment. t2’s vivid warning about nuclear annihilation is far too informed by misanthropy and riddled with other shortcomings (the thing that leads to the nuclear apocalypse is taking the button out of the ruling class’s hands? really?), but it nevertheless had a profound effect on me that still resonates today.
it fucking sucks that “guy who engineered the apocalypse” is the only major role they could find for a black guy, that a heroic sacrifice was apparently the only way for him to atone in the filmmakers’ eyes, and that we got that unbelievably uncomfortable scene of a conventionally attractive white woman in combat gear holding his life in her hands, holy shit. (on a plus side this did give us one of the most blatant instances of john being an extremely good boy.) a-rank
robocop vs. the terminator (comic 1992)
writer: frank miller
artist: walt simonson
almost impressively unremarkable. like, just completely what you would expect it to be–no more, no less. my biggest real complaint is that it gets a bit repetitive, though you get that a lot with miller’s stuff.
it was also pretty disappointing to not see arnold schwarzenegger’s t-800 at all. i mean, when you hear “robocop vs. the terminator,” you just kinda assume he’s the “the terminator” being referred to, right? c-rank
robocop 3 (movie 1993)
this is straight up propaganda, but it’s also the only time i unambiguously like murphy, soooo.
so, this movie created a private security force called the “urban rehabilitators” (“rehabs” for short) and has them going around evicting people from their homes and rounding them up and dragging them off the streets for the crime of being homeless. it then placed literally everyone who actually does or enables that shit in real life (cops, corporations, the media) in opposition to them. the idea of cops refusing to evict people is fucking rich.
(oh, and the reason all this is happening is because scary japanese investors bought the villain corporation and wow hi anti-asian racism you sure are late to the cyberpunk party!!)
the rehabs are also dressed in extremely unsubtle nazi-adjacent khaki uniforms because this movie wants you to think that when the nazis show up they’ll be really easy to spot and not, you know, literally the protagonists of this movie.
i loved the ragtag group of homeless rebels led by bertha, but why is she the only person in this resistance who isn’t a crusty white guy? have you seen any pictures or videos of the people in the streets resisting police oppression? they ain’t mostly white guys, folks! oh and of fucking course she gets gunned down before the third act so literally every adult who’s left in the resistance is a fucking mayo on wonder bread white guy.
oh, i also loved remy, the kid with the ambiguous gender who hacked everything in sight. remy and bertha should have been the protagonists of this movie.
while the movie didn’t go in the direction i was terrified it would at the beginning of the movie (that these awesome rebels would be the bad guys), it did do the next worst thing by having the fucking cops ally themselves with the rebels and having the punk druggie criminals ally themselves with the naz–i mean, rehabs. riiiiight.
it was pretty cathartic seeing all those cops rip off their badges, though, considering that my stance on cops has always been and will always be “have you tried not being a cop?” and that shit needs to be celebrated. buuuuuut again the movie makes it hella explicit that these are the “good cops” and they still consider themselves cops even after they resign in anger, so what the fuck ever.
like… i’m sorry, this is pretty easily the best of the three robocop movies and it’s pretty telling that everyone is willing to swallow the first two but thinks this one is a bridge too far. it’s the only one with any redeeming qualities whatsoever. it’s still absolutely disgusting propaganda, but you know. c-rank
robocop vs. the terminator (video game 1993)
full disclosure, since it’s the story i’m interested in i didn’t play these myself, i just watched longplays.
so, yeah, the genesis version just tells the story through an opening crawl and postscript. the snes version, by way of contrast, has a series of cutscenes many of which use dialog directly from the comic, and which are stylized to look vaguely like comic panels. they … also … have … a … very … deliberate … pace … such … that … the … genesis … version’s … lack … of … cutscenes … is … probably … actually … preferable. (and i’m saying that as someone who almost always prefers more story.)
the genesis version also has slightly more vibrant art, and i think i read somewhere that it’s meant to be more evocative of the movies whereas the snes has more muted tones which again i think are meant to be more like the comic.
i didn’t really get a whole lot out of these, storywise. they’re both basically a stripped-down version of the comic’s story. but it is pretty cool that we got a video game out of this crossover, i just kinda wish we had gotten a movie.
robocop (television series 1994)
full disclosure: i did not watch the entire series. i watched the first six episodes, and then a few recommended/well-reviewed episodes or ones whose premise sounded interesting.
this was a pretty well-produced series, i gotta say. some of the episodes did drag a bit, but for the most part they were at least entertaining. like, the average one is a more interesting watch than the first two movies if i’m being completely honest.
as is traditional for this franchise, the propaganda in the live-action show is thick. the ceo of ocp is depicted as a bumbling but ultimately good-natured guy who, wouldn’t you know it, just keeps ending up with evil masterminds as vps of various departments! and every time his company does something heinously evil it’s either because he didn’t know it was happening or because someone is trying to take over the company or both.
don’t worry, though! the show is willing to take a stand against *checks notes* … radical feminists? huh, that’s probably not right. i’m sure the … evil vice president of scriptwriting is responsible for that one, let’s look for a different example. oh hey there’s one where the bad guy is … uhhh … poor people who take to the streets against the cops.
huh. hey but there’s also one where the evil welfare providers pass a law where you can’t work if you’re on welfare but people really, really want to work so they start fighting for their *flipping through notes loudly* … right … to … work … right to work. why do those words sound so familiar all together in that order…
you know what? i know what happened. i just watched the bad ones! that’s what it is. i just watched the bad ones. i’m sure there are some i didn’t watch that we can tell from the summary alone did a much better job let’s just take a look at one of these. let’s see. here’s one. “the city is being rocked by anti-corporate violence as robocop and officer madigan are assigned to bring in a charming ex-terrorist, but a corrupt union leader and his sultry secretary have other plans.”
i mean, okay, this is exactly what i’ve come to expect from any robocop media, i just heard for years about its supposedly amazing political commentary so it’s always just kind of hilarious to me how consistently awful it actually is.
anyway, the episodes i actually enjoyed were “robocop vs. commander cash” (just exactly the silly toyetic fun it sounds like) and “sisters in crime” (its politics are awful, but it has some strawfeminists forcefemming a ceo and forcing him to do housework for them, soooooo). also, there were a few episodes i checked out because i heard they had some awesome bondage in them, and wow i was not disappointed with any of them. (and one of them even had an explicitly kinky lady villain.)
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