movies

Believe it or not, until today, I had never seen the original RoboCop (1987).

Neither had I seen the sequels or even the reboot made in 2014.

The closest I ever came to experiencing RoboCop was the TV show made during the nineties. I don't think anybody remembers that TV show, but I saw it because it was something to watch. Back then, my family didn't have cable—we saw everything over the air. There were only five channels to choose from, so I watched RoboCop to kill some time. The TV series, well, I'm only discovering now that it's very different from the movie. The movie is way better.

It's funny—for the longest time, I thought the movie was exactly like the TV series, so I avoided watching the original RoboCop because the TV series left a bad taste in my mouth. But let me tell you, I'm amazed at how good the original movie is. I was expecting something fluffy and campy, but Peter Weller, who played RoboCop, did an incredibly good job. We see him before he became RoboCop, then watch the process that made him RoboCop, and finally see him as RoboCop. It's such a trip.

Seeing this movie for the first time in 2025, I have to comment on the tech. Watching the tech is a treat: this is still very much a world of CRTs and primitive computers. We get to watch commercials, and you really get the sense that the Detroit of this film is just a few years removed from 1987—maybe like a decade into the future. There’s a game advertised, Nukem, which is almost like a board game, but also plays like a hybrid video game. It's clear they didn't foresee in 1987 how far we would go with video games, and that’s just one incredible nugget since RoboCop went on to spawn numerous video games afterward. I specifically remember the Commodore 64 version of RoboCop, which I played. It's interesting that in the film, you don't see video games, even though computers are such a prominent thing.

Another noteworthy aspect is how they thought artificial intelligence and cybernetics were just around the corner. Knowing what we know now, there's no way this world—with all its low-tech—could build something as advanced as RoboCop.

That being said, it’s interesting because this film is about the rise of corporations taking over our lives, having near-oligarchic control over civic life. There’s a mega-corporation, Omni Consumer Products (OCP), that controls the Detroit police department.

Watching the TV show during the ‘90s was my entry into the world of RoboCop, and until today, that was my only exposure. Talking about OCP, I remember thinking it was ridiculous because, in a functioning democracy, we’d never allow a corporation that much power. I was a teenager back then, and little did I know that RoboCop would be prophetic.

Now we live in a world where a mega-billionaire, Elon Musk, has winnowed his way into the American government, corporatizing it even as we speak. And I’m not even touching upon Peter Thiel and what he's up to because Palantir is practically OCP today. Let's be honest, OCP isn’t nearly as ambitious as the mega-corporations we have now.

Director Paul Verhoeven could have made just another cyberpunk movie, but what puts RoboCop over the top is its humour and ability to make fun of itself. He did a dynamite job here. He later made notable films like Total Recall, Basic Instinct, and Starship Troopers. He also made the flop Showgirls, which in my opinion makes him even more legendary. Having watched Total Recall and Starship Troopers, I feel like this is Paul Verhoeven's best work. Some might say Black Book, but that film hasn’t winnowed its way into popular culture like RoboCop. RoboCop was a phenomenon and still is. This film is universally praised; audiences love it. IMDb scores it a 7.7 out of 10, while Letterboxd scores it 3.9 out of 5. Critics echo audience enthusiasm with a score of 92% on Rotten Tomatoes.

I think everybody's right about RoboCop. It’s definitely a defining science fiction film of the 80s, during a decade that had excellent science fiction all around. It's too bad my entry point into RoboCop was the TV series. But I'm glad I've seen the original film now, and if you're like me and have held off on seeing this classic, I definitely recommend it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqvRDhW-XVA

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