Review for Robocop [Remastered]

Introduction

I was not going to make the same mistake twice. When Robocop was first released on DVD, I was in a ‘got to ditch the VHS now’ mood, so I didn’t think much of the fact that it was only available as part of a trilogy boxset at first. That includes Robocop 2, which I have watched precisely three times on DVD, and Robocop 3, which I watched once in thirteen years. This time I decided to wait till I could get just the original Robocop on Blu-ray for a reasonable price, the only part of the franchise that I’m actually interested in. It turned out to be worth the wait, as while I was ploughing my way through my existing Blu-ray back-log, they only went and released a second version of Robocop on Blu-ray created from a new 4k scan. As you can imagine, I haven’t seen the first version to compare and contrast, although it certainly looks far better than the DVD, with none of those pesky pauses for integrated branching.


For the theatrical cut of Robocop has been consigned to history when it comes to Blu-ray, and what we get here is the US unrated cut, which in the UK has to be rated by law, so it gets called a Director’s Cut instead, rated 18. There’s no branching involved, no other version of the film, just seamless playback all the way through.

When Officer Alex Murphy was killed in the line of duty, it should have been the untimely end of a short but promising career. But this is the brave new corporate world of the future, where Omni Consumer Products own the Detroit Police, and they take their ownership literally. OCP is investing in revitalising Detroit, tearing it down and creating the city of the future, Delta City. The big problem is crime, and human police just don’t cut it. OCP are looking to mechanise urban pacification, but when Dick Jones’ pet project ED-209 suffers an embarrassing setback, fresh young Turk Bob Morton steps forward with his Robocop project for which Alex Murphy has just ‘volunteered’. The new cyborg policeman makes an instant impact on Detroit, but OCP couldn’t remove the human from the equation completely. A nightmare vision sends Robocop on a journey to rediscover his past, and he winds up investigating his own murder. Meanwhile, Dick Jones isn’t happy about having his thunder stolen...

Picture

Robocop looks good on Blu-ray, far better than I expected given its 1987 vintage, and that decade’s propensity for less than stellar film stock. Eschewing the original 1.66:1 aspect ratio, this disc presents the film in the more commonly seen 1.85:1 widescreen version, at 1080p resolution. Of course the film begins with a Media Break segment, all of which were actually shot on video, so it’s a little while before you get to see the benefit of the HD resolution, and the re-master. It’s come up a treat, with excellent detail, strong, naturalistic colours, particularly for skin tones, and good contrast. The film also gets a decent, but unobtrusive level of grain, except maybe in the darker scenes where it can shoot up, and a couple of non-optical zooms such as Boddicker’s death scene, where they just focused on a small area of the frame. As I usually find with eighties movies, the weak point is the shadow detail, especially in the middle distance as the image tends to lose definition at such points, but Robocop comes off surprisingly well in this regard.

Sound

Here’s a list and a half. DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround English. DD 5.1 Surround Latin Spanish, and Portuguese, DD 2.0 Surround Czech, Hungarian, and Polish, and DTS 5.1 Surround French, Spanish, German, Italian, Thai and Russian, with subtitles in these languages plus Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Japanese, Icelandic, Slovenian, and Chinese. Blu-ray.com also mentions two Japanese audio tracks, but I couldn’t see those.

I went with the English audio of course, and was very impressed with the quality of the surround, the degree of immersion. It’s particularly noticeable first in the police locker room scene, where you feel surrounded by militant union men and women. It’s an excellent surround track for a film of its vintage, really expressing the action well, and with some solid LFE presence. The sound design for this film is something special as well, really making the robotic presence of the title character felt.

Extras

Insert the disc and you get an anti-piracy thank you, and then a trailer for MGM’s 90th Anniversary, before the disc boots up an animated menu. The film will also pop-up a non permanent progress bar if you pause during playback.

There are plenty of extras on this disc, many old, and some new. The Commentary with Paul Verhoeven, Ed Neumeier, and Jon Davison is definitely old, and recognisable from the DVD release of the film. It’s still a good commentary, and well worth listening to.

From that DVD release, you’ll also find the Flesh and Steel: The Making of Robocop documentary (36:55 480i), 1987 Featurette: Shooting Robocop (7:59 480i), 1987 Featurette: Making Robocop (8:01 480i), The Boardroom: Storyboard With Commentary by Animator Phil Tippett (6:02 480i), and the four Deleted Scenes (2:51 480i). They are good featurettes, especially the Flesh and Steel documentary, which pulls no punches.


The Q & A With the Filmmakers is definitely new, shot in 2012, and sees the writers, the director, Peter Weller and Nancy Allen, as well as Phil Tippet answering questions from a moderator, and from the audience about the film. This lasts 42:36 and is presented in 1080p.

I haven’t seen the other featurettes before, but I assume that they were for a DVD re-release, or the first Blu-ray, as they were created in 2006, and are presented here, also in 480i.

Villains of Old Detroit lasts 16:59, and sees Ray Wise, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith, and Miguel Ferrer interviewed about their respective characters

Special Effects: Then and Now lasts 18:22 and the Then bit talks extensively about Matte Paintings, Stop Motion Puppets, and ED-209, while the Now bit is a brief “CGI” from the contributors.

Robocop: Creating A Legend lasts 21:09 with Peter Weller and the creators talking about getting the iconic character to work (it could so easily have fallen flat).

The Paul Verhoeven Easter Egg lasts 0:38, and was obviously an Easter Egg on another edition of the film, not here.

The Theatrical Trailer is in HD, while the TV Spot is in SD.

Conclusion

It’s been almost 30 years, and what at the time seemed like just another eighties action flick has gained classic status over the years. This film is so much more than just the sum of its parts, which is somewhat surprising, given that it really is many films rolled into one. You have the straight up action movie, you have the stinging satire on capitalism, which I have to say is even more relevant today than it was back in the Reagan era, you have the detective story, a dead man investigating his own murder, you have the biblical allusions, the constant themes of resurrection that run through the film, it feels like an urban Western, and of course there’s the obvious Frankenstein allegory.

Robocop is jam-packed with ideas, plot lines, concepts and philosophies that could actually fill ten such films, yet in its brief 100 minute runtime, it manages to make it all work, and work brilliantly. There are no loose ends. It’s a case of lightning striking at just the right moment, making this bastard creation come to life. It’s notable that they tried to do the same thing with the sequel, cram as much in as possible, but when lightning struck that one, all that remained were the scattered, messy body parts of a bad film.


They just don’t make them like they used to, could be an appropriate cliché, but really it’s down to Paul Verhoeven’s outsider’s view of US eighties society that makes this film unique, as well as his joyous embrace of over the top violence, accentuated by this Director’s Cut. For a director who had never done science fiction before, he certainly nailed it on his first try, and then followed it up with the epic Total Recall. The irony is that both of these films have been remade in recent years, neutered of all social relevance, sanitised for the summer blockbuster season, and serving only to make people think fondly of the originals.

I still love this film even after all these years, having first watched it when I was a teenager. The characters, the writing, the story all appeals to my sci-fi geek side, but there’s much more to the film than just that. The older I get, the more I discover in it to appreciate. Whereas at first it was just the action, later on I cottoned onto the satire, and then it was the religious allegory. Robocop ages with its fans. It is one of those rare, timeless classics that will never go out of style, and while I briefly thought that the eighties Yuppie culture satire would date, the ‘greed is good’ mentality never actually goes away, while the eighties accoutrements of these capitalists serve as an interesting historical document.


Robocop looks and sounds great on this re-mastered Blu-ray release. I haven’t seen the original Blu-ray to compare, but this version is definitely the one to go for.