RoboDoc: The Creation of RoboCop (Amazon documentary)

[Neil]

[MinionZombie]

Saw this a few weeks ago - it's excellent! Basically anyone who's still alive is interviewed, there's a bunch of BTS footage, there's all sorts of stories told about the difficulties of filming and shenanegans going on - absolutely superb and exhaustively detailed coverage of the making of the movie.

[Neil]

I was worried it would be boring (with 4 episodes), but far from it.

[kidgloves]

Nice one **rushes off grinning**

[MinionZombie]

I was worried it would be boring (with 4 episodes), but far from it. I did wonder if it needed to be as long as it is, but no problem at all - every episode is jam-packed with fascinating stories and detailed information. Interesting to hear that Weller was a bit of a player on-set.

[Neil]

Watching the effects, you can only imagine how they'd all be CGI now. The fact the ED209 gun gun shots we also done in the stop motion process along with its movement, introducing an LED and cotton wool into a single frame... Wow!

[MinionZombie]

Watching the effects, you can only imagine how they'd all be CGI now. The fact the ED209 gun gun shots we also done in the stop motion process along with its movement, introducing an LED and cotton wool into a single frame... Wow! Watching RoboCop 2 the other night I was awed to see the stop motion effects for the Kane bot (aka "RoboCop 2"). How those sequences were done, the choice of shots, how good the stop motion looked, blending of live action and stop motion etc. Superb stuff. Well, as we saw with the RoboCop remake (mostly forgotten by this point, surely?), it was a boatload of CGI fluff and PG-13 softness. It lacked every shred of charm the original had, not to mention the violence, and the satire was pretty ropey as well. It just got everything wrong IMHO, but then again, it should never have been made in the first place.

[Neil]

I have mediocre memories for RoboCop2 - Should I watch it again or not? And I've never seen the recent remake.

[JDP]

LOL! That line has become legendary.

[Neil]

What's interesting in the documentary is how many of the people working on it found it an uber painful production, while at the same time pouring their creative juices into it.

[MinionZombie]

I have mediocre memories for RoboCop2 - Should I watch it again or not? And I've never seen the recent remake. You should. It's pretty close to the original in many ways, but not in others. It suffers in terms of character stuff for the most part. Murphy and Lewis as individuals get a bit sidelined as the bulk of the film (which is a the best part of twenty minutes longer than the original) is focused on OCP and Kane's gang of Nuke drug peddlers. The focus of the film shifts away from the more personal story of the original to a much bigger picture view of the whole OCP vs Detroit City story - so in that regard it adds quite a lot. To be fair, though, there is some deep chracter stuff - but it's somewhat locked away in just the first act. There's some great stuff regarding Murphy's wife and who or what RoboCop/Murphy was/is/will be. Lewis gets not an awful lot to do, which is a shame, but on the other hand the jet black satire of the filthy OCP's machinations to try and privatise Detroit through nefarious methods adds a whole lot of different meat to the bone. There's also a lot of humour to it as well. The whole bit with Robo getting reprogrammed after a committee gets all hand-wringy about his actions hits even harder now than it would've then. It leads to some quite funny moments, and another bit of a redemption for Murphy before the larger story takes over and sweeps aside the smaller character stuff again. There's lots of great action and effects (although it's never as gory or devious as the original, which really goes very far). It's probably fair to say some of the film's issues come down to Irvin Kirschner being hired the weekend just before the first day of shooting on Monday, and Frank Miller (co-writer) choosing to focus a bit too much on the big story while diminishing the small stories ... but it's still a damn good movie in its own right, even if it isn't able to match the original. However, RoboCop 2 absolutely shits all over RoboCop 3. I liked that movie as a kid, but fuck me what a travesty that was, haha. The only good thing in that movie were the Splatter Punks.

[EvilNed]

I didn't mind the remake. I thought it handled the story about him being detached from his family better than the original. But sure, you can't beat the first one.