RoboCop 2 is a 1990 American science fiction action film directed by Irvin Kershner and starring Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Dan O'Herlihy, Belinda Bauer, Tom Noonan and Gabriel Damon. Set in the near future in a dystopian metropolitan Detroit, Michigan, it is the sequel to the 1987 film RoboCop.
The film received mixed reviews from critics. The plot element of Detroit filing for bankruptcy later received attention from the news media after the fictionalized event actually happened in 2013.
It was the final film directed by Irvin Kershner.
Plot
In the year after the success of the RoboCop program and Jones's death, Omni Consumer Products (OCP) has created a new plan to have Detroit default on its debt so that OCP can foreclose on the entire city, take over its government, and replace the old neighborhoods with Delta City, a new planned city center independent of the United States government, enabling them to effectively have an entire city to be controlled by OCP.
Due to the effectiveness of the RoboCop program, the Delta City project is free to proceed. To rally public opinion behind urban redevelopment and to get a public positive reaction of constructing Delta City, OCP sparks an increase in street crime by terminating police pension plans and cutting salaries, fomenting a police strike, which they are legally allowed to do since OCP was granted power over the Detroit police force. RoboCop is unable to strike due to his directives and remains on duty with his partner, Anne Lewis.
Meanwhile, the Security Concepts division of OCP continues to sink millions into the development of a more advanced "RoboCop 2" in order to replace the original RoboCop and to be able to mass-produce RoboCop to be allowed to replace the police officers. Each attempt ends in disaster - all of the formerly deceased officers picked for the project committed suicide, unable to deal with the loss of their organic bodies. Dr. Juliette Faxx, an unscrupulous company psychologist, concludes that Alex Murphy's strong sense of duty and his moral objection to suicide were the reasons behind his ability to adapt to his resurrection as the original RoboCop. Faxx convinces the Old Man to let her control the entire project, this time using a criminal with a desire for power and immortality, to the objection of the other executives on the project, fearing that a criminal could not be turned into a cop.
Meanwhile, new designer drug, "Nuke", has been plaguing the streets of Detroit. The distributor, Cain, believes that Nuke is the way to paradise, and he is obsessed with power and is opposing the Delta City plan; he fears that he will lose his market if the city is redeveloped. He is assisted by his girlfriend Angie, his juvenile apprentice Hob, and corrupt police officer Duffy, who is addicted to Nuke. Having beaten Cain's location out of Duffy, RoboCop confronts Cain and his gang at an abandoned construction site. The criminals overwhelm Murphy and disassemble his body, dumping all of the pieces in front of his precinct. Cain has Duffy killed for revealing their location.
Murphy is repaired, but Faxx reprograms him with over 300 new directives to "improve public relations". The new directives compromise his ability to perform his normal duties, since he cannot attack suspects and must be friendly at all times, among other restrictions. When one of his original technicians suggests that a massive electrical charge might reboot his system and restore his original programming, Murphy connects to a high voltage transformer. The charge erases all of his directives, including his original ones, allowing him to be in a complete control of himself and out of OCP's control. Murphy motivates the picketing officers to aid him in raiding Cain's hideout. Cain is badly injured while making a getaway, and Hob takes control. Faxx selects Cain for the RoboCop 2 project, believing she can control him through his Nuke addiction.
Meanwhile, Hob, now the Nuke's distributor, arranges a meeting with the Detroit mayor, offering to pay off the city's debt to the United States government to allow it to leave the crisis and depression, in exchange for the legalization of Nuke in Detroit so Hob could make mass profits. However, OCP's Delta City plans are threatened by this meeting because they need the city to bankrupt so they could form a plan to take over Detroit, and they send RoboCop 2/Cain to slaughter everyone there. Only the mayor manages to escape. RoboCop arrives too late, but Hob identifies Cain as the attacker before he dies.
During the unveiling ceremony for Delta City and RoboCop 2/Cain, the Old Man presents a canister of Nuke as a symbol of the current crime wave. Cain goes berserk at the sight of the Nuke and attacks the crowd. RoboCop arrives and the two cyborgs conduct a running battle throughout the building. The rest of the police force arrives and engages Cain. RoboCop recovers the canister of Nuke and uses it to distract Cain, who stops fighting to administer the drug to himself. RoboCop leaps onto his back, punches through Cain's armor and rips out Cain's brain stem.
The Old Man, Johnson and OCP's defense attorney, Holzgang, decide to deflect blame for the fiasco by scapegoating Faxx. Lewis complains that OCP is escaping accountability again, but RoboCop insists they must be patient because "We're only human."
Cast
- Peter Weller as Alex Murphy/RoboCop
- Nancy Allen as Officer Anne Lewis
- Belinda Bauer as Dr. Juliette Faxx
- Dan O'Herlihy as "The Old Man" OCP President
- Felton Perry as OCP Vice President Donald Johnson
- Tom Noonan as Cain
- Roger Aaron Brown as Whittaker
- Willard E. Pugh as Mayor Marvin Kuzak
- Gabriel Damon as Hob
- Galyn Görg as Angie
- Stephen Lee as Officer Duffy
- Robert DoQui as Sgt. Reed (as Robert Do'Qui)
- Frank Miller as Frank
- Ken Lerner as Delaney
- Jeff McCarthy as Holzgang
- Linda Thompson as Mother with Baby
- Brandon Smith as Flint
- Thomas Rosales, Jr. as Chet (as Tommy Rosales)
- Tzi Ma as Tak Akita
- Wanda De Jesus as Estevez
- John Glover as Magnavolt Salesman
- Mario Machado as Casey Wong
- Patricia Charbonneau as Robocop Technician
- Leeza Gibbons as Jess Perkins
- John Ingle as Surgeon General
- Fabiana Udenio as Sunblock Woman
- Barry Martin as OCP Cop
- Mark Rolston as Stef
- Wayne Dehart as Vendor
Production
RoboCop 2 was directed by Irvin Kershner, since Paul Verhoeven was already committed to directing Total Recall. It was based on a script by Frank Miller and Walon Green. Edward Neumeier, one of the screenwriters for the first film, already had a first draft written, but dropped out of the project due to a writers' strike. After the success of The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller was contacted by producer Jon Davison about writing the sequel, and Miller accepted.
Miller's script was labeled "unfilmable" by producers and studio executives. His script was changed, through rewrites, into what became the final script. Even when his tenure as screenwriter was officially over, Miller showed up on set everyday. He was given a cameo as Frank, a chemist in Cain's drug lab; this was the first time that Miller appeared briefly in films to which he contributed writing.
RoboCop is again played by Peter Weller. This was the last time Weller played the role. He complained about how cumbersome and exhausting it was to wear the suit and found RoboCop 2 to be a very negative and disappointing film to work on. He was also upset that some important scenes did not make it into the final cut: "There was a couple of things that made the character more human that weren't used. I can't remember exactly what the scenes were, I just remember wondering why they weren't in." These deleted scenes have never been included on home video releases. Weller's co-star, Nancy Allen, also had negative feelings regarding the second film.
Despite not being directed by Verhoeven, RoboCop 2 contains many of his familiar touches, including satirical television commercials (such as for an ultra powerful sunblock to deal with Earth's depleted ozone layer) and ironically upbeat news broadcasts. The events in the sequel closely follow the events in the first film (the ED-209 unit, for example, is mentioned as being deployed but is constantly malfunctioning).
Filming
RoboCop 2 was chiefly filmed in Houston in 1989. In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, Kershner mentioned that Houston was an ideal location due to the relative calmness of Downtown Houston at night. He also claimed that they were shooting in winter, and snow and rain would be an inappropriate climate for film production.
Jefferson Davis Hospital was used as the location for the Nuke manufacturing plant. The finale of the film was shot in the Houston Theater District near Wortham Theater Center and Alley Theatre. Cullen Center was depicted as the headquarters of Omni Consumer Products, while Houston City Hall was shown in a scene in which Mayor Kuzak speaks to the press. The George R. Brown Convention Center and the Bank of America Center were also included in the film. Additional footage was filmed at the decommissioned Hiram Clarke Power Plant.
Marketing
To promote the film, RoboCop made a guest appearance at WCW's pay-per-view event Capital Combat, where he rescued Sting from The Four Horsemen.
Soundtrack
The film score was composed and conducted by Leonard Rosenman, who did not use any of Basil Poledouris's themes from the first film; the soundtrack album was released by Varèse Sarabande. It was not well received by fans or film music reviewers, many of whom complained about Rosenman's use of a choir chanting "Robocop."
The glam metal group Babylon A.D. released a song called "The Kid Goes Wild", written by members Derek Davis, Vic Pepe, and Jack Ponti. The song is played in the background in the middle part of the film, and it was also used to promote the film. The group created a music video featuring RoboCop targeting the band and having a shootout with some bad guys (footage of the film was also used).
- Track listing
- "Overture: Robocop" â€" 6:02
- "City Mayhem" â€" 3:37
- "Happier Days" â€" 1:28
- "Robo Cruiser" â€" 4:40
- "Robo Memories" â€" 2:07
- "Robo and Nuke" â€" 2:22
- "Robo Fanfare" â€" 0:32
- "Robo and Cain Chase" â€" 2:41
- "Creating the Monster" â€" 2:47
- "Robo I vs. Robo II" â€" 3:41
Reception
Box office and critical response
RoboCop 2 debuted as the second-highest grossing film at the box office in its opening weekend, in spite of receiving mixed reviews from critics. While the special effects and action sequences are widely praised, a common complaint was that the film did not focus enough on RoboCop and his partner Lewis and that the film's human story of the man trapped inside the machine was ultimately lost within a sea of violence.
In his Chicago Sun Times review, Roger Ebert wrote, "Cain's sidekicks include a violent, foul-mouthed young boy named Hob, who looks to be about 12 years old but kills people without remorse, swears like Eddie Murphy, and eventually takes over the drug business... The movie's screenplay is a confusion of half-baked and unfinished ideas... the use of that killer child is beneath contempt."
Additionally, the film "reset" RoboCop's character by turning him back into the monotone-voiced peacekeeper seen early in the first film, despite his reclaiming his human identity and personality by the end of that film. Many were also critical of the child villain Hob; David Nusair of Reel Film Reviews stated, "That the film asks us to swallow a moment late in the story that features Robo taking pity on an injured Hob is heavy-handed and ridiculous (we should probably be thankful the screenwriters didn't have RoboCop say something like, 'Look at what these vile drugs have done to this innocent boy')."
Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote, "Unlike RoboCop, a clever and original science-fiction film with a genuinely tragic vision of its central character, Robocop 2 doesn't bother to do anything new. It freely borrows the situation, characters and moral questions posed by the first film." She further adds, "The difference between Robocop and its sequel, [...] is the difference between an idea and an afterthought." She also expressed her opinion about the Hob character, "The aimlessness of Robocop 2 runs so deep that after exploiting the inherent shock value of such an innocent-looking killer, the film tries to capitalize on his youth by also giving him a tearful deathbed scene." The Los Angeles Times published a review panning the film as well.
Jay Scott, of the Toronto Globe and Mail, was one of the few prominent critics who admired the film calling it a "sleek and clever sequel. For fans of violent but clever action films, RoboCop 2 may be the sultry season's best bet: you get the gore of Total Recall and the satiric smarts of Gremlins 2: The New Batch in one high-tech package held together by modest B-movie strings. RoboCop 2 alludes to classics of horror and science-fiction (Frankenstein, Metropolis, Westworld), for sure, but it also evokes less rarefied examples of the same genresâ€"Forbidden Planet, Godzilla, and that Z-movie about Hitler's brain in a bottle. It's ironic that the directorial coach of the first RoboCop, Paul Verhoeven, went on to Total Recall; couldn't he see that the script for Robo 2 was sleeker and swifter than Arnie's cumbersome vehicle? His absence in the driver's seat is happily unnoticed because Irvin Kershner, the engineer of sequels that often zip qualitatively past the originals (The Empire Strikes Back, The Return of a Man Called Horse, and the best Sean Conneryâ€"James Bond of all, Never Say Never Again), has tuned-up the premise until it purrs."
Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes retrospectively collected 34 reviews to give the film a score of 32%, with average rating of 4.5 out of 10.
Years later, the plot element of Detroit filing for bankruptcy later received attention from the news media after it actually happened in 2013. As recounted by the New York Post, "On Dec. 3, judge Steven Rhodes looked at Detroit’s $18.5 billion debt and deemed the city bankruptâ€"making it the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history."
Home Media
The film was first released to VHS on October 11, 1990, and was later released to DVD in June 2004. The film first received a Blu-ray Disc release on September 13, 2011.
Adaptations
Novel
A mass market paperback novelization by Ed Naha, titled RoboCop 2: A Novel, was published by Jove Books. Marvel Comics produced a three-issue adaptation of the film by Alan Grant. Like the novelization, the comic book series includes scenes omitted from the finished movie.
Frank Miller's Robocop
Frank Miller's original screenplay for RoboCop 2 took on an almost legendary status, and was later turned into a nine-part comic book series titled Frank Miller's RoboCop. Critical reaction to the comic adaptation of the Miller script was mixed. Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly gave the comic a "D" score, criticizing the "tired story" and lack of "interesting action." A recap written for the pop culture humor website I-Mockery said, "Having spent quite a lot of time with these comics over the past several days researching and writing this article, I can honestly say that it makes me want to watch the movie version of RoboCop 2 again just so I can get the bad taste out of my mouth. Or prove to myself that the movie couldn't be worse than this."
