Double-headed Shart Attack: Terrible Movie Reviews: RoboCop

The other day, Jesse emerged from the bathroom and haughtily informed me that "they" (as in, those idiots that run Hollywood) are remaking RoboCop. Naturally, Jesse was upset about this -- just another symptom of the total lack of creativity that reigns supreme in moviemaking these days, he said, where they'd rather just remake old movies and slap on sequels to existing franchises than actually come up with anything new and original.

Haha, just kidding -- he was only partially pissed off about the lack of creativity. Most of his anger came from the fact that the original RoboCop was such a work of art that there's no way they could remake it and have it not turn out an abject failure. I kind of agree that the remake won't be any good, but not for the same reasons. I think it'll suck because if you've got shit to work with, there's no way to cook it up so it ain't shit anymore. You can make it shit stew or shit soup or shit souffle, but it's still going to taste awful.

Here's why RoboCop is shit:

RoboCop takes place in a vaguely-more-awful-than-reality Detroit, Michigan, sometime in the future when the city is about to plunge into terrible bankrupt anarchy (finally, a movie that accurately predicted the future!). An evil corporation (of course) has decided to fix everything by taking over the police force and using robots to stop crime or something. Plan A is to use some giant expensive robot thing to arrest criminals, and the corporate execs show off this fancy new invention during a board meeting.

You're NEVER GOING TO BELIEVE what happens next, though ...

Unfortunately, in a total surprise move, they didn't really have all the kinks worked out so the robot goes on a shooting rampage, destroying the board room, terrifying everyone, and KILLING AN UNTOLD NUMBER OF INNOCENT PEOPLE.

SOMEBODY'S GOT A CASE OF THE MONDAYS, AMIRITE??

Right?!?! I mean, what were they doing standing there? It's like they WANTED to get shot. And the company is not liable for employee suicide, thankyouverymuch.

You're sitting on a goldmine here, Jones. Those idiot employees momentarily sidetracked your project with their boardroom suicide (which is the story we're going with now). Someone has to pay for this.

Undeterred, and apparently facing absolutely no consequences for this first catastrophic failure, the evil corporation goes back to the drawing board and comes up with an awesome Plan B: making a RoboCop that is half man, half machine (and don't think indiscriminate murder means Plan A is out the window -- it's not. It will be back later).

First, they'll need a volunteer to be the half-man part of the RoboCop. And by "volunteer," obviously I mean a guy who gives no consent and has a family that advocates for him about as well as the families of the guys who got murdered by the original robot. Playing the role of "guy who gives no consent and has a shitty family" is new-to-the-area cop Alex Murphy. Murphy gets killed by some bad guys, so the evil corporation steals his body and turns him into the RoboCop.

ROBOCOP!!!!!

RoboCop is pretty good at stopping crime, and by that I mean that he is single-handedly able to stop pretty much all the crime in the city. Everything is going swimmingly until the SURPRISE TWIST where we find out that the utterly evil corporation is actually in cahoots with the evil gang of bad guys that originally killed Murphy!

And then we find out the EVEN SURPRISIER SURPRISE TWIST which is that RoboCop has been programmed not to arrest any executives of the evil corporation!

This leaves RoboCop unable to arrest the bad guy who runs the evil corporation, while at the same time, the original robot that killed all those people at the beginning of the movie is now somehow fixed and is being used to try and kill RoboCop. Oh, and all the bad guys in the gang that killed Murphy have been randomly released from prison and provided with powerful weapons, because ... wait, what the f**k??