Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		5.0
Overall		5.0

RoboCop 2 Blu-ray Movie Review

Shout! Factory Delivers a Monster Collector's Edition to a Worthy Sequel

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson May 9, 2017

Reviewer's Note: this review/article acknowledges and owes an intellectual debt to the writers who reported on and researched the production history of ROBOCOP 2—Jody Duncan, Kim Howard Johnson, Dan Persons, Paul Sammon, George Turner, and Calum Waddell.

The making of RoboCop 2 is as fascinating and compelling as the version that eventually showed up on the silver screen. The sequel had a lot to live up to. Recall that Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner's spec script for RoboCop was passed on by all the Hollywood majors but rescued by Orion Pictures. Paul Verhoeven's eponymous film went on to become one of the biggest hits of 1987. Neumeier and Miner were not contemplating a sequel until Orion demanded (rather than politely requested) that they write a script. The writers penned RoboCop II: The Corporate Wars and delivered a "very rough first draft" to Orion on January 1, 1988, a day after the studio's deadline. The Corporate Wars shaped up to be a love story involving RoboCop and the brain of a policewoman who had died but whose brain is kept intact. Robo falls in love with her mind. Orion's executives responded unenthusiastically to the script, deeming it "unfilmable." In March 1988 the Writer's Guild strike began that would put the industry at a standstill for the next five months. Even if a strike had never occurred, it still would have been difficult to film Neumeier and Miner's script because it did not get a stamp of approval from its main star. Peter Weller didn't really care for it, calling it a cartoon with little at stake. In concert with Davison, Neumeier and Miner went back to work on an entirely new script over a four-month span. While it was coming along nicely, the two writers unexpectedly aborted the project to pen Oliver Stone's unrealized CIA/contra wars film, The Company Man. With his scribes gone, Davison needed to commission a non-guild member to write a new screenplay. Davison surveyed the world of comic book writers. It was due to his admiration of The Watchmen that Davison said he approached Alan Moore about writing the script but received a brief reply from Moore, who declined the offer. Davison was also a fan of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight and envisioned that the work's dark edge, humor, politics, and innovative action could be assimilated into RoboCop 2. Miller was crazy about the first film and agreed to write the second installment.

The next step for Davison was to find a director. Verhoeven had been excited about the material in The Corporate Wars and wanted to direct it but Orion thought that logistically it would not work. Verhoeven then committed to make Total Recall. The studio was also recovering from a string of financial failures and needed a blockbuster sequel to put it back on the map. Orion originally wanted a Christmas, 1989 release so it was eager to get the picture made relatively quickly. Davison's first preference for director was Tim Hunter, who Davison thought could bring a dark sensibility to the material and generate a sense of realism from the actors. Hunter originated the story point about Detroit going into foreclosure and also humanizing OCP's giant creation of RoboCop 2. Nancy Allen was enamored with the vision and story Hunter crafted because it continued the dark comedy and satire of the first film. Hunter also promised to give her almost equal billing with Weller. It shaped up to be a romance between Robo and Officer Anne Lewis. However, Hunter had considerable issues with Miller's script. Visual effects art director Craig Hayes admits that "difficulties" existed between Miller and Hunter, which in part caused the director's departure. Moreover, the script hadn't been completely fleshed out and Hunter was concerned about meeting the preset release date. (It's also possible that Hunter had his own story outline that was separate from Miller's.) Davison spoke to Alex Cox about directing the film. The British auteur initially agreed but then turned it down a week later. His reason? "Well, I just went to see Exorcist II. There shouldn't be any sequels," Cox quipped. After Hunter left the project, the cast and crew were only a month away from going on location and eleven weeks from the start of shooting. Davison had to find a director fast. He held The Empire Strikes Back in the highest regard and asked its director, Irvin Kershner, to take on another high-profile sequel. Kershner read Miller's script over one weekend and opted to direct the movie.

It's true that RoboCop 2 had a number of scripts and multitudinous changes in the process. I've read several of the scripts and story treatments. Miller's 132-page first draft, while rife with great ideas, is episodic and contains too many story vignettes for a cohesive, centralized narrative. They would seem best suited for a graphic novel, which later occurred in the 2000s. After all, the initial plan for Miller when he came on board was to not only write and storyboard the picture, but also produce a graphic novel. Though Miller read Neumeier and Miner's script "late in the process," he went in a completely different direction. However, he also suffered the same fate as his predecessors, receiving the dreaded "unfilmable" from Orion's moguls. According to Neumeier, Miller worked on at least four different drafts. Walon Green (The Wild Bunch, Sorcerer) was brought in for a rewrite and it's an excellent one. While Green retains several scenes and some plot elements from Miller's earlier draft, he charts a nucleus for the core narrative that will eventually turn into the final cut of RoboCop 2 as we know it. Specifically, Green introduces Hob (Gabriel Damon), chief enforcer for the powerful drug lord, Cain (Tom Noonan). (In the earlier drafts, including this one dated 6/7/89, Cain is known simply as Kong.) There is an important difference between the Miller/Green revised second draft and later drafts, however. In the second draft, Green raises the strong possibility that Hob was once Alex Murphy's son through character exposition and editing directions. The key distinction between this draft compared to subsequent drafts and the theatrical version is that Jimmy Murphy (Alex's son in the original film) only appears in Robo's thermographs and in dream scenes. Also, there is no scene of Robo driving by the Murphy house and seeing Jimmy ride his bicycle. There is more of a mystery about what happened to Jimmy in Green's version. Was Jimmy captured and brainwashed by Kong and his gang? Did he change his name? Those are distinct possibilities. In Miller and Green's fourth draft, dated 8-8-89, Jimmy and Hob are kept separate. The reader learns that Hob's last name is "Mills" but his police records are sealed. Additionally, there is a scene of Jimmy with his camera trying to take snapshots of Robo. There is always going to be ambiguity about knowing Jimmy's full story because there are certain legal documents that RoboCop cannot access. Thus, there is the aspect of restrictive narration in the both the film and the scripts.

RoboCop does battle with his antagonist and possible OCP successor.

A revised fifth draft dated 1/13/90, which incorporates revisions made by Miller, was presumably the production script. Kershner divulged that he kept Miller with him "the entire time." Davison also corroborates that Miller wrote day and night under Kershner's stewardship, with color-coded revisions arriving daily. Sometimes, Green would fax in additional script pages to the production office that required edits. Recall that RoboCop 2 was Miller's first film project so it was an important learning experience that came with growing pains. He obviously was disappointed that the studio did not like his first draft or the fact that Orion brought in Green for a rewrite. But he stuck with it and any speculation that he tried to leave the production or ask that his name be removed from the film is merely urban legend and should be laid to rest.

Kershner disclosed that he excised scenes which he predicted would end up on the cutting room floor. So even though they were in the script, he would decide ahead of time that they weren't needed and conferred with Davison, who, according to Kershner, was in unanimous agreement with him. It is still not known definitively whether the deleted scenes exist in some form (in the MGM vaults or elsewhere) but fans of the series should check out the DIRECTIVE 5 blog, which compares and contrasts scenes from the RoboCop 2 workprint, the VHS and MGM BD editions, as well as script pages and pictures.

Kershner recollected that there were nine weeks of pre-production and principal photography came a week under the 80-day schedule. (Davison's recollection differs; he claims filming concluded two days behind schedule.) In any case, the film was a massive undertaking and fortunate to meet a release date of June 22, 1990. RoboCop 2 cost $35 million to make and while not a huge financial success, it grossed over $45 million at the domestic box office.

As I revisited RoboCop 2 on this Shout! Factory BD, many years after watching it on VHS and cable, I was struck by how the film pulsates with a raw and vibrant energy that electrifies the screen. While it is lamentable that there isn't an extended cut with the excised footage included (aside from the workprint that may be in the hands of private collectors), Kershner and his three editors assembled a 116-minute theatrical version that moves with a brisk pace, even during non-action scenes. The film is arguably more violent than its predecessor and retains the original's biting satire. Kershner's work lacks some of the jocularity of Verhoeven's classic and hence isn't as funny or comical. (Critics of RoboCop 2 labeled the cruder moments in the sequel as "mean-spirited.") At least eight characters from the first installment return here and some memorable new villains are introduced. Tom Noonan's Cain lacks the outward menace of the Himmler-like Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) but he is colder and more calculated. Angie (Galyn Görg) is Cain's glamorous and beautiful companion who can activate her mean streak to show that she stands by her man.

Hob (Gabriel Damon) is the film's other unforgettable villain but his "role" has always been hotly debated because it was mired in controversy from the beginning. RoboCop 2 was met with a conservative backlash because reviewers (especially in the mainstream) were overly concerned that parents taking their pre-teens to see the movie would be appalled to observe how a twelve-year-old miscreant could be so mean and callous to Robo, Lewis, and others. Damon delivers a mature and sleek performance as Hob, while also imbuing the adolescent with a toxic mischievousness. (Hob is even more vicious in Miller/Green's second draft.) Part of the shock of watching Hob fire a silver-plated Magnum at Robo's head is that he looks like such a nice, clean-cut kid. Also, the lack of a backstory on Hob clearly threw critics off if they were searching for a motive. The larger and more important point that critics missed is that Hob is a youth victim of the American drug war. Although his origins are obscure, Hob probably came from a working, middle-class family in a suburban neighborhood not unlike Jimmy Murphy. One of the reasons that the cyborg's RoboVision gets scrambled with themographs of Jimmy when he first sees Hob, I think, is because Robo fears that his former son may have joined Hob's gang or gotten mixed up with him. (The two boys very possibly went to the same school together.) RoboCop 2 demonstrates how rampant Cain's designer drug, Nuke, has become in the doom-laden streets of Detroit, much like the crack epidemic in the 1980s. (The name of the drug is a rather witty gesture to the nuclear-themed Nukem board game featured on a MediaBreak in the first movie.) In a rare interview about this film, Miller stated that he was captivated by the original's sick humor and its barbarous attack on the excesses of the eighties. When he wrote the sequel, Miller tried to show how the fate of Old Detroit becomes a simulacrum for the US drug problem. RoboCop 2 can thus be viewed as an extension of the social problems that Neumeier, Miner, and Verhoeven tackled in RoboCop.

RoboCop 2 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Before examining Shout!'s disc of RoboCop 2 and its MGM counterpart, it is necessary to retrace the film's aesthetic intentions as well as give some insights into its advanced optical effects that presaged CGI. Cinematographer Mark Irwin shot RoboCop 2 on 35mm using a 4-perf 5296, which is a spherical process he specifically used to bring out the grain in the rear projection shots. Irwin always employed a high-speed stock. One-third of the film was photographed during the evening, the rest consisting of day interiors and day exteriors. Instead of using a Steadicam for dolly shots, Irwin used the Kenyon Gyro-Stabilizer.

Visual effect shots were shot on a VistaVision 8-perf, a 35mm process in which the height equals the width of a regular format and a width equals double the height of a standard frame. Associate producer/visual effects wizard Phil Tippett employed as many as eight stop-motion crews in order to consummate 160 animated shots required for the film. Paul Sammon ran the idea of using a Amiga 2000 PC by Davison to capture the various computer graphics needed for the film. In addition, Kershner was so intrigued by the possibilities of the graphics system that he had Miller customize his script to more prominently feature the animation and graphics. More, RoboCop's optical point-of-view perspective of "RoboVision" was created on a vintage Macintosh computer. According to special effects artist Peter Kuran, the graphics were scanned into the computer printer along with a lineup chart, which in turn were registered against the print of a particular scene so Kuran would know where to place the elements in the frame. Kuran transferred the chart back to film and composited it over the shot. To visually suggest video scan lines, animator camera technician Jammie Friday hand-drew India ink lines on acetate and composited over the shots. There is a total of thirty-five minutes of computer graphics contributed to the final film.

In RoboCop (1987), the title character appears silvery but in the sequel, emanates shades of blue. It also was intended to be iridescent depending on the lighting conditions. Under street lights, for example, Rob Bottin's Robo costume looked a vivid blue. Under the film lights, it turns into a steely blue-gray. Bottin believes that instead of the pure gray as seen on the suit in the original, a bluer tone would resonate better on film. To light Robo in close-ups, Irwin set up MI-lights, which are small boxed units. Robo's suit (made of plexiglass) showed off smooth, reflective surfaces and Irwin lit him with large planes of light and particularly rim lights for soft lighting so there were not halo effects. According to Irwin, a bulk of the film consists of rear projection with blue screen pieces added to a rear-projected stop-motion foreground (four or five layers in a single shot). Robo's suit of armor and the complexities of shooting it from the front and in profile made Irwin experiment with several different angles and frame rates.

For a majority of its transfer, Shout! has accurately replicated the original color timing and electronic/pre-digital effects that are seamlessly integrated into the film. Shout! presents RoboCop 2 in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1 on this AVC-encoded BD-50. On one layer, Shout! has devoted most of its space to the main feature, with video streams that average 35000 kbps. (The ten or so supplements occupy the other layer.) Although the print Shout! used derives from the same source as the 2011 MGM BD (note the roaming film artifact above Robo's right shoulder blade in frame grabs #s 6 & 7), the two transfers are not identical. Shout! advertises theirs as a new "2K scan of the interpositive." Screenshot #s 1- 5 are captured from the Shout! disc. For Screenshot #s 6-35 of corresponding shots between the two BDs, Shout! appears on the top and MGM on the bottom. (For certain captures, it was difficult to get two exact frame matches.) You will notice in #7 that MGM has made the hue more blue than silver, thus according with Irwin and his crew. Conversely, Robo's armor has a bluer shine in #8. The Detroit Police Department's wood panels are also gray in #8, while they're given a pale green all throughout in #9. The Magnavolt Salesman's skin tone in #27 appears darker above MGM's, which is a shade brighter. In general, MGM boosted its brightness levels a notch. Shout! has an orange tinge and can look a bit muddier in places. In spite of a few inconsistencies, Shout! is the finer presentation of the two. It has a more consistent and stable grain pattern. It also appears smoother throughout with fewer artifacts than the MGM.

RoboCop 2 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Shout! has provided a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track (3838 kbps, 24-bit) and the movie's original Dolby Stereo Surround 2.0 mix (2032 kbps, 24-bit). I recall listening to MGM's uncompressed 5.1 mix and while stellar, Shout!'s recording eclipses it. There is outstanding depth, dimensionality, and range. Gunshots and explosions crackle on the surround channels. Composer Leonard Rosenman, stepping in for Basil Poledouris who was busy with other scoring assignments, delivers a brassy-heavy score that is well-represented on this track. Dialogue is crisp and mostly easy to discern.

Shout! has given the main feature optional English SDH.

RoboCop 2 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• NEW Audio Commentary with Author/CG Supervisor Paul M. Sammon

• NEW Audio Commentary with the Makers of "RoboDoc: The Creation of RoboCop" Documentary – Gary Smart, Chris Griffiths and Eastwood Allen

• NEW Corporate Wars: The Making of ROBOCOP 2 – Featuring New and Vintage Interviews with Director Irvin Kershner, Producer Jon Davidson, Cast Members Tom Noonan, Nancy Allen, Galyn Görg, and Executive Producer Patrick Crowley (32:04, 1080p)

• NEW Machine Parts: The FX of ROBOCOP 2 – Featuring Phil Tippett, Peter Kuran, Craig Hayes, Jim Aupperle, Kirk Thatcher, Paul Gentry, Don Waller, Justin Kohn, Randal Dutra and Kevin Kutchaver (31:36, 1080p)

• NEW Robo-Fabricator – An Interview with RoboCop Armor Fabricator James Belohovek (8:47, 1080p)

• NEW Adapting Frank Miller's ROBOCOP 2 – An Interview with Comic Book Writer Steven Grant (5:53, 1080p)

• NEW OCP Declassified – A Collection of Rare Archival Production and Behind-the-Scenes Videos Including Interviews with Director Irvin Kershner, Actors Peter Weller, Dan O'Herlihy and a Look at the Filming of Some Deleted Scenes (45:50, 1080p upconvert)

• Theatrical Trailer (1:54, 1080p)

• Teaser Trailers (1:57, 1080p)

• TV Spots (1:03, 1080p upconvert)

• Deleted Scenes Still Gallery (2:34, 1080p)

• Still Galleries (Behind-the-Scenes Photos, Stills, Posters, and Lobby Cards)

RoboCop 2 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

RoboCop 2 is ultra-violent, agitprop sci-fi cinema at its finest. This was an extremely difficult film to make under constricted conditions. (Eight separate animation units worked for eight months practically non-stop to finish the project.) Shout! delivers an upgraded image transfer and a dynamic sound mix. The extras are bountiful with some invaluable archival footage. With my HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION, this Collector's Edition is a MUST OWN.