RoboCop Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.5

RoboCop Blu-ray Movie Review

Dead or Alive, This Blu-ray Is Coming with You

Reviewed by Michael Reuben January 9, 2014

One reason for the enduring popularity of director Paul Verhoeven's first American film is the simplicity of its basic story: A man is gunned down and left for dead, but he miraculously survives and, though much changed, proceeds to hunt down the criminals who shot him and take his revenge. The same plot could be (and has been) a Western, a gangster tale or a Death Wish-style vigilante film. But in Ed Neumaier's and Michael Miner's innovative script, the story morphed into sci-fi, and the survivor was no longer a man but a cyborg with a human face and brain, while everything else was machine. The moments when the creature displays his humanity—when he showed that he was more than just "product" (as his corporate sponsor declares)—gradually became more important than the quest for revenge.

Verhoeven has repeatedly told how he initially missed the rich possibilities of the material wrapped in RoboCop's sci-fi premise and threw the script on the floor (or the beach, depending on which version of the story he tells) after reading just a few pages. His wife made him take a second look, and he began thinking about the robot in Fritz Lang's Metropolis and considering images of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. Producer Jon Davison introduced Verhoeven to just the right team, including effects wizard Phil Tippett and prosthetics specialist Rob Bottin, to build out Neumeier's and Miner's script into the many-layered classic it ultimately became. Looking back at the experience twenty-five years later, in the new Q&A session included in this Blu-ray's extras, the participants seem astounded that any of it worked.

RoboCop has something for everybody: robots for science fiction fans, Verhoeven's trademark blood-and-guts for gore hounds, big action set pieces, a wickedly satirical sense of humor (especially in the news broadcast inserts) and, at its core, the moving story of Officer Alex Murphy's loss of his family and the life he lived before he was transformed into a law enforcement superhero. Add to this the pointed critique of corporate maneuvering and the pertinent questions raised about profits vs. public service, and there's a lot going on in a taut 103 minutes. RoboCop may prompt different reactions from viewers, but boredom isn't one of them.

In an eerily accurate portent of coming events, RoboCop is set in a crumbling Detroit of the future which, though not yet in bankruptcy, is failing so badly that the city has outsourced its police department to the conglomerate known as Omni Consumer Products, or "OCP". But OCP's plan to clean up crime has little to do with supporting the men and women in blue. It plans to raze the crime-ridden old Detroit and build a sparkling new development in its place called "Delta City". The chief concern is how to provide security for the one million workers who will build it.

Dick Jones (Ronny Cox), a ruthless top executive at OCP, wants to supplant the police force with fleets of a heavily armored droid, the ED-209, which he'll then turn around and sell to the military. The only problem with the ED-209 is that it doesn't work; a demonstration at an OCP strategy meeting turns into a bloody slaughter. Ambitious young Turk Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer) seizes the opportunity to buttonhole OCP's Chairman and CEO, known only as "the Old Man" (Daniel O'Helihy), to promote his own alternative: the RoboCop program, in which legally dead cops have their brains implanted in a cyborg body, thereby enhancing the machine's computer-driven muscle with the cop's experience. With the Delta City construction start date looming, the Old Man greenlights the program, and Bob Morton waits for a cop to die to launch a prototype. Meanwhile Dick Jones fumes and waits for his brash young adversary to make a mistake.

The first cop to "volunteer" for the RoboCop program is Alex Murphy (Peter Weller), who is blasted by shotguns, execution-style, at the hands of arch-criminal Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith), and his gang while Murphy's new partner, Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen), looks on helplessly. Declared legally dead and with his memory wiped, Murphy has his brain extracted and implanted into a gleaming kevlar-coated endoskeleton. He becomes the perfect cop, a hero to the populace and the scourge of the underworld.

But the mind is a tricky thing. Wiping a brain isn't the same as erasing a hard drive. Some irreducible element of Alex Murphy—his "soul" perhaps, although Verhoeven has said he doesn't believe in it—gradually resurfaces in dreams and memories of the wife and child that Murphy left behind. Phrases, gestures and even the RoboCop monotone remind those who knew Murphy, especially Lewis, of the man they thought was dead. A violent nightmare in which he relives Murphy's death sends the cyborg out into the night, looking for the killers, which is how the human machine ultimately discovers who he used to be. Now, in addition to hunting down Boddicker and his gang, Murphy has to reckon with OCP, which is just as responsible for what happened to him as the men who pulled the triggers. But OCP is a big company with many factions, and reckoning with it is a taller order than it first appears.

In a narrative strategy that Ed Neumaier would later repeat in Starship Troopers, Robocop is punctuated by upbeat news broadcasts from two chipper TV anchors (Leeza Gibbons and Mario Marchado) who supply essential information about OCP and the state of the world and whose sang-froid is hilarious. Mock ads for everything from an artifical heart to a gas guzzling auto with the suggestive name "6000-SUX" (always spoken with each letter pronounced separately: "es-you-ex") provide comic relief, as do clips of what is obviously a popular sitcom of the era featuring a short guy with a mustache surrounded by tall busty women. His catchphrase, "I'd buy that for a dollar!" is one of RoboCop's most famous lines.

The bright, happy world of the TV screen only serves to underline the grim and rusty reality of life in the streets, where real cops risk their lives to protect a struggling populace that, to the titans of OCP, is just so much refuse to be swept aside while they profit and party. A few of RoboCop's references may have dated, and some of the technology looks clunky by today's standards, but the cynical forces against which its lone hero fights a dangerous and lonely battle don't look much different than they did in 1987. RoboCop remains as timely, provocative and entertaining as when Verhoeven's wife picked up the script and demanded that her husband read it again.

RoboCop Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

MGM previously released RoboCop on Blu-ray in 2007 in a bare-bones presentation that has frequently been criticized, though not always for the right reason. Cinematographer Jost Vacano, a frequent Verhoeven creative partner, made the most of the film's low budget and practical sets, but RoboCop is and always will be a grainy film from the analog era, its effects created either in camera or through optical superimposition, and its TV interludes reflecting an NTSC aesthetic. Expectations have been high ever since the announcement that MGM was remastering the film for Blu-ray, starting with a 4K scan of the original camera negative.

But 4K scans are not a magic bullet (despite Sony's attempt to build a marketing campaign around the name). 4K is just a number. The result on your screen depends on numerous other factors, including the condition of what's being scanned and the skill of the particular facility chosen to scan the material. And the scan itself is only the beginning. The process of color correction and cleanup must be performed by a skilled colorist overseen by someone knowledgeable about the film (usually a studio executive in charge of asset preservation). The final product must be downconverted to Blu-ray resolution, then compressed and authored. Judgment calls made at any or all of these stages can affect what reaches your display, for good or ill.

Fortunately, in the case of the remastered RoboCop, the right calls seem to have been made, though I doubt the results will satisfy everyone. The TV broadcast segments are still the pre-HD low resolution image that they always have been, because that's how they were shot. The film's grainy texture remains visible. If you are the kind of viewer who objects to grain in your Blu-ray image, you may be disappointed to find that there's even more of it in the remastered RoboCop— but that's because there's so much more picture information. The new scan has picked up a wealth of fine detail in hair, skin textures, backgrounds, the elaborate RoboCop suit designed by Rob Bottin, and virtually every aspect of William Sandell's distinctive production design. For the five main screenshots accompanying this review (and several of the extra shots), I have tried to capture frames from some of the same scenes featured in the review of the 2007 release. Open them at full resolution in side-by-side browser windows for an idea of the difference between the two discs.

That same comparison will demonstrate another feature of the remaster, which is a warmer and more saturated color palette. The effect is to bring out fleshtones and heighten the contrast between the messier human world of the streets and the cooler, detached environs of OCP's labs and executive suites. Lacking any definitive reference, I can't say which version is more accurate, but to my eye the remastered disc is more appealing. Blacks and contrast levels are also appropriately set, which is especially important for the critical scenes at the abandoned factory where first Murphy and then later his RoboCop alter ego confront Boddicker and his gang.

The average bitrate of 27.19 Mbps is adequate for such demanding material. Here and there, I thought I spotted a few instances of compression-related noise, but they were minor and fleeting. Overall, this is a superb rendition of RoboCop in its original form, although anyone expecting a magical transformation into a contemporary work of grainless HD video will be disappointed.

RoboCop Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

RoboCop's wide release was in Dolby Surround, with a limited number of prints in a 70mm blow-up with six-track sound. The 2007 Blu-ray release offered both a lossless 5.1 remix and a lossy 4.0 track that was presumably intended to replicate the four elements of a Dolby Surround mix (left, right, center, surround). The remastered Blu-ray features only the 5.1 remix in lossless DTS-HD MA.

As noted in the review of the earlier release, RoboCop's soundtrack doesn't have the extreme highs or the intense lows available in even the average mixing suite today, but it's still a lively and satisfying experience. The sound mix was nominated for an Oscar, and the sound editors, Stephen Hunter Flick and John Pospisil, won a special achievement Oscar for their clever construction of the various effects, including RoboCop's distinctive step, the whirring and chattering of his internal dynamics and the clanking mechanics of ED-209's tank-like movements. The surrounds are used sparingly but to great effect, and the score by Basil Poledouris (Conan the Barbarian) is so distinctive that it doesn't sound quite like anything else.

RoboCop Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

MGM's 2007 Blu-ray of RoboCop had only a trailer. This new version ports over nearly all of the special features included on MGM's 2004 special edition DVD (minus one trailer and a photo gallery), plus those added for the 2007 two-disc "20th Anniversary Collector's Edition". Entirely new is a 2012 Q&A, which is listed first and marked with an asterisk.

Also, since I routinely criticize Fox when they format MGM's titles without a main menu or bookmarking, I should note that the remastered RoboCop has both.

• *Q&A with the Filmmakers (2012) (1080p; 1.78:1; 42:36): Taped at UCLA's James Bridges Theater on May 31, 2012, and moderated by Robert Rosen, this panel discussion includes Verhoeven, Weller, Allen, producer Jon Davison, screenwriters Neumaier and Miner and effects guru Phil Tippett. Memories have shifted somewhat in the intervening years, but the stories are interesting, and about half of the program is devoted to audience questions. (Although the video format reads as 1080p, the source appears to be of lower resolution.)



• Flesh and Steel: The Making of RoboCop (480i; 1.33:1; 36:55): With a 2001 copyright date, this is a comprehensive and remarkably frank overview of the difficult and frequently overextended production of RoboCop, with special emphasis on the tense relationship between Verhoeven and prosthetics designer Rob Bottin. The principal participants are Verhoeven, Miner, Neumaier, Davison and Paul Sammon, who is best known for his research and writing on Blade Runner but was formerly a marketing executive for Orion Pictures, the studio that made RoboCop.



• 1987 Featurette: Shooting RoboCop (480i; 1.33:1; 7:59): Narrated by producer Jon Davison, but also featuring interviews with Ferrer, Tippett, Verhoeven and Smith, as well as some entertaining on-set footage.



• 1987 Featurette: Making RoboCop (480i; 1.33:1; 8:01): A companion piece to the previous featurette, this one focuses on Weller, with contributions by Allen, Verhoeven again, and various effects and weapons technicians.



• The Boardroom: Storyboard with Commentary with Animator Phil Tippett (480i; 1.85:1; 6:02): As ED-209's rampage plays in slow motion with storyboard drawings inset, Tippett describes the various techniques used to create the sequence.



• Deleted Scenes (480i; 1.33:1; 2:51): A "play all" function is included.
• OCP Press Conference
• Nun in the Street Interview
• Topless Pizza
• Final Media Break



• Villains of Old Detroit (480i; 1.78:1, enhanced; 16:59): "God bless that robot movie!" says Miguel Ferrer at the close of this retrospective documentary featuring the actors who played RoboCop's three main villains (misspelled in the opening credit as "Villians"), as well as Ray Wise, who played a member of Boddicker's gang and can't resist slipping in a reference to his famous role in Twin Peaks as Laura Palmer's dad. In addition to many interesting stories from the set, actors Ferrer and Kurtwood Smith do great Verhoeven impressions.



• Special Effects: Then and Now (480i; 1.78:1, enhanced; 18:22): A discussion of the film's effects with Paul Sammon, William Sandell, matte painter Rocco Gioffre, ED-209 designer Craig Hayes and ED-209 animator Phil Tippett.



• RoboCop: Creating a Legend (480i; 1.78:1, enhanced; 21:09): The focus of this documentary is on the creation of the RoboCop character, with substantial detail about the construction of the suit, choice of weaponry and development of Weller's performance. The participants include Weller, Neumaier, Miner, Verhoeven, Davison, Kurtwood Smith, Miguel Ferrer and Ray Wise.



• Paul Verhoeven Easter Egg (480i; 1.78:1, enhanced; 0:38): This brief insert explains Verhoeven's accidental cameo in the film. It is also noted in the commentary.



• Commentary with Director Paul Verhoeven, Writer Ed Neumeier and Producer Jon Davison: This is a lively, almost jovial commentary, as the three former collaborators exchange notes on who contributed what ideas, plot elements and lines of dialogue. Despite the frayed tempers and intense atmosphere described in the "Flesh and Steel" documentary, everyone seems perfectly happy to give credit to other members of the team. Much of the information related in the commentary is also covered elsewhere in the extras, but it gets a different spin when it's connected to action occurring on screen. (Note: The commentators mention several times that they are watching the R-rated theatrical version.)



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1.78:1; 1:38): This is one of the two trailers included on the 2004 MGM DVD. This one uses Brad Fiedel's Terminator score.



• TV Spot (480i; 1.33:1; 0:31).



• MGM 90th Anniversary Trailer: This plays at startup and is not otherwise available once the disc loads.

RoboCop Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Peter Weller has played a wide range of characters in his varied career, ranging from the hallucinating writer/exterminator in Naked Lunch to outright villains in 24 and Dexter to ambiguous figures such as Admiral Marcus in the recent Star Trek: Into Darkness. But RoboCop remains his signature role, and Paul Verhoeven concludes the 2012 Q&A session by paying tribute to Weller for his contribution to the film's success. In an amazingly small amount of screen time, Weller brought Alex Murphy to life. Then he brought Rob Bottin's elaborate RoboCop suit to life, with only the lower part of his face and a distinctive way of moving that he worked for months to perfect (and then had to relearn all over again, when the suit finally arrived). It's a credit to Weller's performance that the beating heart of Verhoeven's film remains this hulking metallic figure who doesn't, in fact, have a heart, just valves and hydraulics. With Weller in the suit, you know Murphy is still there, even before he does. As far as the new presentation is concerned, it's everything a true fan could want. Highly recommended.