:eek:
Or, in a more enlightened setting, he’s AC/DC.
He’s TNT.
Ah. That would explain why Paul Weller looked so puzzled when I asked him to sign a photograph of Robocop.
I mean, he did it. But, yes.
The reboot will be called RoboMuslim. Salim is a gentle Imam in Detroit brutally hacked to pieces by a terrorist cell. After he’s rebuilt, he goes undercover as a weaving machine at burka factory, where he sucks the terrorists in one by one, rips them to shreds and uses their remains to make modest garb for devout women. His reward is that hot muslim chicks, even devout ones, regularly strip down in front of him to try on their new clothes, and none of them give a second thought to the machine that seems to vibrate just a little more when they’re naked.
What I liked about Robocop was that the film presented a pretty large scale operation (the Police, OCP, Robo and the bad guy gang) and then just let them get on with it, showing it all on screen with no build-up. Eg. Security Concepts build Robo, Bam! he’s on the street solving crimes right away, blowing away perps left and right. Most films before that just didn’t have the budget or the direction to put a scenario together and then show the large scale results with no fuss. I think Veerhoven’s Starship Troopers did it as well, just get on with it and show the explosions and killings right away.
We’re almost living in a world run by Omni-Consumer Products now. I wonder if that point is lost on modern audiences.
RE: “Shoot him in the mouth”
The biologic material in Robocop was no more than a few “chunks on a coroner’s table.” I got the impression it didn’t amount to more than (some of) Murphy’s central nervous system. Everything else was metal or synthetic.
He did have at least one working arm when they got him. Bob Morton specifically ordered them to remove it in favor of “full body prosthesis” right in front of Murphy’s face. So I’m guessing he had at least a torso and organs. But just what “Full body prothesis” entails is not explicitly stated. My opinion is that he had his highly modified (armored) torso and central nervous system and a few artificially assisted organs. The rest was machine. After all, he had to eat baby food to keep his organics alive.
…And in the shoot-out with the cops in the OCP car park he was definitely using his arm to cover his face from bullets.
I imagine his face is probably more vulnerable than the rest of him but its still not flesh and blood, and attempting to protect his face was a pitifully human gesture in what is an overall rather affecting scene.
btw apparently this is what Robocop looks like underneath:
:eek: 
If Robocop’s face is artificial, why did OCP make him look like Murphy instead of random male face #42? They didn’t want anyone know he was Murphy, least of all him.
It felt cold, well, maybe cyborg cops don’t run as well at 98.6 and so he’s kept at a cooler temp, I dunno.
Good question, don’t know.
But it would be equally strange to armour him up and then leave his lower face so exposed if it was really flesh and bone, one bullet and your expensive cyborg law-enforcement machine is so much scrap metal.
Actually thats an interesting ‘in-world’ question, what should your new robot cop look like? He needs to be human enough for the public to emphasis with, interact with and willingly take orders from but not human enough to be vulnerable otherwise whats the point. Keeping an artificial human face over an armoured humanoid chassis is a good compromise.
edited to add I imagine that sticking a human brain/mind into a non-humanoid body could in itself cause problems, the brain would be expecting two arms, two legs etc and messing with that would be difficult. Even Robocop 2.0 had a basically bipedal stance and body if I recall correctly.
Even with 1986 technology it was perfectly possible for a plastic surgeon to make someone’s jawline and mouth unrecognisable (See also Michael Jackson). With Robocop era technology there was no need for him to look like Murphy even if if that is Murphy’s actual face.
Either way you look at it, Robocop didn’t need to look like Murphy because of physical limitations.
The real explanation is that he looked that way because the concept demanded it. The director needed physical continuity between Murphy and Robocop, and the face was the way to do that. Any in-universe explanation is just fanwankery.
Heck, even the Robocop 2 prototype had a videoscreen to show a rendered version of Cain’s face, complete with emotional cues to indicate his mood. Why? Why not?
It’s imperative you keep the human element in RoboCop. He’s a tragic and sympathetic character, that over the course of the film begins to realize who he was before. When he was having flashbacks of his wife and son in his former life, those parts felt pretty thin and cheesy, but it still worked. I suppose a reboot could trump up that connection a bit more.
But all in all, there are so many kickass parts in the original, that if you didn’t include them, it’d subtract away from the overall dark violence of the film. The scene of ED-209 malfunctioning in the OCP boardroom is a classic. It was truly horrifying and intimidating. The maiming of Murphy by Boddeicker and gang, going black, then the interspersed cuts we get as they’re bringing RoboCop online from his POV. The internal rivalry within OCP between Dick and Bob, and their respective projects was interesting, and offered the movie a passive antagonist. It has a zillion little moments that all add up to something holistic.
You have to keep his prime directives, as it played right into the very end so brilliantly.
What would worry me most is loosing the iconic look of RoboCop and ED-209. The darkness mixed with humor is a fine line that I think would be difficult to pull off nowadays with the lot of directors we have.
That said, I think out of anyone working today, Whedon might be perfect to helm a reboot.
Actually I always thought that they kept Murphy’s original head and face, and a humanoid body because they needed to- they hadn’t perfected a pure brain-in-jar cyborg yet. What they really wanted was a robot. In Robocop 2 the two failed prototypes are much more machine-like, though they still retain the skull before the lab techs are finally able to have the brain and eyes be the sole organic components.
RoboCop’s jaw has been at least partially replaced with metal. Check out this pic of the back of his head, where you can clearly see the synthetic hinge. (That pic appears to be fan art, but it matches up pretty well to the movie stills I could find on line.) I’m guessing that if any of his organic head is left at all, it’s just the upper skull and face - the fleshy bits that are left exposed by the helmet are just skin and a thin layer of flesh over a metal mandible.
I’ve been looking through the imdb and elsewhere, but I can’t find out the identity of a certain cast member. She was a brunette in the POV scene of Robocops creation. At a party she’s drunk and gives him a silly crown and a big kiss. Who was this character and who portrayed her?
Was it Sage Parker? http://www.aveleyman.com/ActorCredit.aspx?ActorID=38474