Does RoboCop get paid and pay taxes?

[Armus]

or as the film has been described elswhere "fascism for socialists"

That's a colorful way to describe it!
"Come quietly or there will be trouble." Robo touches upon a deep need in many for order and justice.

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[Awesome Possum]

Would be interesting to see a story, maybe not robocop, but the idea is, you have this person, he/she either dies or signs there body away, and they get plugged into a cyborg body, either like robocop, for a purpose, or just as an experiment to see if they can.. then, say 5-10 years latter, either the company that done it went bankrupt, or it was a success and led to others being cyberized.. The initial prototype, what happens to him/her? do they spend the money and upgrade the body? or if they went bankrupt, who's going to pay for the maintence? Does someone who is already declared dead.. have any right to life? can they just be turned off?

There was a recent comic miniseries that sort of dealt with this with RoboCop. OCP is bought out by a Silicon Valley type billionaire who replaces the entire police force with robots, giving all the citizens a phone app to report crime. RoboCop is decommissioned by installing commands preventing him from using weapons, his gun is literally on a table and he is unable to pick it up. He ends up squatting in an abandoned home. Another former cop finds him, they manage to remove the commands and the two take back the city, which is basically a police state managed by Twitter.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

There was a recent comic miniseries that sort of dealt with this with RoboCop. OCP is bought out by a Silicon Valley type billionaire who replaces the entire police force with robots, giving all the citizens a phone app to report crime. RoboCop is decommissioned by installing commands preventing him from using weapons, his gun is literally on a table and he is unable to pick it up. He ends up squatting in an abandoned home. Another former cop finds him, they manage to remove the commands and the two take back the city, which is basically a police state managed by Twitter.

That actually sounds interesting. Robo squatting in an abandoned house that sounds interesting in itself. How does he eat or get nutrition?

 

[FPAlpha]

That actually sounds interesting. Robo squatting in an abandoned house that sounds interesting in itself. How does he eat or get nutrition?

I guess he could eat babyfood since his digestive system is rudimentary ( remember the scene in Robocop where that executive even tastes the food mush and says it tastes like babyfood).

As to the general topic - interesting idea. I guess it depends on the legal status of Robocop. The person, in this case Frank Murphy, was officially killed in the line of duty and legally declared dead (i assume.. it's been a while since i saw the whole movie) which of course is probably the first illegal thing OCP did as Murphy wasn't really dead.

So once he is officially dead OCP owns the biological body and just upgraded it with technology to get some use out of it so while Murphy was Robocop he was property of OCP. However when Murphy re-emerged it would be a field day for lawyers, ethics professionals and probably even philosophers as to what constitutes a person - most likely his death certificate would have been revoked and his status changed to "Alive" meaning he's a person again with all privileges and duties.

 

[Awesome Possum]

That actually sounds interesting. Robo squatting in an abandoned house that sounds interesting in itself. How does he eat or get nutrition?

I think he had a bunch of baby food. It was more about the other cop trying to pull Murphy out of a deep depression from having to watch the city go to hell and he him being unable to do anything to stop it.

 

[Christopher]

As to the general topic - interesting idea. I guess it depends on the legal status of Robocop. The person, in this case Frank Murphy,

Alex Murphy.

was officially killed in the line of duty and legally declared dead (i assume.. it's been a while since i saw the whole movie) which of course is probably the first illegal thing OCP did as Murphy wasn't really dead.

As I recall it, in the original film, he was dead, by any current legal or medical definition. The people behind the RoboCop project did not want or expect any of Murphy's original personality to survive in the brain they used to assist with their robot's motor control and autonomic functions; they just wanted an obedient machine they could program and control. I've always figured that they only used a human brain and nervous system as a shortcut, because it was a quicker way to get results than trying to create an artificial control system that worked as smoothly and efficiently as the human equivalent. The fact that portions of Murphy's mind and memory survived after all, that a brain they thought was dead was able to recover some of its former life and identity, came as a surprise to them.

 

[Armus]

Alex Murphy.



As I recall it, in the original film, he was dead, by any current legal or medical definition. The people behind the RoboCop project did not want or expect any of Murphy's original personality to survive in the brain they used to assist with their robot's motor control and autonomic functions; they just wanted an obedient machine they could program and control. I've always figured that they only used a human brain and nervous system as a shortcut, because it was a quicker way to get results than trying to create an artificial control system that worked as smoothly and efficiently as the human equivalent. The fact that portions of Murphy's mind and memory survived after all, that a brain they thought was dead was able to recover some of its former life and identity, came as a surprise to them.

Exactly. That's the heart of the film. Somehow his soul or spirit survived. Verhoeven perfectly captured the moment when his memories kick in gear, when he dreams of his murder. The memories make him flinch and he becomes obsessed with arresting Clarence. Weller plays Robo with more nuance from then on out, to convey the transformation.

 

[Awesome Possum]

Just watch him slowly drop out of his purely robotic expression.

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RoboCop is a perfect film.

 

[Christopher]

Exactly. That's the heart of the film. Somehow his soul or spirit survived.

I'd prefer to say that portions of his memory and personality remained viable in his brain and reawakened once the brain was restimulated and nourished as part of the cyborg system. Which is pretty logical, because death is a more gradual process than we tend to assume, and it would take time for the neural structures within the brain to decay completely. If it was kept on life support after Murphy's death and preserved until it was transferred into the cyborg body, then that could've halted the deterioration, and once his brain was active and stimulated again as part of RoboCop, that stimulation could've revived the residual engrams and such.