Truthfully Bob Morton was no better than Dick Jones, both were willing to cheat and lie their way to the top. Bob Morton didn't plan for Murphy's personality to resurface.
Let's examine ED-209
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Truthfully Bob Morton was no better than Dick Jones, both were willing to cheat and lie their way to the top. Bob Morton didn't plan for Murphy's personality to resurface.
But at least Morton was personally invested in his work, such that...well, he cared if it worked! Morton may have been callous as to Murphy's humanity, but at least he cared if RoboCop functioned properly.
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I don't think so, after Robocop's "dream" Morton wasn't willing to shut him down ad find out what was wrong, he even scolded Lewis for even talking to him. As long as Robocop was working properly Morton was a bigshot, he could've cared less about Murphy's humanity or ending crime in old Detroit.
Ed-209 was goingto be used to clear out old Detroit to make way for Delta City, he wasn't meant for taking in criminals just killing them off.
That's the catch. As long as Robocop was working properly.
I do grant that Morton didn't care about Murphy as a person and didn't want his humanity 'awakened', as such. But Morton definitely cared if Robo actually worked right. Morton just thought that Robo would work better if it didn't act human.
And Morton was definitely no fan of ED-209. That was Dick Jones' thing. All Dick cared about was selling ED and its replacement/maintenance; anything beyond that was irrelevant. Dick openly said he didn't care if ED actually worked; Morton really believed in Robocop's mission and plans to end crime in Detroit.
Yes, Morton was a jackass, but at least he truly wanted his creation to succeed. Dick didn't care about any of that.
For two real-life examples of such, read into the history of the F-22 and F-35.
Lots of defective or useless products get sold successfully, because advertising is about deception. Advertisers may not be allowed to lie outright, but their job is essentially to bend the truth to make products seem more appealing -- and some are more unscrupulous about it than others.
This thread is basically saying "Let's forget it's satire and it doesn't make sense to apply real world logic and let's apply real world logic. How come it doesn't make sense?"
My specific example is the assumption that real world civil rights laws apply, which seems to be clearly false in the movie.
My specific example is the assumption that real world civil rights laws apply, which seems to be clearly false in the movie.
Forgive me, but that's kind of overlooking the point of satire, isn't it? Satire isn't just empty nonsense. It's an exaggeration of real problems, a way of calling attention to genuinely bad things in the world. The idea of a dystopian future where civil rights have eroded under the onslaught of corporate self-interest is disturbingly plausible when you look at the world today; it's not the current status quo in the US, but it's one that could exist here if certain groups had their way, and it's one that no doubt does exist in other parts of the world.
And again, the whole idea of ED-209, the whole point of its inclusion in the movie, was that it wasn't a viable or practical concept, that it was overkill in a rather literal sense. There are plenty of things that exist in the real world that can't be justified by real world logic, because the real world includes people who are incompetent or irresponsible and just have bad ideas. Heck, even people who are competent and responsible have bad ideas sometimes. ED-209 was a rejected proposal, remember. Weeding out bad ideas is part of the process.
I agree completely. My problem was with taking it literally and seriously without accommodating for the changes to the universe the movie brings.
^Oh, I see. Yes, that's right. The situation can't be judged on the basis of real-world laws and rights, because it's set in a dystopian alternate world.
Nothing I recall in the movie suggests it takes place in a "dystopian" world where civil rights and other tenets of Americanism has been curbed. Sure, Dtetroit is a hell-hole one step away from being razed in favor of a newer, better, city but that's hardly indicative of anything. Near as we can tell it's still by an large a "free" society with rights similar to the ones we actually have. Robocop even Mirandizes Boddicker when arresting him. How much of a dystopia with curbed civil rights can it be if things like Miranda Rights still exist? Near as we can tell aside from needing full tactical/riot gear policing still is carried out the same as it is today just with a greater edge of danger. Hell, Robocop's Prime Directives (Serve the Public Trust, Protect the Innocent, Uphold the Law) largely suggests the world is by and large "normal."
We get glimpses of the news media and other aspects of popular culture through commercials and TV shows and it doesn't seem all that different from what we actually had at the time and still have today.
So I'm not sure where the idea is that Robocop takes place in a dystopia beyond Detroit being a crime-ridden hell-hole which, well....
Feelings on present-day Detroit aside, in the movie it's clearly just a very dilapidated city with an overburdened and under-budgeted police force. As a city is it a dystopia? Ehhh.... sure. But that's hardly indicative of what the entire country our police forces around the nation are like.
We get glimpses of the news media and other aspects of popular culture through commercials and TV shows and it doesn't seem all that different from what we actually had at the time and still have today.
So I'm not sure where the idea is that Robocop takes place in a dystopia beyond Detroit being a crime-ridden hell-hole which, well....
Feelings on present-day Detroit aside, in the movie it's clearly just a very dilapidated city with an overburdened and under-budgeted police force. As a city is it a dystopia? Ehhh.... sure. But that's hardly indicative of what the entire country our police forces around the nation are like.
The world presented in the original Robocop was pretty far from reality. It was exaggerated enough that you could easily see it for satire. I mean, a dude got blown away in a corporate boardroom by a defective robot and nobody really gave a shit. That's not real life.
The cruelty of Boddicker and his men is also pretty outlandish, not at all typical of criminal behavior, but shown to be pretty typical for future Detroit.
Everything's over the top in pretty obvious ways.
Everything in movies is pretty much *always* over the top. That doesn't make all movies taking place in a dystopia.
And I'd hardly say "no one gives a shit" when the guy is blown away in the boardroom. We hear a woman crying afterwards, someone *does* call for an ambulance and even "The Old Man" is bothered by it. Norton even, though somewhat as an after thought, says "Too bad about..." later in the elevator. The only one who really didn't seem to care was Dick Jones.
I don't disagree the violence and behavior by some of the characters in the movie as being over-the-top but I do disagree with the future presented in the movie as being a "dystopia." Because other than some executives not giving a shit when a man is blown away right in front of them and some rather indifferent attitudes to some cops being killed and some ludicrous behavior by a drug kingpin, there's not much suggestion that this is in a "dystopia" anymore than *we're* living in a dystopia in the eyes of people living in the 1950s because we have TV shows about fat low-class people, people trying to survive on an island for 30 days and we have predator drones flying over the country while the government data-tracks phone information.
Movies always have over-the-top criminals in them, especially in the law-enforcement genre. "Lethal Weapon" features criminals connected to old army units, kidnapping teenage girls of police officers, and capturing police officers and shocking the shit out of them for information. Yet I don't think 1987 Los Angeles was supposed to be a "dystopia."
That's what I was getting at. Not that Robocop wasn't "far from reality" but that the world they live, outside of the criminal activity and the activity of a few business men, wasn't too much different from ours to the point of calling it a "dystopia."
And I'd hardly say "no one gives a shit" when the guy is blown away in the boardroom. We hear a woman crying afterwards, someone *does* call for an ambulance and even "The Old Man" is bothered by it. Norton even, though somewhat as an after thought, says "Too bad about..." later in the elevator. The only one who really didn't seem to care was Dick Jones.
I don't disagree the violence and behavior by some of the characters in the movie as being over-the-top but I do disagree with the future presented in the movie as being a "dystopia." Because other than some executives not giving a shit when a man is blown away right in front of them and some rather indifferent attitudes to some cops being killed and some ludicrous behavior by a drug kingpin, there's not much suggestion that this is in a "dystopia" anymore than *we're* living in a dystopia in the eyes of people living in the 1950s because we have TV shows about fat low-class people, people trying to survive on an island for 30 days and we have predator drones flying over the country while the government data-tracks phone information.
Movies always have over-the-top criminals in them, especially in the law-enforcement genre. "Lethal Weapon" features criminals connected to old army units, kidnapping teenage girls of police officers, and capturing police officers and shocking the shit out of them for information. Yet I don't think 1987 Los Angeles was supposed to be a "dystopia."
That's what I was getting at. Not that Robocop wasn't "far from reality" but that the world they live, outside of the criminal activity and the activity of a few business men, wasn't too much different from ours to the point of calling it a "dystopia."
I'm not really in the mood to debate this, so let's just say that we interpret things differently. However, the robot makes a little more sense under my interpretation, imo.
See, the problem here is that you're defining dystopia too narrowly. RoboCop isn't a political dystopia, it's a corporate dystopia. It's set in a society where the rule of law still nominally applies, but corporations have so much unchecked power that they can take over the police force and arrange for a cop to be murdered in order to advance a corporate law-enforcement initiative. Regardless of the letter of the law, it's still a world where a powerful few are able to run roughshod over the rights of the many to serve their own agendas, a world where an uncaring system tramples the rank-and-file populace.
But that's just it. The movie was a satire on the excessive violence and callousness of other '80s movies, on the whole cultural zeitgeist of '80s America. Or at least that's how Verhoeven spun it, although his other films were just as violent and excessive.
But many would say we are living in a dystopia because of those things, or at least trending in that direction. There's nothing in the word "dystopia" that requires it to be incompatible with reality. The word literally just means "bad place," a state or society in which life is not good for most of the populace. There have been lots of dystopian regimes in real life. What would you call North Korea?
It's debatable whether or not the society in the original RoboCop is dystopian, but it sure seems to be one in RoboCop 2 - if only for the fact that the ozone layer is gone, and to go outside at all you have to slather on industrial-strength sunblock (which in itself causes cancer).
That being said: I'd kind of like to have a MagnaVolt.
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w39o6eSI06Y[/yt]
That being said: I'd kind of like to have a MagnaVolt.
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w39o6eSI06Y[/yt]
I watched the trilogy last week, in preparation for the new movie, so this is fresh in my memory.
ED-209 could not be an effective normal law enforcement officer for the reason already stated; other than blowing away a suspect there is nothing it can do to stop crime, it can't detain.
That said, the satirical Detroit of RoboCop doesn't really need a normal law enforcement officer. Given the entirely over the top violence shown to be rampant throughout the city I think being able to blow away criminals (and anyone else who got in the way) was enough to allow ED-209 to effectively "clean up Detroit", which is the goal of OCP.
The droid certainly couldn't be a Police Officer in our world, but I would say that it's intended application is consistent within the world it occupies. I.E. as already stated, satire is satire.
And as a fun fact, that sunblock was modeled by the lovely "Lady" Adira from Babylon 5.
ED-209 could not be an effective normal law enforcement officer for the reason already stated; other than blowing away a suspect there is nothing it can do to stop crime, it can't detain.
That said, the satirical Detroit of RoboCop doesn't really need a normal law enforcement officer. Given the entirely over the top violence shown to be rampant throughout the city I think being able to blow away criminals (and anyone else who got in the way) was enough to allow ED-209 to effectively "clean up Detroit", which is the goal of OCP.
The droid certainly couldn't be a Police Officer in our world, but I would say that it's intended application is consistent within the world it occupies. I.E. as already stated, satire is satire.
And as a fun fact, that sunblock was modeled by the lovely "Lady" Adira from Babylon 5.
Another nod to dystopia is that a nuclear reactor melted down in the Amazon rainforest, with all that implies — heck, the fact that a nuclear reactor was built in the Amazon rainforest! — and no one cared.
