Did Robocop die after the events of the third film???

[FPAlpha]

I’m pleased they stopped at 3

It's always hard to follow up on a genre defining movie, most of them fail and the Robocop sequels just didn't measure up.

I liked the japanese robot in the third movie though in appareance and agility, a natural progression in technological advancement.

 

[urrutiap]

go watch the remake which the remake gets a little gruesome showing much much is left of Alex Murphy. Just the lungs, a hand and his head

How much of Murphy was left anyway? He has a rudimentary digestive system, which probably provides nutrients to keep his brain functioning, but how much of it is a brain/human tissue encased in that skull and how much of it is a processor. He has a human face, but that's probably stretched over a metallic framework, like a Terminator. I think, at some point, what's left of Murphy's brain is going to age and go through cognitive decline, resulting in it being completely replaced by a computer. The same goes for his digestive system. There will probably be nothing left of Murphy, but a program that thinks it's Murphy.

 

[Christopher]

go watch the remake which the remake gets a little gruesome showing much much is left of Alex Murphy. Just the lungs, a hand and his head

Yes, but as I alluded to before, the remake is quite different from the original in that Murphy isn't actually killed first. In the original movie, Murphy was dead, and the intent was to use his brain as merely a memory bank and a control system for RoboCop's autonomic functions, with the revival of his partial memory and personality being a complete surprise. In the remake, Murphy was still alive and was turned into a cyborg to keep him alive.

 

[Skipper]

I really never understood why we were supposed to think that Micheal Keaton was a bad guy in the remake. Yes, he wanted more robots in the street. It was supposed to be a bad thing?

 

[Christopher]

I really never understood why we were supposed to think that Micheal Keaton was a bad guy in the remake. Yes, he wanted more robots in the street. It was supposed to be a bad thing?

Well, he did a number of villainous things like coverups, kidnapping, and attempted murder. Sometimes villainy is about using evil means to pursue a theoretically positive end -- e.g. Batman's foe Poison Ivy fighting to protect the environment but doing it through ecoterrorism, brainwashing, and murder.

But yes, the movie wanted us to think that having heavily armed robots militarizing the police force and using lethal force without human oversight or restraint was a bad thing, as it certainly would be in real life. Unfortunately, the movie did not do a good enough job of showing why that was a bad thing. We saw characters debating the morality of the issue, but the movie didn't put its money where its mouth was, failing to show any actual negative consequences to individual liberty or safety once Murphy’s emotions were suppressed to let him operate in full-on drone mode. If anything, the movie presented ubiquitous surveillance as a pretty unambiguous positive, letting Robo track down bad guys in mere moments. The only people he endangered in emotionless drone mode were criminals and corrupt cops. The only negative consequences to Omnicorp’s progressive dehumanization of Murphy were the emotional consequences to Murphy himself and his family, and those proved pretty easy to overcome. So not only did the film fail to make a clear statement about the issues it superficially engaged with, but it had little in the way of stakes overall.

 

[Oddish]

I really never understood why we were supposed to think that Micheal Keaton was a bad guy in the remake. Yes, he wanted more robots in the street. It was supposed to be a bad thing?

The power of life and death, untempered by conscience? Yes, it's a very bad thing.

 

[publiusr]

Wanting more cops is easily questioned.
An image floating in my head…made easier by the Robocop bits just being appliances…would be for a power figure to lay a hand on Murphy and all that just fall away.

—all as a ploy…

 

[Skipper]

The power of life and death, untempered by conscience? Yes, it's a very bad thing.

Or a very good one. Maybe a robot wouldn't be affected by the color of someone's skin. The problem is that as the theme is treated in the film, at least for me the effect it had was "Who cares". It would have been the same if the villain of the film had wanted to market genetically modified avocados. A generic McGuffin which makes the Bad Guy do Very Bad things for which he must be punished by the Good Guy.

 

[Christopher]

Wanting more cops is easily questioned.

That's true in general, but in the movie, what Sellars wanted wasn't more cops, but armed, autonomous military drones taking over police work, analogously to ED-209 in the original movie.

Or a very good one. Maybe a robot wouldn't be affected by the color of someone's skin.

It wouldn't be capable of compassion or restraint, either. It wouldn't be capable of defusing a situation without violence, or calling social services to get someone mental health care, or (as happened recently in my building) fulfilling someone's request to check in on a relative who wasn't answering their phone and make sure they were all right. In the context of the movie, we aren't talking RoboCops with human consciences here, we're talking mindless military drones only capable of using intimidation and force against people they conclude to be breaking the law. It's a metaphor for the excessive militarization of the police that's happening in real life.

And robots absolutely can be affected by someone's skin color, because their judgment is only as good as what's programmed into them by humans. It's already been shown that AI programs are susceptible to absorbing the racial and gender biases inherent in the information that's fed into them, and that some facial-recognition or biometric-identification programs have trouble with black faces because the people who designed them only trained them on white faces.

 

[Skipper]

That's true in general, but in the movie, what Sellars wanted wasn't more cops, but armed, autonomous military drones taking over police work, analogously to ED-209 in the original movie.

In fact, the original film made you understand perfectly what was at stake. There were angry cops. There was the ED-209 demo which was a complete failure. There were managers who were the quintessence of 80s greed and capitalism and for whom maintaining public order was just another way of earning money. In the new film everything is "meh".

It wouldn't be capable of compassion or restraint, either. It wouldn't be capable of defusing a situation without violence, or calling social services to get someone mental health care, or (as happened recently in my building) fulfilling someone's request to check in on a relative who wasn't answering their phone and make sure they were all right. In the context of the movie, we aren't talking RoboCops with human consciences here, we're talking mindless military drones only capable of using intimidation and force against people they conclude to be breaking the law. It's a metaphor for the excessive militarization of the police that's happening in real life.

And robots absolutely can be affected by someone's skin color, because their judgment is only as good as what's programmed into them by humans. It's already been shown that AI programs are susceptible to absorbing the racial and gender biases inherent in the information that's fed into them, and that some facial recognition programs have trouble with black faces because the people who designed them only trained them on white faces.

If the new film had convincingly conveyed just 10% of these elements then it would have been interesting.

 

[Skipper]

‘Robocop,’ ‘Stargate’, ‘Legally Blonde’ & ‘Barbershop’ Among Titles In Works For Film & TV As Amazon Looks To Supercharge MGM IP

 

[Christopher]

In fact, the original film made you understand perfectly what was at stake. There were angry cops. There was the ED-209 demo which was a complete failure. There were managers who were the quintessence of 80s greed and capitalism and for whom maintaining public order was just another way of earning money. In the new film everything is "meh".

I didn't think the remake was bad overall, but it's true that it failed to convey its stakes and message clearly and was unfocused as a result. They had talking heads debating the ethics of militarizing the police, but the story didn't effectively illustrate the issues of the debate, so it was just talk.

 

[Oddish]

Or a very good one. Maybe a robot wouldn't be affected by the color of someone's skin.

But it would be incapable of context. The robots in the beginning of the film were incapable of differentiating the threat posed by men in explosive vests and a teenager with a kitchen knife. Human life is too valuable to reduce to a matter of 1's and 0's.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Murphy (original version) was legally dead, so he wouldn't be covered by his employment medical insurance. Otherwise, I assume he would be entitled to ongoing care. He was basically doubly screwed by the system. Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell seemed to have saved enough money to buy a replacement body when required, although she and the Puppet Master uploaded their merged essence to the Net (presumably, the future Internet). Murphy predated the Internet and I doubt he had access to ARPANET - it was a bit slow in any case. It's very tragic, but thankfully also fiction - for now.

 

[Skipper]

Has anyone seen the miniseries "Robocop PD"? I have heard VERY conflicting opinions.

 

[ED-209]

Prime Directives? Yeah - it's fun to watch but don't go in expecting something to rival the original movies. It's camp and cheap, but enjoyable with a few moving moments if you can just enjoy it for what it is.

 

[Christopher]

Has anyone seen the miniseries "Robocop PD"? I have heard VERY conflicting opinions.

I hated Prime Directives. For one thing, it completely missed the point that RoboCop was a satirical dark comedy. It played everything grim and serious and dismal and was just no fun. For another, the actor playing RoboCop was terrible. He played him as just a generic tough, wisecracking cop, with none of the dimension and subtlety that Richard Eden brought to the role in the weekly series. And he was the wrong size for the costume and evidently didn't get decent movement training, so he just flailed around in it like a kid in an oversized Halloween costume.

 

[Skipper]

Prime Directives? Yeah - it's fun to watch but don't go in expecting something to rival the original movies. It's camp and cheap, but enjoyable with a few moving moments if you can just enjoy it for what it is.

I hated Prime Directives. For one thing, it completely missed the point that RoboCop was a satirical dark comedy. It played everything grim and serious and dismal and was just no fun. For another, the actor playing RoboCop was terrible. He played him as just a generic tough, wisecracking cop, with none of the dimension and subtlety that Richard Eden brought to the role in the weekly series. And he was the wrong size for the costume and evidently didn't get decent movement training, so he just flailed around in it like a kid in an oversized Halloween costume.

Like I said, conflicting opinions

 

[ED-209]

Fandom in a nutshell

 

[Skipper]

Fandom in a nutshell

You have a point!
Joking aside, if the best opinion on PD is "It's ok", I think I'll spend my time with something else, considering that it's composed by 4 movie-length episodes!