RoboCop (1987) | Canadians First Time Watching | Movie Reaction | Movie Review 

Yup. They HAVE to watch Starship Troopers next! I also recommend watching Robocop 2 (but not 3). Another film they’d like is ‘Crank’ starring Jason Statham.

@@BigMikeDTW 2 is good... 3... I liked it, but only because it scratched my young robot/anime itch when I was a kid.

@@BigMikeDTW Robocop 2 is good , when Tom Noonan plays the villain , Robocop 3 is silly . There is Judge Dredd 1995 , with Stallone and the way better remake from 2012 , where they actually follow the comics canon. Starship troopers have also those strait to DVD sequels .

Eh. Didn't do the book justice

Although it's a very poor adaptation of the book... It is still a must watch if you like robocop and total recall...

one of the best lines

I think you have to be holding a gun for it to work

I mean, it's literally one of the best lines in movie history - let's face it lol

Paul Verhoeven is Dutch so the word bitch is not common there. So he referred to the two actresses as bitches, unbeknownst to him. Miguel Ferrer and Kurtwood Smith said this was so so funny

That and "Can you fly, Bobby?"

Its a difficult balance to strike because there's never a shortage of idiots in any audiance who''ll misread a films message in the worst way. Like Starship Troopers, Fight Club, Demolition Man and even most recently Joker.

@@Avenger85438 NPH walks in wearing a version of an SS uniform. People who don't get satire: I don't get it! The problem is that Heinlein very much was imagining a military junta in control or a straight up fascist state. It seems "nice" mostly because we follow kids in a rich area school

Couldn’t have been stated better!!!

His films tend to be mislabeled as pro- whatever they were actually critical of. Robocop - critics said it was pro militarization of police. Starship Troopers - Critics thought it was pro-authoritarianism, there are always idiots.

This is the Chappelle show problem. Chappelle show became so popular that Dave began to think that a substantial portion of the fans of the show weren't seeing it as satire, instead embracing it as a depiction of black America with no sense of irony. He felt his show was doing more harm than good, so he had a crisis of conscience and abandoned 50 million dollars. How many people watch starship troopers and think that ah . . . what a kickass movie, really you shouldn't get to vote unless your in the military? I think it's a real question, and given our current political context, I, for one, am honestly concerned. People take the wrong messages from these things and Verhoeven's intent as a satirist wasn't to boost the fascists he was satirizing. If I were him I would consider closely whether I successfully had the effect I was aiming for.

I didn't realise Basil did the score for this but now that you mention it I don't know why I never identified it before. Masterful!

Simone is correct! Clarence is Mr. Red Foreman aka Kurtwood Smith.

@@MrTech226 Yea I know, maybe I wasn't clear in what I said, but growing up seeing Robocop first, it was strange to see Kurtwood in a comedic role after knowing him as Clarence, but the new generation sees it the opposite way.

@@darthphayde508 I saw Robocop as a kid first too and still its Red Foreman for me, back in the 80s he was just a nameless villain

Exactly. When I saw the first episode of that 70s show, I looked at my brother and said, "Can you fly, Bobby?"

Weller's also just an amazing physical actor. Compare him with whoever they got to replace him in the later sequels. It's night and day.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was going to be Robocop

@@nickm5419 ​Only because the producers wanted a big name. The reason he wasn't picked was because of the suit. Here is a part of an article where they discuss it..."According to Orion's Paul M. Sammon in 'The Movies That Made Us', the issue was when the suit's designer Rob Bottin started drawing the suit to Arnold Schwarzenegger's proportions, which Sammon claims made him look like ...'the Michelin Man.' The Arnold Schwarzenegger version of RoboCop was "too exaggerated" and bulky, to the point where he looked both indestructible and ridiculous. It soon became clear RoboCop couldn't work with Terminator star Arnie, and that they needed somebody with low body mass and appealing lips - since that's what audiences would see for most of the movie." Before choosing Weller Michael Ironside, Tom Berenger and Rutger Hauer were all considered.

Kinda sad that he never made it out to become a bigger action movie type actor like Arnold, Stallone, or Willis. I think his next biggest film outside of the Robocop franchise was Leviathan. And even though it was a pretty good movie in and of itself, it's largely forgotten today.

@@rsuriyop I prefer "Screamers".

Based on Nancy getting nearly killed at the end I think a lot of us thought that she would also be a Robocop if they did a sequel but they decided not to go down that road.

When you play the directors commentary with Ed Neumeir, they describe at the end being in a cinema, the crowd jumped up and went. YYYYEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH

It was wholesome. :)

@@JustWasted3HoursHere If Robocop2 were made today, Nancy would have definitely become the next Robocop.

@@DocMicrowave if robocop 2 was made today it would be as bad as the reboot of robocop...

He's also highly educated. He's got a PhD in Roman/Italian Rennasaince Art.

Loved "Buckaroo Banzai"! Laugh while you can, Monkey Boy!

The music too. Robocop theme stick with ya. Basil Poledouris strikes again.

'Do you want to know more?'

I agree: Black Book is great. Verhoeven's other films are a bit uneven. I do like Starship Troopers though I think it misses the ideas from Robert Heinlein's book by a wide margin.

good old starship troopers. a bomb.. and then 20 years later... Genius! wheres the fuck'n sequal? and i mean the REAL one. not this low budget shit. I'll never understand why they never made another.

@@jonasfermefors Starship Troopers doesn't miss the point of the book, it's a conscious caricature of the ideologies the book is based on.

@@OctaBech Doesn't that mean that it at least has a different point?

I always wondered what Topher Grace thought when they met. "This is my dad?"

"effects of living inside a metal body with no tactile sensation and his growing dependency on the stimulant drug" Damned if you do, damned if you don't. No feel vs feeling nothing but pain. People will do anything to get rid pain getting hooked on their own drugs trying to get by and survive just the same. Once pain gets past a certain level just thinking becomes hard, it can make ya crazy where cutting things off yourself just to get rid of that pain makes sense. I'm not at that level yet but I'd be fine with no mirror ever... I'd think a face is more for other people, uncanny valley freaks them out.

This is also an issue with some patients after cosmetic surgery, they look in the mirror and don't recognise the face looking back at them

Robocop 2

Best body splatter ever!

You forgot Showgirls...notable because of the massive collective WTF that was had by all after it came out. LOL

Murphy's Baretta is also a weapon in Far Cry Blood Dragon and Far Cry 4. It's fantastic!

Guys how bad were US in the 80s? Every "future" movie city was a wasteland

@@JacopoBasanisi The 80s started about 15 years after white flight to the suburbs from most US cities, leaving very little tax base to keep things going. Throw in Hep-C, HIV/AIDS, and the Crack epidemic and most major cities in the US were an absolute dumpster fire starting in the late 60s and didn't really start to turn around until the late 90s/early 00s.

@@bigfella6898 Oh ok so you are saying this kind of movie was accurate

Me too. Saw it as a kid, my dad's "Police" but radio mechanic/installer.

I saw it in the theater when it came out and couldn't believe a family with 2 young children were sitting behind me. The kids were really chatty and I was dreading they'd talk though out the movie, but they were apparently dazzled into silence by the violence, blood and gore 😛

Hey, I know you 😉 Неожиданно

It's not really a documentary, just a featurette on the DVD/Blu-Ray. But yes it's there. Also there is a spot where Kurtwood and Miguel Ferrer talk about the 'bitches leave' scene, specifically how Verhoeven and his DOP Jost Vacano kept nonchalantly saying it to each other, including imitating their accents. If George lost it so much just hearing it here.. he'll die from laughter seeing that clip.

That is amazing, the actor really understood the character.

Starship Troopers aged too well to say the least.

It just makes me wish there was some point in Robocop when he calls somebody a "dumbass". 🤣🤣🤣

He's *also* the president of the Federation in Trek 6! (Probably only I care about that, tho.)

In my totally not canon headcanon, this was what Red's life turned into after Eric left the house and Kitty passed/divorced him. Nothing left to lose, he turned to crime and ruthlessly rose through the ranks, carving a swath through all those "dumbasses"

@@jennifervalentine8955 Oh...that is good. LOL

I honestly can't understand how people like that book. And I like Heinlein, quite a bit. But that piece of fascist trash, which he literally wrote to protest the US ending nuclear testing, is just terrible. Verhoeven's satire of it, though, is a masterpiece. IIRC, he said of it, "I wanted to give the fascists their perfect world, and show them that all that it was good for was killing fucking bugs". Even people who like the book, grudgingly like the movie. It's pretty funny to watch them twist themselves into knots trying to reconcile the two facts by pretending the movie is fundamentally different from the book, but all they can come up with are minor details and omissions of specific pieces of tech, none of which impact the substance of the narrative. There are lists of "differences" on some of the fan Wikis. I've read them. They're very amusing.

@@michaelccozens The real irony is that all the things that Starship Troopers the book was criticizing are the things that are now destroying society. That book was right on the money. Verhoeven tried to make fun of it, but the movie was a flop and the underlying truth of the message still shone through, despite the attempt at satire. The "woke" left has just about pushed society to the breaking point with their lies and degeneracy, and what will you feminine soi-bois do when things finally break down, and the natural order of things is restored? What will a low-testosterone pseudo-intellectual like yourself do when masculinity, honesty, courage, and honor once again become valuable in life, and your lies, hypocrisy, and Neo-Marxist fantasies go out the window? It's coming soon. Everything you believe in is lies, and everything you hate---masculinity, the genetic inequality of human beings, the fundamentally hierarchical nature of human existence---is the truth. As is typically the case with SJW types, the reason you hate the inegalitarian truth is your subconscious knowledge of your own inferiority. With lefty males, this usually stems from a lack of masculinity and all its virtues, leading to a character defined by cowardice, moral corruption, and fearful hatred of biological reality. There's a reason SJW males tend to be so feminine, and SJW females so unattractive. Egalitarian ideologies (classic Marxism, cultural Marxism) are always the most appealing to the inferior. But such ideologies are false, and contrary to the laws of nature, which is why they will always fail. The ideology that you fear the most is the truth, and it's the future. That's why people like you are getting more and more scared all the time. Don't you know the truth will always win in the end? It's almost time. Stand by for the return of the patriarchy and the rule of the evolutionary elite.

@@michaelccozens The word "fascist" get thrown around carelessly and often demonstrates that the person accusing someone of being a fascist is ignorant of political/economic philosophy. Even Paul Verhoeven doesn't get it; he has said that his take on this movie was influenced by his childhood experience of WWII in the Netherlands, which evidently taught him that fascism is military + good-looking uniforms. This is fine for a child, but not very good for an adult wanting to comment on fascism. So what is fascism? Let's start with Mussolini, who coined the term. His definition was "Everything for the State, nothing outside the State, and nothing against the State." When we move northward and look at the 25 point manifesto of the NSDAP, we can see that is simply Communism in one country, instead of world-wide revolutionary international Communism; the difference is enemy is not the rich (or middle class - the bourgeoise, or the yeoman farmer - the Kulaks), it is the foreigner. During the time leading up to Nazi control of Germany, the NSDAP and the Communists were not ideological opponents, they were rival parties competing for votes by promising to have better socialism than the other. Fascism, therefore is the apotheosis of government such that the state replaces all other sources of authority, maybe also with a side of ethno-nationalism. The novel "Starship Troopers," is, in essence, a mediation on government. What Heinlein puts forth is a liberal democracy with limited suffrage. In his Federation, the right to vote or hold office is not a consequence of existence, but something earned though the willingness to sacrifice one's life for the polity. Federal Service is both entirely voluntary and individually accommodating. Heinlein writes that the government will find some form of service that the hopelessly stupid or the severely disabled can do so that *everybody* has the opportunity to earn citizenship. There is no indication that the state controls the economy, prescribes where people can live or what people can do for a living. Other than the right to vote or hold office, "civilians" have no social, economic or legal disadvantage to citizens - Rico's family is wealthy and are in no fear that this wealth will be arbitrarily confiscated by the state, there are private institutions, such as Harvard, and private businesses, such as his father's. Nobody is prohibited from criticizing the government or the political system (as shown by Rico's father and that scientist who examined Rico after joining the military. There is no conscription, and there is no punishment for dropping out of military service. The society isn't even particularly militaristic; note that while the military is the means by which one can become a citizen, one only becomes a citizen *after* completing military service. While the legal system is more punitive than ours, it is not a police state - people get fair trials and they have fewer police than we do. There is no ethnic discrimination (unless, I suppose, we count the ethnicity as "human," in which case the Federation is unapologetically "nationalist.") None of this is fascistic. The government is not totalitarian - it is not really even authoritarian. There is no apotheosis of the state. Whether or not this is a good and/or sustainable political system is up to the reader, but what it is not is fascism. In the film, Verhoeven actually gets most of this correct (meaning true to the novel). The only difference that I can remember is the arbitrary sentencing of the criminal shown in the film. I cannot remember if it is in the book, but in the film, the Federation isn't even expansionist. The war started with the Arachnids essentially nuking Buenos Aires (Geneva in the novel) in a surprise attack. According to the film the only possible provocation was "Mormon extremists" settling in the "Arachnid Quarantine Zone," where they were killed; however, far from retaliating against the Arachnids, the Federation blames the human settlers, presumably because it wanted to avoid conflict (as shown by establishing a quarantine zone in the first place and advising its people to stay away). Thus the "fascism" that he is criticizing is having a military that fights wars, and that military having uniforms reminiscent of those of the Third Reich. To the extent that Verhoeven was trying to make a satirical critique of "fascism," he failed. Contrast this, for example, with his pseudo-cyberpunk (cyberpunk adjacent?) Detroit in Robocop; if Verhoeven's goal was to paint a picture of a corporate-controlled society filled with violence and lawlessness as a terrible place to live, he succeeded. Nobody wants to live in Robocop's Detroit. However, even according to your own description, people would not mind living in Starship Troopers' Federation. To be fair, Verhoeven had the example of the actual shithole that was (and still is) real Detroit to draw upon for the former, and only the presence of foreign soldiers in smart uniforms occupying his country before he was old enough to understand and/or be interested in political philosophy for the latter.

@@bigtechisbigbrother8690 It's always amusing to see that people like you are thinking they would belong to the ruling class in a system you have described. The truth is, you wouldn't. The most you would reach is to be a small cog in the giant machine of the state - somebody who can be substitued without anyone noticing you are no longer there. The only way you could be more if you are a psycopath, an immoral killer who has no problems if he have to shoot a toddler in the head. And if you really are that kind of person... you have no place in today's civilization, you belong in a mental institute for life.

​@@hanng1242 bro all of that just to say "You're childish. Educate yourself."

Yeah, I lived in downtown Detroit for a couple years & never recognized any areas of Detroit from this movie. Same with ‘The Crow.’ I did recognize lots of spots from ‘Out Of Sight,’ since a lot of the establishing shots were filmed by my old place.

Right? Hardly ANY of it's on fire.

They didn't even want to film this in Detroit. They filmed it in Houston lol

To be precise, they built the suit around the actor they chose but they figured when they cast the part that if they went with a big, beefy, Schwarzenegger type he'd look chunky and not at as much of a bad-ass once you put him in the suit.

@@karlmortoniv2951 My answer wasn't intended to imply the suit was pre built. Obviously, it has to be custom built to perfectly fit the actor. What I meant was they chose a rather slim actor so he would look good in the finished suit which would inevitably add quite some bulk. A bigger actor would have resulted in a comically massive cyborg which wouldn't have fit the tone of the movie they were going for.

@CYB3R2K30 I have mixed feelings about the remake. While I liked some aspects of it, I completely disliked the 'he only thinks he's in control' part. On top of that, Robocop is one of my all time classics which simply don't need a remake. They could have told the same story with a completely new 'hero'.

@@HrWisch I think we’re both saying the same thing. I didn’t mean to call you out or anything like that, but I have a memory of Verhoeven and maybe the producer talking on a commentary track about how slender Peter Weller was and how this was a factor in casting him.

Maybe it's nostalgia, maybe it's my guilty pleasure. But I have a soft spot for Robocop 2. While it was nowhere near the masterpiece the first movie was, it stayed true to the story of the first movie (picking up things like the police strike they were talking about in the first movie). On top of that, Robocop 2 was self aware and they didn't take themselves too seriously which resulted in a lot of funny scenes. Like Ghostbusters 2, it's nowhere near the original. But as a sequel and if you don't expect another 'perfect' movie, it works well enough for me. The remake couldn't pull that off for me. I'd rather watch Robocop 2 than the remake.

Frank Miller wrote a Robocop vs Terminator comic that answered the question.

Screw Attack did an analysis of this death match. In short, Robocop can easily overpower a hydraulic press which is quite literally what killed the Terminator. Winner: Robocop.

@@zairac2564 Robocop is almost as stationary as a hydraulic press too. lol Terminator can just walk around but is the machine that smart?

Verhoeven is also responsible for "Total Recall".

@@DecemberGuy77 He is! But they've watched that on this channel already.

@Latest Obsession true, forgot about Metropolis

I didn't know Verhoven directed Starship Troopers so I went in just expecting some popcorn flick. The moment I saw the infommercials, I knew it was directed by Verhoven. Then I started asking myself, "are we the baddies?"

His name is Verhoeven. I love that you're calling it a trilogy. Definitely has the Verhoeven signature style, just like the Cornetto trilogy.

same! Always saw those as a trilogy. I wish he would bless us with another intro into the genre!

Basic Instinct is great

Well, he apparently only lived long enough to be classified as brain dead, thus allowing them to harvest his body.

Was that The Benny Hill Show only Americanized? I just know I'd watch it.

8,000 thumbs up!!!!

Buckaroo Banzai end titles (credits) (good quality) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-8MqJ3iGBdOo.html

"Which one was yes, go ahead and destroy Russia... or number 2?" ' & of course, "It's not my damn planet, monkey-boy!"

@@hughdavidvisor1769 John Big Booty

Another great Basil Poledouris score, too.

Flesh and Blood....Best middle age movie ever, 2nd Ladyhawk...

I love Flesh + Blood. That was really film that introduced me to both Verhoven as a director and Rutger Hauer as an actor. The plague sequence alone gave me nightmares as a child. I had just read about the black death and seeing it depicted in such a visceral and over the top way really hammered home how brutal it could be.

While not Paul Verhoven, another good dark ages movie is "The Name of the Rose". Sean connery is awesome.

@@carn9507 Indeed. In fact I think we appreciate stop motion even more because we subconsciously understand the HUGE amount of artistry and patience that went into making it (not that CGI is easy necessarily, but the computer does do a large amount of the work). Interesting tidbit about stop motion: When they were designing Jurassic Park they considered stop motion but tests did not live up to what Steven Spielberg saw in his mind's eye. Computer graphics were fairly new but the modelling and animating software was even newer (this was years before even the first crude Toy Story came out), so they thought they'd be forced to use stop motion regardless. Someone came up with the idea of building a rig that a stop motion artist (Phil Tippet, stop motion legend) could manipulate, while the angles of all the joints would be recorded by computer and then the software would interpolate the 'in-betweens' which removes all of the jerkiness of typical stop motion. This is why, to this day, Jurassic Park looks as good or better than many movies coming out almost 30 years later.

I haven't seen Soldier for decades but I remember it as being a very good film. The first thing I remember seeing both Rutger Hauer and Jeroen Krabbe in.

Krabbe is also in 4th Man, along with Renee Soutendijk, who was also in Verhoeven's 'Spetters'--one gets the impression that the Dutch film industry was a relatively small community.

@@WUStLBear82 It still is. Budgets are small and there's a limited market so good actors have a hard time going full time. That said, some great movies were made here.

And that he was skinny. Which allowed him to wear the bulky suit without being too bulky. Even so, he lost a TON of weight through sweating, because of how hot that suit was.

RoboCop: Haven't we done this before? Terminator: I have no record of our previous encounter. Robocop: We have met, I'm sure of it. (MK11 Intro dialogue)

I was 11 as well, and my older sisters took me to this movie with them. I have no idea why my parents didn't mind me going.

It was also my first R rated movie, & to hit me even harder my dad was a cop for over 30 years. He was a young cop like Murphy when this movie came out. It rocked me pretty hard at that age & it’s forever seared into my brain. It’s still one of my all-time favorites.

I believe this the unrated cut.

This was also my first R movie. I was 9. I saw it at a drive in as part of a double bill with Spaceballs.

Yea this has to have been one of the earliest R movies I had seen too. I got physically ill at the torture/killing of Alex and had nightmares of that and just the loss/gradual regain of humanity for him over the course of the film. It was less crime thriller and more horror to me at the time.

@@ThreadBomb Beautiful.

@XyZ313 Absolutely agreed!

And? She was right, wasn´t she? 😀

@@Mikesupr1 Yes. But then again I think she overlooked the doing blow off a hookers cleavage scene

There is a quick topless bit early on...but no romantic stuff.

I've always hoped for that never-made sequel to Buckaroo Banzai.

They already did Total Recall. 😉 But I firmly stand behind the Starship Troopers suggestion. 😊 Such a fun movie. 👍

@@JanGaarni I know they did Total Recall. I only asked them to watch Starship Troopers and only mention that Total Recall which they watched was made by the same director.

@@totomomo18 ah, gotchya. 😊

Final Fantasy has lifted half of their material from extant fantasy and sci-fi. I guess Square Enix changes just enough to not get sued on a regular basis.

Better than "bitches come"(XXX)?

I agree

Back then I think I remember there was a guy arrested because video conferencing was considered a scam. Impossible things, just like how flip phones were Trek only. Or Tron was considered cheating.

I still don't like Ghostbusters 2, but Robocop 2 has always been a good flick.

@@bigfella6898 you can't beat the failed RoboCop 2 montage.

IIRC, Kurtwood Smith wasn't casted because he looked like Himmler. But they made him wear the Himmler glasses to make him resemble Himmler

He's fantastic in the animated The Dark Knight Returns.

Yes!