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To be honest, the more you see of RoboCop the more you realize his limitations. He can’t run and all of his other movements are pretty slow. In the first movie it didn’t matter because there was no need for him to be fast and in the second his main nemesis was a cyborg as well, so it had the same limitations In the third however he’s pitched against a duo of cyborg ninjas who are played by humans. It makes good ol’ Robo’s look like a snail.
And by the way, you read that right: Cyborg Ninjas.
In RoboCop 3 OCP has finally started building Delta City. To do so they have to evict a lot of people from their homes for which they use so called Rehabilitation officers. In reality these guys are just modern day Nazis who even kill Ann Lewis. So RoboCop joins the resistance and goes up against OCP and their rehab officers.
This is a movie I heavily anticipated ever since I saw some ad about the accompanying video game in 1992. “Great, a part 3” I thought but the movie was nowhere to be found and the video store owner had no idea there even was a part 3. Yes kids, in the days before the internet one relied on people like video store owners to supply you with release dates of home video releases. But when it finally did see the light of day over here in Europe it failed up to live to everyone’s expectations… Big time!
RoboCop 2 was already a notch down from the first movie, but still an enjoyable action movie full of violence and a cool nemesis. In part 3 they literally do everything to kill this franchise. First of all the R-rating has been traded in for something kid friendly, and if only the violence had been toned down I could have lived with that but the producers decided that the movie needed a kid girl in the lead part who would befriend RoboCop. And not just any kid, no this is one of those brilliant computer wiz kids who apparently just by looking at an ED-209 or RoboCop immediately knows where the ports are where she can hook up her laptop and override the programming.
ED-209; killer machine turned “loyal as a puppy” by a 9 year old with a laptop. The annoying thing about these highly intellectual kids is that they make the rest of the adults, even scientists, look like morons. Something which really only happens in kids movies.
And there are also Splatter Punks… because what better way to enhance your movie than putting some “Mad Max” rejects in it? Apparently the future has a gang of criminals easily recognizable due to their cartoon look that seem to be the source of fear for even the police. Now the reason these guys are probably in here is because Frank Miller was involved. Miller, nowadays famous for mostly 300 and Sin City, had a cyborg/street gang fetish in the early 90’s. Both his Spawn #11 and Spawn/Batman crossover featured cyborgs. I never really dug those and they never felt like they really belonged in the Spawn world. But it’s no surprise that the splatter punks are so caricatural. We’ve come a long way since Clarence Boddicker’s crew. As over the top as they might have been, they were still grounded in reality.
Some people complain about the jet-pack as well, but I found that to be an addition that could’ve worked out pretty neatly if the effects were better. Now it looks a bit goofy, but then again the entire movie is goofy.
There are so many illogical elements and choices made here. Let’s take Niko the kid for example. In one scene she sees her parents being put into busses and driven away by OCP rehabilitation officers. The next scene she’s walking around ruins of her old neighborhood yelling their names in order to find them. This is a wiz-kid who surely can apprehend the logic that when somebody is driven away from a location, yelling their names in order to find them will not work. RoboCop’s entrance also makes little sense. He drives his car of a parking garage and crashed it onto the streets, shoots his roof open en emerges from the vehicle. Sure, it’s impressive, but it makes no sense at all… He probably realized OCP would pick up the billing I guess.
RoboCop 3 has little going for it and it put the final nail in the coffin for the RoboCop movies. It’s no surprise it’s generally also known as RoboFlop.
