RoboCop 2

RoboCop 2
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Irvin Kershner
Produced by	Jon Davison
Screenplay by	Frank Miller Walon Green
Story by	Frank Miller
Based on	Characters by Edward Neumeier Michael Miner
Starring	Peter Weller Nancy Allen Dan O'Herlihy Belinda Bauer Tom Noonan Gabriel Damon
Music by	Leonard Rosenman
Cinematography	Mark Irwin
Editing by	Armen Minasian Julie Offer Lee Smith Deborah Zeitman
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Live Entertainment Orion Pictures
Release date(s)	June 22, 1990 (1990-06-22)
Running time	117 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$35 million
Box office	$45,681,173 (United States)[1]

RoboCop 2 is a 1990 science fiction action film directed by Irvin Kershner and starring Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Dan O'Herlihy, Belinda Bauer, Tom Noonan and Gabriel Damon. Set in the near future in a dystopian metropolitan Detroit, Michigan. It is the sequel to the 1987 film RoboCop.^[2]

The film received mixed to negative reviews from critics, and Rotten Tomatoes has given it a "rotten" rating (from the average score of 4.5 out of 10).^[3]

It was the final film directed by Irvin Kershner.

Plot

Omni Consumer Products (OCP) has the city of Detroit in a corporate stranglehold. They have forced a police strike and are attempting to take over the city government with plans to demolish the old city and put up a planned community development in its place.

A new designer drug named “Nuke” has been plaguing the streets. The primary distributor, Cain, is a cult leader with a Messianic complex. RoboCop confronts Cain and his gang at an abandoned construction site. However, they render RoboCop immobile and slice him to pieces, though he remains alive. RoboCop is saved when OCP's Dr. Juliette Faxx takes charge of the new RoboCop team, which includes the development of a more advanced "RoboCop 2" and wants to choose a criminal with a desire for power and immortality. She finds the perfect subject in Cain, who is badly injured after a revived RoboCop persuades the striking police force to help him attack Cain's hideout.

Cain's successor Hob arranges a secret meeting with Mayor Marvin Kuzak, offering to bail out the city's debt to OCP, but only if he agrees to a hands-off policy regarding the distribution of Nuke. Since this would hinder OCP's attempts to take over the city, they send RoboCop 2 in to kill everyone. Everyone but the mayor is killed. RoboCop arrives too late, but learns of RoboCop 2.

During the unveiling of Delta City and RoboCop 2 at a press conference, Cain flies into a rage and opens fire on the crowd. RoboCop arrives, and the two cyborgs battle throughout the building, eventually falling off the roof and into an underground facility. They continue to battle on the street below until RoboCop kills Cain. The OCP President, executive Johnson, and OCP lawyer Holzgang discuss the company's liability for the massacre, and decide to scapegoat Faxx.

Cast

Screenwriter Frank Miller (right) plays the illegal drug chemist "Frank" working for Cain (left) while Hob appears in the background (center).

• Peter Weller as Alex Murphy/RoboCop
• Nancy Allen as Officer Anne Lewis
• Belinda Bauer as Dr. Juliette Faxx
• Dan O'Herlihy as "The Old Man" OCP President
• Felton Perry as OCP Vice President Donald Johnson
• Tom Noonan as Cain
• Roger Aaron Brown as Whittaker
• Willard E. Pugh as Mayor Marvin Kuzak
• Gabriel Damon as Hob
• Galyn Görg as Angie
• Stephen Lee as Officer Duffy
• Robert DoQui as Sgt. Reed (as Robert Do'Qui)
• Frank Miller as Frank
• Ken Lerner as Delaney
• Jeff McCarthy as Holzgang
• Linda Thompson as Mother with Baby
• Brandon Smith as Flint
• Thomas Rosales, Jr. as Chet (as Tommy Rosales)
• Tzi Ma as Tak Akita
• Wanda De Jesus as Estevez
• John Glover as Magnavolt Salesman
• Mario Machado as Casey Wong
• Patricia Charbonneau as Robocop Technician
• Leeza Gibbons as Jess Perkins
• John Ingle as Surgeon General
• Fabiana Udenio as Sunblock Woman
• Barry Martin as OCP Cop
• Mark Rolston as Stef

Production

RoboCop 2 was directed by Irvin Kershner from a script by Frank Miller and Walon Green. After the success of The Dark Knight Returns (comic book mini-series), Frank Miller was contacted by producer Jon Davison about writing a sequel to the Davison-produced box-office smash RoboCop, directed by Paul Verhoeven. Miller enthusiastically accepted the offer, eager to make an impression in Hollywood the way he had in comics the past decade.

However, Miller's script was labeled "unfilmable" by producers and studio executives. His script was heavily changed through rewrites, and drastically re-written into what became RoboCop 2. Even when his tenure as screenwriter was officially over, Miller showed up on set everyday, eager to learn all about the filmmaking process from start-to-finish. He was even given a cameo as "Frank the chemist."

RoboCop is again played by Peter Weller, who played RoboCop in the first film. However, although a second sequel and a television series were made, this was the last time Weller played the role, due to complaints of how cumbersome and exhausting it was to wear the suit and also because Weller found RoboCop 2 to be a very negative and disappointing film to work on. He complained about some scenes not making into the final cut, "There was a couple of things that made the character more human that weren't used. I can't remember exactly what the scenes were, I just remember wondering why they weren't in." These deleted scenes have never been included on home video releases. Weller's co-star, Nancy Allen, also had negative feelings regarding the second film.

Despite not being directed by Paul Verhoeven, the director of the first film, RoboCop 2 contains many of his hallmarks, such as satirical television commercials (such as for an ultra powerful sunblock to deal with the devastation of Earth's ozone layer which is carcinogenic in itself) and ironically upbeat news broadcasts, hallmarks which also appear in Verhoeven's later film Starship Troopers. The events in the second film closely follow the events in the first film (the ED-209 unit, for example, is mentioned as being deployed and malfunctioning).

Filming

RoboCop 2 was chiefly filmed in Houston in 1989.^[4][5] In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, Kershner mentioned that Houston was an ideal location because of the relative calmness of Downtown Houston at night. He also claimed that because the film needed to be shot in the winter, too much snow and rain would be inappropriate. The grand finale of the film was filmed in the Houston Theater District with Wortham Theater Center and Alley Theatre being displayed.^[6] Cullen Center was depicted as the headquarters of Omni Consumer Products, while Houston City Hall was shown during a scene with Mayor Kuzak giving a speech. Scenes with the George R. Brown Convention Center and the Bank of America Center were also included in the film.

Soundtrack

RoboCop 2 (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Film score by Leonard Rosenman
Released	August 31, 1993
Recorded	1990
Genre	Soundtrack
Length	30:19
Label	Varese Sarabande
Producer	Leonard Rosenman
Leonard Rosenman chronology
Where Pigeons Go to Die (1990) RoboCop 2 (1990) Aftermath: A Test of Love (1991)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Soundtrack-express.com	[7]
Soundtrackcollector.com	[8]
SoundtrackNet	(3.1/5)[9]
Runmovies.eu	[10]

The film score was composed and conducted by Leonard Rosenman, who did not use any of Basil Poledouris's themes from the first film; the soundtrack album was released by Varèse Sarabande. It was not well received by fans or film music reviewers, many of whom complained about Rosenman's use of a choir chanting "Robocop."

The glam metal group Babylon A.D. released a song called "The Kid Goes Wild", written by members Derek Davis, Vic Pepe, and Jack Ponti.^[11] The song is played in the background in the middle part of the film, and it was also used to promote the film. The group created a music video featuring RoboCop targeting the band and having a shootout with some bad guys (footage of the film was also used).

Track listing

1. "Overture: Robocop" – 6:02
2. "City Mayhem" – 3:37
3. "Happier Days" – 1:28
4. "Robo Cruiser" – 4:40
5. "Robo Memories" – 2:07
6. "Robo and Nuke" – 2:22
7. "Robo Fanfare" – 0:32
8. "Robo and Cain Chase" – 2:41
9. "Creating the Monster" – 2:47
10. "Robo I vs. Robo II" – 3:41

Release

Box office

RoboCop 2 debuted at No.2 at the box office.^[12][13]

Critical reception

RoboCop 2 received mixed reviews from critics and fans of the first film. While the special effects and action sequences are widely praised, a common complaint was that the film did not focus enough on RoboCop and his partner Lewis and that the film's human story of the man trapped inside the machine was ultimately lost within a sea of violence. This film was also partially disliked by actors Weller and Allen as they both thought it was a negative film to work on.^{[citation needed]} In his review, Roger Ebert wrote "Cain's sidekicks include a violent, foul-mouthed young boy (Gabriel Damon), who looks to be about 12 years old but kills people without remorse, swears like Eddie Murphy, and eventually takes over the drug business... The movie's screenplay is a confusion of half-baked and unfinished ideas... the use of that killer child is beneath contempt..."^[14]

Additionally, the film "reset" RoboCop's character by turning him back into the monotone-voiced peacekeeper seen early in the first film (despite the fact that by the end of the first film, he had regained his human identity and speech mannerisms). Many were also critical of the child villain Hob; David Nusair of Reel Film Reviews stated, "That the film asks us to swallow a moment late in the story that features Robo taking pity on an injured Hob is heavy-handed and ridiculous (we should probably be thankful the screenwriters didn't have RoboCop say something like, 'Look at what these vile drugs have done to this innocent boy')."^[15]

Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote, "Unlike RoboCop, a clever and original science-fiction film with a genuinely tragic vision of its central character, Robocop 2 doesn't bother to do anything new. It freely borrows the situation, characters and moral questions posed by the first film." She further adds, "The difference between Robocop and its sequel, [...] is the difference between an idea and an afterthought." She also expressed her opinion about the Hob character, "The aimlessness of Robocop 2 runs so deep that after exploiting the inherent shock value of such an innocent-looking killer, the film tries to capitalize on his youth by also giving him a tearful deathbed scene."^[16] The Los Angeles Times published a review panning the film as well.^[17]

RoboCop 2 currently has 35% positive reviews on the film review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, with 20 of 31 counted reviews giving it a "rotten" rating and an average score of 4.5 out of 10.^[3]

Adaptations

Novel

A mass market paperback novelization by Ed Naha, titled RoboCop 2: A Novel, was published by Jove Books. Marvel Comics produced a three-issue adaptation of the film by Alan Grant. Like the novelization, the comic book series includes scenes omitted from the finished movie. Ocean and Data East published a series of video games based on RoboCop 2

Frank Miller's Robocop

Frank Miller's original screenplay for RoboCop 2 took on an almost "urban legend" status, and was later turned into a nine-part comic book series called Frank Miller's RoboCop. Critical reaction to the comic adaptation of the Miller script were mixed to negative. Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly gave the comic a "D" score, criticizing the "tired story" and lack of "interesting action."^[18] A recap written for the pop culture humor website I-Mockery said, "Having spent quite a lot of time with these comics over the past several days researching and writing this article, I can honestly say that it makes me want to watch the movie version of RoboCop 2 again just so I can get the bad taste out of my mouth. Or prove to myself that the movie couldn't be worse than this."^[19]

See also

• List of American films of 1990
• RoboCop 2 (video game)
• RoboCop 3

References

External links

• RoboCop 2 at AllRovi
• RoboCop 2 at Box Office Mojo
• RoboCop 2 at the Internet Movie Database
• RoboCop 2 at Rotten Tomatoes