Andy's Archive: RoboCop 3 (1993)

Credit: Orion Pictures

This is by far the worst of the RoboCop series despite having the most relevant plot, which makes this a painful viewing experience. What was once a great character that bordered on being fully mechanical and a robot who thought he was a human, is now nothing more than a punching bag and a bad punchline. At least a few familiar faces appear here, some for better or worse; mostly worse.

Before RoboCop 3 brings out the worst in me, it might be best to at least mention what the movie does right. The first twenty minutes actually set the tone for what could have been a darkly witty action movie and Delta City (briefly mentioned before in the series) seems closer than ever to being realized. OCP is moving forward with its plans for the city of the future, even if it means most of its would-be citizens aren't up to the standards of this rich metropolis. OCP is using a militarized group to carry out the eviction notices, which is a cruel twist on OCP buying the police force in the first movie, because now they're outsourcing the jobs of the police to a group of combat veterans. What can be filed under "life imitating art", or the "shit that's really real" file, is the big reveal that OCP is funded by a Japanese corporation, in much the same way that the Japanese own our asses after bailing the USA out in 2009. Along with the economic satire is a pretty darn good scene in a donut shop, which gives Anne Lewis a great re-introduction to the audience as she was rarely featured in the previous sequel. I'm glad they gave Lewis one of the few shining moments of the movie before they killed her off, but it’s probably for the best that they killed her off before the movie began its nose dive into the shitter.

Where RoboCop 3 failed was in trying to appeal to a wider audience, while the original very much embraced the fact that it was a hard R-rated movie. It didn't even try to cater to action movie fans of the time, since it was done as a way to mock the cultural landscape of the 1980's; it only disguised itself as a science fiction/action film. RoboCop 3 took that popularity and tried to mass market it for kids. The first time RoboCop appears on-screen he has an over-sized gun for a hand, and he's surely not just accessorizing for combat but also for a future action figure accessory. Even more obvious is the movie's climax where RoboCop sports a jet pack. Maybe I'm actually over-looking something deeper, and that is RoboCop 3 is actually spoofing itself. An early scene in the movie showed a child's bedroom with a RoboCop action figure, so the movie could be acknowledging that the RoboCop within the movie has achieved celebrity status as great as the fictional character that we're watching; it's so "meta" its making my head hurt.

One of my biggest pop culture pet peeves is the "annoying child". Mostly its a bad horror movie cliche, but a few times it reared its ugly head in an action movie, such as RoboCop 3's use of the "hacker kid." Just look at that opening scene where she is solving math problems on a lap top; what 8 year old would know what "slope" is? I can barely figure out the slope of two points and I'm 29 years old. So in their attempt to make RoboCop more mainstream friendly (following a comic book and cartoon series), they added a kid and even took away the blood. Yet it still isn’t kid friendly with all of the gun fire and swearing, even a character within the movie points out that same fact. Attempting to straddle the line of an adult action movie and something that’s kid friendly is what brings this movie down, despite some fun performances from secondary characters and a nugget of a good plot. The worst offense of all that is ultimately unforgivable is the weakening of RoboCop. If I have to sit through RoboCop 3 again, then you can damn sure bet I’ll be jumping out of a high story window like an OCP executive.