The Movies
A brilliant satire of corporate America (released the same year as Wall Street), RoboCop also manages to handily skewer the media while serving up plenty of kick-ass action. The plot, involving a critically injured lawman reborn as a super-powered cyborg, sounded a lot like the premise for a bad TV pilot. But an unexpectedly smart script and the over-the-top, uniquely dark comedic style--think Toxic Avenger, but never outright silly--made Robo a huge hit with audiences, and an enduring modern classic.
When director Paul Verhoeven did not return for the inevitable sequel, cinematic chameleon Irvin Kershner (The Empire Strikes Back) was chosen to helm RoboCop 2. A new writer was found as well, namely Frank Miller, a hot commodity following his headline-grabbing graphic novel, The Dark Knight Returns. As with many a sequel, much of the newness, the subtlety and the charm were gone. The film might have emphasized the humor a bit too much in this tale of a highly addictive new drug, a police strike, anarchy in the streets and a plan to take the city of Detroit under private ownership. The studio lost another director and star Peter Weller on the way to RoboCop 3, wherein citizens fight back against a Nazi-like mercenary army hired to round up uncooperative low-income families. All I can add is that this time around, RoboCop flies.
Badly.
The Picture
Disc One appears to be identical to the previously released RoboCop, but for the new artwork on its face, and this is not really good news. It's an MPEG-2 master, possibly the same one used for the DVD years ago, loaded onto a single layer BD-25 with an average bitrate listed at only 22 megabits per second. It's the Unrated, more violent cut by the way, with no seamless branching to the R-rated theatrical version. The 1.85:1 image is frequently hazy, the palette is muted but then it always has been. Blacks are a mixed bag, some darks surrender precious detail, other times they are mushy blobs. The look is very old-school, which might be why Hollywood is allegedly remaking RoboCop.
RoboCop 2 is much cleaner-looking--a good thing for Old Detroit?--but still with some grain and noise, and blacks could still be better. RoboCop 3 is a return to some of the low-budget dinginess of the original, with more of a B-movie visual style. The two sequels are new to Blu-ray, and presented in AVC format at a higher-bitrate, but none of these are reference quality.
The Sound
The first movie has a lot going for it, starting with Basil Poledouris' musical score which has been aggressively remixed, with impressive clarity. There are discrete voices in the rears, phones ringing, and plenty of whizzing bullets and other directionality. I noted ample thunder for the gunshots, although there could be even more bass. And kudos to MGM/Fox for preserving the original theatrical 4.0 soundtrack as an option, something not all studios do.
The first sequel shows more polish, a sonic slickness, with a wider dynamic range and more hard, discrete surrounds despite the fact that this movie predates 5.1-channel audio. Robo 3 is similar to the overall modernity of 2, except that it has an obnoxious noisiness to it, with dialogue that is sometimes difficult to discern. All three are in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 here.
The Extras
Despite loads of value-added content in existence--audio commentary and beyond from DVD--we are only given a total of four trailers across the set.
Final Thoughts
RoboCop is one of my favorite movies of all time, ending with a single word that I hold as my favorite line of movie dialogue. (I won't spoil it in case you still haven't seen it, plus it loses a lot out of context.) But as this set's RoboCop Trilogy devolves from Unrated to R-rated to PG-13, so too do the movies grow noticeably weaker, losing the edge so vital to the original. As for the Blu-ray, well, they've never looked or sounded better, but I'm still hoping at least for a rebooted, more heavily-armed RoboCop in the future.
Product Details
Where to Buy:
| Overall | |
|---|---|
| Video | |
| Audio | |
| Movie | |
| Extras |
