A couple weeks ago, I posted a video about Robocop 3 for Super Nintendo. But I figured, why stop there? Let's check out the movie too, which I haven't seen since I watched it at my childhood friend Dan's house when I was 11 years old. I remember it being painfully bad, since it didn't have Peter Weller as Robocop, and it didn't have any of the comically extreme violence of the previous two movies. Instead, it was retooled to cater to a younger audience, which is confusing because kids already liked Robocop just fine. But anyway, here we go. Lots of spoilers here, FYI.
We start out learning that Omni Consumer Products (OCP) have actually bought the city of Detroit, but are struggling to implement their plans to rebuild everything. They have to call in the help of the Japanese Kanemitsu Corporation, and wait one second… is “Robocop 3” a Christmas movie?
Three minutes into the movie, we’ve got some guy reassuring his daughter that everything’s going to be fine, just as a wrecking ball crashes through her bedroom. That allows the “I’ll buy that for a dollar!” guy to make an appearance out of nowhere for some reason. Hey I’m not complaining.
OCP is still having trouble removing citizens from Detroit so they can rebuild, so all the typical “evil empire vs. plucky rebellion” tropes are in play here. The little girl from earlier, whose name is Nikko, wanders off and gets picked up by rebellion leaders CCH Pounder (Dr. Hicks from “E.R.”) and Stephen Root of all people (from “Newsradio,” “Office Space,” “Barry,” and about a million other things). Wow, even Kruger from Seinfeld is in this! It’s a who’s who of 90s-ass TV actors.
They get confronted by ED-209, the walking killer robot that can’t climb stairs, but Nikko is apparently some sort of electrical engineering savant, since she’s able to effortlessly hack into its programming and have it blow the doors off of a police armory. Next, we get two MORE recognizable TV actors, Jeff Garlin (from “Curb Your Enthusiasm”) and The Guy Who Gets in a Fight With George Costanza Over a Parking Spot. I had no idea this movie had such a weird cast.
Officer Anne Lewis from the first two movies shows up and we get our first chase scene. It ends with Lewis’ vehicle upside down. Whoops. A street gang (looking like they were pulled straight out of a Jaleco beat-em-up) takes offense to this and comes after Lewis, and finally 20 minutes into the movie we get our first appearance of Robocop. He blows a hole through the roof of his own car for some reason, and chases the gang away. I should mention the music real quickly, which was composed and arranged by Basil Poledouris of “Conan the Barbarian” fame. His work here is the best part of the movie.
We get a goofy scene where Robocop is set on fire and walks around uncomfortably for a minute before he takes out a couple more gang members in yet another reminder that this movie is PG-13 instead of R. Next, we see supervillain Rip Torn getting chewed out by a Japanese executive for failing to empty the city fast enough. By the way, absolutely none of what’s happened so far in this movie is in the Robocop 3 video game. To the film’s credit though, they did do a nice job making Robert Burke look plenty like Peter Weller as Robocop.
The script in this movie is brutal. There’s lots of unfunny gags and cheesy one-liners, but not unfunny or cheesy enough to be amusing, just irritating. It was written by director Fred Dekker with Frank Miller, and it’s safe to say it’s not their best work. Anyway, the movie crawls along with the same old “he’s a machine!” “no, he’s a man!” exchange we’ve already done to death in the first two films, only this time it’s written like something out of the Sunday Night ABC Movie of the Week. Main OCP Flunky #2 orders that Robocop have his memory repressed so he can follow orders more easily. But the scientist tasked with installing the chip to do that, played by Whatshername from “Crossing Jordan,” smashes it instead.
Robocop continues to disobey orders and heads over to the rebellion hideout. It gets Officer Lewis killed by OCP Flunky #1. Please no, not the only clearly defined, decently acted character! This makes Robocop side with the rebellion and he heads down with them to their underground hideout. The dialog continues to be awful in a TV-movie kind of a way, but at least Stephen Root gets to have a “GAME OVER, MAN!” moment.
Robocop has a problem: he keeps falling apart, and since this is the third movie, he’s no longer under warranty. Robocop says to go find the gal from “Crossing Jordan,” so naturally Nikko is able to just saunter into Detroit police headquarters and find her in less than 20 seconds. Meanwhile, with Robocop joining the rebellion, the Japanese Kanemitsu Corporation steps in to take care of things, with what else, robot ninjas. Some anonymous OCP flunkies take exception, and cracks one of them in the face with a metal pipe, giving us this great visual.
That’s what my jaw feels like when I try to eat more than one Now and Later. Elsewhere, Crossing Jordan makes it to the rebellion hideout to fix Robocop, and we get a confusing sequence where Robocop blends his wife, Officer Lewis, and Crossing Jordan into one person, followed by a whole bunch of time killing flashbacks to the first movie. I just realized, if they were to make a show called “Crossing Jordan” today, it’d be a 30 For 30 about this moment:
The movie goes back and forth between the cyborg ninja plotting to find the rebellion, and Robocop obtaining a magic jetpack that just happened to fall into their laps. Robo kills time by wandering over to the police station and avenging Officer Lewis’ death with a flamethrower, roasting people alive as the heroic Robocop theme blares. Next, we get a totally pointless heel turn from Stephen Root, as he’s revealed to be passing along info to the bad guys. Robo finds OCP Flunky #1 and gives chase in a pink Cadillac owned by a pimp, and I’m starting to lose track of the villain hierarchy here. The movie just forgot about the cyborg ninja during all of this.
Stephen Root comes back to rebellion headquarters and reveals his true colors, as a bunch of bad guys raid the building. The movie deems everyone expendable except Nikko and Crossing Jordan, only they get separated in what’s supposed to be an emotional scene but I really don’t care. OCP Flunky #1 goes to police headquarters to order everyone to go after Robocop but they all throw their badges on the ground and walk out. Again, who cares.
What’s really bad about this movie isn’t just the confusing narrative or the bad dialog, it’s that it labors to recreate the charm of the original “Robocop,” complete with fake commercials and news reports. Except in this movie, they’re PG-ified, so all they do is clutter up the movie with even more unfunny nonsense. And where the hell is the cyborg ninja?? The remaining rebels are shown meandering about in broad daylight. Uhh, shouldn’t they be hiding underground somewhere? How did they get away? Ah who even cares.
Finally, we get Robocop vs. cyborg ninja, the only thing anyone cares about in this flick, while the fired cops help the rebellion against what’s left of the OCP flunkies. Cyborg ninja dominates early, slicing off Robocop’s arm, but Robo simply replaces it with a gun and blows ninja’s head off. Well, that was a total dud. Robo throws on the jetpack and zooms around town blowing up what’s left of the OCP army, featuring some very flimsy green screen effects.
Robocop goes to take out the remaining bad guys, only to find TWO cyborg ninjas.
Cocaine’s a helluva drug. In case you were hoping for a coolass three-way fight, instead the magic computer genius girl Nikko manages to hack both cyborg ninjas in a matter of seconds and has them decapitate each other. Nikko is such a killjoy.
So that’s “Robocop 3.” The chase scenes and fight sequences were way too short, the dialog is terrible, the story is confounding, the Japanese conglomerate angle went nowhere, I didn’t care about a single character, and there weren’t nearly enough cyborg ninjas. At least “Robocop 2” was a fun romp in addition to being confusing. I will say, I expected much worse from this movie, so in that sense it wasn’t THAT bad, but that’s probably because I’m used to watching “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” I didn’t totally regret watching “Robocop 3” but I will definitely never watch it again.
Here’s where you can watch “Robocop 3” if you’re interested.
Thanks for reading and enjoy the rest of your day!
-Alex