'RoboCop' is a prescient satire worth revisiting
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There is no movie more prescient than RoboCop.
The 1987 action movie may seem ridiculous on the surface — a cop gets turned into a robot cop to fight crime in futuristic Detroit — but it takes aim at some of the United States' biggest issues that are still affecting us today, including privatization of public institutions, gentrification, unchecked capitalism, corruption, and television media.
Yes, RoboCop is over the top, but that's what makes it so fun. That, combined with its messages that still hold merit 32 years later, makes it worth revisiting.
RoboCop takes on Detroit
In RoboCop's version of the future, Detroit is basically a dystopia, riddled with crime and protected by an underfunded police department. One cop, Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) tries to take on a notorious, murderous criminal with his partner Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen).
Alex Murphy finds himself staring down the wrong end of a gun barrel and gets blown away by one liners and bullets, only to have his body taken by the corporation Omni Consumer Products and turned into a crime-fighting android — RoboCop.
You see, Omni Consumer Products (OCP) has entered into a deal with Detroit's mayor to help out the local police force, which the department is not too happy with. Over the course of the movie, it's revealed that not only is OCP privatizing the police force and enacting changes for their own benefit, they're working with some of Detroit's worst criminals for financial gain.
Detroit, essentially, is a mess thanks to rich capitalists who want to make more money and don't care how they get it.
RoboCop, a violent product of corruption and corporate greed, finds himself caught up in the middle of all of it and works his robot ass off to straighten everything out while following his prime directives: serve the public trust, protect the innocent, uphold the wall, and a mysterious fourth directive.
In today's climate, RoboCop is worth revisiting now more than ever.
Timeless lessons
The dystopian world of RoboCop really isn't too far off from the kinds of things we're seeing in the United States right now.
With companies like Amazon, Apple, and Google developing massive campuses and headquarters in different cities around the country, they've been creating their own sort of pseudo-public services like the buses that shuttled people who lived in San Francisco to their respective tech companies while public facilities deteriorated and rents rose unchecked, displacing people outside the rapidly expanding tech industry. All of this while local governments are giving these corporations tax breaks to try and attract them to their cities.
Meanwhile, the privatization of prisons and police forces in the U.S. is turning crime into a for-profit industry, which leads to things like unethical policing and mass incarceration.
In RoboCop, OCP's involvement with the police leads to its own ethical problems. When RoboCop finds out that an OCP executive is involved with criminal activity, it turns out that RoboCop's fourth directive is to not take action against any senior OCP executives. It's a perfect allegory for the way private interests can corrupt institutions people rely on to keep them safe.
And then there's the OCP product ED-209, which is basically a walking turret with artificial intelligence that was developed for "urban pacification." Through gentrification and government-sanctified murder, OCP is hoping to redevelop Detroit into Delta City, a corporate-run town that will be a cash cow for OCP.
The metaphors in RoboCop are over the top and a little bit ridiculous when surrounded by cheesy one liners and '80s action, but the lessons you can take from them are so on the nose it's almost scary.
It's a movie that's certainly worth revisiting right now to remember what exactly these giant corporations we give so much of our money can do with more power. RoboCop knows capitalism isn't your friend.
The movie is available to stream or rent on several streaming platforms including Hulu and YouTube.
