RoboCop: Prime Directives

Three movies, a live action TV series and two cartoons later, ROBOCOP returns with a made-for-TV miniseries "ROBOCOP: PRIME DIRECTIVES". This miniseries consisted of four movies which attempted to bring back the gritty and darker tone of the first movie, as well as some social satire. For all intents and purposes, what we have is an ambitious project limited by lack of budget and inexperience of the creative team.

Our story begins 10 years after the first movie (ignoring the continuity of the other movies and TV series). Robocop is obsolete and weary of his years trying to bring peace to the crime ridden Delta City. The megacorporation OCP, who runs the city, is experiencing inner turmoil among the management. Due to new policies preventing use of lethal force by the police, a crime wave is sweeping the city. From Kamikaze gangs to a psycho in Halloween armour armed with machine guns and rockets, this town is going to hell. Fortunately, they have a new kick ass police commander JohnCable; a dual pistol wielding ol fashioned cowboy cop. Oh, and Robocop, the supposedly invincible enforcer of law who spends the entire miniseries getting owned.

Every character goes on about how awesome Robocop is, every criminal mentions his name in fear, you never see that. What you get is Robocop being blasted, kicked down, smashed, electrocuted and pummeled in every other combat scene. He only manages to take down people who refuse to take cover in a firefight.

This brings me the portrayal of Robocop himself played by Page Fletcher. Fletcher is a fine actor, able to convey heavy emotions with his voice and mannerism. He is not, however, I anyway suited to the role. For starters, he is short. As in really short. And the bulky oversized armour only makes him look shorter. Everyone including the old female scientist is taller than him. His Robocop is a stumbling dwarf, always marching with his fists balled up. On the flip side, with his helmet off, Robocop looks like an old man and even acts like one. Nothing is done to make him machine-like. He very visibly pants when tired, swallows hard when scared, he even sweats.

So a crappy Robocop headlines 4 made-for-TV movie length episodes of the miniseries. On the bright side, what the 4 episodes do is attempt to remake and redo some very classic elements from Robocop media history. You have a new more advanced Robocop, something Robocop 2 should have been about. You have a advanced Artificial Intelligence meant to automate the entire city, like th pilot episode of the 90s TV series. Lastly, you have a tale of a machine regaining his humanity. Throughout this story is the tale of James Murphy, son of Alex Murphy, who is now a young executive caught up in the turmoil in OCP. James must come to terms with the discovery of his father's identity as Robocop as father slowly reunites with son.

The overall story is good for its drama. The actors are spot on in their portrayals and it is generally well written with many of the themes inherent in the original films. Of particular note is the hammy Kaydick and the absolutely obnoxious Damien. A huge plus is the miniseries return to R-Rated violence rather than the kid friendly style of fighting in the TV series and Robocop 3.

Sadly the execution is less than sub-par. Director Julian Grant brings a lazy hand to the directing and seems to have this obsession with skip-frame slo mo (the kind of jerky slo mo you get when shooting something at half the usual Frames Per Second). The overall low budget look to the production is heightened by dated special effects, unremarkable camera-work and crappy costumes. The New cyber terrorist villains have the fashion sense of the Matrix characters, all tight, black and trench coats. They have cartoony electrical powers and can move at super speed with a basic blur effect. The low budget is most obvious in the Robopcop suits. During action scenes, they come apart at the seams letting you clearly see the black leotard underneath.

With this, Prime Directives sounded the death knell of the classic Robocop franchise. Perhaps in this new century of movies with fast kicking kung fu combat, high tech special effects and tighter narratives, the concept of classic Robocop as a walking tank is in itself obsolete. With this sad closure to a once remarkably original franchise, perhaps the new reboot in 2014 would be a much welcome revival of the concept.

gun play galore, killer laser beams, explosions, bustin' glass, back stabbing, martial arts, psychotic killers and this all happens in the "safest place on earth to live"? Remind me never to vacation in Delta City!

Sounds like something right out of Hollywood right? Well that's almost correct, try Hollywood North.

I'm speaking of the new mini series Robocop: Prime Directives made by Julian Grant and written by Brad Abraham and Joseph O'Brien.

I had the pleasure and privilege to attend the theatrical showing of the entire series on Sunday afternoon and it was time well spent. Julian Grant was there to introduce the film and spoke in between chapters, he seems very proud of the work him and his crew accomplished and he has every reason to be. Along with Grant, some of the other cast and crew were on hand to watch it with us as well, writers Brad and Joeseph, RoboCop himself Page Fletcher, along with Maurice Dean Wint as John Cable and actress Leslie Coles as Ashley St. John-Smythe the MediaNet anchor.

The series has it all, action, drama, a bit of horror and the outrageous humour that was born with the original. And I mean outrageous, some of it had the audience roaring.

The story is very well written IMO. Joe and Brad put some more human emotion into RoboCop that I quite liked, it makes you really feel for the character. There are times when I just wanted someone to give the guy a hug and tell him that "it's okay". At the same time, RoboCop is still the strict enforcer of the law and at times damn right mean. There is at least one shocking scene when Robo gets carried away and does something that I am sure he was not programmed for, I'll just leave it at that for fear of spoiling. There is all kinds of deceit going on, you don't know who will end up good or bad, who's going to live through the 4 parts, who's not. The plot line really makes you want to keep watching. I feel sorry for the folks that have to watch it over 4 days, I had to know what was going to happen next right then and there.

The special effects were well done, you don't feel like you are watching some cheap quickly shot B-movie. I'm not sure what the budget was but it looks big. RoboCop looks used and abused and it goes well with the storyline because they mention that many of his parts are outdated and not even produced anymore, it's 10 years after the first movie. Plus he just plain old takes a real beating in the movie!

The shoot was mammoth from what we were told, 88 days if I recall correctly. Folks this is a big project that these people put a lot of time and effort into and I'm sure many personal sacrifices were made. You can tell that the people involved were fans of RoboCop as they stay true to the feel of the original movie. If you have any reservations about this show, try and dispose of them, there is really no need for them. Try going into viewing this series in a positive frame of mind, it's *GOOD*.

Congrats and best of luck to all who worked on the series!

Ed

On the first two RoboCop feature films, the producers hired renowned mime artist and choreographer Moni Yakim to help Peter Weller, who played the title role in those pictures, get a handle on the role's intense physicality, and the investment paid off handsomely. On "Prime Directives," however, apparently such expenditures were deemed superfluous and eliminated from the budget. Yet, considering that RoboCop is the miniseries' main character, the character needing to be lavished with the most attention--especially with regard to issues of movement and ambulation, so as to ensure precise execution and verisimilitude--such an oversight on director Julian Grant's part is simply beyond the pale. The sad result: Page Fletcher, who plays RoboCop in "PD," spends most of his time stumbling and bumbling about in the RoboSuit, fists eternally and inexplicably clenched, wildly swinging his arms to and fro in a bizarre echo of Rock'em Sock'em Robots, and walking as if there were a warm, freshly laid dump permanently ensconced in his RoboDrawers.

To add insult to injury, RoboCop's makeup FX in "PD" really leave something to be desired. They are so bad, in fact, that the RoboHelmet-less Fletcher looks like Mandy Patinkin from "Alien Nation," replete with what appears to be a shopworn Tupperware bowl spray-painted a drab gray and hastily slapped onto the back of Fletcher's ridiculously enlarged noggin. What's worse, as the miniseries goes on, Fletcher's RoboSuit seems to fit him less and less snugly. At one point, when RoboCop visits his own gravesite, the suit's chin-guard seems to be floating independently from the rest of the RoboHelmet, careening away from Fletcher's jaw by several maddening inches.

Furthermore, those who are familiar with Julian Grant's decidedly unimpressive B-movie oeuvre (most especially the utterly dreadful direct-to-video "Airborne") know all too well his pronounced limitations as an action filmmaker. Grant fancies himself an ace action director, in the mold of George ("Mad Max") Miller and James ("The Terminator") Cameron. However, unlike those esteemed cinematic kineticists, Grant has absolutely no sense of timing or geography when it comes to arranging action set pieces. To be perfectly candid, his "style," as it were, is actually more in line with that of an unadorned hack like Roger ("Battlefield Earth") Christian. Grant's action scenes go on and on and on, in a way that oscillates between being boringly redundant and spatially confusing. Grant will repeat the same information time and again, such as having a procession of nameless, faceless bad guys meet repetitive, cookie-cutter deaths at the hands (or rather guns) of the good guys, and all the while within settings where it's difficult to tell where the bad guys are positioned at and/or coming from with respect to the good guys.

The verdict: 2 out of 4 stars.

"Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?"

Apart from that, this was a bit disappointing, too cheesy, too TV-ish for my taste. But I guess that these people had to work on a very very tight budget, so I'll cut them some slack. Obviously there were fans of the original 2 movies involved, so I'll give them credit for that as well.

I do believe, though, that this would have worked much better as a 2-hour movie, with better casting & visuals instead of standardised TV series fare.

This made for tv four-parter looks so cheap that it is not even funny any more! In the first part we have BONE MACHINE, who looks like an old HE-MAN action figure. He hides his face behind a mask, that even little children wouldn't find scaring on halloween. Oh yes, he's laughing all the time, because that's really menacing. Right. This tv-movie is as bad as ROBOCOP 3 - only that it looks cheaper. But it actually is WAYYYY better than the cartoon series (which really stinks, by the way). The main problem with the movie is, that the story is not interesting at all. Sometimes ROBOCOP seems nothing more than a sideshow character. Now, they have tried it all: 2 movie sequels, a childish tv-series, 2 animated series and finaly PRIME DIRECTIVES, a mini series, that is quite dark, which is not bad. If they had a decent budget, it could have been a little nicer to watch - despite the lame story. If you think about the original movie, PRIME DIRECTIVES is a shame.