RoboCop: Prime Directives

You've not seen much worse than this! The RoboCop franchise once held so much promise, so much potential. It quickly disintegrated into cheap kiddie garbage.

The first RoboCop movie was awesome and is no doubt a cult classic. Almost immediately this was followed by a crudely animated cartoon show in 1988 and then, RoboCop 2, the under-rated sequel was totally misunderstood on release but by the time RoboCop 3 came out Orion Pictures had long gone out of business and it was unceremoniously dumped into cinemas without any kind of ad campaign or publicity. Quite appropriate too as it's a moronic pile of crap aimed at the kids.

And it got worse after that! An uber-cheap, live-action TV-series came and went within a single season and yet another animated show 1998 (selling RoboCop to the kids is like making Bratz dolls based on House of 1000 Corpses!) and one of the worst video-games ever in 2003. If you think this franchise couldn't get any worse wait until you get a load of Prime Directives. It stomps what's left of Robo right into the maggot-infested mud.

The story is hardly worth mentioning but if you're that interested it involves Robo feeling old and obsolete, Delta City politics (now located in Canada, a poor substitute for the real Detroit) and some crazed employee at OCP (the company went out of business in RoboCop 3!) trying to take over with his ultimate doomsday device. Robo's kid is now a fully-grown exec and his ex-partner (a man with a very, very dodgy moustache) has been killed and made into a new RoboCop. They drag this crap out over 375 minutes and you feel every precious second of it.

I could forgive the cheapness if the makers were enthusiastic or spirited or if the actors weren't so bored they are about to keel over and die. The Robo suits look terrible and could fall apart at any minute. The nobody playing him makes Robert John Burke's performance in RoboCop 3 look Oscar-worthy. Instead of striding with a heaving titanium chest he kind of stumbles and bumbles like an old man without a zimmer-frame and has as much trouble ascending stairs as ED-209 did descending them. It's as if he was mimicking C-3PO.

Say what you want about the declining quality of the films. At least they all had great music. Prime Directives has noise that is painful to the ears and lethal to the soul and mind. Goddamn, I want to erase this horrid mini-series from my memory but I can't. I need a shrink!

This junk should be scrapped and left to rust. Not even the most dedicated and forgiving RoboCop fan should suffer this guff. Wise people such as myself will realise this has as much to do with the TRUE RoboCop as Supergran does with Clark Kent.

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

Hmmm, this series doesn't seem to be very popular but on closer inspection the criticism seems to be from the "watched the first 10 minutes then turned off" crew.

I'm unsure how you can fully judge something without watching it but that's the level of mentality here.

Anyway, I think Prime Directives is a great slice of binge entertainment. Nearly 6 hours of action and story set in the Robocop universe and the stories are very interesting too. The usual Robocop themes of family and greed are here but they throw in some plot points about obsoletion as well which I found very cool.

This is a TV production so don't expect any great special effects here but the cinematography is top notch and very moody and it's all absorbing enough to hook you in.

Now it has some bad points and most of that comes from the acting. It's pretty bad right across the board with maybe only one or two standouts but yep, it's really corny. Page Fletcher looks like a poor man's Dennis Hopper and far too short to be Robocop in the first place. He's "ok" as Alex Murphy but honestly he bungles about in the Robo suit looking constipated and his shoulders are so hunched up it loos like he could explode. The rest of the cast fare better but honestly, not by much.

It's surprising because the script, while not the snappiest is really quite good and fuses well with the extended stories and even throws in a some memorable lines here and there.

The best thing about it is that this is the extended runtime. Here we have FOUR feature length episodes all connected to the same skeleton story and it's great fun immersing yourself in the Robocop universe for that amount of time. The 6 hour running time means that the story and plots can really breathe and be fleshed out quite a bit so this adds tremendously to the connection between audience and program.

I honestly think that some people watch this and expect the same quality as the films and that just isn't going to happen.

Regardless aside from some bad acting and Robo himself being somewhat miscast this is a great pieces of quality entertainment that lasts a good while and there is PLENTY to enjoy here believe me so give it all of it) a shot and if you keep in mind it's production you shouldn't be disappointed.

Terrific for tearing into on a binge after the first three films.

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.

This has got stuff going for it. It ignores the two sequels, and uses the Verhoeven movie as the basis(it, in fact, appears to be in love with it, and uses it wherever possible, most noticeably in the spoken lines), that proves they had the right idea. The satire is also quite present(albeit it tries too hard, worst in the last credits, where it could not possibly be more obvious that they're talking directly to the audience, not to mention how it often underestimates their smarts, and spells it out, same as in the second flick). Moreover, there are plenty of gunfights, as well as some martial arts and car-chases(not all of these are fantastic, if they tend to stay above the level of passable). Each episode seems to start with a bang(there are those that would call them grabs for attention). On paper, this sounds an awful lot better than it is, which is not at all to say that it is all poor. It has several scattered things wrong with it, that unfortunately add together and make the whole less than excellent. For example, the plot is good, and remains so through the mini, but there are perhaps a subplot or a couple over the amount there should be, and not everything pays off(a shame, considering the concepts they at least begin to cover). The pacing can be uneven. While there among the characters are truly interesting ones, others are caricatures, and they get considerable screen time. I will say that this keeps getting even better and bigger, without losing anything, throughout, I didn't think they'd be able to top themselves, however, they went and did just that. The very ending, though parts formulaic and tough to swallow, had something great and well-thought out, in my opinion. The performances are so-so(I personally got a kick out of getting to see Geraint Wyn Davies again), and this is not devoid of screamy acting. This does hold a number of *really* awesome moments. There is unintentionally silly material herein. This is exciting sometimes, and certainly had me thrilled, although not constantly. Why do people continue to use small arms fire against RoboCop, and when will they realize it is utterly and completely ineffective? They cover up the limitations and constraints reasonably. There are repetitive actions(get used to seeing a certain individual storm out with determination). The effects are well-done, meanwhile, no one is going to be fooled and not be able to figure out what's CGI and what isn't. The music is... well, let me put it this way, either they saw the title role as a bit of a cowboy, or the composer is big on Ennio Morricone(hey, who could blame them?). Obviously I hope it's the former, but it didn't always seem staged or filmed to fit that. There are marvelous developments and situations found in this. The writing is a mixed bag, both dialog and story. There is violence, and it could be called excessive, in tone and volume. This I would say is genuinely disturbing a handful times, whether or not that is positive is up to the viewer. I recommend this series to any fan of the first of the cinema-releases, and/or of the iron-clad law-man... be aware that there are areas of this that are going to underwhelm; if you can stand those, you're in for multiple cool, fun sequences and not half bad science fiction. 5/10