RoboCop 1987 foreshadows a lot

  Blender Dumbass
September 28, 2025

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#RoboCop #NancyAllen #PaulVerhoeven #film #review #movies #politics

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There are ( at least ) 3 types of movies: Corporate bullshit, like the shit Disney produces now a days, which for some reason are popular as heck; smart films with a strong message, which win awards but fail at the box office; and the third type: a film with a message, disguised as corporate bullshit, to trick the audiences that it's the shit they wanna see, while actually being the shit they need to see. Paul Verhoeven's 1987 film RoboCop is from the third type.

I know there are other types, that's why I added "( at least )" there. I didn't want to butcher the flow of the idea, giving all the examples, like exploitation films and porno-films and parodies and other stuff.

The film pretends to be a sci-fi action film about a police-robot. It even delivers on that promise. In a way this film is a kind of proto-superhero movie, with an origin story, superpowers and everything. And yet this is not the goal of the film. The goal is to explore a possible future, which is even closer in 2025 than it was in 1987, where the shit gone so terribly wrong, that a private company controls the police, and the policemen go on strike. ( Which is sort of unrealistic. I think by the point police will be privately owned, strikes will be illegal. But let's imagine a slightly brighter dystopia for a second, than the one we live in ).

You can say ( and Verhoeven would probably agree with you ) that despite the movie being a box office success, it was a failure. While the messages communicated are quite clear, they didn't actually prevent much of anything. And we still got the 2025. Verhoeven even made a few more political satires trying to double down on the same ideas, like Total Recall and Starship Troopers. And even Steven Spielberg got in on the action, trying to help the same cause.

In the beginning of the film, we get a fake news report type thing which plays music I found very familiar. Not just very familiar. I recognized another scene from a different film that uses the same kind of music in the same kind of fake news thing in the same kind of pretending to be an action film, political movie. That other movie is Spielberg's Minority Report. And knowing the strategic references Spielberg knows how to use, I can safely assume that this could be a direct reference to RoboCop.

There seem to be this underground movement of smart film-makers trying to slowly push the society in the right direction with films like RoboCop. To be frank, the Oscar-winners also are in on the same message, most of the time. They just make the mistake of making unsellable films. And the Disney types, following the hype are trying to inject some social commentary into their bullshit too. It's just obviously a corporate calculated move and not a genuine vision. So it is still bullshit.

I'm not saying that individual film-makers in those Disney films are the bullshit mother-bitches. They could very well have the best of intentions. Look at the Avatar franchise. James Cameron is super hard core when it comes to his messages. And yet he does basically Disney blog-busters now. But visionaries like Cameron that work on such a scale are few and far between. You can even say that Cameron did RoboCop a few years before RoboCop was made with his Terminator. And you can even argue that RoboCop is a cheap corporate knockoff of the Terminator. Which is kind of brilliant, on the part of Verhoeven.

If people think it is a dumb Hollywood movie, they think it is safe ( when it comes to Norepineuphoria ). And that what makes them buy the ticket. If RoboCop is a knockout of Terminator, it means it is probably dumb enough, and not challenging enough, that I will go and get the damn ticket, with a box of popcorn. But that's when Verhoeven can trike with his genius. And can hit the audience with the messages of the film.

And think about it. Verhoeven ( and even Cameron ) aren't Christopher Nolan. They don't have the ungodly magical powers to convince people from around the world, to come and see a complex movie revolving some insanely counter-intuitive and complex philosophical discussions. They need the schlock-factor. They need the hook.

Speaking of foreshadowing. In the title I spoke of foreshadowing. This film foreshadows 2 things. It foreshadows the dystopia of today. And it also foreshadows the 1992 erotic thriller Basic Instinct by the same director.

It is even arguable that the second thing could be intentional on the part of the director. The script for Basic Instinct was already in the bidding wars in the 1980. And Verhoeven would not wait long before producing it after RoboCop. Yes, he would make Total Recall in the middle. But so what? He could have already planned making Basic Instinct when doing RoboCop.

RoboCop and Total Recall are kind of in the same style. Both futuristic movies, with a slightly schlocky B-movie charm to them. Both have a deep political stands in their core. And then comes a completely different film, a Hitchcockian thriller, shot in an almost completely unrecognizable style ( suddenly it flows and the camera work in immaculate ) with Basic Instinct. It is as if Verhoeven suddenly decided he is a different director now.

But think about it. In my review of Basic Instinct I speculated that Vehoeven took the throne of Brian De Palma as the Hitchcock imitator. And Brian De Palma, during his Hitchcock imitation years liked to work with Nancy Allen who was in such films as Dressed to Kill and coincidentally in Spielberg's 1941 ( which may feel somewhat unrelated for now ).

In RoboCop you obviously get Peter Weller as RoboCop. But then who plays his partner? You guessed it. It's Nancy Allen. So... Verhoeven sees Dressed to Kill ( in 1980 ) and gets inspired to do something like that. Coincidentally a very similar script Basic Instinct now enters the bidding wars. In Dressed to Kill he spots this girl that excites him to make his version even more viscerally sexy. This girl is Nancy Allen. What does he do? He signals everybody about his intention, by casting her in RoboCop.

But here is an even more interesting thing. After Verhoeven takes his turn as the Hitch-imitator, the next one is Robert Zemeckis with What Lies Beneath who coincidentally is one of the writers on 1941 ( starring the same Nancy Allen ). And who also directs his first feature film I Wanna Hold Your Hand just one year before 1941, where the entire cast is pretty much the same cast as in 1941. Including Nancy Allen.

And here is the thing. Dressed to Kill was not the first Hitchcock imitation of De Palma with Nancy Allen. The first one was in 1976. It was Carrie. So you can say, Zemeckis was obsessing over Hitchcock imitations for way longer than Verhoeven. Zemeckis got Nancy in his film way earlier to foreshadow his eventual Hitchcockiness. Which only came out in 2000. While Vehoeven needed to wait much less.

Of course all of that I got out of my ass. Maybe Nancy Allen was just good for the role in all those cases. The fuck do I know?

Happy Hacking!!!


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