First off, I will state that, despite the bad hair and old technology, the original RoboCop (1987) still holds up well and is a good, solid film through and through. The overall series seems to suffer though, as more movies were made.
For those younger readers who didn't grow up with a RoboCop in their lifetime, the cyborg man in blue was created when a good cop, Alex Murphy (Peter Weller), was gunned down in the increasingly violent Detroit underground. Since a private company, OCP, had recently won a contract to run and control the police force, they were able to use Murphy's corpse in an experimental security program designed to produce a new kind of cop. This half-man, half-machine officer would be bulletproof, never have to sleep, only eat the most minimal of substance to maintain his organic tissue, and most importantly, follow a strict set of directives to keep the public safe.
At first, RoboCop doesn't really have many memories of his previous life, that is until his former partner, Officer Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen) realizes who is behind the metallic visor and makes contact with him. Then, not only does Robo start to remember who he was and that he had a family, but he also remembers that he dies at the hands of drug lord Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith who would later play Red on That 70's Show).
Before the first movie ends, RoboCop seeks out Boddicker's gang and starts to learn that the man's connections run deep, and apparently into the boardroom of OCP. The same boardroom where OCP vice president, Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer) is going head-to-head with another executive, Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) concerning the RoboCop project (Morton's project) and the ED-209 project (Jones' department).
RoboCop 2 (1990) takes place a year later. OCP is still trying to tear down old Detroit to put in what they consider the city of the future, Delta City, and they have run the police department so badly, that the cops have gone on strike, well most of them anyway. Still on the streets are Murphy/RoboCop and Officer Lewis. To make things worse, a new drug has hit the streets, Nuke, and it is far more addictive than anything previously seen.
Meanwhile, back at OCP, the pressure is on to try and duplicate the success of the RoboCop project, but it seems that every "RoboCop 2" they produce ends up destroying itself, as well as others, before it's even out of the testing phase. The current project head, Juliette Faxx (Belinda Bauer) realizes that what they need isn't just another cop, but someone with a strong enough will and desire to live to get past the strange form he takes after being rebuilt.
When a confrontation with the makers of Nuke, led by a crime boss named Cain (Tom Noonan), leaves Robo in pieces, Faxx convinces OCP to repair him and add over 300 new directives to his core programming that all seem to work on helping OCP's image rather than actual crime prevention. As RoboCop takes to the streets and deals out harsh lectures instead of lead, his ability to handle the growing crime problem is overwhelming. Eventually RoboCop's added programming is erased and he once again goes after Cain. Unfortunately, when Cain dies in the hospital, Faxx realizes that he is the right man for the RoboCop 2 program and installs the insane criminal in a super powerful body. What results is, of course, a major battle between the two cyborg creations.
While RoboCop 2 wasn't as good as the original film, it still had a lot of good points. A major boon was the better blending of stop-action-animation with the live-action shots. In the first film, scenes with ED-209 were jarring and choppy, but in RoboCop 2, when our hero faces the new mechanical monster, the action flows a lot better and smoother. Unfortunately, RoboCop 3 seems to lean a little heavier on less practical-based visual effects, and at those times, the film is a little hard to watch.
Of course, a lot of that "hard to watch" aspect comes from the film's story. While the 1993 film rounds out the trilogy, it doesn't really do it in a graceful way. Many of the characters or actors are switched out, the story is only so-so, and while the first two films were rated R, this one stays PG-13 ... plus it tries to spice things up with a rocket pack, a gun-arm and robot-ninjas. In other words, it feels just like a long-running TV series that tries to revitalize the show by adding new characters and gimmicks.
By the time RoboCop 3 starts, crime in Detroit is at its worst, and while the cops are off of their strike, they are getting gunned down left and right. RoboCop (now played by Robert John Burke) is still in the fight of course, but as OCP's Rehab Squad, lead by Paul McDaggett (John Castle), has taken to the streets to forcefully evacuate the city's population so that the building of Delta City can commence. When the Rehabs deal major damage to RoboCop and kill Lewis, he switches sides and joins the paramilitary underground formed by ousted families, believing the best way to protect the civilians and uphold the law is to fight the brutish force expelling them from their homes.
Having the whole trilogy together makes this Blu-ray package a nice purchase for any die-hard RoboCop fan, and while there is a noticeable quality increase in both video and audio, the quality itself is much better the more recent the movie. In other words, RoboCop has some grainy moments, while RoboCop 3 is pretty much always crisp ... including the badly done scene where Robo is flying around the battlefield in his jet pack, and in that case, a little too crisp. What I was disappointed at though was the lack of any real special features. Seriously, the only extras attached to any of these movies are the original theatrical trailers. That's just ridiculous and pathetic for such an iconic franchise.
