A parody of itself (With RoboCop creator Michael Miner)

It's Friday night. Time to kick back and enjoy Hollywood's latest blockbuster. Maybe you're at a movie theater. Perhaps you're home alone on the sofa. You dig into your popcorn as the titles roll past. You're enjoying yourself. But are you really having a good time? Are you seeing and hearing what you think you're seeing and hearing? You look down, and the popcorn isn't there at all. The popcorn isn't real. i gotta tell you about something i had the i had the funniest dream it was like i was watching a commercial like one of those commercials that make the toy that's not that cool seem really cool like bullseye ball wow okay so this toy in this commercial was just these small plastic rings that you just throw at a pile of other plastic rings i think kind of like marbles like how you try to knock them out of the circle or something but they're rings so they don't roll like marbles nothing really happened anyway but the thing that made it cool was the

whole time there was this song that was just blasting rager rings rager rings they're small they're small rager rings rager rings they're small they're small wow rager rings like the fact that they're so small small was their main selling point and also just made them like super badass because they're so small they're small i gotta give me some rager rings these sound great oh man were they like collectible at all or did they have different colors or designs or like pictures they were just red plastic rings that were small i thought it was so funny that i woke up laughing the rager rings marketing department just blew it away they blew it out of the water but the rager rings design department really was awful i know i wanted to buy them because they're so small but yeah they're small they're small you gotta get me some rager rings they're so small dude oh man that's good well hold on speaking of unbelievably cool products marketed

to young boys who do you think would win in a fight robocop or a young boy man if only we had a movie that could answer this question for us dude i think maybe there was one hold on you're not talking about robocop 2 are you Well, as it turns out, I am. Hello and welcome to The Popcorn Isn't Real. So today we're going to be talking about RoboCop 2. Yeah. Torvald, what can you tell me about this film? RoboCop 1 came out in 1987. RoboCop 2 came out in 1990. So just a few years after the original. But in between these two movies, there was actually a TV series, a cartoon about RoboCop, and it only had 12 episodes. I don't think it was particularly beloved or anything. basically the cartoon mostly existed to sell toys to kids to sell rager rings it was a pretty good no so around the time robocop 2 came out robocop was kind of sitting in a weird spot as like an ultra violent critique of modern capitalism and society in general but also something for kids to

play with right like what the marketing department was trying to do with robocop was not at all what robocop wanted to be i can see why visually speaking they were confused because if you look at robocop he looks like a toy he looks like a toy he certainly does well and it's interesting and i think that strange position it was kind of precariously sitting and had some effects on robocop too uh which we're probably going to talk about today yeah yeah but first i just want to mentioned it was directed by irvin kershner he directed star wars the empire strikes back uh james bond never say never again like he's apparently a fantastic director it was written by frank miller the dude who wrote he created sin city 300 the spirit he's written tons of comics waylon green i don't know how involved he was but he's also credited as the writer the screenwriter of RoboCop 2. He wrote The Wild Bunch, Eraser, which I think is a fantastic Arnold Schwarzenegger

action movie. But let me let me walk you through what happens in this movie. OCP, the mega corporation that created RoboCop, they're purposefully like dismantling the city of Detroit. They're allowing it to become a horrible place so that they can buy it. They want to own Detroit. Now Robocop, who is in the Detroit police department, he's trying to hunt down a gang of drug dealers, but he gets caught and he gets ripped apart by the drug dealer Kane and by a little boy named Hob. OCP at the same time and Juliet Fax, who is a woman who works for OCP, she takes it herself while reassembling Robocop to reprogram him to be more family friendly and more socially acceptable. But then he electrocutes himself to get back to normal. So she turns to her other project, which is to create Robocop 2. She uses Kane, the head of the drug pushers, to create a new drug-fueled murder machine that she thinks she can use to enforce the law for some reason.

she names it robocop 2 but robocop 2 goes berserk and in the end robocop 1 defeats it to save the day i'm sorry the plot's a little convoluted might have sounded like i mentioned a bunch of things that had very little to do with each other but all those things were important to the movie and i think the convolution of the plot kind of added to people's dislike of the movie yeah because it's really hard to follow one single thread like to say this is what robocop 2 is about what is it about it's about many different things it's kind of mainly about robocop being a loser right like being stripped of his powers and forced to be an idiot i mean i can see why a fan of the original certainly wouldn't like this movie right well the first thing he does is get beat by a little kid like specifically twice like interesting little uh recurring theme they have there right well what's what's your theory what's what's actually going on in this movie let's talk about

it so the first robocop like that could have just been like a b-movie about like a robot cop like there certainly were strange b-movie like what do you think made that movie so great clearly it was the social political and corporational satire that they threw into the movie i think that elevated it far beyond what it could have been one of the things that people might say was the reason why robocop 2 wasn't so great was because it wasn't an amazingly smart sociopolitical satire that there's nothing else there. But I would say that perhaps there is something else there. And the entire movie makes a lot more sense, all the different threads, if you look at the underlying message of the movie. This theory, I have to give credit, came from a YouTube channel called Peaked Interest, and it was created by Lee Barron. He has a video essay titled The Secret Meaning of RoboCop 2. We're going to link that in the description, so go check it out.

It's actually a really good video. He believes that RoboCop 2 is actually a satire that is all about how watering down RoboCop for kids was a bad idea. RoboCop was being aimed at an audience, namely kids, that presumably had never seen the original film. Oh yeah, they hadn't. At least they shouldn't have. RoboCop was essentially kidified after the original movie came out. They made an animated TV show. they were pushing out toys and they were also trying to make a sequel and this theory says that the writers the people who created the sequel sort of sneaked in this little this this message into little RoboCop yeah not message and not very sneaky once you see it yeah well wait let me just clarify before you before you continue I want to clarify this for myself and for the listeners So you're saying that RoboCop 2 is literally and intentionally a parody of itself? Yes, that's what I'm saying.

Well, it's a sort of a parody slash critique of what was happening to the RoboCop franchise at the time. How difficult would that be to write a movie about things that are playing out? Like you're writing a movie about the process of writing the movie you're writing. Right. No, not difficult at all. So like you might think, oh, that's crazy. Like, why would that? That's a silly interpretation. It's not silly even a little bit, because after I lived and worked in Hollywood, every single movie I now watch, I it's not even a question. I can see this is clearly a metaphor for some sort of dumb problem that I've seen in Hollywood, that the people like the writers and producers, directors making it clearly are very frustrated with. And now when I watch movies, every single movie, I essentially see these clear parallels with the problems of specifically L.A. And I wonder how do other people watch movies who aren't familiar with L.A. and not feel like lost and confused, like watching the newest season of Rick and Morty, like every single episode felt like it was a meta commentary on L.A.

And I was like, how does anyone else? I mean, I know why I enjoy this, because I've lived there and I've experienced that. And that's fun and cool for me to see people commenting on that. But how does anyone outside of L.A. even like this show anymore? You know? So you're saying that it would be incredibly easy for you, while writing, to simply allow your frustrations to flow from your fingers to the keys of your computer and just have the movie you're writing be your frustrations. Totally. That's what all writers do. That's a totally normal thing to do. And it's not even subconscious. It's conscious. You do that. You're pissed at these people who are forcing you to write a bad movie. And so you write a critique of a bad movie that they don't even know about because they don't care in the first place. Yep. No, they're never going to watch it. It's just a vehicle for money for them. Exactly.

Exactly. And that's what this theory is about. How RoboCop 2 was just a vehicle for money and the writer, the people making it knew that and they put this critique into it. You think that's what made the movie bomb? No, I think that's what makes it good watching it now. Watching it with that in mind, I thought, wow, this actually totally makes sense. Everything makes sense. Whereas your synopsis of it kind of didn't make sense. There was a lot of stuff going on. I have to admit, I had tried to watch RoboCop 2 at least three times in the past. And I was just like, why is RoboCop losing to a kid? I don't want to watch this. I want to watch RoboCop kicking some ass, right? So I turned it off there. Having watched the YouTube video that you referenced, I went in and watched RoboCop 2 again. And I got to tell you, I found it to be a much, much more interesting and enthralling movie with this theory in mind.

It certainly is. I think it improves the movie on the whole. It's a metaphor, right? And each character or group of characters represents something. And so I'm going to walk you through what each character represents. Murphy, a.k.a. Robocop or Robocop 1, represents, of course, the original movie, Robocop 1. Kane, who is an evil drug dealer, represents Robocop 2, which is pretty easy to see that parallel because he literally gets turned into a robot called Robocop 2. Named Robocop 2. What a great name for their robot. Now, OCP, the big corporate executives who are controlling everything and being pretty evil, they represent kind of the Hollywood studio or even just the Hollywood system. They represent the bigwigs. They represent the executives. Yeah, I don't think they represent the people, the producers on the ground floor who are really working hard to make the movie. They're the people who are making all the big decisions and who just see this IP as something to franchise and make money off of, right?

I actually think that Detroit, the city, represents the studio because that's where RoboCop was born, right? Like, I think Detroit represents Orion. Orion is the studio that owned and produced all the RoboCop movies. And the good cops, like the cops that are on RoboCop Murphy's side, like Lewis, his partner, represent the original fans of the original movie. And that one I'm totally involved with. They love RoboCop. Yeah. And, of course, the evil kids, of which there are many in this movie. There's a lot of evil kids. they represent the new target audience yeah the new target audience that that is destroying the franchise basically aiming robocop toward this target audience is destroying what robocop is appealing to this kid leads to robocop's death it does that over and over in this movie i mean and this kid is very closely associated with death in this movie and in the end he dies yes juliet fax the woman who reprograms robocop her and the board that she gets input from they

represent parent appealing focus groups and the hr of this company and like the marketing department of this company trying to push robocop towards kids and towards family friendliness to me she represented like the specific individual executive who was put in charge of the franchise by okay overlords i believe that reprogrammed robocop specifically represents cartoon robocop i think that once she reprogrammed him that was her creating cartoon robocop and that's why it quickly commits suicide which it did it only got 12 episodes and then she's like well i guess we'll make robocop 2 now right like it fits so perfectly in my mind what does nuke represent nuke is the drug in the movie what is it like what is it in the analogy because i can't place it i don't know what it is the only thing i can think of is that it has to be money that's what i came up with i believe that nuke is money in this analogy but also like despite whatever the allegory is here

the movie still needs a plot yeah and nuke is essentially the plot you know right yeah so robocop 2 it's a movie about critiquing the over commercialization of robocop and what does this movie open with it opens with a commercial oh you're right it does it opens with a commercial about a car that kills the people who try to steal it oh yeah there's no need to notify the police even just take out that that uh dried roasted body and just drive away yep you just go on with your day so there are a lot of commercials in this movie well it's true and that's what they use instead of news flashes and stuff like in the first movie they use news and this one they use commercials which is why we see at least three commercials that are just absolutely ridiculous uh during this movie actually i like all of the commercials they're great no they're all really good i really really liked the commercial for an internet service provider

a network provider or something where he was like i needed to get these files to them and my network was down. So I had to take a plane all the way there, but I was too late. And then he just commits suicide. He just shoots himself and shows a photo of his daughter. It's like, they're really selling this product. You don't buy our product. You will die committing suicide as an unhappy, sad, sad man. You'll leave your family behind. This is just a reminder that this over-commercialization is ultimately self-destructive and it is the commercial itself that is literally killing itself whoa just like robocop and all the robocop the failed robocop 2s kill themselves right yeah robocop kills himself after he's reprogrammed when this movie opens the police are on strike and they're mad because ocp is essentially just dismantling the police on purpose but one of the policemen says when someone's interviewing him he says ocp refuses

to even talk to us. And I think with our metaphor that we have with the police represent the old school fans, I think that's a pretty clear parallel right there. OCP, the people in charge, are ignoring the original fans. And then RoboCop goes, he does this big drug bust. It's going pretty well. As he's leaving, this foul-mouthed kid named Hob, played by an actor called Gabriel Damon, who also voiced Littlefoot in the original. Land Before Time. And he also played Spock Collins in Newsies. Spock Collins? Never fear, Brooklyn is here. Yeah. I think that Hob is actually a pretty cool character and a pretty cool villain overall. I think if they'd removed Kane and just kept Hob as the main villain, this would have been a much more interesting movie. When RoboCop cannot shoot this child, I think we are being told by the film itself that RoboCop literally cannot and should not target children.

Yeah, exactly. And that's where the problem of the movie comes from. Like this is the start. He targets that child and tries to track him down and that leads to his downfall. And that's literally what led to the downfall of the franchise. Exactly. He tried to target children. No, I know. This theory is great. It is. It fits so well. Interestingly enough, RoboCop says, touch me to his wife instead of touch me not. Whoa, dude, this ties in with the RoboCop 1 theory. If you missed it, our RoboCop 1 theory is that RoboCop is actually an American Jesus who paralleled many events in Jesus's life. Go watch it. It's a really good episode. But basically, right here, he's forced by OCP to abandon the ones who loved him. And he says to his wife, I don't know you. Which I kind of think the wife, along with the police, maybe represents the old school fans who really loved him. So we also get this scene about OCP is purposefully bankrupting Detroit so that they can own it and recreate it to be more commercial and also sell parts of the city off as like stock shares, basically.

Then we are shown that they are trying to develop RoboCop 2, which I mean, like, that's not even being subtle with the metaphor. Like, this is them telling this meta story of how RoboCop 2 was developed, right? Do you think that the other versions of RoboCop 2 that are demoed and shoot themselves or kill themselves, do you think those are like failed scripts or rewrites? Yeah, that's exactly what I think. Because OCP sits down and they're basically pitched different versions of RoboCop 2. And of course, as someone who has worked in Hollywood, like, that's what happens. like you're like i have this franchise i need a sequel the original writer's not working out for me so i'm just gonna have new writers come in and they're gonna pitch me different versions and inevitably most of these versions aren't gonna be very good right because these people don't necessarily know what the whole thing was about they're not the original creators right they're

just trying to come up with something cool that you know will get them some money and make the studio some money so each one of these robo cop two clones kills themselves which i think is really cool it was really good it's a good scene well one of them kills the scientist first and then shoots himself the other one just tears off his own tears off his own head so good like these things hate being robocop 2 they know they're terrible robocop 2 obviously the person writing well like how often does that happen that like a sequel is being made so writers are like well I have this script, let me turn it into a sequel. And they just rewrite an original work as a sequel to some IP. All the time. Does that happen a lot? That happens all the time. Sometimes it turns out well, in the case of 10 Cloverfield Lane, you know? Oh, that's a good movie, dude. And then it's literally stated that the reason that all these ideas for Robocop to fail

is because they don't have the heart of the original, in this case, Murphy. It's pretty clear. You might even say it's barely a metaphor at this point. They're just saying it. Right, exactly. Even from talking to Michael Miner, like we know that they didn't like his script and that they didn't go with him and they went in search of other writers for RoboCop too. So like we know that essentially this did happen. In fact, we asked Michael Miner about this and here's what he said. Well, the pressure was to get a script fast. They knew that we had put lightning in a bottle, But many executives have a different kind of pressure on them to come out with the next widget. You know, there are some executives who, you know, definitely are interested in quality and content. You know, Mike Medavoy, he was instrumental in helping make my career. I love him. Love him to death. And if you look at the films he greenlit, Silence of the Lambs, Platoon, dozens of films.

He clearly was very interested in content. I understand the pressures that a lot of Hollywood executives are under. Sometimes I don't forgive them because it's overt. There should be more show art than there is show business. MGM hired us to write a RoboCop return script in 2014 and 15. And we played around a lot with the idea of a Robocop who was like Han Solo in the second Star Wars, I guess it would be called the fifth, but in the Empire Strikes Back where he's frozen in the titanium or whatever the hell they call it. We have a prologue where he's hit by a RPG and then they put him in suspended animation and wake him up much later when things have gotten much worse. And one of the things that Robo wants to do is erase his memory of being a human being. And so we still play around with that theme. The script was not made yet, but it may have life in the future. I've heard of RoboCop Corporate Wars, which was originally going to be the sequel.

Is that what you're describing or is this something that's up and coming? We took that, the idea inside of that, which was written in 1987, and did a new, a page one original based only on the concept that was in that script because we were lousy. We didn't have enough time. We barfed out a first draft just before the writers' strike. We carried on after a 30-year gap. 30 years, yeah. Wow. Oh, my gosh. It's a long time for a second draft. I sure hope it gets made. That would be amazing to see like a true RoboCop sequel after 30 years, after decades. Yeah, we would like it too. So RoboCop tracks down this drug. He goes to this warehouse and he's like sneaky enough to have his car go in and explode, yet he somehow isn't in it. Yeah. But then that doesn't matter because he just walks in and they see him because he's not sneaky. He's RoboCop. And why didn't he bring backup? Why did he go alone?

He walks into a part of the warehouse that for whatever reason seems like they stole some stuff from a museum and they have a bunch of Elvis memorabilia, including his skeleton. Did you have any thoughts on that? No, just kind of weird stuff. It's weird because it looks like it was stolen from like on display at a museum or something. I don't know. I thought maybe it was a hint, just like a metaphorical thing that, you know, these people take something beloved and exploit it. Whoa, hey, that's kind of interesting. Put them on display. I would assume that Elvis memorabilia would be stored in a museum in like Memphis, right? Yeah, not Detroit. I don't know. So I don't know what's going on here. As we've talked about several times throughout this movie, the thing that trips RoboCop up is a child, namely Hob. And this time, Hob just comes out with like a minigun and just shoots his arm off.

And then they quickly just take him and dismantle him. And Hob is the one who's like pushing them to dismantle him. Like when one of the goons gets tired, Hob is like, why are you stopping, man? He's like, keep doing it. And he instructs him on how to do it. He's like, it'll go easier if you cut with the grain, not against it or something. I don't remember. Pretty evil kid. And then they unceremoniously dump him in front of the cops, the old fans. Yes. and he's just twitching and looking undignified this is the the studio or whatever dumping the thing they loved out to their fans here it is they're like this is what we made here you go they're just like looking at it like but you stripped it down it's nothing we wanted we gave you pieces in an undignified mess

they kind of like hook him up and like just barely keep him alive with like electrical signals they make it very clear to lewis that he's just a product the only reason he's still alive is because we think he can make us money which i thought was very overtly telling the fans we don't give a crap what you think we're just using this thing to make money right like we'll do whatever we want with it and if we want it to die it will die right this is the part where the crooked cop duffy is taken to be tortured kane and his goons hob and angie are in the room with him yeah and the torture doctor points to the kid and says maybe you ought to have the kid leave he shouldn't watch this he shouldn't be watching robocop right now exactly and the kid's like no no i want to watch robocop yeah i think that's another hint that robocop 2 and the people making it don't care if it's too adult for kids all they care about is that people are watching it and if

it appeals to kids great have them watch it or better yet force them to watch it because when they cut open duffy hob looks away and kane physically turns like you gotta watch this he's like you're the target demographic and we are getting you no matter what he's like i'm robocop 2 and you're watching this right just like they were doing right they were bombarding kids with robocop commercials and toys all the time they were forcing they were putting it right in front of them for them to watch any kid who had watched the cartoon and had the action figures and stuff and then heard that robocop 2 was coming out would probably try and see it they would want to go see it be like really sad and unhappy about horrified with this part where And they're chopping Duffy open with a scalpel. And the writers knew this, apparently. And they put the kid in the audience and forced him to watch it. They sure did.

So OCP is looking for candidates. And Dr. Fax is looking among criminals for the next person to turn into Robocop 2. Then the old Dr. Shank says to Dr. Fax, You are not using my lab to put that kind of brain into my cyborg. Now, I suspect that Dr. Shank represents Michael and Ed, Michael Miner and Ed Neumeier, not getting to make the sequel and going to do other things while this monstrosity was created and other random brains were put into it, other screenwriters just trying to make it into something. Johnson comes to the old man and says, Dr. Fax is screening psychotics. And the old man says, well, we aren't planning to build a toy, Johnson. Which I think is funny because, like, just clearly much of this movie was made to get new toys to make, right? That's what the first one did for them. So they are building it to make a toy. They sure are. So they're taking Robocop to be fixed, and the chief of police says, he's one of mine.

And the lawyer says, maybe we'll fix him, or maybe we'll sell him for scraps. Then a committee of corporate people and, oddly enough, worried parents talk about how to rebuild him. We'll sit down with Juliet Fax and talk about how to rebuild RoboCop. This is my favorite part of the whole movie. Here's some of the things they say. They say, we're getting a lot of heat from parent groups. All that destructive behavior, he's become a role model for our children. What are we teaching them? If he'd just talk things out with people instead of firing that big gun of his, he could talk about environmental issues. Hmm. Maybe we could see him doing something nice, like visit an orphanage. Or help a cat out of a tree, or go door-to-door collecting for Red Cross. Maybe even roasting some marshmallows with Cub Scouts. This is 100% a committee meeting trying to decide what the next movie is. Like, that's exactly what it is. There's no other interpretation of this scene.

Like, this is what a committee of studio execs looks like when they're trying to figure out what to do with their next franchise. And they're not thinking about the movie. They're just thinking about, who can we sell it to? Oh, kids love him. Hey, let's make him teach people. Like, this is the committee that turned the original RoboCop into the cartoon that was made for children. They were like, he's become a role model for our children. What are we teaching them? Like, we need to make this cartoon a lot more child friendly. We need to have him do good things. And I just like, why else would Worry Parents be a part of this conversation? Like, look at the world we're in with their commercials and everything happening on the news. Does this seem like a world where they care about what kids are learning? Like their kids are freaking criminals in Detroit in this in this world. And how often have you seen a parent group get together to talk about the actions of a specific police officer and say this officer needs to be more of a role model for our kids?

It doesn't make any sense. It clearly represents like a soulless writer or soulless person changing a fictional character to do what they want. And I think it's just such a clear, the way she literally says, I type it, you think it. And he says, you type it, I think it. Like, this is a writer being like someone like Frank Miller comes in. He sees all the previous drafts that have been done that aren't in the spirit of the original RoboCop. And he's like, this is just so many people coming in just being like, I type it, you think it, right? Like, you know, we're just writing stuff for RoboCop to do, basically. And I think the fact that he has a million different prime directives is also really telling because that's why movies and shows end up bad is you've got a committee of people who all have completely different agendas and people they're trying to appeal to and trying to make money in different ways.

And you end up with a movie that essentially has a million different visions and directions it's going in, which, as you described the synopsis in the beginning, it kind of feels like with all the different plot lines, this movie was sort of going in a million different directions. And I think that's what all of his, you know, he's got all he's got all these different prime directives now. And that's what that represents. At certain points in the movie, we see screens scrolling by with all of his directives. Some of them are avoid destructive behavior. Be accessible. If you haven't got anything nice to say, don't talk. Don't rush traffic lights. Don't run through puddles and splash pedestrians or other cars. Don't say you are always prompt when you are not. this is a really weird one don't walk across a ballroom floor swinging your arms you can see these are just completely stupid meaningless prime directives that are basically just made

to appeal to like parents but there's one in particular that i'd like to point out to you and i i want to know if you have any thoughts on one of his prime directives which you only see through his own eyes just for a split second when it flashes avoid orion meetings which i thought was very funny because there's only one orion involved with robocop and that's orion the the studio the production company oh my gosh that's great oh what do you think this means no that's exactly the sort of thing someone would throw in because that's the worst thing is a writer going to a committee meeting with the studio and just having a million ideas exactly robocop needs to do so yeah you want to avoid or by means because that doesn't help you write a good script i just thought it was a really funny thing for them to include right there in the open so robocop gets kidified he's jaunty he's got a spring in his step he's up when he returns to the station

all he does is pose which i think is great like he is just literally an action figure now right like this is the kidified version of him whether it's a cartoon or an action figure you know yep and then what does he do next he goes out to meet a bunch of kids he stops a kids baseball team that is robbing a store like why and then he tries to arrest a corpse which i think is kind of telling that now he's kitty version because he doesn't recognize this is a dead body because like that was that's not something that was in the animated show or the you know the toys he has no idea this guy is dead now death is not a thing to him and then he starts to give like random generic messages to the kids like don't swear eat right and they run away they drive away but then he pulls over and stops the car because he finds kids playing and having fun in a fire hydrant that's been opened he then turns off the fire hydrant ruining their fun and lectures them

with nonsensical platitudes like waste makes haste for time is sweet or a rolling stone is worth two in the bush those are complete nonsense this is a metaphor for how basically kids were having fun with the violence of robocop and then he came in and turned that off he's like well we can't have any fun here and we got the cartoon version of robocop which is nonsense it's no fun and it means it's meaningless like it's just literal crap i think that's what they were showing us here comes cartoon robocop ready to turn off everyone's fun lewis kind of represents the old school fans and even like at this point even the old school fans are turning against him they're like what's with you I don't understand you what's wrong with you yeah what happened to the RoboCop we loved and then yeah RoboCop goes nuclear and kills himself uh basically the the cartoon gets cancelled because it sucked and hey RoboCop is back here's the original it's it's very

clear that the series was merchandised towards kids and this is in spite of the hugely violent nature of the movie. We got Michael Miner's input on this as well. And here's what he told us. Even though I've been paid by some residuals for the toys, I haven't really been as involved in tracking that as Ed has. You know, every once in a while, he'll give me a toy from the Robocop line. I will say, though, that toys spun off from films. If you think about Roland Barthes, the French critics' analysis of how toys are made by adults to turn children into adults. That's the simplest version of it. To embrace the main culture, to embrace having a family, Barbie, obviously, to validate war. George Lucas with Star Wars, I mean, he originally was going to direct Apocalypse Now in Vietnam when the war was on, shooting it in 16 millimeter. He was definitely an anti-war activist. But Star Wars supports the concept of war.

I mean, you know, there is a rebel group. You know, if you look at how toys operate, spinning off of those kinds of franchises, they're definitely used to socialize children and make them follow the rules of adults. I mean, it's oversimplification, but don't you think? It's totally true. As a kid, I grew up with RoboCop toys everywhere. I loved it. I was like, man, RoboCop, he's so cool. I didn't even think about the violence. It is violence. Fortunately, with Paul, it's quick and it has consequences. So they go to take down Cain. We get a commercial for Sunblock 5000. Wow. If you want to spend more than 20 minutes in the California sun, just apply a pint. And also, it frequently causes cancer. Yeah, it does what it's supposed to prevent. okay so then the police just like easily take down kane at this point dr fax decides that kane is perfect when fax describes why kane is perfect she mentioned several things but a couple of

things she mentions are he has a god complex he's addicted to drugs yep like edu 209 and robocop have really good designs i think purposefully robocop 2 the robot looks like crap Yeah, he's supposed to just look like a total mess. Like, there's nothing cool or good-looking about him. He's just junk.

So, Kane is literally just an evil, soulless version of RoboCop, and he's called RoboCop 2. So, when RoboCop finds Hob, he's literally dying buried in a pile of money. Wow, yeah, that's true. And also, the mayor and other people have been courting him as a source of money to save them. That's true. And he represents the money that they want, right? Like he is that target audience, that child audience that is only courted to get money. And it doesn't really matter how, whether through violence or through kiddie things. The kiddie things didn't work. So we're going back to violence. Yes. I just think it's interesting that this kid becomes a source of money for the city because that's how they're seen. You know, kids are a money farm. You know, content doesn't matter even if it destroys them or warps them. Just get that money. and i took this to be like uh orion which i feel the city represents orion they never wanted to

cater robocop to kids that was never their intention but it became a necessity because the executives were pushing them to do it and that's the only way they were making money so eventually they're just like all right this is how we write yeah and the mayor of the city doesn't want to get no he never wanted to do that but he has to right like he has no other option so specifically hob who represents children gives ocp which represents orion studio gives them 50 million dollars robocop one grossed 53 million dollars wow dude they were literally playing off of this is the amount that robocop one made orion studios it made 50 million dollars yeah from kids basically so ryan's like well we didn't expect to get this money from kids but all right we'll take it this is the only way no that's good that's pretty good like that's a very specific amount and it fits it's the exact amount that robocop one made uh ocp unveils robocop 2 and when they

unveil him he literally comes out of detroit which he then destroys do you think that means anything robocop 2 is he doesn't care about orion he doesn't care about the fans he doesn't care about anything like it's just a vehicle for the executives to make money it was it was never here to further the franchise once he's a robot all he does is wreak havoc that's all he does like that's all this movie does and that's all it did really with the fans it just wreaked havoc like right the kids didn't like it the old school fans didn't like it no one liked it no one like the studio didn't like it i think except that it made money so they were probably happy no well it cost 25 million it grossed 14 million it didn't make money geez how how could it not make money robocop is huge i don't know and they made a robocop 3 yeah which was the first robocop i ever watched me too perhaps ocp's plan would have worked i don't know maybe robocop 2

would have somehow made the money i'm not sure how this only works with the metaphor as far as i'm concerned i don't understand the plot reason no the plot makes no sense and why would they want some, like, drug-crazed maniac to be their policeman. The only reason that the final fight of this movie happens is because the old man just randomly decides to just wave around some nuke. Yeah, wave around some nuke. For no reason. He has no reason to wave that around. He's just like, see this? This is nuke. Yeah. Our new RoboCop guy is gonna get rid of nuke, and that'll destroy all the crime. Yep. RoboCop 2 ends up losing because he ignores RoboCop 1 in the pursuit of nuke which as i said i think represents money money and the reason that robocop 2 loses is because he ignores robocop 1 because he's going after the nuke which is what the movie did it ignored the original and did its own thing and it lost yes i think the biggest thing you could

say to maybe critique this theory is so you're saying the filmmakers knew the film they were making was a mistake um yeah and to that i say yes i do think that and i think i've already provided some evidence for as to why. But at the end, the old man and Johnson get off scot-free by blaming it on facts, which is always the case in Hollywood, right? You get some ambitious young executive to sort of helm the sequel to your big franchise and make you money. You feed them what you want and they make it. But if it fails, you blame it on them and fire them and you don't lose anything no you get all the money that scene is definitely showing like how uh you know scapegoats work in like a corporate context right like yeah no matter what that's what it's showing so and definitely scapegoating happens in a hollywood corporate uh context as well yeah so let's answer it for once and for all just you know for everyone to hear who would win in a fight

robocop or a young boy oh gee the young boy he won twice yeah yeah so yeah i think the young boy wins i'd put 50 million dollars on the young boy rude yeah i have to give credit to lee baron whose youtube channel is called peaked interest because i think he did a lot of the legwork in figuring this out and he really put together a believable theory and i completely buy it like this is clearly a metaphor for the making of robocop 2 and the dumbing down of the franchise to appeal to kids clearly right and it makes the movie more fun to watch totally yeah like you said it's kind of a crappy movie watchable right right it's not that fun to watch originally but now that you know this go watch the movie again and you'll like it a lot more uh let us know what you think we're on twitter at popcorn isn't real uh send us a tweet tell us if you like the theory if you have a different theory. If you have any thoughts at all, let us know. If you like the show, make

sure to rate, review, subscribe. It really helps other people to find us if you give us a rating and a review. Music for this episode was provided by Christine. And until next time, remember, the popcorn isn't real.