American Jesus

Hello, and welcome to The Popcorn Isn't Real. I'm Leif Ehrich. I'm here with my brother Torvald. We've got an amazing show for you today. Today we're going to be talking about RoboCop. 1987 classic. Some might call it like an action masterpiece. It's a terrific movie. I don't know, would you call it an action movie? Yeah, you would probably classify it as an action movie. Certainly all the things that we're trying to capitalize on its success thought of it as an action movie and tried to make other action movies. Right, yeah. But, I mean, you would just call it a social satire, right? That's what it is. Yeah, a social satire. But first, let's give some information about the movie. It was made in 1987, written by Michael Miner and Edward Neumeier, directed by Paul Verhoeven, stars Peter Weller as Robocop, Kurtwood Smith as Clarence. You might know him as Red from That 70s Show. Got Miguel Ferrer as Morton.

War. It's fantastic. You know that guy? Yeah, he's great. Now, I have so much to say about this movie because, like, not only is it so good, but it had such a storied and rocky production. Yeah. Paul Verhoeven throwing the script in the trash the first time he read it. Peter Weller hiring a literal, like, mime to teach him for months how to move as RoboCop. and then having to throw everything away and relearn it in a few hours when the suit didn't allow him to, you know, move. I mean, there's the story of the suit itself going way over budget, getting redesigned over and over, taking 10 months just to design and produce it. As a kid, I always thought Robocop was like Terminator. So I was like, man, Terminator would totally beat Robocop in a fight. But as I, you know, matured, I realized that they're just Honestly, almost anyone could beat RoboCop in a fight. Right, exactly. All he does is lose in all of his movies.

Terminator and RoboCop are 100% different. They're conceptually opposites almost. I don't know how founded it is, but there's a rumor that the stunt coordinators, they were a brother and sister team, and they were both going through messy divorces at the same time while filming the movie. and the reason it was happening at the same time is because their respective spouses had run off together which is insane yeah you probably don't want stunt coordinators who are just like in that kind of mood of like yeah i just wish everyone would die right they're the ones who are in charge of making sure you don't die it's a really good movie and i'm really excited to talk about it But first, I want to make sure to introduce my theory right off the bat. So, hey, Leif, why don't you talk us through RoboCop? What's this movie even about? It's about a man who is a cop. His name is Murphy. And he gets killed while doing cop things.

And he gets brought back to life by being turned into a cyborg slash robot. And then that robot goes around and enforces the law. But of course, he was created by this company, OCP, that controls and owns the police force, and that company is evil. And so eventually, he has to kind of fight back against his own creators, and he ends up winning, in short, after losing a lot. And of course, the whole movie is just a giant social satire against capitalism and the culture of the time, I guess. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on, Leif. Leif, are you sure you watched the movie titled RoboCop and you did not, in fact, read a book titled The Bible? Because it sounded to me like you were just telling the story of a certain man named Jesus Christ. gosh now i'm now i'm uh now i'm really confused i don't know i oh boy i mean i have read the bible so it's possible i got the two confused well allow me to blow your mind leaf because it turns out

the story of jesus christ and the story of the resurrected robot you just told are one in the same. Oh my goodness. That RoboCop is in fact an American Jesus. Wow. Oh wow. We're going to prove it. Dude, I can't wait. There's a legend that RoboCop director Paul Verhoeven, who is a historical Jesus Christ scholar. He's the author of a book called Jesus of Nazareth, which basically like breaks down Jesus as a person and tries to build up an idea of who he really was. He's the only member of the Jesus Seminar who does not have a degree in biblical studies. And there's this legend that he worked this idea of the historical Jesus into the character of Murphy and RoboCop while directing the movie. Not just a legend, but what, didn't Verhoeven say it? Right, yeah, Verhoeven has said it, but do you buy it? I don't know. I mean, yeah, when I watched the movie with that in mind, because we were going to do this episode, I came away with like, I don't know, maybe three notes.

No, exactly. Like, I think most people watch RoboCop and don't think it's Jesus, right? Like, no one's watching and thinking that. There are certainly some similarities here and there. The legend is that Verhoeven crafted and molded RoboCop into the story of the American Jesus. that he's fighting crime, protecting his fellow man, preaching his own gospel, rising from the grave and avenging his own death, which Jesus didn't quite avenge his own death, but he's the American Jesus. It wasn't really in his wheelhouse. So what I've done is I've tried to map certain quotes and events from RoboCop's life to events in Jesus's life. And I've done my best to catalog all these instances and I'm going to present them for you as proof that RoboCop is in fact the American Jesus that Paul Verhoeven and the rest of the crew envisioned when making RoboCop. And we're also going to have Michael Miner on, who is the writer of RoboCop. And we're going to

get his thoughts on this entire idea. We're joined by writer-director Michael Miner. Welcome to our show. We have ignition. Awesome. It's so great to meet you. Good to meet you too. So Michael, I wanted to start by just asking you about how your career got started. I know you were a student in California and you made a short film called Labyrinths and then I believe you were hired as a writer on RoboCop while you were still a student. Is that correct? Oh yeah it's actually I guess my career as a storyteller even though I didn't know it started in an English class in high school where I was mentored by a really exceptional person, a teacher named Frank Jansen. I was the 98-pound weakling, president of scholarship club, but I was being tortured all the time by the cooler crowd. I wrote this short story that I refused to read in class, but Frank read in front of 30 fellow students, and several of them cried. And I thought, wow, I've got power over my

tormentors. But I think I became a writer that day at the age of 16. And as an undergraduate, studied English literature and theater and started a film society at UC Riverside. And this was in the late 60s and early 70s, and then was accepted to the UCLA Film School. After making a short Super 8 film that attracted a lot of attention, I wrote an outline for an idea that became Labyrinths, inspired by one of my literary mentors, Jorge Luis Borges, who's published a collection of short stories under the title Labyrinths. I wasn't really a screenwriter then. I had an outline for scenes that we then rendered, and I shot in a kind of improvisational style, Recorded on 16mm film, that story, which was about five astronauts trapped in a spaceship who had a machine that would allow them to have collective dreams together. And then we went into those dreams. And it was a half an hour of science fiction, fantasy, associative dreams that then stepped

back out when the astronauts woke up. It won a lot of awards and made me sort of a rock star at UCLA. And I guess the other big influence at that time was Philip K. Dick, who I happened to meet and get to know and subsequently auctioned his short story paycheck for 500 bucks. That's very cool that you met Philip K. Dick. Yeah, that's incredible. It was great. It was a great experience. I'm a huge fan. And I've tried to get a couple of his other books going. So I opted it for $500 and wrote a screenplay that almost got set up. We got close and it fell apart. And thank God it did because I didn't know what I was doing. Then I made another short at UCLA called Alias Jane Doe, which traveled around the town and was seen by a lot of executives in Hollywood. And one of these executives who saw it was Ed Neumeier, my future RoboCop partner. So we had similar ideas. He had an idea called RoboCop.

And then I had an idea called SuperCop on nights and weekends. We started co-writing the script. And in three months, we had a first draft called RoboCop. If possible, I would love to actually hear a little more about SuperCop, because I've heard just a little bit about it, that apparently it was about a police officer who was like affected by different appliances but i don't really understand like what what was it originally about what was your idea it was about a police officers who start wearing these what i guess could be called fighting suits now if you look at the tom cruise film edge of tomorrow so they start wearing these appliances and it starts affecting them psychologically and and turns them into bad cocks. My idea was more of a story about robotic appliances that humans wear, whereas Ed's idea was about a human trapped inside a machine. We were both on a similar expedition.

I heard that originally you were thinking that you might direct RoboCop, and I was wondering how it ended up with Paul Verhoeven. Yeah, for about 30 seconds, I had kidded myself into thinking that I was going to direct. It would have been a much different and inferior film because Paul, who we were lucky enough to get after a director's search, which included passes from George Cosmatos and Curtis Hanson, thank God they passed. So I pitched Paul to Ed and John Davison, the producer. Paul, when he first read the script, he threw it aside because he thought it was just a genre cartoon. But Martine, his wife, who is a psychotherapist, read it and said, you should look more closely at this because there are themes of resurrection, the ghost in the machine. And Paul reread it and he just finished Flesh and Blood for Orion. So there was a trusting business relationship. And, you know, we were incredibly lucky to get him.

It sounds like the stars really aligned to make this movie happen. The team that was on it was just jaw-droppingly amazing. I apologize for not mentioning Peter, because he's a marathon runner. He consulted with a mime, a famous mime in New York about movement, about how to make something robotic, but also seem a little bit like ballet or modern dance. And again, it could have been just a stuntman in a wetsuit. which a lesser director and actor would have rendered. But Peter sold the whole illusion. I wanted to ask you, just because I've seen the music video Don't Stop Running by YNT, which I've heard that you directed. It starts with this kind of geeky boy who gets, he wants to go out with this girl, but he gets rejected. And then he transforms into this robot with a very prominent face mask, right? Kind of like a certain RoboCop we know. And then he goes on to fight crime, right? He beats up those muggers.

Do you think this was kind of a proto-RoboCop? Was that what? Ed and I had rules for RoboCop. Sort of, we call them the John Wayne rules. He can't be on a telephone. He can't kiss the girl. He can't ride a bicycle and he can't fly. Oh, wow. Those were the real prime directives. Yeah, those are the real prime directives. Very good. So I made the mistake of having the robot fly in the Y&T video. But the better Y&T video is the one we made before that called Mean Streak. I think it's really interesting how that music video, the Don't Stop Running one specifically, kind of it reflects a lot of the themes in RoboCop, like how this geek, he wants to be cool. He wants to be some slick robot dude. It's kind of like how Murphy, he like he has this desire to be TJ Laser, right? He learns all these tricks and moves to kind of try to be a cool guy, but then he gets killed because of it, right? Then after getting resurrected, he actually is the cool guy, but he lost his humanity because of it.

Just like the boy in Don't Stop Running. At the end, he wants to end up with the girl and he is this cool robot, but she rejects him. She runs away and leaves him crying because he's not a human anymore. Those are very good points. Actually, the TJ Laser thing, which was completely Ed's idea, is really brilliant. He had been working at Universal Studios, and there was a T.J. Hooker character who kind of inspired the T.J. laser gun trick thing, which allowed us to have Lewis recognize the human inside the cyborg. I mean, it all lined up very nicely. I mean, of course, you're aware that Paul Verhoeven has publicly said that the character of RoboCop is supposed to be kind of an American Jesus motif. Is this something that was involved from the start? You know, it's interesting. That's where Paul's brilliance comes in. The main influences for myself and Ed were Blade Runner, The Man in the Iron Mask, Judge Dredd, the graphic novel, which it's interesting.

I think RoboCop was the first adaptation of a graphic novel where there was no graphic novel. There was melodrama. It was about 10% dialed up from where it should be. And so we got there first. In terms of the Jesus motif, Paul has been involved in something called the Jesus Project for a long time. And it involves trying to determine what Jesus said and taught compared with what was added on by disciples and historians. So he saw the reanimation of Robocop more as a resurrection theme than Ed and I did. We didn't talk about that. So that's something that Paul brought to the project. Paul needs credit for that, you know, unearthing that theme within our script. So I'm just going to go through and I'm going to outline some events or phrases or quotes that I think can be mapped one to one from RoboCop or Murphy to Jesus Christ. Like, for example, I'll start you out with a softball. If we were going to try and define like a catchphrase for Jesus Christ, like what does Jesus Christ tell people?

I think most people would agree that... Come follow me? Yeah, like that's what Jesus says. And RoboCop's catchphrase is quite similar. Jesus says, come follow me. RoboCop says, dead or alive, you're coming with me. I mean, he took that catchphrase and he Americanized it, right? Now it's not an invitation, it's a command. I mean, that works for Jesus too, though. Dead or alive. It doesn't matter. He's bringing you with him, whether you're dead or alive. Starting out, we're going to go over what I call the betrayal and the resurrection. We all know that Jesus Christ in the New Testament, he was betrayed by his apostle Judas. He was specifically betrayed with a kiss. In RoboCop, Murphy, I believe, was also betrayed. He was betrayed by OCP. So Murphy doesn't know why he's here, but he thinks it seems like OCP is moving a lot of new guys up there to Metro West, which is apparently a very unsafe place to be.

Later on in the movie, Morton, the younger business guy who's kind of in charge of the RoboCop program, he says, We're ready to go, sir. We've restructured the police department and placed prime candidates according to risk factor. I'm confident that we can go to prototype within 90 days. So what he's saying is we will have a body of a policeman because I have put fresh bodies in places where they will die. Like, that's what he's saying. So he was literally betrayed by OCP. They put him there to die. Do they kiss him? Yes, they do kiss RoboCop. Oh, that's true. She does. I remember that. Well, he's being created. So Murphy dies. They get his body back to OCP. they start you know taking off his human parts almost ridiculing him like they take off his left arm even though they don't have to right like very reminiscent of how the romans treated jesus you know during the crucifixion right one of the ladies comes up to him puts a literal crown

on his head and kisses him okay yeah right just like jesus christ during his crucifixion first got kissed by judas as a betrayal and then had a literal crown of thorns put on his head well they ridiculed him yeah okay probably paul was doing that on purpose and just didn't talk about it the other one you could analogize is murphy losing his hand in the torture murder as a kind of stigmata so um you you guys may be onto something here no i'm with you um when when they murder him they specifically start with the hand that's right and that could be stigmata or maybe him getting crucified through the hand when they you know put the nails in and then he gets crucified all over as the gang just shoots him all over the place all over that's so american exactly it's it's this is not like jesus where he he got a few nails this is american he gets a lot of bullets i mean one could possibly argue that what happens is he just gets

shot a lot but you know yeah he gets crucified a lot yeah and then he's crucified one more time at the end of the movie by clarence who drives a spike through robocop's shoulder and this could be a crucifixion or it could be the moment where the um the spear guard yeah pierced his side with a spear right it could be either one but that's that's still part of the crucifixion so i count that in right blood and water didn't pour out though well he was in water so there you go and then there's that you know the shot where he's they're there on the uh steel foundry and he's walking on water so paul was probably tickled you know by being able to render that and push the theme more of robo walking on water now see that's the only one that i picked up on one yes that's the only one most people pick up on jesus christ he walked on water to save his friends from a storm robocop in the end of the movie walks on water to kill clarence specifically

to save lewis yeah it's at this point where lewis is incapacitated she's full of holes like she's been shot up and clarence is right there next to her robocop shows up and walks on water to get clarence's attention and save the day there and that's the one that verhoven has pointed out right when when he says that he this was like that's the only one he points out i think as far as i've heard from commentaries and stuff yeah okay well i mean before we get any further though we did skip over one of the most famous scenes from this movie where the guy gets shot out the window and to set up that scene of course ocp uh has two different projects one is the robocop project and it's competing with ed 209 which is sort of a stop motion creature that can walk around and says like you have three seconds to comply drop your weapon ed stands for enforcement droid and i'm guessing 209 was just like the iteration so to test out its capabilities they are giving this

one executive business guy a weapon and then of course it malfunctions and it's not even a test dude you're giving it too much credit it's supposed to be a demo like the thing shouldn't even have live ammunition yeah so they give him a gun it tells him to drop his weapon so he does and that's supposed to show hey this thing can enforce the law but then it keeps counting down saying you have three seconds to comply and then it just shoots him and kills him i love how like he just he gets shot for like i think it's it's something ridiculous it's like over 30 seconds of film time of just him getting shot and then the dust settles and it's quiet in the room and then someone yells somebody call a paramedic this man is more holes than man he's dead he's so dead yeah it's really good really good comedic timing i love it and i want to say when the robocop remake was coming out people were worried because it was going to be rated pg-13 and of

course i'm not one of those people who really thinks oh if it has an r rating it'll be good or if it has a pg-13 rating it'll suck i kind of think that has nothing to do with if a movie's good or not however when people were worried about that being like oh this is going to be watered down and stupid why is it pg-13 one of the filmmakers involved with the project said come on times have changed if the original robocop was made now it would have been rated pg-13 and everyone was like what have you seen it i mean like just for that scene of the guy getting shot alone it would be rated r like i mean it did not instill confidence in anyone who was starting to lose confidence in the remake which did end up not being very well liked or well received but like Like the first one of the main filmmakers involved, it clearly hasn't even watched the original of the movie he's remaking, at least not in a long time, if he thinks it would be rated PG-13.

It was almost in C-17. It is violence. Fortunately, with Paul, it was, you know, it's quick and it has consequences. Oh, definitely. After Robocop fights ED-209, there's also another betrayal. Does Lewis deny him three times? Kind of. Not Lewis. Lewis actually does save him here. But the police deny him at this moment. So it's at this moment that he walks out of the building and then is surrounded by police and they just open fire. They just start mercilessly shooting him. And a few of the police don't like it. And they kind of protest, but they don't do anything to stop it. And they just kind of stand around and watch. Right. And some of the police do shoot at him. Right. And so I kind of took this as Peter denying him. right lying that he didn't know jesus and basically being complacent i mean it would be better if someone actually denied him like three times was like i don't know that police officer

and kept shooting at him and then like there was like a loud siren at the end and that cop felt bad but there was not that much dialogue involving robocop yeah another little evidence that i have another event that i'd like to correlate with robocop's life i would like to call it the witness If you've read the New Testament life, who was the first person to see Jesus Christ after his resurrection? Mary Magdalene. Exactly. In one of the gospels. In the other gospels, she doesn't see him at all. In John's gospel, it's Mary Magdalene. She is the first person to see and recognize Jesus Christ after his resurrection, the woman Mary Magdalene. For Robocop, the first person to see and recognize him is also a woman. It is Louis. Okay. Louis recognizes Robocop as Murphy and confronts him about it after he has his big bad dream about you know getting murdered yeah that's pretty good I didn't notice that and then later in the movie

once he finally understands you know what's going on they're hiding at the steel mill he asks about his family and she tells him oh they moved away and she gets closer to him and she's gonna touch him she's gonna pat him on the shoulder to comfort him he says touch me not he stops her he says leave me alone she's about an inch away from touching him and she does not touch him just like jesus said to mary touch me not yet ascended to my father exactly and this has to be intentional right that's pretty i can imagine verhoven saying to that actress do not touch him right like i believe that was definitely intentional and this was robocop's touch me not moment i think it's interesting that those things line up we i mean we were obliged to do that because it's uh lewis is his partner so yeah it does line up very well the other thing i i will say is again i i think it's just a not it's a lucky accident so another act that i have mapped

between robocop and jesus christ is what i like to call the adulterer i don't know if you remember Jesus Christ, he saved an adulterous woman. Right, right. Whoever is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone. Right. So the story of Jesus Christ, there's this woman, she's basically getting mobbed. They want to stone her and kill her because she was adulterous. So they confront Jesus about it, and they're like, hey, yeah, let's kill this woman. Help us kill this woman, Jesus. You're so gospel-y, right? You're such a good guy. Why don't you help us kill her? He answers them, and he says not to. Now, I'm going to map this to an event in RoboCop where RoboCop saves a girl who is getting mobbed she's actually getting raped by a couple of gangsters robocop enters the fray and you know i talked about how they in the new testament they want to stone this woman uh first jesus disarms them well robocop also disarms them by shooting off that guy's stones

right wait wait he shoots off that guy's stones to disarm his ability well what do you mean when you say jesus disarms them like he just he disarms them metaphorically with his words yeah metaphorically by how he talks to them about it none of them go through right right none of them throw weaponized rocks yes okay but this isn't this is not israel's jesus this is american jesus okay he's gonna disarm them with a gun right so he he takes away their stones um and then he says your move creep Jesus Christ at this point said your move that is without sin among you let him first cast the stone your move creep right like it's literally what he's saying disarms them takes away the stones and says your move what are you gonna do now after this event that's good I like that after the event has taken place and the accusers have left right they've fled the scene the woman in both cases is then comforted by her savior but not how she expects to be where are

those that hath accused thee hath no man condemned thee neither do i condemn thee go and sin no more right it's not what she was expecting at all right robocop she she runs up to him you know runs into his arms and says oh thank you so much and then he looks at her and says madam you have suffered an emotional shock i will notify a rape crisis center and then she just kind of looks confused at him it wasn't what she was expecting yeah i mean i feel like that's not exactly the most clear adaptation of the great story right there i mean both of them are saying yeah yeah no i get it i get emotional turmoil is over now you can move on with your life wait because the the humor of that scene of course is just that robocop is so emotionless and you know this woman is looking for some form of comfort after a traumatic experience, and he's just like, I will notice. So are you saying that the American Jesus is not full of love and mercy?

No, of course not. The American Jesus is a big badass action hero, only cares about being badass, right? All right, yeah. Even though I'm a Buddhist, I've studied the life of Jesus, and historians speculate that he was a Torah scribe. And that may be the only way that someone could know all of these Proverbs. And when you think about the function of a proverb, it was written before there was paper. It had to be short and punchy so that people could remember and transmit it orally because they couldn't write it down. So one could also say that these things, you're a move creep, Dead or Alive, You're Coming With Me, could be... These are proverbs. Proverbs about violence. I love it. I love it. They're action movie one-liners from the past. Action movie proverbs. Well, and also this movie has a lot of quotable one-liners. Like the most famous one is, I'll buy that for a dollar. We based Bixby Snyder on Benny Hill, who was a raunchy English comedian

who would get pies thrown at his face by scantily clad women. but we americanized this lowbrow comedian from english television what does he actually mean when he says i'll buy that for a dollar like what's the i get it is funny to me but i don't think i quite get the joke it's a rejoinder kind of like thumbs up okay yeah yeah it's not really doesn't have really any meaning i see what you're saying isn't that great yeah which is good right that's the that's one of the themes of the movie like all that media there's really no meaning behind it paul was considering the idea of shooting the media with over the shoulders similar to something like network but we were very adamant about it being first person with news people's looking straight out because you didn't want that extra layer you wanted it to be news people looking at you from the screen like a television and there was a fourth media break

at the end that didn't test well the audience preferred uh Peter Weller saying Murphy but we had these four other media breaks and one of them Lewis is interviewed in a hospital bed the stronger ending was Weller after he executes Jones uh answering the old man what's your name son? Murphy. No, that makes sense. Then the big RoboCop sign comes up. Yeah. And just because we're talking about that, I was wondering maybe just as the writer, what your opinion is, do you think RoboCop really was Murphy or was Murphy dead and RoboCop is just a robot that happens to have some of his memories? Murphy's alive. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Yeah. And one of the things that ed and i played with mgm hired us to write a robocop return script in 2014 and 15 and we played around a lot with the idea of robocop who was that we 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. The script was not made yet, but it may have life in the future. So was this the script? I've heard of RoboCop Corporate Wars, which was originally going to be the sequel. Was this, 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 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 were like, we carried on after a 30 year gap. 30 years. Yeah. Wow. Oh my gosh. it's a long time for a second draft it gets made that would be that would be amazing to see like a true robocop sequel after 30 years after decades yeah that would be awesome like we would like it

too hey well okay speaking of kind of the businessy side of things i actually i've seen a photograph that i really want to ask you about because i have no idea what's going on here there's this black and white photograph of it's a man in a robocop costume and he's standing next to Richard Nixon. And they're like all buddied up and Richard Nixon smiling. He's going to shake his hand. What is going on here? What was that for? I'm not sure if it was a replay of Nixon with Elvis because he did like to pose with characters from popular culture. I don't know how that happened, but I have seen the photo. I love it. I think it's amazing that this photo exists it's so good Nixon he was a horrible liar in so many ways but he is responsible for title nine which uh offered scholarships for women athletic scholarships at universities he helped open up uh China he and Kissinger did bomb Hanoi on Christmas Eve of 1971 which is completely

a war crime uh he's an interesting character i mean compared with ronald reagan and and going forward who are clearly benign evil nixon is more conflicted and more affected by the times that's why i just love that picture of robocop standing next nixon nixon looks so happy to be there he's he's like yeah robocop i'm like did you not understand what robocop is about i've heard a story that you originally in the big gas station explosion you wanted the shell logo you wanted the s to drop off and it would become hell is this right you guys good for you that's that's good research well i've been trying for three scripts the third one being robocop to have a gas station named shell blow up and then just have hell and the s gets popped off and have hell inflates so god bless john davison he cleared shell motor company which is different from the uh gas gasoline the original uh oil company we built this thing they

shot it the gas station explodes they blow off the s and there's hell and they had a close-up and paul cut it out oh my gosh no i wasn't sure the day that they dropped it or i would have said because there are several things Paul didn't understand about really obvious humor in an American audience. As a European, there were things that needed to be a little more sophisticated and deft. And that includes draft four. When we were in development, we got Paul with draft three. With draft four, he said, let's try Murphy being a bachelor. And what I pointed out to Paul, look, for American audiences, you have to threaten home. if you look at Abneyville Horror, if you take away their home, it strikes right at the heart of what they believe in most. And so he recognized that and said, okay, make him married again and have the fed with the condo with if we put all that stuff back in. And, you know, much to his

credit, he understood that he was wrong about that. So with hell, though, I wish I'd been there that day. Me too. One of the only mistakes I thought he made. The first time I heard that I was like that would be so perfect that's so good and to hear you say that now that they actually filmed it it exists and it wasn't put in the movie oh that's heartbreaking that would have been perfect it is a gothic tale and the horror of having one's memory blanked all those things and that would have added to that gothic quality i agree so that's uh that's pretty much all of my evidence that uh robocop was in fact an american jesus that's what i got for you i think it's a good theory no you you like you came up with some great evidences that i had not thought of all i knew was the walking on water thing i mean that's that's pretty impressive to come up with that many that many pieces of evidence i do have to ask though do you have any thoughts on the the one

question i had when i was watching this looking for for jesus metaphors was there's a flashback where he flashes back to shortly before Halloween and he's with his family and his son comes in dressed up as Satan. And I wonder if you have any thoughts on what it might mean for the son of American Jesus to come in dressed up as Satan. Is his son the Antichrist or what's going on there? I have no idea. You brought this up to me earlier and you blew my mind. Like I didn't even notice this while I watched it. I mean, I noticed it, but I didn't make that connection. I racked my brain. tried hard to come up with some like why because it's it's an odd halloween costume i mean back in the day i guess people probably dressed up kids probably dressed up as a lot as devils and satan yeah and like the little rascals like in like the 50s i i don't know yeah that's pretty much all i got what do you think i mean was was robocop an american jesus as i've said i don't

think that anyone watching this movie really thinks that and the evidence you have found while impressive is not the sorts of things that most people would see or pick up on however obviously i gotta get none of the stuff we go over is i know but obviously i gotta give it to you because like the freaking director of oliverhoven has said it so i mean yeah he said so no matter what this is canon yeah this is a jesus allegory but yeah i think this is a fun theory i love the movie robocop uh if you get if you get the chance please click the link buy or rent the movie watch it you won't regret it it's just a really fun movie um if you're down for a gory action-packed satirical time totally and try and pinpoint your own instances where robocop was an american jesus let us know if you find something we didn't totally yeah i tried my best guys tweeted us on at popcorn isn't real if you have any opinions and also uh thanks for listening and music for

this episode was provided by christine and if you like our podcast don't forget to subscribe or even leave a nice review for us that would be cool thank you guys it's it's been a lot of fun to chat i i really like your energy keep going well thank you so much i mean i can't tell you what an honor it's been talking to you like seriously your works shaped my childhood i grew up with robocop right like this is it's uh it's it's been really great talking to you so thank you so much for taking the time you guys have got great energy i i uh i know you're gonna do fine awesome our show is called the popcorn isn't real so we always end every episode by telling our audience to remember the popcorn isn't real um and since you're the guest uh would you like to do the honors yes yes everyone out there listening to this great podcast just remember the popcorn is not real *crickets*