RoboCop 3

There is a certain weariness that starts to get on sequels after a time.

While some movie characters seem to be able to keep going on for all eternity, like James Bond, others get old real fast. Robocop, for example, is a character whose narrow magnitude has been worn out. There is so much that you can do for this half-man, half-robot who, as Ebert described, “walks like a child’s toy,” and eventually disobeys his programming in order to fight for the good guys.

“RoboCop 3,” released in 1993, is set once again in Detroit, where, despite the accomplishments recorded in “RoboCop” and “RoboCop 2,” things are even worse. So bad, indeed, that the city has more or less been sold to the evil Omni Consumer Products corporation, which even owns the police force.

OCP’s grand design, as the movie starts, is to relocate thousands of nice folks in a colorful neighborhood, and build on the ashes of their homes the towers of Delta City, a high-rise development that seems plagiarized directly from the covers of back issues of “Amazing Stories.” (OCP has undeniably studied the huge victory of other megalomaniac high-rise growths in Detroit.) The people who live in the neighborhood understandably hate OCP’s plans, which are carried out by deadly strike forces who throw out tenants on pain of death. One little child, for example, who is an orphan, is left to wander through the mean streets after OCP’s wrecking crews have killed her parents. Meanwhile, in the sewers beneath the city streets, another culture struggles to survive. This civilization, who dresses like 1960s hippies, are against dictatorship and mega-corporations, and are fighting rebel combat against the industrial pigs.

There are some moments of humor in “RoboCop 3,” like when an executive hangs up his phone and jumps out his window. And it’s fun watching the great Rip Torn, as Omni’s CEO. He walks, talks, smiles and thinks exactly like, how Ebert put it, “the producer of the Larry Sanders Show,” a role he was probably performing more or less simultaneously. (Because “RoboCop 3” gives him little else to do, this is a wise acting decision on his part.) RoboCop, you may recall, was once a normal human Detroit policeman, until large parts of his anatomy were lost in the battle against evil. Now equipped with machine-tooled body parts and a computer-assisted brain, he looks like a robot, except for his mouth and chin, which are left exposed, probably to pay tribute to the superhero costumes that do that, like Batman or the Flash. He clanks about the city, speaking like an automated elevator, and despite the efforts of Detroit’s best programmers he keeps having flashbacks to his family – memories that bring back his human side, and cause him to side with people he likes.

RoboCop was played by Peter Weller in the first two movies, which Ebert said, “he confided in me were the worst experiences in his life - not because of the screenplay, but because of the costume, which caused him to sweat gallons even though air-conditioners were trained on him between takes.” In this one he was replaced by Robert John Burke, star of “Simple Men,” by the independent filmmaker Hal Hartley. This may be too high a price to pay to enter the Hollywood mainstream. Nancy Allen is also back again, as RoboCop’s partner, Lewis, in a role that grows more thankless with every sequel. Both of them don’t do that good of a job in this one, I’m sorry to say.

Why do they continue on making these retreads? This is the answer Ebert gave: “Because "RoboCop" is a brand name, I guess, and this is this year's new model. It’s an old tradition in Detroit to take an old design and slap on some chrome.”

Another complaint that fans gave on the second one is that there was just one scene where RoboCop’s wife comes in and they never follow up on it. In this one, they give RoboCop a surrogate wife and child, which is a terrible idea. That was a huge part of the storyline that they just passed on and never followed up on it. In the end, this one gets a 0; it’s the worst in the series and one of the worst sequels ever made.

Now that I finally got that out of the way, check in next week when I talk about the remake.