The pop culture zeitgeist is a machine that can metamorphose its icons into something digestible. Safe. Crowd— and therefore family— friendly. The more press and entertainment space awarded to a figure, the more familiar and beloved do they become. When treated through the process of popular opinion, even a character like Freddy Krueger can go from being a menacing child murderer to the host of a 1-900 number designed to entertain kids (that is, as the commercial notes, as long as they get their parents permission before they dial).
Long before I ever saw a frame of RoboCop (1987), I had been introduced to the character on an X-Men–like cartoon show. Gone were the gory, blood-splattered action sequences, replaced by clean laser fights and snarky, comic-relief villains. Instead of a deceased man reborn as a machine struggling to find place and purpose in the world, I came to know the character as the electronic, talking action figure at my friend’s house that said things like “Hands up!” And “Uphold the law!” alongside the Ninja Turtles, Ghostbusters and the G.I. Joes that occupied the plastic bins in his basement.
Yes, at the time, I would have told you I was very familiar with RoboCop…
Imagine my surprise when I saw the film.
It’s no shock that RoboCop became so beloved to kids as the general design feels right out of a comic book. At first glance, there’s a silliness to the thing’s aesthetic, one that softens the impact of the moralistic implications inherent to his existence… and, I believe, purposely so. It’s a film that leans heavily into its style and satire, creating something larger-than-life and therefore better able to comment on the broader issues plaguing modern society.
Even in the film, RoboCop is packaged in such a way as to elicit good will. He looks like a “good guy.” A super-hero-like figure that might have posters and merchandise to accompany him. A way of gaining more traction, more power and, of course, more money. For, in a world run by corporations in the position of government, capitalism becomes more than a marketplace ideology, it stands as the predominant way of life.
It took many years for me to identify the odd parallels between how the character was sold to kids in the real world and how his image is conveyed to the public in the film. How oddly fitting it was that the message was so watered down that kids like me would buy more toys. Of course, through that lens, RoboCop is but one of many cultural icons to be repackaged and repurposed for the masses. But, regardless of where they all end up, one thing remains constant between all of them.
There’s a reason for their proliferation. Somewhere there’s a movie, a show, a comic book or something that worked. Something that landed with its audience. Something unforgettable.
In the case of RoboCop, it’s a powerful film about the very nature of humanity. Where it’s been, where it’s going and what the dangers and consequences of our desires might be. Paul Verhoeven’s film paints a uniquely stylized picture, drawn in outlandish imagery, excessive violence and uproarious societal reflection. All of the film’s various elements work well in tandem, crafting something as entertaining as it is compelling, and they are brought to life through incredible special and practical effects.
So much of this film is defined by the man in the silver suit, but, for me, the most shocking and unforgettable instant driven by the explosive practicality that the film employs is Murphy’s demise. Starting at the scripted level, the scene is plainly worded, straight forward in the way that the character of RoboCop is presented, recounting the facts in a procedural way that still somehow leaves room for emotional nuance. The film carries those words forward, bringing with them a level of chaotic malice against the kind-hearted protagonist that is so rare in mainstream action films.
It’s one thing to see the hero fall, it’s another to see that hero altogether obliterated. The scene is a deeply upsetting moment in the film that sets the stage for not only the oncoming narrative but the hard-edged and action-packed landscape that the story will occupy. It works because the effects work, the perfect marriage of the script and visualization on the screen, all serving to shepherd in one of the most iconic cinematic creations of the 80s (its pop culture desaturation aside).
THE SCENE
Murphy corners two of the members of Clarence’s gang in their hideout. He shoots one and moves to arrest the other. Leon and Chan emerge and corner Murphy. Clarence enters the room and asks Murphy if he’s a “good cop”. Clarence knocks Murphy to the ground, demanding to know where his partner is. Joe enters and claims to have taken her out. Clarence laughs and continues to taunt Murphy until finally he points his shotgun at Murphy’s hand and blows it clean off. The rest of the gang laughs hysterically as Murphy attempts to get away, partially in shock. Then, they open fire, decimating his armor while Murphy screams in agony. After, Clarence fires one last bullet into Murphy’s head and he drops lifeless to the ground. The gang leaves, laughing and taunting Murphy. Lewis enters the room after them and finds Murphy’s bloodied form.
THE SCRIPT
THE SCREEN
INT. WAREHOUSE — MURPHY
steps up behind Emil and Dougy.
MURPHY
Drop ‘em boys.
The script is written in a stream of thought manner, the Action Description headings leading into the sentences below. There is a similarly streamlined nature to the action on the page that is incredibly simple but allows for the machinations of the moment to come alive in the imagination.
The film follows the script to the letter, Murphy surprising them both as they casually watch TV: Dougy grabs for his shotgun and Murphy fires. He enters the room in a wide shot at a high angle, providing an overview of the tight space and already suggesting the danger Murphy is in.
As called for in the script, the image cuts away to Lewis, coming to as Murphy calls for her support. Lewis’ presence in the scene helps to keep the hope alive that Murphy may yet escape, as is the norm for a character of his sort.
KA-CHUNK.
Again, the script and the film adhere incredibly closely. As Murphy moves to cuff Emil, he hears the action of an autoload and turns. The image doesn’t cut, rather it pans over to find Chan descending the staircase with his gun pointed at Murphy. Then it cuts back to Murphy who turns as someone in the background behind him becomes visible. The camera racks focus to find Leon on the level above, also pointing his gun at Murphy.
In the script, Emil turns his gun on Murphy and Clarence almost immediately appears. The film slows down the rapid-fire series of events and allows the gang members to coalesce around Murphy, framing him with metal barrels, at the center of which stands Emil looking smug. That’s when Clarence enters. First his voice off-camera and then the man, walking down a long hallway in a wide shot, his shotgun tipped casually at his shoulder as scripted.
The film does away with a Lewis cut away here, seemingly in an attempt to keep the focus of the action on Murphy as opposed to his partner’s attempt to scale the grease encrusted cables of an elevator shaft. Instead, the image follows Clarence as he saunters in inspecting Murphy.
The camera sticks close to Clarence as he moves around Murphy, following him as if he were the lead. The lines are delivered almost exactly as written (aside from Clarence referring to Murphy as “hotshot” instead of his actual name). As written, Clarence clubs Murphy viciously behind the knees with his autoload and demands to know the whereabouts of his partner.
Still, the film does ratchet up the tension here, Clarence shouting the “Where’s your partner?” line twice and slamming Murphy in the back again while he’s on the ground. The dialogue on the page reads more dry, but, as realized, there is a dangerous, unhinged nature to Clarence’s delivery that makes the entire exchange much more powerful than the normal first act encounter with the antagonist.
Again, the script and the film follow the same trajectory. Joe enters and says of Lewis: “I took her out…” The film adds in another vicious kick as Clarence knocks Murphy to the floor and bends down to put a hand on Murphy’s face. The script simply says of this:
MURPHY — ON HIS KNEES
Clarence hovers over him.
The film inserts a sense of intimacy to the evil behind Clarence’s character. He is more than a cold, calculating villain. His is a brand of nemesis that revels in the emotional pain he is causing. It is not enough to destroy the body. He must also lay waste to the mind.
What happens next occurs in a tight shot-reverse-shot exchange. As in the script, Clarence exclaims that what happened to Lewis must really piss Murphy off and that he probably doesn’t think Clarence is a “very nice guy”. And, as scripted, Murphy responds, “Buddy, I think you’re slime”.
In the script, Clarence’s response to this is to step on Murphy’s arm, playing to his gang. In the film, the gang laughs uproariously as they seem to do in response to most things. They are lackeys, imbeciles akin to the mindlessly giggling cartoon weasels in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988). Even Clarence grins at this remark, seemingly impressed by Murphy’s will. He pushes him down, but his jovial sensibilities remain in tact.
In a close up, Clarence delivers his scripted lines about the mutual dislike he shares with all cops. In the script, Clarence then puts the muzzle of the autoload to Murphy’s wrist and pulls the trigger. There’s no build up, just an immediate action to cement what he is capable of.
The film embellishes this moment. Clarence raises the shotgun and moves it around Murphy’s body. As he does so, he makes a quick-release “nah, nah, nah” sound, simulating the kind of missile seeking weaponry one might find in a handheld game of electronic battleship. It’s a silly character moment that feels lighthearted when subtracted from the context of the scene and yet it culminates in extreme, grotesque violence. For, after a moment or two, Clarence pauses and pulls the trigger and:
Murphy’s right hand is blown off.
Murphy’s hand explodes into blood and sinew. The shot is quick, but the impact of the fleshy stump attached to our hero and spewing blood onto the dirty concrete is felt with pain and immediate weight. So much so that even the screenplay deviates from the realm of the visual and offers up a bit of emotional insight: He’s never known so much pain.
Murphy is in shock, staring at his hand and attempting to stand back up. Again, the film forgoes cutting back to Lewis, holding on the cackling gang and Murphy’s feeble attempt to get away. The film follows Clarence as he returns to the gang and gives him the added line, “Well, give the man a hand!” if only to hammer home the cruel insanity that the group, and villainy at large, inhabits in the story.
The script calls for Clarence to encourage the remainder of the gang to take their turn: Now he’s yours. The gang follows suit, firing on Murphy. The film allows the sequence to breathe, holding on Murphy as he attempts to pick up his bloody mass of skin and bone as blood sprays from his mess of an arm. Then, Lewis once more comes into view, making her way toward Murphy— still, a ray of hope for his survival per the tropes of the genre.
Murphy stands and moves slowly away from the gang in a medium wide. The gang laughs and coaxes him to turn back around, calling him “pretty boy” and the like. He does turn and that’s when Emil blasts Murphy, as was scripted immediately after his hand was severed. Bringing forward a scripted action several paragraphs down the page, the blast severs Murphy’s right arm entirely.
Guns fire and the scene intercuts between a barrage of twisted images. Murphy screams. The gang fires. Smoke rises from their guns. Smoke rises from Murphy’s twisted form. Lewis finally reaches the room, eyeing the gang firing execution style on something obscured from her vision. Bullet after bullet connects with Murphy’s broken form, his chest now a foggy haze of smoke, blood and bits of torn armor, now nothing more than shreds of fabric that would no better protect a pillow than the fragile innards of a human being.
While the film pushes forward, the screenplay actually takes a moment away from the action, providing intimate character insight that deviates from the writing style thus far:
MURPHY’S POV
This is how things look when you’re dying. The room is a blur. The faces of the gang swirl in front of him, threatening, leering… Emil… Joe… Chan… Leon… Clarence.
Certainly the violent montage of Murphy’s demise accomplishes this scripted notion. Still, the quiet sense of acknowledgment provides a forlorn, haunting sensibility invaluable to the reading experience. Not to mention the importance of the narrative impact of imbuing these specific gang members onto Murphy’s subconscious.
After the personal aside, the script cuts to the chase, as the gang looks at each other and the bloodlust has cooled. Then Joe makes the apathetic observation, I’m outta ammo, Clarence pulls out his gun and blows off a piece of Murphy’s head.
In the film, Murphy falls to the ground, still screaming, adding an emotional intensity unmentioned in the script (for all the reader knows, Murphy mind has gone dark). Emil makes the unscripted comment that “he’s still alive” while Murphy moves to push himself up off of the ground. He’s in agonizing pain, pulling his form up out of a pool of his own blood and the gang starts to taunt him once again. It is then that Clarence approaches and removes his gun, saying an additional line that does not appear in the script:
“Okay, fun’s over.”
Murphy strains, looking upward, his face contorted in a grimace of unthinkable pain as the camera tracks around him to see Clarence wielding the gun in the background. The gun fires and, in the same shot, a hunk of Murphy’s bloody, sweaty head explodes out of the back of his skull. Murphy’s face hits the floor, his eyes open and vacant. In the words of the script: Murphy goes down and stays down.
The script and the film stay closely aligned as the gang turns to leave. The only added nuance that doesn’t appear on the page is the laughing and jeering of the gang, still taunting the decimated Murphy as they exit— “goodnight, Sweet Prince!” They exit, as scripted: They melt away into the dark warehouse.
In the screenplay, Lewis is still on her way:
LEWIS RUNNING
And running and running. She rounds a stack of cargo containers and stops short, grim, staring at
MURPHY — SPRAWLED
In the film, Lewis was just offscreen, stepping out of the shadows to survey what she already well knew was the case. Her face is awash with emotion, a speechless shock, as she kneels beside Murphy’s body. In the script she’s told to calm down when calling for help before then snapping back at the dispatcher in anger. The film instead leaves the scene in a wide, low angle shot of the two police offers, mirroring the opening view as Murphy first approached Emil.
It’s quiet and somber, a stark contrast to what has just gone on, and one showing the futility of the fight between good and evil in a chaotic world which often favors the criminal over the lawful. In its current state, justice, it would seem, is largely out grasp.
THE BLOODY CONCLUSION
“This scene, for me,” Paul Verhoeven said on his commentary track for RoboCop found on the Arrow Video blu-ray disc, “was like describing the ultimate nightmare.”
Popular culture is a machine. An amalgam of the greater whole’s interests, boiled down into sweeping generalities that favor the bland flavor of the safe over the tangy taste of the unpredictable. Still, it’s a mechanism that doesn’t get the luxury of selecting its heroes. Rather, such figures are delivered by their ability to resonate, often by way of the very trait the mechanism seems Hellbent on buffing out: their distinctness. Their individuality. Their message as it pertains to and challenges the very construct by which such figures are proliferated.
RoboCop deals with many aspects of a troubled capitalist worldview. It’s a film overflowing with incredibly compelling ideas, astounding effects work and stellar technical prowess, all serving to create an unforgettable movie that’s as entertaining as it is affecting. And yet, for me, when I reflect back on its countless narrative achievements, I am always drawn to Murphy’s demise and the dramatic impact that scene has on the film as a whole.
From the perspective of Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner’s script, the scene is incredibly straight forward. In the feature The Future of Law Enforcement found on the blu-ray, Michael Miner says, “The marriage between the corporation and the gang was very appropriate… and delivers both objective and subjective violence to the audience.” In regards to the gang, he says, “they’re all very comic book, very broadly painted.”
Creating such stark caricatures to serve as the villains this early in the film helps to make clear that the “bad guys” are more than sharp-talking jerks and that the “good guys” are in for more than just a boring, expository monologue, as certain cartoon shows might have suggested. It strips away the playfulness sometimes associated with such characters and establishes what’s at stake, not just for Murphy but for society at large.
In the feature Special Effects: Then and Now, Production Designer William Sandell goes beyond just the characterizations, commenting on how the “brutal, cold architecture” also served the tone. Still, despite the off-putting nature of the factory where Murphy meets his end, according to Sandell, “there’s no information [onscreen] that you don’t want to see.”
Beyond the set up and structure of the sequence, it’s the practical execution that really allows it to land. The effects were overseen by the legendary Rob Bottin and a great deal of time, effort and planning went into bringing the sequence to life. In the interview feature mentioned earlier, screenwriter Michael Miner says of the scene, “one of the goals was to take away his body… losing the hand, the shot to the head, we wanted to communicate to the audience that he was dead. We wrote a very detailed description of how the gang torture-murders Murphy.”
“The floor was built up about 5 or 6 feet,” Producer John Davidson said in the previously mentioned audio commentary, “in order for puppeteers to be underneath the floor operating the hands.” Michael Miner elaborated further in his own interview, “Rob [Bottin] built an upper torso of Peter Weller that was powered by a bicycle so that he rises up when he peddles or when the operator peddles…”
So it was that as any controversial, iconic figure can be laundered and deemed appropriate through the construct of the popular consciousness, so too is Murphy dismantled and repurposed by the system he swore to protect. In retrospect, my experience with the character as a kid, before I had any context or understanding of the film or its broader intentions, falls perfectly in line with the movie’s overall assessment of the world. Our art and truth evolve as we age and our heroes and villains do too.
Such discoveries are inevitable, I suppose, as the veneer of childhood fades away. And yet, if there’s one thing RoboCop represents, it’s hope. A power to the perseverance of the human spirit. The message that no matter how terrible the acts committed against it, no matter how demonstrably the system breaks down one’s humanity… the spirit lives on. Fights. Succeeds against all odds.
That’s the funny thing about the pop-culture machine, as hollow as it can sometimes be, it also has the ability to echo a certain degree of depth. For, whether I realized the full extent of the meaning behind the electronic talking RoboCop at my friend’s house or not, I knew he was good. That he stood for something important. And it wasn’t the machine that made me think those things, it was the idea of the person underneath it.
Little in the film rings more true to that sentiment than Murphy’s violent end. A perfect marriage of script, visualization and tonal execution that sets the stage for everything that follows, including the character’s enduring legacy. A violent, heartbreaking start to a journey that ventures far away from the human form to tell a distinctly human tale.
It’s a scene that may not be the easiest thing to digest in the moment, but there’s a reason people latched on to it and the remainder of the film. It’s not because it’s safe, crowd or family-friendly. For when a movie taps into something carnal and current, no amount of pop-culture roadblocks will stop it from becoming a part of the vernacular.
It’s an evolution that may desaturate, declaw and otherwise soften the material, sure, but, hey, if it gets a kid like me to eventually want to seek out Paul Verhoeven’s masterpiece, well… maybe it isn’t so bad. After all, metamorphosing isn’t always a one way street. Just ask Robo.. oh, my apologies, I mean, Murphy.
RoboCop (1987): Written by Edward Neumeier & Michael Miner & Directed by Paul Verhoeven
