A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion Spine #23: Paul Verhoeven’s Robo­Cop.

This is a good time to explore the Cri­te­rion Collection’s mis­sion state­ment, since I know plenty of peo­ple think that hav­ing Robo­Cop on a list with The 400 Blows and 8½ is an abomination.

The Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion, a con­tin­u­ing series of impor­tant clas­sic and con­tem­po­rary films, is ded­i­cated to gath­er­ing the great­est films from around the world and pub­lish­ing them in edi­tions that offer the high­est tech­ni­cal qual­ity and award-​winning, orig­i­nal supplements.

Robo­Cop is the kind of film on which an enter­pris­ing and lazy film stu­dent could base an entire the­sis. It is a post-​modern mas­ter­piece, in both lit-​crit and cult-​crit usages of the term. While films like The Ter­mi­na­tor and The Matrix are also excel­lent post-​modern films, they lack a cer­tain cul­tural applic­a­bil­ity that is the main motive force in Verhoeven’s image of the future. To call Robo­Cop a com­edy or satire is to do it a great dis­ser­vice. It is often bark­ingly funny, but the per­vad­ing bru­tal­ity, cal­lous­ness and cyn­i­cism is not present for its own sake but to flesh out an idea and warn­ing about Verhoeven’s pre­dic­tion of cul­tural evo­lu­tion in the late 1980s. The fact that Robo­Cop is more and more often billed as a com­edy does more to strengthen the pre­science of the film than any­thing else. We laugh at Robo­Cop because we are con­tin­u­ally becom­ing closer to the future it pre­dicts. We laugh because it is cor­rect, even though we don’t want to believe it.

Robo­Cop, there­fore, becomes the poster child of post-​modern man. And there is noth­ing funny about him. While gay gang-​member drug deal­ers blow apart Detroit with huge guns held crotch-​high spurt­ing fire [No, I am not kid­ding], Robo­Cop is dri­ven by his prime direc­tives to bring jus­tice to all and sundry but for a select few. He is a man impris­oned within cir­cuitry, who can feel his fam­ily although he can­not remem­ber them. With a sub­jec­tiv­ity so frac­tured and con­trolled by cor­po­rate and polit­i­cal inter­ests there is lit­tle cause for Robo­Cop to accept the name of the dead man he is [Are all cops named Mur­phy?] or to accept any­thing at all.

Robo­Cop is far too sym­pa­thetic a char­ac­ter to be funny. Despite all of the stric­tures placed upon him, he strives to be as autonomous as pos­si­ble, to live up to obso­lete stan­dards in a cutting-​edge envi­ron­ment with ADD news­casts NUKEM board games; he ulti­mately tri­umphs because his prison is also his weapon. So if that isn’t rea­son enough to include Robo­Cop in the Cri­te­rion list, noth­ing I can say will change your mind.

I can’t end this review with­out men­tion­ing the stop-​motion ani­ma­tion debt that the film owes to Ray Har­ry­hausen. I love that man, and were it not for him, the ED-​209 and the 6000 SUX com­mer­cial, inte­gral to the cul­tural aroma of the film, would have not been nearly as effective.

• Cri­te­rion Essay by Car­rie Rickey
• YouTube clip of RoboCop’s intro­duc­tion, one of cinema’s great reveals.
• The Robo­Cop Archive
• The Cri­te­rion Contraption’s review.