During the Communist era, many American films were not distributed in Czechoslovakia, and so many films, unfortunately, have to be repeated by film fans many years later on VHS, DVD and possibly Blu-ray. One film that was not available to Czechoslovak cinemas at the time of its American release was Robocop. It was made in 1987 by the Dutch director Paul Verhoeven, for whom it was the first major film to be made in the US.
Thanks to the fact that this film is adults-only, there's a lot of human blood, so it became a cult, which I didn't find out about until I went to see the second episode when I was ten years old. So I'm surprised they let me into the cinema myself, but I guess they didn't keep an eye on it in our little cinema on the estate. I had scary dreams from the second episode then, and also many experiences from the picture that I still remember now.
My scary childhood dreams
I didn't see the whole of the first Robocop episode until a few years ago on DVD and now on Blu-ray. I'm a lot older now, so the film's blood doesn't scare me; rather, I can appreciate the quality and timelessness of the film.
Robocop is an old-school 80s movie, back when computers could only render simple triangles, movies could only dream of computer graphics, and so all modern sci-fi technology had to be done with mechanical and optical tricks. The other way to make a movie about the future is with paintings and camera tricks. This is because before computers, many backgrounds had to be drawn, using simple masks on cameras to combine the real image and the painted image.
If computer technology were used now in the modern era, 30 years ago the old window-by-window animation using models was used, and has been used by film technology for almost 100 years. Many famous films from the 80s and 70s were made by combining already "historical" techniques. For example Robocop, Total Recall,Star Wars, but also Indiana Jones and other films that unfortunately 21st century man has to discover from digital media. Unfortunately, he is already infatuated with modern computers, so he cannot properly evaluate the creation and creative process of a film, when everything was done on his knee without computers, only mechanically and optically.
Robocop, made in 1987, is Paul Verhoeven's first major achievement, managing to make a film that was in an adults-only accessible format that became his springboard for other, more successful films.
His vision of a future full of violence, full of commercials and full of death may be closer than it seems. The world is full of death, drugs and bribes, and surely in time it will be full of, say, robots who will destroy their creators and fight for the right until they are destroyed. Robocop is also the first precursor to Iron-Man, but perhaps the last stage that awaits Tony Stark when only his brain remains.
There are several scenes throughout the film that even I remember to this day. The first is the death of Murphy, then the rescue of the woman from the rapists, and lastly the sickening death of the main villain and his first hand. Secondly i there are several humorous scenes in the film that lighten the depressing notion of the film. The sci-fi western series that Murphy is based on. The main weapon of a large corporation (the robot ED 209) and its disabling and destruction.
I am glad to have this movie in my collection, if I want to revisit the 80's which was a golden time for action movies, Robocop is one of the movies, incl. Terminator 1 that I'll be returning to.
Technical performance on Blu-ray
A new master has been used for the Blu-ray, which preserves all the image quality. All the details in the image are visible. Every blemish and damage to the actors and Robocop. If only other digital media makers would be inspired by this to see what a 25 year old film should look like on modern media. The picture retains its characteristic film grain, yet the image is sharp and with the technology used in the production of the film, the image tricks are not noticeable at all. The sound quality, while it won't blow your library away, but the sound engineers have done their job, and so the film is sound quality as well. Unfortunately I can't speak for the Czech version, which is the latest dubbed version starring Jane Stastny. It may meet the standards for a domestic production, but it falls short of the quality of the original. It is good, however, that the producers of the medium have managed to edit the 2003 dub into a director's cut.
So I think any film fan will be pleased to have this medium in their collection. It's a pleasure and a joy to have cult films among your collection.
The bonus features are pretty much the same as on the older DVD. But there is the added bonus of interviews with filmmakers from more recent times. That's the only one in HD quality, the others are in DVD quality only. The bonus features are nutritious and contain enough information to fill fans in on how difficult the making of the film was and how the filmmakers handled the challenging shoot.
Bonuses:
- Mass and Steel: From the Making of Robocop
- Robocop: The Birth of a Legend
- Films about the 1987 movie: The Making of Robocop and Production
- Meeting Room: Storyboard with commentary by Phil Tippett
- Missed Scenes
- Criminal in Old Detroit
- Special Effects: Then and Now
- Commentary by director P. Verhoeven and other filmmakers
Original release July 31, 2019 – Kritiky.cz
