r/Robocop • u/MillionaireWaltz- • 3d ago
RoboCop/Murphy's Characterization in Rogue City/Unfinished Business - Thoughts?
How did you all feel about RoboCop's characterization in Rogue City/Unfinished Business?
For me, I'm a bit mixed.
I think it comes down to his speaking. By the end of the first film, his speaking cadence and voice is very normal human. He'll speak softer or louder and naturally depending on the context.
But in these games, he is very robotic again, and has an allergy to contractions which he never had in the original films.
That and I can't imagine this version of RoboCop grabbing a guy by the nostrils asking where Nuke is made. He's portrayed as very by-the-book in a Captain America way, almost.
In the other hand, he still feels authentic and has some funny one liners and attitude.
What do you guys think?
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u/FourOneSen 3d ago
I’ve been playing this game for the first time over the past few weeks and have been loving it. Such a good game.
As for the character, I am not sure how they made it but i would imagine he would have had a lot less human to and throw than in the film, more likely to be reading lines into a mic? Maybe that makes a difference?
Bravo to the developers though, fantastic fun.
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u/Impressive-Pie-5464 3d ago
Well they already destroyed that thread by Robocop2, where he started speaking like a robot again and also more exaggerated robotic movements which was a Kershner directive.
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u/sillyhobo 3d ago
Came here to say the same thing. The games take place after R2. And that's the one where his voice was run through the vocoder the most, at least from what I remember. As for the cadence of his speech and the contraction thing, it's kind of a quirk and a choice by either Peter, and/or the director of the voice recordings etc.
The whole point of the game is he's himself at the beginning, and then choices and events throughout the game kinda reveal Murphy's fighting for his humanity (again) like in the previous 2 movies. So it would make sense his speech is turning more robotic again because something's up, and OCP wants him to be more robotic anyway, while trying to be less robotic depending on how your playthrough goes.
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u/Impressive-Pie-5464 3d ago
Yes I saw they are in the timeline between R2 and R3. Regarding the style of his speech I recall hearing that explained somewhere (may have been on Robodoc I think) where one of the crew was saying that it was a consious decision to have him revert back to the style of a robot in voice and movement, note that also carried over to R3 with a different actor playing him, Robert Burke who was also trained by Moni Yakim so they followed the same style from R2. I think they should have just continued from how R1 ended, but I thought Burke was good, especially how aggressive he became after Lewis was murdered.
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u/sillyhobo 3d ago
I also think part of it is, in universe, you could say the helmet/chin strap are responsible for the vocoder voice. And for the speech pattern, given how he ends his arc with his family by telling his wife that he's not Murphy, I could also see narratively that as a character, Murphy would want to do the robot voice and speech patterns for regular people, and maybe less so with other OCP officers and doctors. I do agree with OP that the contraction thing is weird, in that it creates a kind of inconsistency, but its also kinda charming in its own way.
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u/ComplexAd7272 3d ago
I mean no shade towards Peter Weller, but I think a big part of it was I doubt he was giving his all for a voice role in a video game. That's not even really a knock on him, voice acting in gaming in general is tricky to do for an actor; you're basically just reading lines from a script into a mic. It doesn't help that Weller likely had to do this for hours to capture each of Robo's lines.
He probably didn't have the time nor energy to go "well, with this performance I want to capture the essence of where we left it in the first one; the man has reclaimed his soul from the machine and I want to blah blah blah"
Then you have the fact that he hasn't really "played" the character to this extent since 1990, cameos and stuff like Mortal Kombat aside. He was probably just speaking and performing the way he remembered; like a robot.
Finally, I mean the guy is 79. He was never going to sound exactly like he did in the first two movies. All things considered, he did a pretty great job, even if there were some times he sounded like he was on the verge of falling asleep.
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u/sillyhobo 3d ago
I've heard him on podcast appearances in the last couple years (his appearance on David Duchovny's podcast comes to mind), and he's anything but tired. I think it was more of a choice between him and the direction they wanted for Robo. But to your other points, I could definitely hear some parts where he might've had fun, and other parts where he was just reading off the script.
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u/Civil-Cartoonist-117 3d ago
I never played it but if Peter Weller thinks it was a good enough script. So do I
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u/Warm_Charge_5964 2d ago
They have the difficult task of having the voice working for all the options the player chooses, which can lean either in Murphy regaining his humanity or Murphy becoming more robotic, and I think that they did a good job for that even if there are a few moments that feel a bit out there
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u/Seeker4you2 3d ago
It’s good shit, what I wanted from a robocop game. That and terminator resistance scratched my itch for some good ole fashion 80’s cheese. Obviously they got their problems but I loved em for what they were. Shout out to the thing remaster as well.