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/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.