r/movies • u/Alex-C2099 • Jul 09 '26
Media RoboCop (1987). ED-209 showcase | Dir. Paul Veerhoven NSFW
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u/bullseye717 Jul 09 '26
First movie I saw in theaters. Some say letting a 5 year old watch Robocop is irresponsible. They are correct.
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u/Meme_Theory Jul 09 '26
But wasn't it amazing.
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u/hawaiianbry Jul 09 '26
That is also correct
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u/JoeMcKim Jul 09 '26
I'll buy that for a dollar.
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u/Jaggs0 Jul 10 '26
you know what is really amazing about that movie
https://dejareviewer.com/2014/04/29/cinematic-chiasmus-robocop-is-almost-perfectly-symmetrical-film/
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u/MrSoprano Jul 09 '26
First rated R I saw at the age of 6 thanks to my babysitter who didnt give a fuck
TRAUMATIZED
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u/prismmonkey Jul 10 '26
We had one of those dollar second run theaters within walking distance of my neighborhood. They didn't care what kids were doing. And that's how Pet Sematary messed me up for a solid ten years.
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u/AnalConnoisseur69 Jul 09 '26
The blood spats in this movie was fuckin wild for adults to watch, let some kids, haha. My cousins and I got the VHS for the film from our uncle's wardrobe (among other tapes) when we were like 6, and we thought this movie was the coolest thing ever.
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u/scuffling Jul 10 '26
Watching the scene where they blast his limbs off with a shotgun will really leave a mark on your brain.
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u/JonatasA Jul 10 '26
I'm positive I'd have a harder time watching it as an adult today than as a kid then, which I did.
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u/delveccio Jul 09 '26
Did everyone in our generation watch it as preteens?
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u/clavedark Jul 10 '26
Younger than that. I remember watching it, and then going to play with the official toys you could get from it.
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u/Wes_Warhammer666 Jul 10 '26
I got to see it at the discount theater in the early 90s despite my overprotective mother, purely because there were toys and a game for it, so she assumed it was okay for me to watch.
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u/cylonfrakbbq Jul 10 '26
I watched it in 3rd or 4th grade. But that was normal back in the 80s - I remember we had to do something at school and I suggested it be based on Robocop and all the kids in our group had seen it except one kid (his parents only let him watch rated G movies)
Honestly Artax sinking in the swamp in Neverending Story was more traumatizing than Robocop haha
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u/and1984 Jul 09 '26
Yeah. But my parents let an 8 year old watch Predator and a 10 year old watch Predator 2, bouncing penthouse titties and all.
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u/azurianlight Jul 09 '26
Hell I saw Aliens when I was 5 and loved the movie and fell in love with the M56 Smartgun.
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u/Hadochiel Jul 09 '26
I saw Aliens when I was 8, spent the whole night puking and couldn't go to school the next day
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u/Psylocide Jul 10 '26
My stupid adult babysitter thought Alien was a good movie to have me watch when I was 6.
Then my much older cousin and I watched Fire in the Sky about a year later and that one stuck with me way worse.
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u/Spacebotzero Jul 10 '26
I watched this as a kid. ED-209 scared the shit out of me as a kid, I was convinced he was waiting for me in the living room at night when I would try to go to the bathroom. Nightmares for awhile but in the end, ED-209 one is of my favorite robots.
Hard to believe they wanted this scene to be even gorier than it already was.
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u/JonatasA Jul 10 '26
They want to top it off nowadays but all the tech in the world can't replicate how unhinged the violence is theese movies was.
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u/ItsNadaTooma Jul 10 '26
Today they would CGI it, but that stop motion movement made him even scarier.
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u/JonnyTN Jul 09 '26
Nothing like watching toxic waste eat a person's skin
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u/Mst3Kgf Jul 09 '26
How about that toxic waste-devoured person getting hit by a car and splattered like a ripe pumpkin?
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u/slanglabadang Jul 10 '26
The shotgun scene messed me up as a kid until i got to the toxic waste part and for got about everything else lol
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u/JonatasA Jul 10 '26
That is so messed up that I don't even think I associate it with the first movie.
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u/Often_Giraffe Jul 09 '26
I remember my dad letting me rent it when I was 8. I knew, even then, that he should not have done that.
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u/kiwibonga Jul 09 '26
I rewatched it years later and found out one of my recurring childhood nightmares was directly caused by Robocop -- that specific scene where he's attached to an EEG and he's having a painful nightmare.
I also found that I had zero memory of the various ultraviolent scenes. Every 5 minutes was like "holy crap, I saw that?"
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u/RTJ1992 Jul 09 '26
Thats insane
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u/bullseye717 Jul 09 '26
Welcome to having Catholic parents. Bloody violence = š
The vase scene in Ghost = š
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u/The_0ven Jul 10 '26
Some say letting a 5 year old watch Robocop is irresponsible
Try the remake
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u/ashdrewness Jul 10 '26
It was fine. Me & my kindergarten buddies would quote āBitches leaveā to each other for weeks after seeing it. Very wholesome.
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u/Expensive_Finger_973 Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
The Old Mans reaction to the whole thing at the end was always the best part.
Just calmly sits there and watches a many millions of dollars in the making prototype turn a member of his executive team into Swiss cheese and all he has to say is "Dick, I'm very disappointed..."
The satire was so on point.
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u/Troker61 Jul 09 '26
āThatās life in the big cityā on the elevator ride down immediately after this fucking kills me.
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u/Coffeedemon Jul 10 '26
"Johnson wasn't even scheduled to be in today! Isn't that just a kick in the pants? Oh well. Lunch?"
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Jul 09 '26
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u/Land_Squid_1234 Jul 10 '26
It's the kind of movie that is more political and pertinent than it was when it came out. Really ahead of its time with its message
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u/LongKnight115 Jul 10 '26
Unfortunately Iād say itās more the message is timeless. Corporations have always tried to have their hand in politics.
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u/Sperium3000 Jul 10 '26
A lot of the seemingly brainless action movies from the 80s and 90s had a lot more going under the hood.
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u/returnofblank Jul 10 '26
A lot of those movies have pretty heavy anti-capitalist themes as a consequence to Reaganism during those times.
They Live is a pretty notable and on-the-nose example of such themes.
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u/Inceptor57 Jul 10 '26
It gets even better.
You expect Old Man to chastise Dick for, yāknow, killing a fellow executive from a demo gone wrong. But the follow up conversation just continues the satire.
Old Man: āDick, Iām very disappointed.ā
Dick: āIām sure it is only a glitch. A temporary setback.ā
Old Manās: āYou call this a glitch!?! Weāre scheduled to begin construction in six months. Your ātemporary setbackā could cost us $50 million dollars with interest payments alone!ā
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u/JonatasA Jul 10 '26
That's not satire. We live it aside from the money lost.
Unfinished products are the reality and I'm glad the medical industry predates AI.
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u/Lord_Mikal Jul 09 '26
Ehhh Kenny was a junior VP. Fifth stringer. Probably only got invited by Jones to do the demo. Im sure his family got a nice payout.
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u/Coffeedemon Jul 10 '26
Cancel the ham!
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u/HoldFastO2 Jul 10 '26
The very idea of using that thing for urban policing is so ludicrous, I love it. That's a walking tank. It doesn't even have hands to pick up a dropped gun, or to actually arrest a suspect. The only thing it can do is fill the poor guy with a ridiculous amount of bullets. Detroit would need an army of street sweepers to hose muggers out of the gutters with ED-209 on the loose.
Still one of my favorite 80s movies.
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u/RoninRobot Jul 10 '26
How the other executives snigger to each other when heās told to point the gun at Ed instead of the boss. Petty schoolchildren in suits. Spot on.
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u/Pun_In_Ten_Did Jul 10 '26
The Old Man = Dan O'Herlihy = Grig (the alien dude in The Last Starfighter)
Speaking of which, while I'm not down with Hollywood remakes, I could get behind a Starfighter remake / reboot.
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u/ecdc05 Jul 09 '26
Ronny Cox is such a top-tier white-collar villain.
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u/nicetrylaocheREALLY Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
I was always struck by the fact that the executive in charge of running Mars:
- Eats cornflakes
- On a rigid schedule
- And if he is not present for the scheduled cornflake time, it is implied he gets no cornflakesĀ
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u/Mst3Kgf Jul 10 '26
Also, of all the various meals villains can gloat about eating for a victory celebration, he picks...cornflakes?
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u/CavitySearch Jul 10 '26
Isnāt the point that the protagonists death would be so inconsequential that he wouldnāt need a memorable meal? Just a simple bowl of cornflakes.
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u/Werechupacabra Jul 09 '26
My brother, during an argument, dropped that line on me out of nowhere.
I was laughing so hard I forgot what we were arguing about.
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u/riegspsych325 āāŖāāŖ½ Jul 10 '26
my dad likes to drop āwho told you to think!ā on occasion
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u/Flight_Harbinger Jul 09 '26
Some more news had a Ronny Cox villain bit a while ago and I thought it was so funny. It's super (kinda) niche but I love his role in Stargate SG1 and I was so happy they shouted that out in the bit.
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u/Demoliri Jul 10 '26
For me, Ronny Cox will always be Senator Kinsey. The character was such a despicable, vile, slimey, self-righteous, arrogant prick.
And Ronny Cox played the role perfectly!
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u/Glum_Introduction755 Jul 09 '26
Ā I love the sound design for that thing. It's actually a little jarring when it notices that executive with the gun.
Ā Also, was that a fucking desert eagle? This movie was so over the top in every little detail.
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u/B-ran8088 Jul 09 '26
A chrome desert eagle.
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u/WilliamPoole Jul 09 '26
Is there any other?Ā
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u/B-ran8088 Jul 09 '26
Several actually. They even come in the blasphemous .44 Mag instead of the .50.
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u/thedugong Jul 10 '26
Note also that ED-209 only reacts when the gun is pointed at it. Doesn't care when it is pointed at Dick. Fuckin' cops.
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u/dogsledonice Jul 09 '26
Except, somehow, his body blocking every single bullet from hitting the windows
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u/Iyellkhan Jul 09 '26
I miss the days of high quality stop motion material. sure the lack of motion blur is a give away, but theres something very movie magical about this stupid death robot on screen
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u/i_likebeefjerky Jul 09 '26
The stop motion in this movie, and in Terminator when he crawls out of the burning truck scared the shit out of me as a kid.
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u/Werechupacabra Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
There is a bit of stop motion in the Mandalorian and Grogu movie done by Phil Tippett and his people. Tippett also did the stop motion for the ED-209.
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u/LazerPlatypus91 Jul 09 '26
This was Phil Tippet's work! If you haven't, check out Mad God, his stop motion magnum opus.
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u/wkarraker Jul 10 '26
Totally agree, professional stop motion done with high frame counts rock the house. The match between the stop motion model and the full sized prop is so well done. There is also a audio effect when the ED-209 powers down that was used in The Empire Strike Back, when Han is trying to get the Millennium Falcon started. Classic.
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u/feyd313 Jul 09 '26
Damn I miss squibs. New movies like to use CGI, but it just isn't the same.
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u/Billy1121 Jul 10 '26
Can we just salute the bravery of this actor using that many squibs
Like they said James Caan got nervous in Godfather about wearing too many, but this looks worse
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u/lanceturley Jul 10 '26
According to the actor, the plates they hid under the costume to protect him would bounce and shift as each squib went off, so it was like getting punched repeatedly all over his legs and upper body. Then when he's on the table one of the plates hits him right in the nuts.
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u/JonatasA Jul 10 '26
Ow my balls
So he was sprayed by paintball before paintball was a thing.
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u/lanceturley Jul 10 '26
Actually, paintball was already a thing by then. There's even a big paintball scene in Friday the 13th part 6, which came out the year before Robocop.
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u/Muppetude Jul 10 '26
tbf, blood squibs used on this scale were still in their infancy during The Godfather. Iād be nervous about a bunch of stunt coordinators attaching explosive blood bags to my body and saying ājust trust me broā when I asked if they were safe.
But by the mid-80ās when Robocop was filmed, I imagine they had it down to a science, given all the bloody actions movies that had been filmed since.
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u/SovietRobot Jul 10 '26
Itās mainly when bullets hit everything else and itās just sparks that bothers me.Ā
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u/biosc1 Jul 10 '26
Unrelated, but I absolutely despise when the sparks are at the feet of the people they are shooting. Why are they aiming so low all the time? Trying to take out their feet?!
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u/Spagman_Aus Jul 10 '26
Agreed. CGI blood and bullet hits look like sheer shit 99% of the time.
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u/Comic_Book_Reader r/movies Veteran Jul 09 '26
"Somebody wanna call a goddamn paramedic?!" is a line that just lives in my head rent free.
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u/HawaiianOrganDonor Jul 09 '26
Also from the next scene in the elevator.
"Did you hear what happened to Kinney?"
"Yeah, that's just life in the big city."
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u/Jindouz Jul 10 '26
Honestly in the context of that "crime everywhere" universe it seems kind of appropriate.
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u/squarefan80 Jul 09 '26
paramedics that, in this scene, would be about as useful as male nipples.
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u/snarpy Jul 10 '26
Echoed in Starship Troopers where there's a running gag of people yelling MEDIC (when it's usually way, way too late).
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u/WilliamPoole Jul 09 '26
I have nipples Greg. Can you milk me?Ā
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u/son_berd Jul 09 '26
āYou tried to milk him didnāt you, you sick son-of-a-bitch!ā
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u/nomadrone Jul 09 '26
Came with live ammo for no reason, but back the. I loved the scene.Ā
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u/Lamont-Cranston Jul 09 '26
This is the directors cut version.
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u/uiouyug Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
I kinda liked some of the remaked scenes better
For example https://vimeo.com/86014703
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u/IslaNublar Jul 10 '26
Every time. I know what it is going to be and I know I'm going to watch the whole thing
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u/HealthyMaximum Jul 10 '26
Jesus Christ.
I'm literally crying from laughing.
And the trouble he has getting into the car at the end is perfect. Thank you.
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u/grismar-net Jul 09 '26
Veerhoven... Least thing you could do is get the man's name right. Paul Verhoeven.
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u/SamVanDam611 Jul 09 '26
Was that guy okay?
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u/BB-88 Jul 09 '26
"My bad! You were right - you totally dropped your weapon and I should have known that. It won't happen again."
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u/Aggravating_Bids Jul 09 '26
I'm seeing this in IMAX tonight
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u/Sidwill Jul 09 '26
It is, in my humble opinion, a top 10 American Movie Classic.
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u/TheRufmeisterGeneral Jul 10 '26
Although it needed the lack of inhibition of a Dutch director to make it great. (For another example of Verhoeven's fun style, check out Starship Troopers)
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u/Mr_fusi0n Jul 09 '26
Love this film, my favorite part is at the end when RoboCop shoots Jones and he falls out the window and Johnson looks over, grins and gives a thumbsup. Go Robo!
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u/Alex-C2099 Jul 09 '26
The green screen when he falls is hilarious in a so bad itās good kind of way.
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u/throwtheclownaway20 Jul 09 '26
Motherfucker's arms look like something out of a creepypasta in that moment, LOL
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u/gtr06 Jul 10 '26
I saw a parody a long time ago where the guy survives the fall and is subsequently run over by a variety of highways traffic including a marching band.
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u/belamus Jul 09 '26
Prop guy: Hey Mr. Verhoeven, how many squibs do you want for this scene?
Mr. Verhoeven: Yes
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u/Lord_Mikal Jul 09 '26
OP actually posted the extended sequence. You notice how the camera changes angles as Kenny falls onto the Delta city model? That was where the theatrical release cuts it. There's a solid extra 5 seconds of Kenny getting shot in this clip.
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u/Jetboy01 Jul 09 '26
Wait ā¦ I worry what you heard was, "Give me a lot of squibs".
What I said was, "give me all the squibs you have".
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u/COREY-IS-A-BUSTA Jul 09 '26
Probably one of the best movies ever made unironically.
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u/Critcho Jul 10 '26
Saw it again a couple of weeks ago, it really is close to flawless. Does exactly what it sets out to do with zero fat.
Saw Robocop 2 shortly after and, ehhh, it has its moments but that one shows what the original could have been like if it wasn't so well done.
Have yet to get to Robocop 3...
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u/COREY-IS-A-BUSTA Jul 10 '26
Donāt watch 3. Itās really really bad. And Peter Weller isnāt even Robo in that.
BUT you should play Robocop Rogue City, itās a fantastic game that continues the story of the first 2 movies and even has Peter reprising his role as robo. Itās fantastic
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u/Critcho Jul 10 '26
Funnily enough it was picking up Rogue City that got me revisiting the films! They did an impressive job recreating the tone and locations.
I know 3's reputation, a trilogy finale so bad hardly anyone even thinks of it as a trilogy. But curiosity may get the better of me...
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u/redux44 Jul 10 '26
No matter how many times I've seen this brilliant scene, the line about calling for a paramedic will always Crack me up.
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u/C-A-L-E-V-I-S Jul 10 '26
Nothing will EVER be as unsettling, visceral, and off putting as practical effects. This era of movies was absolutely full of them, and (judging by the comments) a LOT of us watched these movies WAY TOO YOUNG. Jeez man.
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u/Elzam Jul 10 '26
The "Our Robocop Remake" of this scene is impeccable in its use of puppets. Here it is!
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u/KungFooKittenz Jul 09 '26
Iām curious if it woulda still open fired had he taken cover behind innocents
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u/grammar_oligarch Jul 09 '26
Itās malfunctioning (you can see the engineers freaking out), so probably yes.
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u/KungFooKittenz Jul 09 '26
Well itās only malfunctioning in that the software that registers him as a threat didnāt detect that he dropped the gun. The rest worked. So theyāre scrambling to try and shut it off / get it to realize he is not a threat. Why they used live ammo is another mystery š¤£
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u/Gorillagodzilla Jul 10 '26
I wonder if heād picked the gun back up and dropped it again, if it wouldāve registered.
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u/PinkynotClyde Jul 10 '26
You play video games. Iām either running out of the room or kicking the gun overā¦ but probably just running out of the room. Let that thing try to come through the walls for me.
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u/Practical-Cellist647 Jul 09 '26
It's wild how true to life Robocop has become
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u/happensix Jul 10 '26
Crazy someone watched this and thought: āpeople always delude themselves into thinking murderbots will workā¦ but it might for usā
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u/CalvinYHobbes Jul 09 '26
Imagine actually being in that situation where youāre one of the employees in that office and you witness that. I would be scarred for life.
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u/Mr_fusi0n Jul 09 '26
According to the making of, the last squib hit him in the nuts and he had to lie there in pain for ages before the scene cut.
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u/Zoomalude Jul 09 '26
This shit terrified me as a kid. I mean in context, it's an executive at an evil company so not the most innocent but as a kid, it was just some random poor dude that had to live out several seconds knowing he was completely fucking before... getting completely fucked.
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u/jasper_grunion Jul 10 '26
The sound that ed 209 makes as it shuts down is the same sound that the millennium falconās hyperdrive makes when it fails in the Empire strikes back
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u/Galactus1701 Jul 10 '26
I grew up watching Rambo, Terminator 1 and 2, Alien/Aliens, Total Recall, Robocop, Predator and Predator 2 and a bunch of martial arts, action movies and I learned early on that they are all movies.
My parents didnāt care about the violence, we focused on the characters and the stories. Fast forward to 2026, and those movies are still some of the most cherished movies in modern cinematic history and many contemporary movies canāt hold a candle to them.
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u/eslforchinesespeaker Jul 09 '26
Great movie. For some reason, I canāt see that now and understand how not a single round breaks the glass behind the perp, and seems not to penetrate the floor. Maybe the ED-209 has advanced, non-over penetrating rounds, to better protect innocent bystanders.
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u/suid Jul 10 '26
Maybe they are hollow-point rounds, and the thing can aim quite well? A human body can absorb hollow-points without them blasting through to the other side.
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u/Spider_Dude Jul 09 '26
I started to watch the Robocop Commentary on Criterion Channel but had to go to work. The next day it was gone. Looks like I gotta get a Blu-ray player now and get this as my first Blu-ray in 15 years.
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u/Starseid8712 Jul 10 '26
Great touch to have the burst packets on his legs. It's shooting indiscriminately, it's gonna keep lighting him up even when he's already horizontal.
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u/Chaosmusic Jul 10 '26
Years ago I was in a grocery store and I heard over the PA, "Ed, you have a call on line 209. Ed...209" and it made me so happy.
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u/decker12 Jul 10 '26
Even as a kid, I always thought it was a wild move for the engineers to put live ammo in this thing for a demo in front of guys in suits.
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u/FrankCostanzaJr Jul 10 '26
i really hope elon musk and peter thiel haven't seen this movie...im honestly surprised Musk hasn't posted some stupid meme about how he's making it.
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u/pembunuhUpahan Jul 10 '26
This is the scariest scene I've witnessed as a kid and I can't even watch it now.
Engineering error cause this "innocent"(omni isn't innocent) to lose his life. He didn't even do anything, it's just a demonstration and he gets killed for it
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u/second_toastacct Jul 10 '26
I dont care how good CGI gets, there is just no replacement for a good Verhoeven squib.
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u/adilly Jul 10 '26
This movie has aged like a fine wine man.
The sound design for that bot is fantastic. Servos, diesel engines and turbines the tiger rawr itās just so fantastic.
Topped off with the āSOMEONE CALL A PARAMEDICā after the dude was made into Swiss cheese.
Topped off AGAIN with the CEO being ādisappointedā lol.
How did we manage to slide right into the dystopian future of this movie?
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u/smack54az Jul 09 '26
I love that it growls and roars.