Rent RoboDoc: The Creation of Robocop (2023)

RoboDoc: The Creation of Robocop review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

The best movies are the ones you can talk about for hours. It’s the reason why so much attention gets lavished on movies like Alien than Galaxy of Terror. For being an action icon of the 1980s, there should be plenty to talk about with Robocop. The cyborg of the future built by a corrupt Detroit had plenty to say about capitalism, police corruption, media saturation, and tech gone awry. That seems like it’d be enough to dig into Robocop for a feature-length documentary. But RoboDoc goes one step further with a lengthy miniseries on the history and production of this legendary piece of sci-fi cinema.

Plenty of time is reserved for dozens of voices to shed light on how everything with Robocop came to be. The first episode perfectly sets up the perspective on science fiction during the 1980s. Getting an idea like Robocop off the ground was challenge in terms of the idea on a surface level. Executives and audiences had a specific vision of how cyborgs would look on screen and the idea of a cyborg cop with visible metal components seemed too wild, especially for a character who would wear a visor that covered 50% of their face for most of the movie. Even director Paul Verhoeven was hesitant to work on a film like this, as the prospect of a robot cop sounded too silly. It was only once his family took a look at the script and suggested that he have a look that Paul started to see there was something more than a mindless action picture.

A docuseries like this is great at expanding on the areas that might go missed by some audiences who would easily dismiss Robocop. More importantly, though, it presents an exciting examination of the film’s thrills. The many actors interviewed have a host of great stories to tell about the production, showcasing how the behind the scenes mechanics had an electricity buzzing from the start. Peter Weller speaks about how he was chosen more for his body type that was frail enough to fit in the heavy Robocop suit. Kurtwood Smith spoke about his penchant for playing villains while Ray Wise was surprised that he didn’t get the lead role but had a lot of fun playing an antagonist. Their conversations with Verhoven are also a hoot. One of the funniest tidbits was with Kurtwood Smith’s iconic line of “Bitches leave” and how Paul’s English was so bad he didn’t know the word bitch was a deragatory term. He kept using the word on set, leading to Smith laughing heavily at such casual usage of the word.

Adding to the allure of these fantastic stories is the stylish direction. The team behind this docuseries doesn’t just rely on the interviews and archive footage to carry the series entirely. They add in appropriate fonts from the movie, use vivid editing, craft enticing transitions, and even have some detailed motion graphics that reenact behind-the-scenes moments. There’s some great uses of this format, as when interview footage is depicted in a small digital window while the scene being talked about plays in the background. It’s all layered and delivered in a clever manner that never bores. For a docuseries that goes the extra length with each episode, it goes the extra mile to maintain the allure throughout.

RoboDoc is more than just the complete Robocop retrospective with all the best footage and interviews. It manages to be genuinely entertaining beyond the behind-the-scenes production tales. Robocop fans will love this series regardless, but even casual fans will find themselves intrigued by the level of meaningful detail covered here, where the series can effortlessly go from talking about the mechanics of Murphy getting his hand blown off by a shotgun to discussing Paul Verhoven’s historical perspective on violence being applied to the film. All of this stuff could make for a great book, but it functions just as well as a documentary series, where it’s impossible not go to the next episode in the same way one needs to read one more chapter before bed. This is easily one of the best documentaries on a single movie I’ve ever seen, where the lengthy running time feels fully justified in what is explored. Sure, you could watch Robocop four times in the time it takes to get through this series, but watching RoboDoc feels like watching the film again with four different audio commentaries with so much to say.