RoboCop 2 is a 1990 American science-fiction action film directed by Irvin Kershner and written by Frank Miller and Walon Green. It stars Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Dan O'Herlihy, Belinda Bauer, Tom Noonan, and Gabriel Damon. It is the sequel to the 1987 film RoboCop, the second installment in the RoboCop franchise and the last to feature Weller as RoboCop until he returned in Mortal Kombat 11 (2019), RoboCop: Rogue City (2023) and other media. It is the last film Kershner directed before his death in 2010.
Set in a dystopian Detroit, the plot follows RoboCop (Weller) as he becomes embroiled in a scheme made by Omni Consumer Products to bankrupt and take over the city, while also fighting the spread of a street drug called "Nuke" and its gang of dealers led by Cain (Noonan). The film was shot in Houston.
The film received mixed reviews upon its release and earned a moderate box-office return, grossing $45 million domestically, compared to the previous film's $53 million gross on a significantly smaller production budget. It was nominated for three Saturn Awards, including Best Science Fiction Film, Best Performance by a Younger Actor (for Damon), and Best Special Effects (for Phil Tippett, Rob Bottin, and Peter Kuran). A sequel, RoboCop 3, was released in 1993. Miller returned to write the comic-book sequel RoboCop Versus the Terminator in 1992 and Steven Grant adapted his original screenplays for the second and third films into the comics Frank Miller's RoboCop from 2003 to 2006 and 2013 to 2014.
Plot
Detroit is facing bankruptcy after failing to pay off its debts to conglomerate Omni Consumer Products (OCP). The OCP chairman intends to have the city default on its debt, then foreclose on all public property, so they may move ahead with their radical urban development project, Delta City. To rally public opinion behind the project, OCP deliberately underfunds the Detroit Police Department to cause a rise in street crime. A new drug, Nuke, is sweeping the city, driven by crime boss Cain and his lieutenant, a teenaged boy named Hob.
RoboCop remains on duty with his partner Anne Lewis and continues to be plagued by memories of his life as Alex Murphy. He locates the home of his widow and son, and begins watching them until she brings litigation against OCP, but when she meets him face-to-face and is responsive to him, RoboCop claims not to know her and that her husband is dead. OCP attempts to develop a "RoboCop 2" using the brains of legally dead police officers, intending to mass produce them to replace human officers, but all subjects kill themselves upon activation. Psychologist Juliette Faxx suggests that the error is the test subjects, and that Murphy was a success because of his strict Catholic upbringing and moral code, preventing him from committing suicide and reinforcing his devotion to his duty. Faxx begins screening suitable candidates for the project, but instead of police officers, she secretly considers death row inmates who desire power and immortality.
RoboCop raids a construction site used by Cain's gang, but he is ambushed and dismembered, and the pieces are dumped in front of the precinct. RoboCop is repaired, but Faxx intentionally reprograms him with more than 300 new directives that severely impede his ability to perform his duties, so that her project can be selected. RoboCop eventually clears these by shocking himself with a high-voltage transformer and rebooting his system. He rallies the police to assist in raiding Cain's hideout. After a battle and chase, Cain is wounded, arrested, and falls into a coma. Hob escapes and takes control of his empire.
Believing she can control Cain via his Nuke addiction, Faxx selects him for the RoboCop 2 project and disconnects his life support. His brain is removed and implanted in a new cyborg body. Hob contacts the mayor and offers to cover the city's debt to OCP in exchange for leniency towards their drugs syndicate. OCP sends RoboCop 2 to stop the deal. At the meeting, RoboCop 2 kills everyone present except for the mayor, who escapes alive, and Hob. RoboCop arrives and is told by a fatally wounded Hob that Cain is now RoboCop 2 and was responsible for the killings.
At an unveiling ceremony for RoboCop 2 and Delta City, RoboCop 2 goes out of control and berserk when the OCP chairman holds up a canister of Nuke. RoboCop arrives, and along with the police, ineffectually battles RoboCop 2 as it attacks civilians. Lewis uses an armored car and Nuke to distract it, while RoboCop climbs on its back, rips out its brain, and smashes it on the street, deactivating the machine. The OCP chairman uses Faxx as the scapegoat for the failure of RoboCop 2 and for the civilian and police casualties it caused. Lewis complains that OCP will once again avoid accountability, but RoboCop insists they must be patient because, "we're only human".
Cast
Production 1987–1988: The Corporate Wars
RoboCop screenwriters Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner started drafting a sequel in September 1987 due to strong demand by Orion, which imposed a deadline of December 31, 1987. Neumeier and Miner rushed the screenplay as they were also simultaneously writing for another Orion project, Company Man; a film about the Central Intelligence Agency's involvement in the Contras, it was planned to be directed by Oliver Stone, star Paul Newman, and be released before the next United States election.
Neumeier and Miner's draft, RoboCop 2: The Corporate Wars, is set 25 years after the first movie. RoboCop, trying to stop a bank-robbery, is blown up by a thief. The titular protagonist wakes up in a new United States named AmeriPlex, consisting of upper-class "plexes" made out of former cities (e.g. NewYorkPlex, RioPlex, DelhiPlex) and many more shanty towns with residents named OutPlexers. He is revived in a now-abandoned building for the defunct Omni-Consumer Products (OCP) by two goons of a "super-entrepreneur" named Ted Flicker, who plans to make the national government a private corporate entity that he will own. Flicker also currently has a lot of control over the country, despite another person (who was a former comedian) being the president. RoboCop's new system is also the central computer system of AmeriPlex, NeuroBrain.
RoboCop 2 follows numerous subplots, such as Flicker's plan for domination, a violence-spreading narcotic named Smudge, the Internal Grid Security commander trying to commit genocide against the OutPlexers, and RoboCop's code being played with by an American scientist and a Chinese hacker. The script expands upon the first film's consumerist aspects; those in the high-class city plexes eat at LeisureGold where ServiceDroids serve them and make love with SexBots at various brothels; while the environment's media landscape is filled with "NewsBlips", mood-enhancing drugs ads, and MoonDog, a rapper from space, changing public opinion.
On March 7, 1988, a five-month Writers Guild of America strike began and its length resulted in Neumeier and Miner being fired from the project for breach of contract. Additionally, the writers and Orion struggled to agree on a story, with the studio turned off by the gritty parts of Neumeier and Miner's draft. Stone also stopped Company Man to work on Talk Radio (1988), making Neumeier and Miner no longer involved at Orion.
1988–1989: Frank Miller's RoboCop 2
In order for a sequel to still be possible, Orion had to sign a waiver to develop other RoboCop scripts, and, before he was fired, Neumeier recommended two popular comic book authors to write them: Alan Moore and Frank Miller. Moore declined the offer, citing a lack of interest in working on movies. Miller, who had become popular for his edgy, "tragic hero" take on the Batman character, signed on to the project after Miner and Neumeier had been fired. His script went through four drafts. While there had been no reports of Miller taking influence from Neumeier's script, The Corporate Wars, both versions of the script have several things in common, including the concepts of corporate executives trying to buy out entire governments and highly addictive drugs causing mass violence.
Miller's first draft was less comic and had a bigger emphasis on corporatism than the final film, with the last showdown pitting RoboCop against OCP forces instead of RoboCop 2. While RoboCop (1987) producer Jon Davison praised its grittiness, "inventive action", humor, and politics, Orion rejected the script as "unfilmable" and brought in a screenwriter of the violent western film The Wild Bunch (1969), Walon Green, to re-write it. Cut material included backstories for Anne Lewis and the marriage between Alex Murphy and his wife Ellen. Miller later used his treatment as the basis for his own series of RoboCop comics published in the 2000s.
Development Davison had been reluctant to produce a sequel to RoboCop, citing a skepticism of sequels in general. He believed that most sequels were worse than their predecessors, and he preferred to cater new properties to audiences of the first film. He was also forced to decide between producing a second RoboCop film, versus producing Warren Beatty's screen adaptation of the Dick Tracy comics. He ultimately chose to take on RoboCop 2, saying that "RoboCop is my movie and Dick Tracy is more Warren's movie". Director Paul Verhoeven did not return, as he was working on Total Recall (1990).
As with the first film, multiple directors rejected offers from Davison to direct RoboCop 2, although for different reasons; Davison reported potentials were either concerned about following up Verhoeven's directing, or not wanting to direct a sequel. Alex Cox considered the project, but changed his mind after watching a screening of the sequel to The Exorcist (1973).
Davison first hired his friend Tim Hunter, mostly known for River's Edge (1986), to direct RoboCop 2, citing his "realistic tone with actors" and "real dark sensibility" as reasons. However, Hunter left the project eleven weeks before filming began, citing a conflict between his vision of an entirely dark product like the first film, and Miller's more humorous script, which he called "tonally unfocused". He was replaced by Irvin Kershner, who had previously filled in as director on The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and who shared Miller's vision.
While Davison had made Kershner agree to not make changes to the script once shooting had begun, due to the state of the script and the tight schedule, Kershner found himself forced to work closely with Miller on editing the script as filming progressed. Kershner added more dialogue and discarded several new scenes that Green had added, in favor of the reworks that he was performing with Miller. Miller later said that he had only been willing to work with Kershner on revising the script, and that he had rejected multiple offers from other people to do this.
Orion Pictures asserted far greater control over the sequel compared to the original film, and frequently pushed back against input from Miller, Kershner, and the actors. Before the story had been completed, Orion announced a release date during the Christmas season in 1989, then later moved it up to early that summer, resulting in a rushed production cycle. Neumeier and Miner claimed that these decisions were based solely on business decisions and stifled creativity, and Weller said that the film did not have a proper third act since Orion insisted that "the monster's going to be enough."
Casting