Dr. K's Waiting Room

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To celebrate the release of RoboCop (Padilha, 2014) on home media, June 3^rd was declared “RoboCop Day” in the city of Detroit, providing the perfect excuse to celebrate RoboCop each year.

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Quick Facts:
Having achieved mainstream success with licensed adaptations of horror and science-fiction films, Dark Horse Comics sought to replicate their success with mashing together the Alien (Various, 1977 to present) and Predator (Various, 1987 to present) franchises. Having already published spin-offs of the Terminator films (Cameron, 1984; 1991), Dark Horse started a run of RoboCop (Verhoeven, 1987) comics with this four-issue crossover, which led to a popular videogame, Frank Miller’s complicated relationship with the cyborg, and a somewhat divisive second encounter almost twenty years later.

The Review:
In true Terminator fashion, RoboCop Versus The Terminator begins in the nuclear wastelands of the war-torn 2029, where malicious rogue artificial intelligence Skynet sweeps across the remains of human civilisation, enslaving or vaporising any human resistance. With Skynet on the verge of absolute victory, Florence “Flo” Langer infiltrates Skynet’s “regional mind” looking to gain insight into Skynet’s creation and verifying resistance leader John Connor’s theory that a human mind merged with software (specifically cyborg police officer Alex Murphy/RoboCop) birthed Skynet in the past. Blaming RoboCop, Flo fights her way to the Time Displacement Equipment and takes a jaunt to the past to kill Murphy and change the future. Dumped in a busy Detroit street, the naked Flo immediately attracts attention and acquires a pistol, hoping to murder Murphy before he becomes RoboCop, only to find she’s too late for that. Though overwhelmed by the lively, flourishing world, Flo cobbles together a rudimentary plasma rifle, only to find it malfunctions when she’s accosted by an Enforcement Droid-209 (ED-209) for “[violating] street cleaning city ordinance 66B”. Luckily, the ED-209 is as dumb as ever and is easily tricked into tripping over itself, allowing her to get her weapon working to turn it into scrap metal. Thanks to the “frivolous” magazines of the time, Flo heads to the police station where RoboCop is based and easily reaches RoboCop’s lab, where Doctor Marie Lazarus worries that Murphy has been driving himself to exhaustion with his duties and that self-imposed isolation may be making him suicidal. Flo knocks Dr. Lazarus out and steals the tracking device they use to keep tabs on RoboCop, who’s out knocking off kidnappers and would-be bombers with a dispassionate efficiency.

While brooding over his lost humanity and family, RoboCop is caught completely off-guard when Flo attacks and she coldly blasts him to pieces with her plasma rifle. This sends shockwaves through time that slowly erase the hellish future Skynet fought so hard to create. With only moments to spare, Skynet sends three Terminators back to stop Flo from destroying their “creator”. Quickly acquiring clothes and weapons from the well-armed Detroit locals, the Terminators gun Flo down Though she’s disgusted by RoboCop’s assistance, the critically injured Flo is brought to a hospital, and he queries her about her clearly non-human attackers and her massive cannon. Although his scans reveal Flo’s telling the truth, RoboCop has Lazarus hook him into the Pentagon so he can investigate through cyberspace, verifying (to his horror) the threat Skynet (and, by association, he) poses to mankind. Although RoboCop tries to get the ED-209s on side to even the odds against the Terminators, the dumb things attack each other when ordered to “scan for cybernetic activity”. Luckily, one’s left to reduce the attacking Terminators to their exoskeletons and the Terminators, puzzled by their “creator” defending the humans they so deeply despise, seek only to subdue rather than destroy RoboCop. While the damaged and defective ED-209s destroy one Terminator and RoboCop grapples with another, the third enters the hospital and guns down everyone in its hunt for Flo. Luckily, Lazarus saves Flo and re-arms her, allowing her to blast it to smithereens and take some comfort in the familiarity of combat. Although badly damaged and missing his left arm, RoboCop eventually pummels the remaining Terminator to pieces after a brutal fist fight. However, as RoboCop still lives, the future sees the Terminators spread out into the universe to free other worlds of the “infection” of organic life.

Accordingly, RoboCop offers no resistance when Flo prepares to execute him, despite Lazarus’s protests, even encouraging her to step closer so her unreliable weapon doesn’t miss. However, Flo refuses, now seeing RoboCop as a noble soul and remembering her vow to never take a human life. However, haunted by visions of the future and driven by his Prime Directives, RoboCop resolves to mince himself at a nearby scrapyard. Accordingly, evidence of the Future War disappears from the past and the future again begins to be erased, forcing Skynet to again scramble two Terminators and send them back to preserve its existence. This time, they send back a child and a dog infiltration unit, who approach RoboCop directly as he’s contemplating suicide by his gravestone. The “boy” accuses “the flesh” of tricking RoboCop into thinking he’s human and is aghast when RoboCop opens fire. The “dog” attacks with writhing tentacles, easily overpowering the damaged RoboCop and severing his head, dragging him back to the police station and hooking him up to the mainframe. Flo frees herself from a jail cell and rushes to the commotion to witness the Terminator break Dr. Lazarus’s neck and Murphy’s screaming head begging her to kill him. This time, Flo doesn’t hesitate, but the Terminator catches the bullet, shrugs off her gunfire, and brutalises her to the helpless RoboCop’s horror. The Terminator then forcibly connects RoboCop to the mainframe and kick-starts Skynet’s evolution, leaving the disembodied and helpless RoboCop to watch as Skynet unleashes nuclear Armageddon and an army of relentless machines to wipe out humanity. Though horrified, RoboCop duplicates his humanity and wanders through cyberspace as a computer virus, evading Skynet for decades before finally using Skynet’s robotics technology against them to construct a fully armed and war-ready replica body for himself in 2029.

Thus, the story comes full circle, with Skynet on the brink of absolute victory. This time, RoboCop saves Flo as she’s infiltrating the regional mind, easily blasting the Hunter-Killers with his rockets and heavy-duty ordinance. Stunned by the sight of a machine helping her kind, Flo confronts him as the others recuperate at a makeshift encampment. Seeing that the dogs aren’t afraid of him and that he has a human face and name, Flo chooses to trust Murphy, who warns that Terminators will arrive soon. RoboCop’s actions cause subtle changes to the future, but he remains as an anomaly, helping the Resistance prepare for Skynet’s counterattack. However, when Skynet surprises them with a nuke, RoboCop jets off to intercept, detaching his legs to redirect the missile towards Skynet’s regional mind! Heavily damaged by re-entry, RoboCop has Flo take him to the Terminator factory for repairs, where she marvels at his ability to control the “junk”, unaware that RoboCop feels his humanity slipping away the more he emulates his enemy. Still, inspired by Flo, Murphy constructs an army of RoboCop clones to battle Skynet’s forces in a spectacular display of metal-on-metal action. While they fight alongside Flo and the Resistance, RoboCop heads to Skynet’s now-vulnerable central complex where, in desperation, Skynet offers to make him a “God” and bring his deepest fantasies to life. However, when Flo is killed, RoboCop vehemently turns down the offer and destroys the Skynet system core (a gigantic duplicate of his head!) and all its machines. Although Flo dies hopeful for a better future, RoboCop literally makes it happen by encasing himself in living tissue and travelling back in time to destroy the orbiting defence system that would become Skynet. In doing so, this cold, mechanical version of RoboCop is erased and Flo wakes up in a utopian future, barely remembering a bad dream of the world that once was, and the present-day RoboCop decides to heed Dr. Lazarus’s advice and get some rest. As before, Skynet scrambles to preserve its victory by sending a Terminator back through time. However, amusingly, they miscalculate the time jump in their panic and the machine is simply crushed by a Tyrannosaurus rex.

Final Thoughts: 
I’ve had my issues with Frank Miller over the years, but this was one of his better efforts. Sure, some “Miller-isms” are still present, mainly in the blunt, repetitious dialogue, but it served the purpose of the story very well. I really liked seeing Skynet panic when it realises the timeline is changing, erasing its influence and replacing it with natural life, which it hates for their destructive tendencies and disorder. RoboCop Versus The Terminator suggests the future is one malleable timeline. So, changes in the past directly affect the future rather than producing alternative timelines as in the films. This means that destroying RoboCop in the past doesn’t immediately prevent the Future War; it just alters the timeline. This gives Skynet the chance to quickly send Terminators back to undo the damage, which perfectly captures the desperation the machines felt when the Resistance destroying their defence grid in the films. Indeed, Miller characterises Skynet and the machines as surprisingly emotional beings. They hate “the flesh” and have no qualms about hunting down and killing even children to purge the “cancer” of humanity. They even take to the stars upon achieving absolute victory, seeking to conquer other worlds and spread their doctrine further, and are amazed when RoboCop refuses to embrace their cold, clinical logic. The Terminators’ relationship with RoboCop is complex. They see him as their “creator” and seek to preserve him but will rip him to pieces and subdue him to ensure their survival and think nothing of turning their full force against him in 2029.

RoboCop is in a bad place in RoboCop Versus The Terminator. The trauma of his condition and the pain of being separated from his humanity and family ser him throw himself into his work, rendering him a cold, emotionless machine at the story’s start. Dr. Lazarus is even concerned that he’s suicidal and, indeed, RoboCop is more than willing to sacrifice his life to save humanity once he learns of his awful destiny. Determined to save the world, follow his Prime Directives, and end his suffering, RoboCop resolves to destroy himself once he verifies Skynet’s threat. Indeed, RoboCop practically jumps at the chance to die and begs Flo to kill him, especially when he’s forcibly hooked into Skynet. Rather than giving up, RoboCop creates a digital doppelgänger and endures the horrific machine takeover just so he can rebuild himself and turn the tide. Interestingly, RoboCop takes the time to rescue Flo and lead the fight against Skynet in the future before going back to erase them from existence. I assume this is to ensure that there’s no chance Skynet can mount another counterattack and to avenge all those killed, but it would’ve been far more efficient if RoboCop had simply built a body and travelled to the past to destroy Skynet then. However, that would’ve robbed us of some of the story’s best visuals. I particularly liked seeing RoboCop all decked out in missiles and Terminator technology, blasting through the sky and raining missiles and commanding an army of Robo clones on the battlefield! Similarly, I enjoyed the one-on-one fight between RoboCop and a Terminator in the past, which delivered a knock-down, brutal melee far beyond what the movies would’ve been capable of, I’m sure.

Unusually, RoboCop Versus The Terminator doesn’t feature John or Sarah Connor; John is only referred to by Flo. Flo is a decent enough main character, being hyper focused on destroying RoboCop and vehemently hating all machines due to her traumatic experiences in the Future War. Flo’s capable enough to build a plasma rifle, easily outwits the ED-209s, and holds her own against the Terminators. She destroys RoboCop without hesitation in one timeline and then ends up fighting to defend him in others, touched by his humanity and ultimately trusting him despite her repeatedly dying because of the cyborg cop. We get some fun Terminator variants here, including a little person, child, and dogs, showing that Skynet’s infiltration strategy was incredibly layered. Unfortunately, we don’t see RoboCop fighting with or alongside a reprogrammed T-800 (beyond his fist-fight with an endoskeleton) but I liked that there was a lot of action in the past and that RoboCop was forced to witness Skynet’s destructive plot in real time to fight against them in the future, giving us the best of both worlds and putting both characters in each other’s home turf. Miller even found an interesting way to merge the two franchises by having RoboCop be the spark that gives Skynet sentience, which makes perfect sense as he’s “part man, part machine”. I also enjoyed seeing elements of Miller’s RoboCop sequels weaved into the story, like Dr. Lazarus and a reference to Nikko Halloran, and seeing ED-209s as bumbling robot enforcers. Overall, RoboCop Versus The Terminator is a super fun story full of explosive action, time travel shenanigans, and thrilling interactions and battles between the titular cyborgs. It’s a shame we never got to see it in live-action (though I live in hope for an animated feature…) but we did pretty well between this, the videogame, and the action figures.

My Rating:

Great Stuff

Did you enjoy RoboCop Versus The Terminator? What did you think to RoboCop being in such a bad head space and him being painted as Skynet’s creator? Did you enjoy the time travel shenanigans and the fights between the two cyborgs? What did you think of Flo and RoboCop’s new look in the future? Would you have liked to see more clashes between the two and a movie of the premise? How are you celebrating RoboCop Day today? Drop your thoughts on RoboCop Versus The Terminator in the comments, and donate to my Ko-Fi to suggest other RoboCop content for the site.