Cyberpunk Cinema: Robocop 2

Unlike the spectacular subject of Cyberpunk Cinema’s last entry, not every sequel to a popular film ends up meeting expectations…take for instance the film I’ll be discussing today, “Robocop 2″. The original was both a cyperpunk action/sci-fi movie and biting social commentary all in one, but still having enough of a “soul” where the movie wasn’t totally unlikable. In the sequel, that soul was ripped out just like Alex Murphy’s was — gone were the insights on humanity, memorable villains and cohesive plot. These were replaced by dueling Robocops, throwaway bad-guys and half-explored subplots. Yippee, let the dystopic mayhem run amok!

As if the first movie didn’t show enough how big drugs are of a problem in the Motor City, this time around the addictive narcotic is a red hallucinogen with the oh-so-subtle name of “Nuke”, which threatens the entire populace (as I said, “subtle”.) While investigating the ring of criminals distributing the drug, Robocop has an unwanted meeting with a jackhammer and ends up a cybernetic scrap heap as displayed above. When he’s repaired, he ends up being reprogrammed with commands to do things like help the environment and quote proverbs to a group of thieving schoolchildren, definitely the funniest scenes in the movie. (The scenes were in an in-your-face moment to the hordes of real-life parents’ groups complaining that popular movies were sending dangerous messages to kids about violence.) How Peter Weller managed to play that off with a straight face and making the expressions he does in those scenes is beyond my comprehension. It seems the bad guys have done quite the number on our pal Robo.

Ahh yes, the villains — certainly a part of what made the first film so much fun. Before they were on “E.R” and “That 70’s Show”, Paul McCrane and Kurtwood Smith were some of the slimiest bad guys ever seen on the big screen in “Robocop”. Taking their place this time are a druggie whore, Elvis impersonator, hippie cult leader and…that little guy (Gabriel Damon). Yup, “Robocop 2″ makes the interesting choice of casting a child villain; one who swears like Eddie Murphy circa 1984 and opens fire on cops with reckless abandon. Oh and by the way, thanks to the magic of IMDB, this gun-toting, foul-mouthed, hadn’t-hit-puberty-yet bad guy also has another famous credit to his name…Littlefoot. Yup, one of the main bad guys in “Robocop 2″ was that wimpy dinosaur in “The Land Before Time”…good God. As the old saying goes, you can’t make this s**t up.

Speaking of the hippie cult leader Cain (Tom Noonan), he ends up on the verge of death after a battle with Robocop, and is then himself murdered to provide the brain for Murphy’s replacement. OCP’s trial-and-error process for the new prototype is one of the more gratuitous and humorous sequences in this violent film, one which literally transforms Cain into Robocop 2. As a means of controlling him, they bait him with Nuke, the same narcotic he was hooked on in human form. He can have as much of the drug as he wants, the only catch being that he slaughters his former associates and Robocop. As an interesting aside, look for Frank Miller himself in a brief cameo as a drug chemist/designer (also named Frank) who gets blown up in his own lab.

Needless to say, things don’t exactly turn out how OCP wants, and their new “bastard creation”, as the first film’s Dick Jones would have said, goes on a drug-induced killing spree. The only one who can stop Cain/Robocop 2 is the original, and both of them proceed to fight it out in the OCP headquarters and streets of Detroit. Some of the dialogue before this, including the OCP CEO’s command to the cyborg pair of “Behave yourselves!”, and the wild outbursts of the city’s mayor are laughable and do nothing but add some serious cheese to this sequel. In spite of that, the overacting of the city mayor is actually quite funny (think Don King or Johnnie Cochran on crack).

Ultimately, Robocop’s brain triumphs over Cain’s brawn…or is it the other way around (examine Cain/Robocop 2’s death scene in the film to get the reference)? Robocop’s final line made a reference to his humanity, concluding in a similar fashion to the first film. And that, in my opinion ladies and gents, is where this sequel went wrong. The first 20 minutes partially explores Robocop’s intention to reclaim his humanity and family, something which could have been a key part of the film, then drops it with no explanation. It seems as if he almost accepts his fate as a machine, even when Littlefoot is trying to bust a cap in his steel-plated dome.

Oh and one final caveat, though the credits may say that Frank Miller was the screenwriter on this, he wasn’t totally responsible for this garbage. His original script went through so many rewrites that the finished film utilized almost none of his concepts. If you want to see what “Robocop 2″ could have been, his original script was made into a comic book called “Frank Miller’s Robocop”. Unfortunately, the trend of sequel crappification would only get worse. By the time of the third and last film, Robo was flying like the f*cking Rocketeer and helping to avert a housing crisis — but I’m not even going there. No wonder Miller didn’t return to Hollywood until “Sin City” came out, luckily that time he had creative control…and the difference shows.

Cyberpunk Cinema: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Bigger is better…always the case? Not necessarily, but no one told James Cameron that when he went about filming the sequel to his highly-acclaimed smash hit “The Terminator”. While that movie was produced on a budget smaller than the diet of your average Hollywood starlet, the sequel would command financing of $100 million, making it the most expensive film ever produced (at the time, of course.) With Cameron returning, actors Ahh-nold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton would be reprising their roles as well, with newcomer and future drug addict Eddie Furlong stepping into the spotlight as John Connor.

Since this is an extremely popular and well-known movie, I’ll spare everyone an in-depth recap but will just say this. Since Skynet in all its infinite wisdom failed miserably to kill Sarah Connor in 1984, they figured they would give it the old college try some 10 years later and try to kill her son John, the future leader of the resistance, directly. Skynet would send a T-1000, an updated prototype of the infiltrator unit composed of a mimetic poly-alloy (liquid metal in non-geek speak) to assassinate Connor, while the human resistance would again send back a protector, a reprogrammed version of the Terminator from the first film. Again, the catch being that only one of them could reach John first. When some hardcore fans first heard this scenario, they blanched at the idea of their favorite Austrian killing machine being put into the “good guy” role, however the final product shows that those same fans really underestimated the star of “Kindergarten Cop”.

Initially, there’s just one problem: Sarah Connor. She managed to get herself involuntarily committed to a mental ward and lost custody of her son in the process, failing to live up to her own described status as “mother of the future”. Even though the relationship at the beginning between mother and son flat-out sucks, John breaks with the plans and goes to enact a good, old-fashioned jailbreak, which is successful. Unfortunately, during all that time locked up with fat, sleazy security guards licking her face at night and administering intermittent shock therapy, Sarah forgot how to be a mom. So them getting used to each other is one subplot that would prove crucial later on in the movie. As seen here, she is far from the near-helpless waitress she was upon her introduction in the series.

Meanwhile, the T-1000 (played by Robert Patrick) is in hot pursuit of the heroic trio. Being able to imitate anything he touches, he makes sushi out of various police officers and even John’s foster parents just to hunt him down. Now that’s commitment! Part of what made this film important was the titanic (pardon the pun) leap forward in computer graphics technology that brought the T-1000 to life. While Phil Tippett and Stan Winston did the best they could in 1984 to bring the original Terminator to cybernetic life, to say those stop-motion effects have not aged well would be the understatement of the year. In contrast, though the film was released 17 years ago, the effects hold up fairly well – Industrial Light & Magic deserves an extra big bowl of cheesy poofs for that. On a random note, it is said that when Spielberg saw how well the T-1000 came off in the movie, he realized that CGI had come forward enough where he could attempt to realistically portray dinosaurs on film, leading us to “Jurassic Park”.

In the midst of all this chaos, obsessive Cyberdyne lab tech Miles Dyson (Joe Morton) works feverishly to unlock the secrets behind the CPU chip and cyborg hand that were recovered from the first Terminator in 1984. Allowed to go unchecked, he would actually bring Skynet to life, causing Judgment Day, yadda, yadda, yadda. That being said, Sarah actually tries to take him out, but her human compassion comes into play, and she ceases to be the always-cold bitch she was for most of the film. An awesome action sequence follows with the destruction of the Cyberdyne lab, but I won’t spoil that for the 3 people in the world who haven’t seen it yet. Dyson of course, falls on his proverbial sword (of C-4) for the cause of humanity. What a hell of a guy!

In the end, it comes down to a final showdown in a steel mill, and just when you think the good guys are about to be made into human fillet, Ahh-nold comes through and makes a liquid barbecue of the T-1000. Seeking to also prevent Judgment Day, he destroys himself as well, with the unknown future rolling ahead. Now, THAT was the way to end the story, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s where these films ended. My faith in part 3 was totally fragged when Arnold said this sentence. “Judgment Day is inevitable”. WTF? So then why did you have 2 awesome movies dedicated to the heroes preventing something that would eventually happen anyway?!!! ARGH!!! Needless to say, Cameron and the main cast (except Ahh-nold) weren’t involved at all with that monstrosity, and as you can see above, even the T-1000 is wagging the finger of shame at the crew of T-3. Then again, that could just be at himself for starring as the main villain of “Double Dragon”…Good Lord, that sucked.

Caf-Fiend: Salute Your Donkeylips

“We run, we jump, we sing, and play… we row and go on trips! But one thing that lasts forever… our are dear friendships!

Camp Anawanna, we hold you in our HEARTS, and when we think about you, it makes me wanna [charge batteries with my nipples]?!” NAH! P-Push it real good! lol

“Its I hope we never part, now get it right or pay the price!”

Can you believe that this show only aired for 2 seasons at 13 episodes a pop (1991-1992)! Are we on the same page here, but didn’t it seem like everytime you flipped over to Nick it was this or Hey Dude! Well, considering I was just turning double digits when the show was canceled, anything past 7 mins could have seemed like a long time.

But on a serious note, why is Nick not creating a duel-season Blu-Ray special Sponge edition series. Come on’ Nick, bite off Tarantino and make each character a special edition, I want more UGG in my life. But Nickelodeon is like, nah, sorry pops, you can only have Clarissa Explains It All! Sorry Melissa Joan Hart, I was a huge Pete and Pete fan even though I secretly watched your show! lol.

I realize that this post is way past overdue, but I want you visualize the Lips everytime you take that precious sip of Mountain Dew Amp. Every sip you get closer, and closer, and CLOSER to his hairy Budnick-style, awful-waffle covered nipples and horrendous chin-strap! So, the next time you are stranded in Tarzana (yah, he is a local celeb… be jealous) I hope you have a cooler of energy drinks, so you don’t have to call AAA. But, you have to give him credit, he is f*cking hilarious, and I’m so glad to see him back in the spotlight! Maybe Mountain Dew could make this an ongoing joke?! Just start strapping Michael Bower to random household appliances and airplanes, etc… etc.. or make him experience all the products. For example, lets see what happens when you give him Mountain Dew Gamer Fuel! Does he log on his Warcraft toon and start pwning nooblets… maybe life-action sorcery?! He already leveled up his Rank 12 Lighting Bolt spell. What can we hook him up to next?!

“Think Anawanna wanna, speak Anawanna wanna, live Anawanna wanna… UGG!”

Valentine’s Day Sucks!!

 

 

Ah, Valentine’s Day… the holiday devoted to sweet tooths, heart aches, the color red, and tacky chocolates (don’t forget the Russell Stover bow!). Since I detest Russell Stover, whoever he was, let’s focus upon the other aspects of V-day, namely vampires. Isn’t it obvious? Sweet tooths, heart aches, and the color red scream blood lust and eternal life. These are the real roots of Valentine’s Day, the adoration of the vampire. All this ‘I will love you forever’ stuff, well *news flash*, only immortal bloodsuckers can love forever.

 

In honor of this bloody helliday, I thought I’d treat all you single guys who read this blog… ok, everyone who reads this blog, to a bloodthirsty competition to decide the deadliest movie vampire in history. There were so many vampire movies to choose from and unfortunately I had to pare it down to the true blooded ones, with apologies to Ankle Biters and Sorority House Vampires. I decided to only look at Underworld, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Interview with a Vampire, and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. Furthermore, with so much at stake I need to come up with some sharp rules to govern the competition by and those rules are: only powers exhibited in these movies are granted to the vampire combatants and initial match-ups were determined by movie release dates, oldest movie vs. newest and then the two left over. According to the movies chosen, our immortal combatants are Selene vs. Count Dracula, and Lestat vs. D.

 

I know you’re dying to hear how it all got sorted out, so without further adieu let’s sink our teeth into this riveting account of vampire mortal combat. It’s guarantee not to suck with so much at stake. Let’s read as our four fanged immortals will duke it out tooth, nail and wing for supremacy.

First Round: Selene vs. Dracula

Dracula shambles into the arena humming the Batman theme song. His lordship appears as the old wrinkled man with the heart-shaped haircut, his personal stamp of approval for Valentine’s Day. Selene strides out all sexed out in her tight fitting black leather, hears the song, sees Dracula’s robes, and mutters “And I thought Craven was gay.”

“Velcome my dear, I have question for you,” Dracula begins. “Do you believe in destiny? That even the powers of time can be altered for a single purpose? That the luckiest man who walks upon this earth is the one who finds… True love?”

“No,” Selene snaps. She whips out her twin Berettas, each packing ultraviolet heat, and executes a perfect, slow motion flip through the air. The camera hugs in tight on her accentuated black leather curves and cleavage, since this is an integral moment in the plot of all action movies. Finishing her flip, she drop kicks Dracula in his two full moons and pumps the oldman vampire with sixty bullets. The big man crumples and Selene crosses his name off her ‘To Kill List’ between Viktor and Stephen Sommers.

Thinking she’s won, Selene is speechless as Dracula rears up from the dust and morphs into the eight foot tall bat demon that melted Hannibal Lecter’s cross. Selene’s guns fall out of her hands and she wets her pants, pleasantly surprised to find out that black leather hides urine stains well. Demonic bat Drac roars and gnashes his teeth to let everyone know how pissed off he is.

 

“Look, I suck at soccer and I know this. I can’t bend it like Beckham so there’s no way I’ll ever get with Keira Knightley. So I decided to go for the Diet-Coke version of Keira, Winona Ryder. Instead of partially fulfilling my fantasy, I was shot, stabbed, staked, kicked, punched, offended by her terrible acting, and worst of all, I ended up losing Winona to Keanu Reeves! Now, you shoot me and kick me in the balls to boot!! AAARRRRGGGHHHHH!!! In seconds, Selene is salami and demon Dracula readies for his next victim.

Second Round: Lestat vs. D

Lestat de Cruise enters the arena draped in rich silks and gold jewelry that augment his immortal perfection. In addition, he dons a pair of aviators that scream ‘I’m a late 80’s member of the homoerotic mile high club’. D wears black shoes, black pants, a black shirt, a black cape, and a black hat over his black hair. Lestat de Cruise smiles and taunts D, saying, “That’s right! Ice…man, I am dangerous. ”

D responds by whipping out his long sword and castrating Lestat de Cruise. The sappy Jerry Maguire/Cruise whines, cringes, and looks for Nicole Kidman to tuck him into bed, while the Lestat de Lioncourt in him drags him into combat. With his ability to read thoughts, Lestat de Cruise knows D’s every move before he makes it, soon overcoming the vampire hunter. His opponent down, Lestat de Cruise takes the opportunity to admire his nonexistent reflection in the mirror. He muses, “Too bad Katie Holmes’ reflection isn’t invisible. That way none of us would have to see that half of her face that droops down. Oh well D, time to drink from me and live for nevermore biatch!”

 

Taking advantage of Lestat Cruise’s vane pause, D reaches his parasitic left hand up to the vampire’s face and sucks it right off. After vanquishing the scientology vampire, D’s hand starts puking like Roger Ebert after watching Freddy Got Fingered. A concerned D asks what’s wrong and the hand replies, “I swallowed his fake German accent from Valkyrie…ugh.”

Final Round: A bloody first two rounds finally culminates in Dracula, the father, squaring off against D, the son, to decide which of these fantastic four is the best. Dracula has taken the youthful form of young man Oldman, while D continues his Goth-kid kick in all black. No words are exchanged and D goes to draw his sword… but nothing happens. The vampire hunter doesn’t move, change expression, or do anything but stand there in suspended animation. Dracula smiles and says, “I killed all your animators before I got here. Sucks to be a cartoon doesn’t it?” Dracula wads D up and uses him as toilet paper after draining Selene dry. Having vanquished the others, the Count stakes his claim as no. 1 in the 1^st Annual Valentine’s Day Massacre.

Celebrating Black History Month: Part I

While some of you saps relish the month of February as an opportunity to commercially and tackily express your true love for that girl you randomly hooked up with at the bar three months ago who now refuses to call you less than three times a day, hangs out with all your friends, siphons gas from your car, and is your mother’s surprising hand-picked selection as your future spouse, I do not. Valentine’s Day is overrated and pales in comparison to Leap Year birthdays, which rock. For those leap year babies, think about this: if you only age on your exact birth-date, then you should be expecting almost 300 years of life in the US.

Stepping away from these two hallmarks of February, the more civic minded of you might be thinking to yourself, “Wait a tick, February is Black History Month”, to which I say…WYLD STALLYNS! So let’s take a break from fake news stories and sheer nonsense to observe Black History Month in a multi-part month long series. We begin this most Excellent Adventure with a look at one of the most awe-inspiring and dominant constructions in Black history, I speak, of course, of The Necrodeck.

The pinnacle of Black history on the Magic the Gathering scene is arguably the devastating reign of Necro as Numero Uno, the So-crates, the One, the Constantine of Black deck construction. Thanks to the expansion of global warming, err, Ice Age, black weenie decks gleefully added Necropotence to their arsenals and proceeded to rape, pillage, and sodomize.

Before I extol upon the virtues of Necro, a little magical nostalgia is in order. Black weenie had long been a successful, aggressive deck before Necro because it was cheap and it hit your opponent with all kinds of fast, physical weenies. Unfortunately, once your initial rush was defended and you ran out of cards, well, let’s just say things got ugly for your weenie deck.

Enter Necropotence, a phenomenal enchantment that allowed the black weenie deck to exchange life for massive amounts of cards. The black weenie deck now had its Spear of Destiny and Type II tourneys were never the same. With Necropotence functioning like Cialis for limp weenie decks, the Necro Deck flexed its manhood in all its Black (and sometimes Red) glory. Hordes of Black Knights, Order of the Ebon Hands, Hypnotic Specters, and even Sengir Vampires blasted your hapless opponent’s life total, while Hymn to Tourach emptied their hand and Ice Quakes and Strip Mines devastated their lands. This ferocious attack was sustained by the card drawing Necropotence and lost life was recouped by a Zuran Orb or Ivory Tower. Triomphe Napoleon!

Maybe you weren’t around for Necro’s reign of terror. Maybe you’re only familiar with the fancy new shiny M.T.G. cards. Count your blessings medieval dickweed! Ever heard of the Black Death? There’s a mistaken idea that this is a colloquial term for the Bubonic Plague that ravaged Europe in the 14^th Century, but really it was coined by Tom Cruise after his ‘Islands and Ornithopter Scientology Deck’ was dominated by Oprah’s Necro Deck during his brief foray into M.T.G.

Seriously though, from the Spring ‘96 – Fall ‘96, Necro Decks dominated the Magic community. Affectionately dubbed ‘the Summer of Sam’, or some such thing, this period saw Necro dominate so thoroughly that over 65% of the field at the Magic World Championships was playing Necro. A duel against the Necro deck was like being Neo against the multiplying Mr. Anderson, but just as you’re about to kick ass with the power of the One you’re suddenly morphing from Keanu Reeves-Neo to Keanu Reeves-Ted Logan…BOGUS!

Hogan Hosts ‘Gladiator’, Prayers Answered

He told us to take our vitamins and say our prayers. Apparently, we did. Now, we’re blessed with roid rage, man-breasts, backne, shriveled scrotums, federal investigations, and child-onset heart conditions. However, we’re also blessed with the second-coming of one of the greatest television franchises of the past twenty years – American Gladiators, hosted by the O.H. (that’s Original Hulkamaniac) himself, Hulk Hogan.

“Gladiator-mania is gonna be runnin’ wild, brother!”
-Hogan, at NBC’s Burbank, CA offices, October, 2007

Already announced on infinitely more reputable news outlets is that Terry Bollea (aka Terry Boulder, aka Super Destroyer, aka Sterling Golden, aka Ichiban, aka Thunderlips, aka Rip, aka Shep Ramsay, aka Dave Dragon, aka Randolph J. ‘Hurricane’ Spencer) has signed on to host NBC’s 2008 reincarnation of the early to mid-90’s boob tube staple. While the show will still headline competently-athletic, weekend warrior-type Joes, and has-been/never-were professional athletes (see: frighteningly overgrown Abercrombie models) with soft-core porn star-worthy nicknames (Thank goodness!), it is said that the new show will feature “water skills, special effects, and high-tech stunts”.

I don’t know about you, but this kind of talk makes me very concerned. Someone get Joe Rogen’s agent on the phone, and make sure he’s booked solid with UFC duties and stand-up obligations, because frankly, this has testicle-consumption written all over it. They better not be sullying my beloved, innocent Gladiators. They better not be ruining the show that needed little else than weakly-propelled tennis balls to become a global phenomenon.

I’m not joking, Mr. and Mrs. John and Jane Q Producer; bust open the locks to the prop warehouse, cart out Assault and The Eliminator as-is (you don’t even need to dust them off!), squeeze the now-over the hill Danny Lee Clark into some Red, White, and Blue, figure-control spandex, round up the rest of the has-been has-been athletes (no disrespect to Nitro), and start shooting this thing. It’s a can’t miss.

With the wrestling icon/reality show star/recent divorcee/future defendant in a potentially devastating civil suit at the helm, Hogan is making sure not to pass up a good (and insanely lucrative) opportunity twice (he was once offered to be the face of what would come to be known as the ‘George Foreman’ Grill), and he might wind up needing this money.

If I may, however, make one humble suggestion: that is, to increase the danger factor of the show, Battle Dome-style (namely, in the Jake Fury/gruesomely disgusting ankle injury sort of way). Awe hell – who am I kidding?! All I really want is for them to shoot a live-action version of Smash TV. They don’t even have to call it American Gladiators.

Whatever the case, this show’s gotta be better than Ryan Seacrest’s Gladiators 2000.

And at least the Hulk Hogan Ultimate Grill turned out to be just as successful as the George Foreman Grill, right?

Sorry, I just can’t help myself.