In 1987, the film director Paul Verhoeven gave a twist to action science fiction with RoboCop. In reality, that was a cocktail very much to the director’s liking where there was satire, cyberpunk and police thriller. The difference was that he did not limit himself to telling the fall and rebirth of a hero: he decided to win over the viewer with emotional hammer blows, with a death. so cruel and excessive that it was impossible to look at without feeling uncomfortable.
The scene that changed everything. Alex Murphy, the protagonist, appears up to that point as a good cop thrown into a corrupt world, but the film doesn’t have time to build him up calmly, so it does it by the most brutal way: literally, it tear apart in front of the viewer so that, when he returns converted into a machine, he understands that what has been lost is not only flesh, but humanity.
Verhoeven explained it with an almost religious and at the same time tremendously cynical idea: “if you want to resurrect Murphy as an all-powerful RoboCop, first you have to crucify him.” And that crucifixion, instead of being symbolic or elegant, is filmed like a physical nightmaredirty and painful, one designed so that the viewer cannot avoid the impact.
The slaughter as a narrative. The sequence It is constructed like a public execution, with the criminals laughing in the background, and that is possibly the key to its violence: it is not just that it unlockis that along the way they humiliate him, turn him into a broken toy, and torture him as if the gang were enjoying the show. The scene is escalating until it seems impossiblewith the protagonist trying to understand what is happening to him while his body stops obeying him, and the band acting like real madmen.
There is the moral trick of the director of RoboCop: The villains were absolutely grotesque, yes, but the film removes any sympathetic veneer from them and turns them into a total social menace. Thus, when the final shot arrives that puts an end to the execution, the viewer is no longer watching the typical “80s action” film, he is seeing the point of no return that makes the entire film, from that minute on, a story. of loss and revenge.
The old school of effects. It is impossible to talk about this classic without mentioning what makes it unique. The how was filmed: no less than under the orders of the legendary Rob Bottin with an artisanal obsession that today seems unthinkable based on meticulously designed prostheses, molds, fake parts and physical tricks. In order for the mutilation to work without putting the actor at risk, a a fake hand From a real mold, it was reconstructed in fiberglass and divided into sections so that it could be “popped” with compressed air and stage blood without the need for explosives near the face.
It wasn’t just an effect, it was a device home engineering: internal blood tubes, pressure control, parts that could be assembled and disassembled, and a repeatable explosion pattern to always nail the same result. “Death” was also filmed with a staging designed to hide the real and sell the fakewith raised floors, holes through which to put the real arm under the stage, and a member of the team moving from below a false arm attached with Velcro as if it were a living limb.
The underground trick. Plus: Murphy’s death is supported by a secret choreography that the viewer never saw: operators out of shot, hidden mechanisms and an absurd number of hands working to make a second of screen seem like an organic nightmare. Not only that: a foam arm in disguise with a police uniform, a metal structure to hold it, hinges at the “elbow” and even a support anchored to the false floor so that everything could resist the violence of the effect.
While the actor was dying and staggering above, below there was a team of professionals pumping blood by hand and adjusting compressed air. Even the shots that “break up” the armor were reinforced with simple but brilliant physical details, such as small charges of talcum powder to simulate fragmentation, a very cheap solution that, in camera, added texture and turned the scene into something tactile, with dust, impacts and material that seems to fall off the body.
The Peter Weller doll. Another stroke of genius came with the moment of the auction: for a final shot that in the released version lasts a sigh, a Murphy’s full torsoa sophisticated doll with a latex face made from a mold of the actor, an internal fiberglass skull and mechanisms to move the neck, jaw and body. It was not a static mannequin, it was a creature manipulated by cablescapable of opening his mouth in a silent scream, leaning, trembling and reacting to the shot as if there was still life inside.
The execution was designed so that the back of the head “jumped out” with a controlled explosionwith pieces pre-cut to break in a specific way and with the interior prepared with blood and soft fragments, so that the horror felt mechanical but compelling. In addition, the “sweat” detail was added with water sprayas if the doll was breathing for the last time, and a motor with vibration so that the body seems to tremble with fear, an almost obscene trick due to its human nature that returns to artifice.
Censorship as an enemy. The most incredible thing is that, even so, what was seen in the rooms was a cropped version. RoboCop’s violence clashed head-on with the rating system of the time, and the film was given an X rating several times, forcing reedit, cut and sacrifice material until a commercially viable qualification is achieved.
Paradoxically, the cut that helped save it was one that its own creators considered “shabby” or too obvious, the moment in which Murphy’s arm flies off pulled by a cable, but it was just the mutilation that pushed the scene to the extreme, and that the censors did not seem willing to tolerate. The end result was a somewhat strange balance: RoboCop was still wild, but with some amputations by the scissors of censorship, and a final shot in the head that had been conceived as a long and claustrophobic moment, and that was reduced to just a few frames, almost a flash that the eye barely processes.
Today it would be unthinkable. To say that today it would go “digital” is an understatement, because what is truly unthinkable is not the technique, but rather the mentality of the time. In the 80s you could decide that the hero was going to die in a sadistic and operatic way to gain empathy, and the decision could be supported with a team of craftsmen capable of constructing limbs that exploded in unison, hyper-realistic dolls and sets designed to trick the camera like a gruesome magic trick.
Today, even with more means, that scene would clash with another industrial culture: faster production rates, more closely monitored occupational risks, an ecosystem of franchises that protects its protagonists as assets, and a much less tolerant sensitivity to prolonged violence as a spectacle. Perhaps for this reason, RoboCop It became a cult object in a short time: not only for what it had, but for the artisanal audacity with which it was made, for having filmed a death that seemed excessive even for its time and for having turned that excess into the emotional engine of the entire film.
The nostalgia. If you also want, the Murphy’s death It was the point where RoboCop separated itself from almost everything that came after it in commercial action cinema. The trick was not only technical, It was narrative.: make the public suffer enough to accept a robotic resurrection without forgetting what they have stolen from the man.
In fact, I would say that is the main reason why it continues to work decades later, even when the viewer knows what is going to come: because in 1987 one of the most savage deaths ever filmed of a protagonist was filmed, and it was done with hands, latex, fiberglass, blood bombs and an overflowing imagination.
Image | Orion Pictures, RoboCopArchive
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