RoboCop 2 (1990)
I still have a vivid memory of standing in the school playground, clutching a plastic RoboCop action figure, completely oblivious to the razor-sharp, deeply inappropriate satire I was holding in my eight-year-old hands. That memory says everything about the strange cultural place these films occupy. They were sold to children while being designed for adults, and the tension between those two audiences turns out to be at the very heart of RoboCop 2.
I'll be honest: I went into this one bracing for the worst. The warnings came in early and often. Friends, film writers, random strangers on the internet, all of them insisting that Irvin Kershner's 1990 follow-up was a catastrophic step down from Paul Verhoeven's iconic original. So you can imagine my relief when it turned out to be, well, actually pretty good fun. Not a patch on the first film, no. But nowhere near the disaster I'd been led to expect.
What it gets right is the tone. It still drips with that unapologetically cheesy, late-80s action energy, the satirical adverts and sneering corporate villains, the bombastic violence and the sly, knowing comedy. And it wraps all of that around a genuinely interesting cynical premise: a city drowning in debt, a municipal government on the verge of collapse, and a corporation cooking up an even more ruthless cybernetic prototype to replace the one they've already lost control of. There's a gleefully dark idea buried in there about privatised law enforcement eating itself, and I appreciated that the film at least gestures towards it, even if it doesn't quite have the nerve to push it all the way.
Peter Weller returns to the suit, and fair play to him. The man commits completely to the mechanical physicality of the role, finding those small human flickers inside all that armour. The script doesn't give him a great deal of new emotional ground to work with, and the narrative leans heavily on familiar beats, but Weller carries it with quiet dignity. The plot is highly predictable, the story goes over old ground, and nobody watching this is expecting a profound character study. You want a heavily armoured cyborg blasting criminals through the dystopian streets of Detroit. It delivers that with reliable, if well-worn, gusto.
What it doesn't deliver, and this is where the sourness creeps in, is the visceral shock of the original. The gore is noticeably dialled back, and once you know why, you can't unknow it. The studio had spotted the merchandising opportunity, and the only way to shift plastic RoboCop figures off the shelves at Christmas was to sand down the rough edges just enough to make the whole thing feel, if not family-friendly exactly, then at least commercially viable for a younger audience. It's a deeply cynical move, which is almost fitting for a franchise built on corporate satire, but it does drain some of the original's real, dangerous bite. I had a similar feeling when I watched Total Recall, that sense of a major studio simultaneously embracing and neutering Verhoeven's anarchic instincts.
What nobody watered down, thankfully, is the score. The RoboCop theme returns in full force, and it remains one of the finest pieces of music the sci-fi action genre has ever produced. Pulsing, relentless, genuinely thrilling. Every time it kicks in you feel it in your chest, and it does more than its fair share of work in keeping the energy up during the film's flabbier stretches.
Three and a half stars.
RoboCop 2 is not a great film. But it's a solidly entertaining one, and given everything I'd heard, that felt like a minor triumph. It knows its audience, it delivers what it promises, and it carries just enough of the original's satirical DNA to feel like a legitimate entry in the series rather than a cynical cash-in. Come in with your expectations calibrated correctly and you'll have a good time. Just don't expect it to disturb you the way the first one did. That edge is gone. Sanded smooth and packaged for retail.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 1990 | Watched: 2026-08-04
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: MGM Plus Amazon Channel
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Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
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Physical: Amazon US
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