Flasz On Film

Before you jump to any conclusions based on the star rating you may have noticed above this text, I think it might be a good idea to stick around for a few more paragraphs just to make sure you know what these five stars actually mean. After all, you might end up thinking that RoboDoc: The Creation of RoboCop is perhaps a revolutionary piece of documentary filmmaking that pushes the envelope, reinvents the form or challenges the status quo.  

Far from it. But then again, it’s also important to remember that I would never accuse its creators – Christopher Griffiths (who has also recently co-directed Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story) and Eastwood Allen – of venturing out to explore the limits of their filmmaking format of choice. This isn’t The Act of Killing or The Thin Blue Line. The five stars you see are not the same five stars you’ll encounter above my review of Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man or Little Dieter Needs to Fly. The five stars I think RoboDoc is owed should signify that it is for all intents and purposes the absolutely and unequivocally perfect bonus feature I could ever want to see as accompaniment to one of the most iconic movies of the 1980s, Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop. 

Now, this may not mean much to some young whippersnappers out there, but at a time when distributors are slowly but steadily abandoning physical media except for the most mainstream releases, the very idea of a bonus feature seems to be in continuing peril. If it hadn’t been for boutique labels like Arrow, Criterion and others, there would be very little out there in terms of physically released movies accompanied by extras. We live in the age of streaming when Netflix won’t even allow me to sit through the closing credits in peace without meddling with my day, let alone allow me to delve deeper into the world of a movie I just witnessed. It has become an exception, not a rule, to be able to put on a film with a commentary track, or to find that the release you spent your hard-earned cash on came with an extra disc, on which a feature-length making-of documentary is found. That’s one of the many reasons I cherish my Blu-Ray copy of Blade Runner and Kingdom of Heaven. That’s why I went out of my way and double-dipped on Waterworld.  

But just because it takes a cult label to commission a host of bonus features to accompany a new restoration of your favourite cult classic, it doesn’t mean the very idea of a full-on making-of documentary is going to go the way of the dodo. No, sir. There are people out there who care about these things even more than I do, and – more importantly – they have the means and the drive to do it themselves. That’s why we now have access to an absolute beast of a documentary about RoboCop. Spread across four episodes and totalling to nearly five hours of running time, RoboDoc is the definitive encyclopaedia of everything RoboCop. From gossip about Peter Weller’s sex drive on set and the fact he was taunted with Oreos on one occasion, to showing just how bonkers mad Paul Verhoeven was and how he saw a Jesus allegory in this post-Terminator script written by Ed Neumeier and Mike Miner, this movie has it all. You will see that Griffiths and Allen somehow found a way to get everyone involved in this movie, apart from those who are no longer with us, like Miguel Ferrer, sat them in front of their camera and squeezed every last ounce of RoboCop lore out of them. The suit drama, the on-set skirmishes between Verhoeven and his collaborators, the squib shrapnel, the injuries… It’s all here. 

Thus, RoboDoc presents itself as a phenomenal repository of fan factoids and extra-textual knowledge about an absolutely iconic movie from 1987 that every fan of RoboCop will undoubtedly cherish. In fact, I would go as far as to suggest that – in addition to its upcoming standalone Blu-Ray release complementing its run on the ICON channel – RoboDoc should one day become a crown jewel on the list of bonus features available with the next restoration of the movie. It is truly an indispensable addition to the movie.  

However, this mammoth miniseries is not for everyone because – sadly – not everyone has seen RoboCop or cares about it the way I do. Nobody’s perfect. But you can always sit them down and watch the Verhoeven masterpiece together before embarking on another five hours of bonus material together with RoboDoc. And if they don’t wish to do this because for some ungodly reason they don’t vibe with RoboCop or they don’t feel strongly enough about it to rationalize spending another evening (and then some) learning about how risky all these explosions were and how Basil Poledouris’s score came to be – fine. Let them. in fact, you don’t need to be friends with them. You can find new friends who will appreciate you for quoting Kurtwood Smith at work at your leisure and who may be looking forward to a casual game of Nukem on a Saturday night.  

Failing that, you will always have the movie itself to go back to. And now, thanks to this meticulous and exhaustive piece of bonus-featurism, RoboCop has a making-of documentary to match its iconic status.