What Robo­Cop got right (and wrong) about the future

Paul Verhoeven’s Robo­Cop turns 30 this month, and it remains a sem­i­nal piece of screen sci-fi despite the lack­lus­tre sequels, TV shows and remake that pro­ceed­ed it. It’s one of a num­ber of films that looked to the future in the late ​’80s and won­dered what it would be like. With the last decade of the mil­len­ni­um approach­ing, cin­e­mas were inun­dat­ed with visions of the future such.

Some were pret­ty far from the mark – 1997 was a lot qui­eter than Escape From New York pre­dict­ed – but oth­ers now seem eeri­ly pre­scient: The Run­ning Man imag­ined a future dom­i­nat­ed by real­i­ty-based TV, while the things Back to the Future Part 2 got right (and wrong) about 2015 are well doc­u­ment­ed. No, we don’t know where our hov­er boards are either. Robo­Cop isn’t con­fined to a spe­cif­ic date, but does have some­thing to say in terms of where soci­ety is going. So, how on the mon­ey was Verhoeven’s depic­tion of a dystopi­an Detroit?

The decline of Motor City is por­trayed with grim accu­ra­cy in Verhoeven’s film. Although things were look­ing bad by the late ​’80s, the declin­ing auto­mo­tive indus­try has hit the city hard in recent years. Crime rose, the pop­u­la­tion dropped, and the city’s name became a media byword for dis­ar­ray. Many res­i­dents didn’t appre­ci­ate the image the film por­trayed of their city, but for many rea­sons the stig­ma still remains.

A half man, half cyborg law enforcer designed to take the human error out of police work is pure sci­ence fic­tion. Yet cer­tain ele­ments of this futur­is­tic vision are already being inte­grat­ed into mod­ern polic­ing. Drones are now com­mon­place in many areas of law enforce­ment, while recent­ly the Dubai Police Force unveiled a robot that can report crimes and accept fines, intend­ed to be ful­ly inte­grat­ed by 2030. A hybrid offi­cer con­tain­ing human remains still seems a long way off though.

RoboCop’s first rec­ol­lec­tion of his past self comes after see­ing thug Emil Antonowsky at a gas sta­tion (“I know you! You’re dead! We killed you!”). He uses facial recog­ni­tion pro­gramme on a record­ing of the encounter, some­thing now used in every­thing from shop­ping cen­tres to phone lock screens. It’s thought that half of US adults’ faces are stored on police data­bas­es, mak­ing the film strik­ing­ly accurate.

Sure, there are now mul­ti­ple screens in every room, but they tend to be a lot small­er, and flat­ter, than the stacked CRT tele­vi­sions scat­tered among the loca­tions in the film (all show­ing the Ben­ny Hill-esque show which every­one seems to find so hilar­i­ous). It’s a fea­ture that dates the film more than the big hair and pow­er suits. A flash­back also sees Murphy’s son play­ing with a mod­el aero­plane – evi­dent­ly iPads and fid­get spin­ners were not a part of Verhoeven’s future.

The vil­lain of the film is Omni Con­sumer Prod­ucts (OCP), a pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tion that con­trols the Detroit Police Depart­ment, as well as hav­ing a monop­oly over hos­pi­tals, pris­ons and space explo­ration. Pri­vate­ly, cor­rupt exec­u­tives hope that esca­lat­ing crime rates will help it turn the dilap­i­dat­ed Old Detroit into the afflu­ent new Delta City, turn­ing to Clarence Bod­dick­er (Kurt­wood Smith) and his goons to keep the chaos going.

The com­pa­ny is Verhoeven’s com­ment on the poten­tial for suf­fer­ing when prof­it is put over peo­ple, and it’s con­cern that holds true today. From con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing com­pa­ny G4S’ involve­ment in polic­ing in the UK, to the pri­vati­sa­tion of space trav­el and hos­pi­tal care in the US, the well­be­ing of soci­ety often clash­es with The Bot­tom Line around the world. For a film titled Robo­Cop, it’s a pret­ty astute obser­va­tion of where we could be headed.

Some of the news head­lines fea­tured in the film are (inten­tion­al­ly, no doubt) a lit­tle out there. To date, no Pres­i­dent has ever vis­it­ed space; there is no nuclear stand-off in South Africa; and no Amer­i­can cri­sis in Mex­i­co – at least, not one that involves fight­ing in Aca­pul­co. Cli­mate change is also not on the agen­da, at least if the com­mer­cial for the very thirsty 6000 SUX (a car boast­ing 8.2 miles per gal­lon) is any­thing to go by.

It’s rare for sci­ence fic­tion to accu­rate­ly pre­dict the future – after all, most dystopias are intend­ed as com­ments on the era in which they are writ­ten. If noth­ing else, how­ev­er, the orig­i­nal Robo­Cop had a lit­tle more going on beneath the sur­face than many of its contemporaries.