RoboCop 2: Corporate wars

ROBOCOP2: CORPORATE WARS
Corporate wars, The un-used script for RoboCop2 begins with RoboCop getting blasted into metallic dust and being resurrected many years later, in a new world. This is the story of the original sequel that was never made.

By Dan Persons

The cover sheet for Ed Neumeier's and Michael Miner's ROBOCOPII: THE CORPORATE WARS reads: "The authors wish to apologize for any errors in judgement and/or lapses of gridlogic in this very rough draft" The warning did not seem to be enough for the development execs at Orion Pictures. After having charged the original creators of ROBOCOP with not one, but two screenplays ( the other being Oliver Stone's abortive COMPANY MAN), and laying down a deadline of December 31st 1987 for the first draft of ROBOCOP2, the company moved fast to find a replacement when it became obvious that, despite numerous meetings devoted to developing some sort of consensus on a story, neither Miner nor Neumeier was going to toe the corporate line. In short order, Neumeier and Miner's rough draft of ROBOCOP2 also became their last draft.

According to Neumeier one of the reasons for the success of the original ROBOCOP is that "it has a whimsical realationship with the audience. Sometimes, a rather nasty relationship. Sometimes it's really out to just fuck the audience" One look at the first five pages of Neumeier and Miner's ROBOCOP II is all it takes to discover that the authors fully intend to continue that very special relationship with their public.

In fact, the story has barely begun before Neumeier and Miner pull off what would have been one of the most audacious mind-fucks in film history, had it ever made it to the screen. Starting off in a suitable, slam-bang fashion with a group of thieves using a truck-mounted cannon to blast their way into a bank, the script no sooner has RoboCop arrive and smoke the criminals than one bad guy, with his last ounce of strength, turns the cannon on Murphy, blowing him to metallic dust. The screen goes black as Murphy's RoboVision fizzles out, then, after several seconds, lights up with a title card: 25 Years Later.

RoboCop awakens to a radically altered civilization, one where cities have been turned into self-contained "plexes" such as New York Plex, RioPlex and DelhiPlex. The privileged citizens of these communities spend their days on the LeisureGrid, munching burgers served by Food ServiceDroids or cavorting with SexBots in high-tech brothels. Those who can't afford the go-go lifestyle become OutPlexers,derelicts exiled to the limitless shantytowns that surround the cities' walls. The President of the U.S (or AmeriPlex) is a former comedian ( the more things change...), while the man calling the shots-and maneuvering to buy out the U.S government and turn it into a privately owned, corporate entity - is "super-entrepreneur" Ted Flicker.

Discovered by two of Flicker's flunkies in the ruins of the now-defunct Omni Consumer Products, RoboCop is revived, repaired, and interfaced with NeuroBrain, the plex's central computer system. Soon enough, he is entangles in the flunkies desperate grab for power, and finds himself engaged in an attempt to discredit the commander of Internal Grid Security, involved in a bloodthirsty campaign to remove defensless OutPlexers from the city's perimeter, and finally driven to take matters into his own hands when a group of terrorists threaten the plex with a neutron bomb. Throughout, he is tinkered with by a reclusive scientist, aided by a Chinese hacker, and courted by the disembodied spirit of NeuroBrain (actually the thought impulses of the scientist's dead wife).

The scipt's plexes seem even more media-happy than the television-obsessed Detroit of ROBOCOP - the airwaves are filled with rapid-fire NewsBlips and commercials for mood enhansing drugs, while the major opinion-shaper of the day is a space-bred rapper named MoonDog. Yet, for all of its intriguing aspects, the script as it stands is very much what Neumeier and Miner proclaimed it to be:a rough draft. If they had been given the chance to do further work, they may have imbued the tale with the humanity it lacked, restored RoboCop to the center of the film rather than reducing him to a pawn in the hands of future-day movers and shakers, and cleared up a storyline that jumped prestige-hungry executives, power-mad terrorists, and sadistic security police in a nearly incomprehensible, internecine conflict. Of course, they never got the chance.

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