I watched RoboCop the other night. It was very, very unrealistic. The film takes place in Detroit in the year 2028. That may feel far off, but two and half years goes by much quicker than you realize. If this town is going to turn into the barren deathscape in which RoboCop optimally operates we’ve got a lot of regressive work to do.

Detroit’s crime rate is currently at historic lows, instead there’s a lot of food trucks and dog parks. I even saw a dude riding a unicycle (with a total lack of shame) down the street a while back. The film’s dystopian future has turned into a pleasant present reality.

Truthfully, I don’t know what RoboCop is going to do around here in 2028. Maybe he could issue some parking tickets or hand out citations to jaywalking joggers. Crime is not as prevalent as it once was and he’ll have to adjust to this new reality.

RoboCop is a poor fit for the world 2028.

People nowadays not only expect their cyborg Robot PolicePeople to be personable and somewhat friendly, but also to have proficient knowledge about mental health issues, economics, and community dynamics. Instead of street fighting, Robocop will have to spend a lot of his time in the schools and attending speaking engagements for civic groups in the city. Truthfully, he’s a mediocre public speaker (at best) and not that charming of a personality. It’ll be an uphill battle for him.

Also, there’s a lot more to being a police officer than reckless driving and fireball explosions.

In my very limited interactions with law enforcement I have observed that being a cop seems to involve A LOT of paperwork. Oh my god, you gotta fill out this form for that and that form for this. You have to write up this report and finish that piece of paper-for-who-knows-what. You have audits, and reviews, and meetings and whathaveyou.

It’s a lot of time sitting in the squad car or hunched over a computer screen. Your eyes start to hurt, your back starts to ache. In this regard Robocop may actually have an advantage over non-robot fused department employees. His titanium spine is sure to be a welcome relief since most of the swivel chairs in the precinct office are outdated and ergonomically atrocious. Other than that I think he will struggle.

And I understand his specialty is killing bad guys. There’s a scene in the movie where he goes to a waterfront warehouse and wipes out an entire group of drug smuggling gangsters with his machine gun. There’s very little questioning and evidence gathering in this scene, which though they can be monotonous, are important aspects of police work.

He’s really great at killing criminal bad guys. But the problem is that usually the biggest bad guys haven’t done anything illegal!

Inside of his helmet, RoboCop’s computer is hooked up to all the large crime databases in the area. He knows instantaneously when someone in front of him hasn’t checked in with their parole officer in a timely manner, but his systems can’t detect the occurrence of wrongdoing. In the blink of an eye he can tell when someone’s illegal. And yet, as we all know by now, just because someone is a criminal doesn’t mean they’re a bad guy. And even if they’re a bad guy, it doesn’t mean they’re wrong in what they’re doing.

Undiscerning RoboCop is deeply unsuited for the moral murkiness that now surrounds us like a poisonous warm blanket.

Because in 2028 wrong will be right, right will be wrong, good guys will be bad guys, bad guys will be good guys, Detroit will lack crime and the world will have an overabundance of wrongdoing.

What a laughably ridiculous movie!

RoboCop was so unrealistic