Forget Die Hard, RoboCop 3 is a Christmas Movie

Are you struggling to get into the Christmas spirit? Have you exhausted the cheer from all the classic Christmas movies after years of rewatching? Are you sick to death of the debate over whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie, with all the people arguing only doing it performatively because they don’t actually care about the answer and are taking part in debates created purely for internet discourse, like pineapple on pizza, to make them feel something about their miserable lives? Well, it sounds like you need an actual alternative Christmas movie. May I present RoboCop 3.

If you’re seeking a film that’s actually good then keep looking. RoboCop 3 is pretty rubbish. A trilogy of diminishing returns, RoboCop 3 is RoboCop again… again. But this time there’s tinsel. There’re baubles. There’re Christmas lights. What there isn’t is Peter Weller in the lead role. Busy with Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch, Weller is replaced with Robert John Burke, who has played cops for most of his career but this time has ‘Robo-’ added to the front of his character description. Burke’s not bad in the role but he’s nowhere near as good as Weller. Fittingly, Burke is wearing Weller’s costume, no time for a refitting, like a Santa outfit at a work event, handed out to whoever the fattest employee is that year.

So, okay, RoboCop 3 isn’t directly a Christmas film. At least at first glance. It’s a Christmas movie in the same way Shane Black’s movies are Christmas movies. The holiday is present in the background, it adds a little flavour, a little extra personality, but it’s not at the core of the plot. In fact, Shane Black might be the reason for the Christmas setting of RoboCop 3. He’s a friend and collaborator of Fred Dekker, the film’s director, and Black even has a cameo. Likely it was an ode to his work.

Perhaps shocking if you’ve only seen the ultraviolent original but RoboCop 3 is essentially a family film. A kids’ movie. Despite being a bloody and profane satire, the first film spawned a franchise that continued to drift towards being for kids, with action figures and a cartoon. By the third film children were essentially the audience so the film is rated PG-13 and a young girl is the protagonist. RoboCop himself is backgrounded, the writers never getting around the fact his arc was completed in the first film, and doesn’t appear until 20 minutes in.

In an early scene, ED-209, the robot responsible for the crazily brutal killing in the first film, is hacked by the genius young girl and starts acting like a little puppy dog. It’s an apt metaphor for the film as a whole. RoboCop 3 is toothless in every aspect: the violence, the villains, the story, and even the satire is far from biting. There are a couple of mildly subversive moments, perhaps echoes of Frank Miller’s original story ideas, but it’s ultimately a safe family adventure. The worst we get is a handful of ‘shits,’ but even they are countered by a meta line: “Hey, watch the language. There’s children present, remember.”

So the film’s not good. The ideas are simplified and unfocused, the tone and style neutered, the villains are bland, and there are far too many characters taking the spotlight from RoboCop. Although that does mean there are about a dozen ‘oh hey, it’s that guy’ actors in the film, from Jeff Garlin to CCH Pounder to Bradley Whitford to Rip Torn to ‘oh hey, it’s that guy from Seinfeld and that guy from Seinfeld and that other guy from Seinfeld, too.”  The street punks are some neon paint away from being Joel Schumacher Batman goons, and RoboCop kills them (often offscreen and always bloodlessly) with his new machine gun arm. Yes, the film removes the Auto-9, one of the coolest guns in fiction, from the big actions scenes to sell new action figures and make the violence more palatable for parents. But at least the awesome music from the first film returns after being absent from the second, so that’s something.

‘But this is a Christmas film?’, you cry. Yes, it kinda sorta is. Because it focuses so much on the kid, RoboCop 3 feels like a family adventure film. It’s just instead of a fantasy land she gets sucked into Detroit during a financial collapse manufactured by fascist companies and a private police force designed to look like Nazis. Ding dong merrily on high! Yet it still has some sense of being a magical adventure, amid the backdrop of the holiday paraphernalia and the occasional diegetic Christmas song playing in a diner. The girl even forms a found family by the end, with an OCP scientist as the mum and RoboCop as the dad. It’s like the sweet family films they’d play on Christmas Day on BBC One. Next up, Wallace and Gromit meet a xenomorph.

The film even contains some not-so-subtle religious references, getting to the heart of the Christmas experience. A church is a key location, there’s a character called Dr. Lazarus who, if you can believe it, resurrects someone, and a lingering shot of a statue of Jesus himself. That’s old school Christmas. RoboCop, seemingly dead, rises from the grave (again) for yet more religious parallels, and flies across Detroit on a jetpack. A representation of Santa Claus, Jesus, an angel, or just a big cyborg man on strings? You decide.

The plot hinges on a countdown, “three more days to…, two more days to…” and it’s hard not to finish those sentences with “Christmas!” Everyone, apart from the prostitutes in this family film, are wearing big comfy coats and that’s Christmassy. And the final message is one befitting the holiday season. It’s a film about RoboCop being a hero of the people, about community spirit, people coming together. Yes, to shoot Nazis in the street but if you ask me that would be a good Christmas tradition to start.

Convinced yet? Don’t get me wrong, I wish RoboCop 3 was even more of a Christmas film than it already is. I wish it doubled down and committed. RoboCop in the snow would be a fantastic image; instead the film is sunny throughout, filmed in spring of 1991. One of the best parts of the first two films are the commercials. Just imagine the fun Christmas commercials the film could have lampooned. Alas, besides the opening scene, the commercials are nowhere to be seen.

This Christmas, if you refuse to buy RoboCop 3 even for a dollar, at least hope that you get a copy in your stocking, and give it a watch over the festive period. It’s not quite as bad as a lump of coal.