[rexstjohn]

I feel this article misses a lot of the historical context when RoboCop was created, it's themes and why it fit this time. I don't see how you can talk about RoboCop without mentioning the cultural climate at the time.

Rewinding to the 1980s.

Reagan was president for two terms, Giuliani was cleaning up the mob using RICO during these time periods. The War on Drugs was raging. Communism was still enemy #1 (See: Rocky IV). It was truly a very right-wing time. For whatever, themes around individuals taking power into their own hands to "Reform" corrupt systems (cities). Like Frank Miller's Sin City, these are absolutely right-wing themes. "Cleaning Corruption" is one of the most conservative motivations from a psychological standpoint.

Others here have mentioned the slate of 80's action movies but it felt like 100% of the culture was heading this direction. Frank Miller's Batman approaches at the time, for example, were strongly echoing similar themes: Vigilante justice in the backdrop of political deterioration. Rambo, Predator, Commando, Total Recall, Scarface.

I think it all started with movies like Dirty Harry and Serpico and then just got more and more extreme leading into the 1980s.

You also cannot leave out Judge Dredd comics. There are similarities between Judge Dredd and RoboCop, I have a hard time believing there was no influence. Judge Dredd also had this magic gun that could do different tricks like shoot through walls etc, lived in a corrupt mega city of the future.

I feel in some ways RoboCop was almost like "Serpico + Dirty Harry if you turn everything up to 1,000." Serpico also had this theme of the good cop who is nearly killed and sent to the hospital due to corrupt system etc.

[Dracophoenix]

I wasn't alive during the 80s but I have a hard time reconciling your view that Hollywood vigilante justice movies were the purview of the right-wing when the moral majoritarians that made up the Republican party of the 80s and 90s would lambast those same over-the-top action movies for "excessive" violence, general disrespect towards society, and "poisoning" the minds of the children. Most of the movies you're talking about came at a time when the MPAA and the FCC began loosening its grip on the content shown on the big and small screens and when the Comics Code was no longer enforced.

[kareemsabri]

You're correct that Dirty Harry was an explicitly right wing, and borderline fascist, movie. It was originally offered to Paul Newman who passed because it wasn't a good fit for him, but he suggested his friend Eastwood (a Republican) would be better for the role. The bad guy is a "dirty hippie" type, who's played very effeminate as a contrast to Eastwood's hyper masculine Harry.

I don't think that Serpico fits in that tradition at all. It's a story about a whistleblower fighting corruption within the police, and is directed by Sidney Lumet (not exactly a right wing director, thematically). The institution is corrupt, but Serpico is trying to uphold the law not take it into his own hands.

I think RoboCop is taking aim at techno-enabled state power and the military-industrial complex, not celebrating it.