Book Review: RoboCop: The Definitive History

I enjoyed watching the first RoboCop movie and the TV series when I was a kid. Back then, I was fascinated by the idea of a human being fused with a robot. I always wait eagerly for RoboCop to appear on screen each time to see his mechanical walk. Those were the days.

RoboCop: The Definitive History is a wonderful book that brings back the good old memories of watching those movies and TV shows.

This book goes behind the scenes to cover the making of RoboCop franchise which includes the first three movies, TV series, the animated RoboCop: Alpha Commando, comics, video games, toys and finally the 2014 movie reboot, all in that order.

There are stories on the production, behind the scenes photographs, pictures of the make up, costumes, actors, miniatures and storyboards. The text and visuals are about a 50-50 mix.

The text is insightful and detailed with background stories and the challenges faced with making each film. The first three films takes up slightly more than half of the book. Other parts of the franchise are lacking and split up into smaller sections. More could have been written but I still enjoy going through them because I did not know how big the franchise was before I read the book.

The design and make up of Robocop still look amazing today. You'll get to see closeup the unmasked RoboCop with actor Peter Weller's head half-fused with mechanical parts. There are also sketches for the Enforcement Droid Series 209 (aka ED-209), another one of my favourite characters, and even photos of how the miniature and life size models were created. The way the films were shot then is a huge contrast to the latest 2014 RoboCop which relies heavily on CGI.

Overall, this is a great movie companion for the RoboCop franchise. It provides an entertaining read in the form of a good recap and history. Highly recommended to the fans.

RoboCop: The Definitive History is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

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