Transcript: Exploring Faith Through Pop Culture: RoboCop TV Series on Blu-ray

Music Greetings Classic Cinema TV fans, this is Jason Lockhart, Pastor Jay here with you once again bringing you another retro drive-in podcast. Today, on this time around, we are talking about a brand new release that just arrived at the Classic Cinema Plus studios here. And at the time we are recording this, it is yet to be released. So this is, yeah, this is before anybody else gets it, we've got it here. It is so, so cool. we're talking about RoboCop the Complete Series okay so before we jump into RoboCop the Complete Series on Blu-ray we want to talk about RoboCop for a minute now RoboCop was an amazing sci-fi adventure film now let's be honest here When this came out, I was way too young to watch this film. By no means could I watch this film. This was a very, very violent, very adult film. I was just a small child at the time when it was released. I couldn't. There's no way. My parents wouldn't let me watch this. So what happened was as I got a little bit older and as it ended up coming out on television, I got to check out RoboCop on TV versions. And I think what's cool about it is Arrow Video released a version of this RoboCop movie in a big box set. And in that was the TV version. Now, I grew up on the TV version, so to me, that's what I grew up on and I've always loved, was that TV version. Quite a bit less bad language and not as horrific violence, if you will, and scary images, but it's still an amazing film. basically Robocop is about a cop who is killed by some gang members some bad dudes and they end up taking him, his body, his mind and making a cyborg of him a Robocop if you will and he goes on a mission to clean up the city. Pretty pretty cool film it really was now of course Robocop went into Robocop 2 and Robocop 3 pretty much everybody will tell you the the second and third Robocop films are just not as good they just don now some some people will like them of course there are some people that that do like them and think that but most people will pretty much tell you it not very good And I'm of that feeling as well. I mean, they're good films. They're something to watch, and you can enjoy them, but they are nothing compared to the original RoboCop. The original RoboCop was just amazing. Later on down the line, we got a RoboCop remake, which is this, the RoboCop remake, which... Don't even get me started. Oh, that's bad. The action's cool. The story's pretty much the same, just put in a new era. but I don't know, there's just something about that original one that just, it resounds with people. It, I don't know, and see, I think they were hoping that RoboCop, the remake, would really do big business and they would be able to make more movies and all, and it just didn't work. And it still comes down to there's nothing like the original, and that's just the truth. Now, interestingly enough RoboCop 2 Was going to be written in a way And they decided to scrap the idea Of the original screenplay That they were going to do for RoboCop 2 They rewrote it And did it in a different way And we did RoboCop 2 and 3 After that was all said and done They decided to go back to the original RoboCop 2 script and make it as a pilot for the TV series, and thus it spun off and became RoboCop the TV series. Now, for years and years, people have been clamoring, saying we want RoboCop the TV series on Blu-ray or DVD, and finally, Liberation Hall films have decided to release this on Blu-ray, Also on DVD if you would prefer. But the interesting thing about this is that this is a, it's pretty cool, 17 hours. We get a slip cover, I should tell you. There's a slip cover there. 17 hours, five discs, pretty, pretty interesting, loaded with bonus features. You got bonus features, behind the scenes featurette, toy commercials, photo galleries, cast profiles, future of law enforcement, the history of RoboCop featurette, put down your weapons, the auto 9 gun featurette, the car featurette, and the suit featurette, all kinds of cool stuff included on this set. Same artwork on the inside. we will tell you that on the inside cover of the J card, the insert if you will there all of the episodes there listed So that pretty cool Just a lot of good episodes here We talk about that in a full written review that we're going to have for this set once we get through all of these watching these. So you'll want to keep your eyes open and do Classic Cinema Plus for that. You get five discs set, as we said. There's disc one, disc 2 and 3 and disc 4 and 5 so as we said, 5 discs set now the interesting thing is that the original RoboCop TV series was produced in full screen format because for televisions back in the day you had the little box sets, you didn't have widescreen televisions you had the little boxes Okay, so shows from back in the early days of television clear up through 80s and 90s was mostly boxes. And so they were produced in full screen format. So many people were hoping that Liberation Hall would produce these in 1080p, but in the full screen format. the original full screen format. Sadly, I am here to say that it is not in the original full screen format. These are the widescreen formats of this TV series, so they're a little stretched out. As I've watched, I have watched the pilot movies, so I have watched one of the episodes at the time of this recording. and yeah, okay, so it's not full screen format, but it doesn't look that bad. I was expecting really a bad, stretched out kind of janky looking picture. I really was. I really was expecting that. I was expecting it to look pretty bad, but for what it is, I have to say it's not bad. It's not too bad. I'm pretty happy with it. Would I have liked to have seen full screen format? Yeah, probably so, because that is the original. So that would have been nice. But I will say for what it is, it's not that bad. They did a pretty good job with it. The pilot movie is pretty amazing. Now, as is with everything, I have not seen this series yet. So this is the first time I'm watching this. So I don't have that nostalgic feel for the full screen format and all that type of stuff. So that's not going to bother me as much as some people. But this is, I like it. I like it. I think for what it is, it's pretty good. I will say the pilot movie looked pretty impressive on Blu-ray. When you popped it into the Blu-ray player on the HDTV and you kind of watch it, You don really notice the fact that it should be full screen You don really notice that that bad so that pretty cool And the picture quality was pretty crisp pretty clear Colors were pretty vibrant and the audio was clear as a bell. So yeah, it was pretty good. It's a pretty good set. I'm looking forward to going through the entire series and see what it's all about. So yeah, I'm I'm excited about it. I like it. I like it. To me, I've always had that nostalgic feel for RoboCop as a young teenager watching it on TV and seeing RoboCop and going, yeah, that's cool. And now that we got the RoboCop, the TV movie or the TV version, if you will, on Blu-ray, and now we get the RoboCop TV series. So yeah, I'm excited about it. So yeah, definitely if you're a fan of RoboCop, I would say, hey, pick this up. This isn't too bad. I mean, it may not be full screen format, of course, but it doesn't look all that bad. It looks pretty good for the fact that it is widescreen format. And I'm excited about it. So we'll have a full written review of this once we go through and enjoy all of the cool features and all that type of stuff. So be sure to keep your eyes open to Classic Cinema Plus. And be sure to go there every day. We've got new articles all the time up there going just nonstop. So you can be there for days checking out all the amazing content that is on Classic Cinema Plus. we do want to thank MVD and Liberation Hall for this amazing set MVD sent this our way so that we could check it out for you we appreciate that and we want to thank them for that we also want to thank Liberation Hall for making this set so that it is available for people to enjoy RoboCop, the TV series I am definitely looking forward to diving more into this series and see all the amazing episodes. It's going to be fun. Definitely check it out. Alright, well that's all the time we got for this version of the podcast this time around. Next time around we'll have something more to say about some sort of movie or TV show and you're going to want to know all about it. Definitely keep your eyes open here at A Classic Cinema Plus. be sure to like, share, and subscribe thank you for joining us and share it with somebody let somebody know about Classic Cinema Plus we would appreciate it and until we see you next time this is Jason Locker, Pastor Jay reminding you that if you want to see a great film check out Classic and we will see you next time for another retro drive-in podcast have an awesome day bye Thank you.