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This saddens me. It's like, I don't know, having to make a Bond movie without the theme music.

In fact, the only things about RoboCop 2 that don’t feel like a morbid imitation are Peter Weller and Nancy Allen, although it’s not because I think the Academy needs to go back and smelt any new trophies. It’s just that Weller’s take on this character fascinates me, and I appreciate how his doughy, adorable partner is never reduced to victim status by virtue of her gender OR huggability. If you don’t count her lack of tractor strength, combat armor and night vision, she remains every bit Murphy’s equal.

The only other character I care to note is Hob (Gabriel Damon), a 12-year-old member of the Nuke gang who takes over when RoboCop breaks their leader (Tom Noonan) in half like a road flare. Like his boss, Hob is a sadistic, brutally violent psychopath. But he’s also a child, and at times he seems to have trouble absorbing the madness happening around him. It’s jarring to see a kid the size of a Segway swearing like a longshoreman as he gleefully condemns his enemies to death by bloody chunks.

Many critics at the time were appalled (Ebert vomited continuously for a week, as I recall), and I can sympathize with their reasoning. But not only does Damon weirdly turn in the most interesting performance of the film, it bears mentioning that kids like Hob do exist. If you don’t believe me, book a flight to Sierra Leone, or wherever there’s still an airport in El Salvador (or, certain parts of Oakland). The point is, we can argue over whether it was appropriate to include such a character in a silly movie like this, but that discussion would only prove what an abject failure the rest of the story (co-written by Frank Miller who, as you can see, does make mistakes) truly is.

Hob is a red herring. The real crime of RoboCop 2 is the way it squanders a terrific head of narrative steam, ecstatically rubs your face in it, pats itself on the back and then drops the mic as though it accomplished something. The unmitigated gall of it infuriates me, but it’s only because - derivative or not - the story it started out telling was GOING somewhere before being unceremoniously jettisoned, like whatever probably happens when RoboCop goes to the bathroom.

It’s crap storytelling, and it murders childhoods.

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