Synopsis:

This is an edit of RoboCop that attempts to recreate the heavily censored Network Television presentation in HD. The movie is cropped and pan-and-scanned to 4:3 like old TV broadcasts, and there are fade in and outs every 15ish minutes to emulate where commercial breaks would be. Swears are replaced with less offending words like "freaking", "forget", "bonehead", and "bologna". Violence is heavily trimmed down and cut as well, for example, Clarence swerves around Emil near the end instead of running him down.

Intentions:

I love this movie so much, and I had been fascinated by the TV edit for as long as I had it recorded on a VHS. A little over a year ago I saw a local airing with the alternate TV footage, haphazardly inserted. I thought to myself "I could definitely do this better," and started working on it.

Change List:

While the audio was based heavily on the ITV version, the video was based more on the ABC version, since it has more creative visual edits. There are many TV edits of this film, so it's kind of a mish mash of different versions, that uses as much alternate footage as possible. Video and audio were edited separately. Many language cuts were made by muting the middle audio channel that had the dialogue. Sometimes edits had to be edited for the movie's environment, like Ron Miller yelling "Don't mess with me" out the window of town hall. Over the years RoboCop has undergone many color corrections. Some of the TV edits reflect this, many modern TV versions have a blue tint and the alternate footage has a slapdash blue filter. The 4k blu ray is the closest to the original color, so some footage had to be color corrected to match. Sometimes frame by frame. There were also television station logos on some of the footage that had to be either matted or cropped out. Old footage from VHS and Laserdisc had overscan on the edges, so they had to be cropped on all sides slightly. I had to re-edit the movie's score in some places because there were so many cuts in a row (such as the factory shoot out). Foley was also used in some places where music was replaced, TV footage often used the on set audio, so sound effects had to be added.

Additional Notes:

There are FAR too many changes to list here. I have a detailed line by line legend of what has been changed and added and what is on all 3 audio tracks here: https://pastebin.com/W9Z52EeF

Other Sources:

2014 R1 Uncut Blu Ray (base) 2006 Recalled Sony Blu Ray - Theatrical Cut 2002 Special Edition Region 4 DVD - Both TC and DX as well as outtakes 1988 Full Screen Image Laserdisc - Theatrical Cut 1988 Orion VHS -Theatrical Cut RoboCop Soundtrack - Music from the Motion Picture ABC Network TV Broadcast from 1991 VHS WGN America TV Broadcast from 2010 VHS Comet TV Broadcast from 2017 DVD THIS TV Broadcast from 2018 "ROBOCOP (1987) Alternate Scenes from TV version" - Youtube Video uploaded by YT user Orville Joder Jr "Robocop 1991 ABC Sunday Night Movie Intro" - Youtube Video uploaded by YT user Sean Mc

Special Thanks:

The Legacy Collection Workprint Collectors The Workprint Collection Members of the Fanedit Forum.