Dan Stevens Is the New RoboCop — That’s the Easy Part

Dan Stevens has officially been cast as Alex Murphy — and therefore RoboCop — in Prime Video’s upcoming eight-episode RoboCop series. Peter Ocko is writing, executive producing and serving as showrunner, with James Wan executive producing through Blumhouse Atomic Monster. Ed Neumeier, who co-wrote and co-created the original RoboCop, is also along for the ride as an executive producer. On paper, that’s a pretty interesting group of people, and Stevens is great casting.

If you’ve watched Legion, you already know Stevens can handle a character whose identity is being pulled apart from the inside. He can be vulnerable, intense, strange and intimidating without feeling like he’s cycling through four different performances. Alex Murphy needs more than somebody who can look good wearing the armor. There has to be a person underneath all that metal or none of this works.

That’s also where my optimism gets complicated. I love the original RoboCop. It’s one of those movies where everything somehow works together when it probably shouldn’t. It’s violent, funny, angry, tragic and completely merciless about corporate greed without ever losing the human story underneath all of it. RoboCop 2 has its moments, while RoboCop 3 is trash. Then there’s the 2014 remake, which I don’t have a single decent thing to say about.

That remake is exactly why casting Dan Stevens doesn’t automatically make me excited about another RoboCop. You can hire good actors, spend a ton of money, build a new suit and polish everything until it shines. If the script doesn’t understand why RoboCop works, none of it matters. There’s only so much an actor can do for a property, no matter how good the casting is.

That’s why Peter Ocko may actually be the most interesting name involved here. Lodge 49 was certainly not RoboCop, but Ocko has worked on shows willing to be strange, character-driven and tonally complicated. That matters for something like this. RoboCop shouldn’t just become a weekly story about a robot cop shooting bad guys. Take away the satire, Murphy’s identity, the corporate corruption and the uncomfortable question of exactly how much of this man is still alive inside the machine, and you’ve missed what made the original special.

James Wan being involved gives me a little more faith too, and having Neumeier involved certainly doesn’t hurt. Prime Video’s premise has a giant tech conglomerate convincing a city to put a powerful robot on its police force, with the consciousness of fallen officer Alex Murphy implanted inside it. That gives them plenty of room to update the corporate nightmare of the original without simply recreating the 1987 movie scene for scene.

Dan Stevens can absolutely play Alex Murphy, but now they have to give him something worth playing. This franchise has already proven that RoboCop himself isn’t enough to make a good RoboCop. The script has to be there too.