FADE IN:

INT. TV SHOW, THE FUTURE

SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON is standing in front of a green screen, pushing graphics around with his hands like he's in MINORITY REPORT.

SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON

Good evening and welcome to The Shmo'Reilly Shmactor. Tonight we bring you live coverage from America's totally awesome and non-oppressive occupation of Iran, because when you want a carefully controlled piece of propaganda, you can't go wrong with unedited footage from a war zone!

EXT. TEHRAN

The OCCUPATION is being overseen by that ultra-butch icon of military strength and American masculinity, JACKIE EARLE HALEY.

SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON

Jackie, I see you've had great success keeping the populace in check through constant monitoring at gunpoint by huge autonomous robots. It's crazy that Americans have decided against having the same system on their own streets, amirite? Limp dick liberals.

JACKIE EARLE HALEY

Wait a minute, the loudmouth right-wing pundit is saying the federal government doesn't subject its citizens to ENOUGH scrutiny? This satire isn't exactly razor-sharp, is it.

Suddenly, some INSURGENTS burst out of a nearby building.

INSURGENT

Aha, now we have a chance to show American TV audiences that we're victims being oppressed by an unjustified military occupation! And clearly the best way of getting this message across is by ATTACKING THE AMERICANS WITH CRAZED SUICIDE BOMBERS!!!

The INSURGENTS blow up some ROBOTS and THEMSELVES. Then a very DISTRAUGHT and also unfathomably STUPID young boy comes at an ED-209 with a DULL TWO-INCH KITCHEN KNIFE.

ED-209

Well gee now, this is the kind of situation that makes me think it might be useful to have settings between "stern warning" and "brutal murder". Oh well, what can you do.

(blows kid to smithereens)

JACKIE EARLE HALEY

Huh, it's just like the famous ED-209 scene from the original, only if you replaced the dark humor with depressing political commentary. Let's just hope this occupation is mentioned ever again after this scene, or these dead kids and suicide bombers might seem horrifyingly gratuitous.

INT. AMERICA FOR THE REST OF THE MOVIE BECAUSE YEAH WE REALLY WEREN'T GOING ANYWHERE WITH THAT MILITARY OCCUPATION STUFF

MICHAEL KEATON

So, marketing guy, we really need to drum up public support for our killbots. I figure we'll ease the public into the idea of android cops by starting out with cyborg cops. Thoughts?

JAY BARUCHEL

My concern is that a police officer in a full-body prosthesis is so staggeringly different from a twelve-foot child-killing warmech with chain guns for hands that using one to sell the other is kind of like using capri pants to sell adult diapers.

MICHAEL KEATON

Yeah, it's kind of a weak premise, isn't it. If only there was something better we could use. Like, it'd be great if there were a whole pre-existing RoboCop movie whose perfectly straightforward and elegant setup we were free to borrow. But nope, we're stuck with the lame "billion dollar PR stunt" idea.

GARY OLDMAN

I'll science you up a cyborg, Michael! I'll just need a severely physically impaired law enforcement officer, and he must must MUST be emotionally stable.

MICHAEL KEATON

Well we have several volunteers to choose from, but if it's emotional stability you're after, we're probably better off forcing the procedure on some comatose guy. I know I'D be the picture of emotional health if one day I got exploded and then just woke up as a robot!

INT. POLICE STATION

JOEL KINNAMAN is being berated by POLICE CHIEF MARIANNE JEAN-BAPTISTE.

MARIANNE JEAN-BAPTISTE

What were you thinking, going after bad guy Patrick Gallow without backup or permission? You're a loose cannon, Kinnaman! You're off the case! I've got the mayor breathing down my neck etc. etc., seriously, why do movies still play this geriatric cliche straight?

JOEL KINNAMAN

But Gallow has cops on his payroll, if we went through official channels they might have tipped him off! ...Come to think of it, the fact that they were able to do that anyway is kind of baffling.

MARIANNE JEAN-BAPTISTE

I oughta suspend you, you know. I mean, I REALLY oughta, since I'm secretly working for Gallow and suspending you would be the easiest way to get you out of his hair. But I guess instead he'll have to take more, ahem, plot-triggering measures.

JOEL KINNAMAN

Ulp! And what'll happen to my injured partner, who is every bit as involved in this thing as I am?

MARIANNE JEAN-BAPTISTE

Oh, uhhh, I dunno. Nothing maybe? Look, we can't be expected to cover every little detail.

INT. JOEL'S HOUSE

JOEL goes home to his standard issue Beautiful Wife and Child.

ABBIE CORNISH

Noooo, those OmniCorp bastards have turned my husband into a soulless machine! SNAP OUT OF IT, JOEL!

JOEL KINNAMAN

Uh, no, this is just my attempt at acting.

ABBIE CORNISH

Oh. Well, could you let me know when you ARE a soulless machine? Cause this could get confusing.

Outside, JOEL'S CAR ALARM goes off.

JOEL KINNAMAN

Hm, it won't turn off. How odd that the electronics in my car would start mysteriously playing up shortly after I started interfering in some crimelord's business. Oh well, better just approach my car unsuspectingly and-

(explodes)

INT. LAB

JOEL is a cyborg now.

GARY OLDMAN

Sorry for the anticlimactic reveal. Let me just give you full control over your powerful mechanical body right while you're in the middle of flipping right the fuck out.

JOEL KINNABOT

(charging out of building)

AAARGHBLBLARRRUUHHH!!!

GARY OLDMAN

Oops. Oh well, we had a whole scene explaining how heightened emotions make it difficult to control these robo-prosthetics, I'm sure he'll collapse any moment now.

JOEL KINNABOT

(leaping ten-foot wall)

NOPE!

JOEL finds that the lab is in the middle of a RICE PADDY in HONG KONG for some reason? Then GARY remotely disables him and brings him back inside.

JOEL KINNABOT

Oh God, I'm a freak! I may have much more functionality than before, but most of my body is gone so there's no point living! Seriously, kill me! End this unholy travesty of an existence!

QUADRUPLE AMPUTEES EVERYWHERE

Well FUCK YOU TOO.

GARY OLDMAN

Joel, please. The sooner you calm down the sooner we can get out of the self-serious emo crap an into some actual RoboCopping.

JOEL KINNABOT

FINE.

INT. OTHER LAB (IN AMERICA THIS TIME)

JOEL is pitted against an OMNICORP ANDROID in a CRIMEFIGHTING SIMULATION.

MICHAEL KEATON

So Joel was slower because instead of the cold calculating efficiency of a machine, he showed human hesitation and caution. That's exactly what I wanted a cyborg for in the first place. FIX IT. FIX IT NOW.

GARY rewires JOEL'S BRAIN, then they put him in an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT SIMULATION fighting like TWENTY ANDROIDS AT ONCE.

GARY OLDMAN

See, now when he enters fight-or-flight mode his brain is immediately overridden by our software, which does the combat stuff for him!

MICHAEL KEATON

The same software that's running those twenty droids whose asses he is effortlessly kicking?

GARY OLDMAN

They, uh, have the trial version? Anyway, the neat part is that while the software is making decisions for Joel, it's also giving him the delusion that he's doing it all by his own free will. I mean, we can't let him know we've been messing with his mind, he'd FREAK.

(pause)

By the way, Joel, is it all right if we upload fifty terabytes of criminal records and CCTV footage directly into your brain, as well as hooking you up to live security feeds, essentially turning you into a walking criminal database?

JOEL KINNABOT

Eh, go for it. But since this is a highly experimental procedure whose results are wildly unpredictable, you should probably hold off and do it minutes before I'm due to appear at a nationally televised press conference.

GARY OLDMAN

Sounds like a plan!

INT. LAB, MINUTES BEFORE A PRESS CONFERENCE

They put THE INTERSECT into JOEL'S HEAD, causing him to start FREAKING OUT.

JOEL KINNABOT

OH GOD, THEY HAVE FOOTAGE FROM MY OWN CARBOMBING IN HERE! SHOT FROM FOUR DIFFERENT ANGLES! WHY WAS THERE SO MUCH SURVEILLANCE ON MY ORDINARY SUBURBAN HOME, IT'S ILLOGICAL AAAAHHHHHHH

GARY hurriedly pushes a button that takes all the DOPAMINE out of JOEL'S BRAIN.

JOEL KINNABOT

oh okay my emotions have stopped now. also i've forgotten all basic rules of social interaction. must attend press conference beep boop

(leaves)

GARY OLDMAN

That's weird, dopamine doesn't usually control every single human emotion. Oh well, whatever works.

JOEL heads out to the PRESS CONFERENCE, and immediately charges into the AUDIENCE and arrests some WANTED CRIMINAL who happened to be hanging around.

SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON

(on TV)

That was awesome! All police should be terrifyingly emotionless and aggressive robots! On an unrelated note, isn't it neat how we've quarantined all of the movie's wry satire into my monologues, allowing the rest of it to be as humorless and dour as it likes?

JOEL KINNABOT

all right now to start arresting known criminals based on my head full of crime facts

HUMAN COP

Say, if you've identified and located like a hundred felons, couldn't you tell the rest of us cops where they are so we can help arrest some of them maybe?

JOEL KINNABOT

no you guys just sit there while i make every single arrest personally it'll be more inefficient that way

JOEL begins a CRIMEFIGHTING MONTAGE.

MICHAEL KEATON

Sweet, the good stuff! We finally get to see this one-man demolition squad reducing thugs to chunks of wet gore with his ridiculously overpowered hand cannon!

JOEL KINNABOT

actually my gun mostly just shoots taser bullets

MICHAEL KEATON

Wait, seriously?

JOEL KINNABOT

and when i do kill people they just sort of bloodlessly fall down

MICHAEL KEATON

But... you're RoboCop! Graphic, over-the-top violence is your thing! I mean come on, what do you even have when you make RoboCop without the violence, the humor, the social commentary or an engaging leading man?

JOEL KINNABOT

robocop 3 obviously OH SNAP

EXT. STREET

JOEL is on his way to some CRIME OR OTHER when he is stopped in the middle of the street by ABBIE.

ABBIE CORNISH

...Now, right?

JOEL KINNABOT

yes now

ABBIE CORNISH

SNAP OUT OF IT, JOEL! Your son is sad and confused!

JOEL KINNABOT

hey you're right i just accessed some footage of him and my advanced analytical software is telling me he's making a sad face... paternal instincts activated... recalibrating neurochemistry by sheer force of will... regaining... ability... to... EMOTE!

(pause)

I mean, you know. As much as I ever could.

ABBIE CORNISH

Great! So you'll go see your son?

JOEL KINNABOT

Fuck that! I'm off to get that bastard crimelord who had me blown up. I didn't go after him when I was mechanically following protocol since there's no solid evidence against him, but NOW-

ABBIE CORNISH

No evidence? What about the piece of extremely incriminating footage it later turns out you had in your head all along?

JOEL KINNABOT

Shut up.

(leaves)

INT. CRIME HQ

JOEL shows up to have a faceoff with criminal mastermind PATRICK GALLOW.

JOEL KINNABOT

All right, Gallow, it's time for-

(kills Gallow)

Wait, what? Did I just kill the main bad guy? Fuck! Uh, I know, those corrupt cops who were working for Gallow are still out there, they can be my new-

(arrests corrupt cops)

GODDAMNIT! Okay, okay, turns out they were working for Marianne, maybe SHE can-

MICHAEL KEATON

(remotely deactivates Joel)

Look, if it means that much to you, I'll be the main villain now.

JOEL KINNABOT

Thank you! Um, how are we justifying this exactly?

MICHAEL KEATON

How about, now that you're taking down corrupt cops I'm afraid it'll make corrupt politicians nervous? And that's bad for my company, somehow?

JOEL KINNABOT

Really thin, but it'll do.

MICHAEL ships JOEL back to the LAB, only to then be brusquely confronted by ABBIE.

MICHAEL KEATON

Sorry, Abbie, but your husband had some kind of psychotic break. He shot an unarmed cop and had a seizure, and now he's in critical condition.

ABBIE CORNISH

Three problems with that lie. One, it suggests your products are dangerously defective. Two, there are a whole bunch of witnesses who saw that the cop he shot non-lethally was clearly brandishing a gun. And three, those same witnesses saw that he was full of bullet holes from that showdown with Patrick Gallow, so why the hell not just say he succumbed to those?

MICHAEL KEATON

Hey, I'm new to this whole supervillain thing, cut me some slack here.

INT. LAB

GARY reactivates JOEL.

GARY OLDMAN

Michael's got armed goons now and they're coming to kill you!

JOEL KINNABOT

But shit, there's no point running if he can just remotely deactivate me whenever he wants! You need to open me up and disable my receiver, as well as any tracking devices that-

GARY OLDMAN

No, it's fine, all of that stuff is done by this fridge magnet thing on the side of your head.

(plucks it off)

See? All better!

JOEL KINNABOT

Seriously? You put an experimental superhuman cyborg on the streets - one with free will, mind you - and your only failsafe against me going rogue was something I could have removed myself? Like, accidentally, while swatting a fly or waving hello?

GARY OLDMAN

Or it could have been destroyed in combat a thousand different ways, sure. What's your point?

INT. OMNICORP

MICHAEL KEATON

Fuuuck, Joel's coming after me. Oh well, I've got a helicopter coming to pick me up from the roof of this building in ten minutes, I'll just wait up there and hope the black-suited superhero doesn't make his way through all my henchmen before it arrives.

ABBIE CORNISH

As long as you're ripping off the climax to a much better one of your movies, need a useless blonde love interest to terrorize?

MICHAEL KEATON

Thanks, I didn't want to ask.

JOEL arrives outside.

JOEL KINNABOT

Now to face down the first wave of bad guys standing between me and Michael: an entire squad of Michael's armed goons!

He TASERS one of the GOONS.

GOON

OH FUCK, HE NON-LETHALLY INCAPACITATED ONE OF US! RUN AWAAAYYY!!!

The GOONS all FLEE FOR THEIR LIVES.

JOEL KINNABOT

...Huh. Oh well, I'm sure we can step up the challenge with wave two, which consists of Jackie Earle oh COME ON. It's bad enough that the big main villain is a pencilneck CEO, now his intimidating right-hand man is a guy I'll have to be careful not to accidentally step on?

JACKIE EARLE HALEY

Hey, I'm plenty intimidating!

JOEL KINNABOT

When you're not playing a psychotic hobo?

JACKIE EARLE HALEY

Okay, fair point. But look, I'm wearing special Anti-RoboCop bracelets which mean you can't shoot me! Whatcha gonna do now, tough-

JACKIE is taken out by MICHAEL K. WILLIAMS.

JOEL KINNABOT

Oh right, my cop partner who just barely exists as a character in this movie. Thanks, cop partner!

MICHAEL K. WILLIAMS

Don't mention it.

(leaves)

JOEL KINNABOT

All right, that just leaves one last wave of enemies: a whole bunch of ED-209s! Now that's more like it!

(pause)

Let's all just pretend we didn't already establish that those things can't shoot at valuable OmniCorp tech such as myself, okay?

JOEL dispatches the ED-209s in about TWO MINUTES.

JOEL KINNABOT

Sigh. How is it that these things are less impressive than a single stop-motion puppet from 1987 that was thwarted by a flight of stairs?

He heads up to the roof, where MICHAEL KEATON is kinda-sorta holding ABBIE hostage.

MICHAEL KEATON

Aha, we're doing the magic bracelet thing again! So without your partner to bail you out this time, what clever workaround are you going to come up with that allows you to shoot me?

JOEL KINNABOT

Hmmm, this is a tough one. Oh, I know what I'll do!

(just shoots him anyway)

FUCK YOU, THAT'S WHAT!!

ABBIE CORNISH

Man, I bet that was satisfying after everything he did to you. I mean, I can't imagine how it would feel to have some greedy executives remake you as some soulless thing that barely resembles the old you.

JOEL KINNABOT

I see what you did there.

END.