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•	2019 Album

•	1990 Album

There is tremendous irony in Rosenman's comments about Poledouris and RoboCop, of course, stemming from the fact that while the sequel score's composition may be technically superior at every level, it's far worse as music for this concept. There is mastery to be heard in Rosenman's thematic constructs for RoboCop himself, and even some of his secondary ideas are frightfully overthought. The way Rosenman shifts effortlessly between four motifs for RoboCop and adapts these ideas throughout the score is extremely admirable, and the writing is a feast for musicians looking to study music theory. Sadly, however, Rosenman's music, while impressive, is absolutely misdirected, and it only worsens the film's major problems. The score is one of pure parody, abandoning all seriousness conveyed by Poledouris and instead producing a brightly exuberant and outright stupid musical demeanor for the lead character. For listeners with little exposure to Rosenman's long, highly awarded career, thoughts of the overly cheery Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home are apt here, because the composer infuses the same sense of playful silliness into the world of RoboCop, with even darker portions for the villains never achieving any sense of gravity. The composer's array of orchestra and synthesizers is too ponderous, the application of an electric guitar to the main villain because of that character's affinity for Elvis music worthy of an eyeroll. Erratic infusions of jazz in "City Mayhem" are annoyingly disjointed. The use of four soprano female voices nestled in the woodwind section is highly interesting, especially when they emphasize the fantasy of brain transplants, as in "Creating the Monster." (Rosenman's application of dissonant woodwind layers and synthetics to this scene are humorously inferior to Poledouris' use of synthetics to represent the machines involved.) The absence of a string section for much of the score, causing Rosenman to lean heavily on brass and woodwinds, causes an odd disconnect in the music to enhance the future dystopia. But all of these intriguing choices are rendered moot by the composer's failure to capture any seriousness of consequence during his music. Moments of fright, like "Monster at Meeting," are supplied music with the pomp better suited for a Godzilla movie. A four-note pulsating growl for the villain's suspense passages, as in "Goodbye Angie," is a strangely simplistic diversion from the otherwise intelligent constructs. The composer amazingly throws atonal elements and unpleasant polychords at the movie while still managing not to achieve convincing horror.

Perhaps the greatest weakness of Rosenman's approach to RoboCop 2 is his terrible handling of action sequences. It's astonishing to behold how such cues could have so much musical complexity but still fail at their task. The composer relies heavily upon the three main portions of his RoboCop theme here, and they are summarized well at the outset of the "Overture: Robocop 2" suite. The first of these is a repetitive burst of five notes mostly on key, appropriate for a cheesy 1970's television cop show and adapted liberally. After that, Rosenman launches into his "call and answer" pair of motifs that emulates urban Bill Conti heroics, the first an ascending six-note phrase that also repeats like the initial rhythmic device preceding it. The "answer" portion of this duo is three notes that forever doom this score, as Rosenman could not resist asking his sopranos to sing "Ro-bo-Cop" to these notes in an insipidly asinine tone. (It doesn't help in retrospect that the "Captain Underpants" franchise used those same three notes for the "Underpants!" lyric.) In most of the score, this "answer" motif is instrumental only, but the effect is the same. Rosenman goes further, developing a fourth section of the main theme that is a lyrical bridge with glorious harmonies that belong absolutely nowhere in this movie, raising the closest bad memories from similar jubilance in Star Trek IV. The general idea might not have been so repugnant had Rosenman not made this material sound like a cheap knock-off of a heroic John Scott identity. These four motifs would be perfectly placed in one of Conti's Rocky scores, for they treat RoboCop as if he's a one-dimensional boxer with none of complexity of his identity issues. Rosenman betrays seriousness even further by placing a few source-like parody cues directly into the score, including "Robo Fanfare" and "Fanfare Suite," which are so obnoxiously riddled with bad humor as to drive a person insane. Along the Godzilla line of thought, he also recorded "Monster Theme Stings" for the movie. Those are obvious flaws however; perhaps the biggest tragedy outside of the main theme in this score is the complete lack of engagement in the cues meant to address Alex Murphy's agony, a cue like "Robo Memories" totally failing to register any emotional response. Overall, RoboCop 2 is a fascinating work but a horrifyingly inappropriate one for its film, the "Ro-bo-Cop" female vocals alone disqualifying the whole. As the composer would say, "it just didn't work." A standard 30-minute album from Varèse Sarabande in 1990 was followed by a limited, "Deluxe" edition in 2019 that expands the misery to 70 minutes. Appropriately, Rosenman's superior skills were replaced by the "dreadful" Poledouris for RoboCop 3, yielding the best score of the trilogy.  *   @Amazon.com: CD or Download