Archive: Meet the New... RoboCop

When Robert Burke was offered the opportunity to pick up the mantle of cyborg cop Murphy for the title role in Robocop 3, his response was thanks but no thanks. "I wasn't really interested", said the easy-going actor of the offer the replace Peter Weller (who played Murphy in the first two Robocop movies) inside the suit. "I didn't think it was an acting opportunity and wasn't thrilled with the script's violence."

Fortunately neither were Robocop's filmmakers (particularly director Fred Dekker and the film's co-writer, comic book scribe Frank Miller) who, in subsequent script drafts, toned down the violence, added a socially conscious storyline in which the metal man aids the homeless and then offered Burke another shot at the part. "At that point taking the part became more of a personal challenge", chuckled Burke. "I put on the costume and my first impulse was to fall down. But I thought Well, Peter Weller wore the costume for two movies and didn't fall down once'. I figured I could keep from falling down as well." Unfortunately, what the actor discovered once Robocop 3 began filming was that the suit had gotten heavier since Weller's tour of duty. "The heaviest suit in the first two films was sixty pounds. My lightest was ninety. It was like acting with somebody on your shoulders. During filming, the costume kept breaking and they (Rob Bottin and his FX mob) would have to reinforce it with steel so, by the tune we were finished filming, the suit weighed more than one-hundred-and-fifty pounds". And it was a suit, groaned the actor, that could be unforgiving. "I basically had to stay in shape the entire five months of filming because I literally could not gain a pound and still fit into it", he laughed. "And sure enough, one day I went to get into the suit and I couldn't get the legs on. I went off the set, did a quick steam bath, jumped some rope and lost a couple of pounds on the spot so I could get the daunted thing on. 

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