Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop is a nearly perfect blend of action film pyrotechnics, horror movie gore, revenge flick angst, and a superhero origin story. Packed with profanity, satire, incredible sound design (good god, this movie is loud), and charismatic villains, RoboCop seemed destined for cinematic immortality and introduced a main character who practically begged for broader exploitation. Over the next 25 years, there were plenty of attempts to maximize RoboCop’s franchise potential. Whether it was the limitations of the character or the imaginations of the people involved, none of these ever quite managed to put it all together.

RoboCop is a product of its time. Fully loaded with Reagan-era cynicism and endless hallmarks from that golden age of action movie excess, there’s a razor’s edge that RoboCop manages to walk. Neither a total nod-wink satire nor an endorsement of the film’s “future of law enforcement” tagline, RoboCop effortlessly blends over-the-top violence with disturbingly gory practical effects and a cutting sense of humor about consumerism, corporate culture, and the media.

Oh, and those villains! In the course of the film, RoboCop eliminates an endless parade of baddies, from Kurtwood Smith’s Clarence Boddicker (whose casually reptilian utterances like “Bitches, leave” and “Just gimme my fuckin’ phone call” are delivered with such effortless abandon that they sound accidental: like the F-word equivalent of that mysterious chord that opens The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night”), to Miguel Ferrer’s coke sniffing upstart corporate goon, to perpetual cinematic nice guy Ronny Cox as the appropriately named Dick Jones. Throw in Clarence’s gang of cartoon heavies for good measure and you’d be hard pressed to find a more colorful assortment of reprehensible assholes this side of Gotham City. Box office numbers were solid, reviews were positive, and Detroit had a new superhero.

It’s easy to see how a generation of pre-teens with cable subscriptions and/or permissive parents were able to sink their teeth into this ‘80s icon. The non-stop violence, nearly poetic use of profanity, terrifying giant robots, and a tragic, man/machine hero who wouldn’t be out of place in the pages of Marvel Comics (where he would eventually end up) were like catnip for kids of the era. With all of these elements in place, and a faintly dystopian near-future that with each passing year looks more and more prescient, it seemed like endless adventures for the hero who is “part man, part machine…all cop!” were all but assured. But many of the film’s strengths were either unable to translate to more franchise-friendly mediums (and with good reason), or the folks in charge simply missed the point.