There are a lot of very famous people from Detroit: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, Francis Ford Coppola, Madonna, Oscar Meyer. So what favorite son or daughter is the city — which is trying desperately to shake the perception that it’s a dying, crime-ridden hellhole — immortalizing with a statue? Why, RoboCop, of course!
There’s no exact date set for the unveiling of the statue of the futuristic part-man, part-machine cop who first appeared in the 1987 movie and who is appearing in a reboot in 2013. But it’s happening. The idea first took shape, like so many great ideas do, as a joke on the Internet. After someone tweeted the idea to Detroit’s mayor, a group of visionaries decided to start raising money to turn the RoboCop monument a reality. So far, they’ve collected more than $65,000 in support of the project.
Of course, not everyone is on board. Some local ‘Ganders are acting like ED 209s because they believe people should give money to “important” causes like making the city streets safer, fixing up some of the city’s abandoned buildings, and blah blah blah. We hate all of their negativity, so we’re choosing to listen to Peter Weller, the guy who played RoboCop …
