The RoboCop Thread

[ElCuervoMuerto]

I kinda like the helmet/headgear design, and the chest-plate is growing on me. But it's still far to much of "guy in suit" vs cyborg. And the hand...that's dumb even a normal man would wear some sort of protection in their hands. I have a feeling the hand is something deliberately sarcastic, and that at some point the hand get's blown up to reveal a terminator like skeleton underneath. Something to show that it was purely a marketing gimmick.

[Silver Nemesis]

Wow, this looks even worse than I was expecting. 

Compare that to the trailer for the original.

Some films should never be remade.

[The Laughing Fish]

I used to really love the original RoboCop as a kid. Nowadays, I think it's an overrated, unwatchable piece of garbage. It's full of awful acting, terribly unfunny and cheesy lines (even for an 80s movie), disgusting violence and I honestly don't think the satire had much to do with the plot.

It was bad enough that the Murphy murder scene was as bad as watching a documentary about animal abuse, but the deaths for almost all of the damn villains who killed Murphy were even more anticlimactic than Bane's death in TDKR. Only the goon who melted to death was satisfactory.

I don't normally mind about how movies have dated special effects; I can always appreciate how they were done according to what was available at the time. But even effects in the original RoboCop look dated for an 80s movie. At least RoboCop 2 had excellent stop motion, probably the best I've ever seen. And that was that film's saving grace as the plot took a further step backwards than the original.

Although I'm extremely critical about the original, I'm not totally impressed from what I've seen of the remake either. The trailer shows some good parts such as Keaton, Oldman and Jackson, and the effects look quite good. But at the same time, the film looks like a TV movie. The cinematography looks cheap, something as ordinary as the Arrow TV show. At best it looks pretty mediocre, and I wouldn't be surprised if I find this movie as ordinary and disappointing like how I felt after watching Elysium (although Elysium had better effects).

[BatmanFanatic93]

I used to really love the original RoboCop as a kid. Nowadays, I think it's an overrated, unwatchable piece of garbage. It's full of awful acting, terribly unfunny and cheesy lines (even for an 80s movie), disgusting violence and I honestly don't think the satire had much to do with the plot.

It was bad enough that the Murphy murder scene was as bad as watching a documentary about animal abuse, but the deaths for almost all of the damn villains who killed Murphy were even more anticlimactic than Bane's death in TDKR. Only the goon who melted to death was satisfactory.

Ouch right in the childhood

[Cobblepot4Mayor]

Wow, this looks even worse than I was expecting. 

Compare that to the trailer for the original.

Some films should never be remade.

For a nanosecond there my hopes were lifted at seeing your post clearly showing a trailer shot in which it looks like the original silver Robocop armor really would be in the movie (albeit a slight redesigned form). Then I watched the damn thing. My response to Michael Keaton wanting a tactical look was a "Nooooo Michael, not that one! THE OTHER ONE IS WHAT WE WANT TO SEE!" If only it had been the other way around it may have stood a chance in my interest department. Making fun of the original Robocop suit (as I believe they do at some point) is another kick in the balls.

This film has flop written all over it. You can clearly see it is totally watered down from the original movie. Automatically it's less cooler. I don't even like Robo's POV shots that always looked cool and more importantly very simple. There isn't a shard of the powerful emotion witnessed in the Paul Verhoeven film. He did more pathos with Murphy's family in a handful of upsetting flashbacks than this film can do in 2 hours. It's nothing more than a blend of Iron Man mixed with the over the top militarism of The Dark Knight Rises, Man of Steel and Transformers.

It also appears far less interesting. Murphy seems totally aware of him becoming a robot rather than the battle with repressed memories Peter Weller gave us. I'd love to know what Ed Neumeier thinks of this dribble. It's a horrendous scar on a true sci-fi masterpiece.

You'll have to be insane to actually want to buy a ticket to see this movie. No, really!

[johnnygobbs]

The new one looks pretty bland and little more than a pointless b-picture but it's not the worst trailer I've seen this year.

As for the original, my feelings are almost the opposite of Laughing Fish's.  Maybe I was a bit more squeamish as a kid but it always baffled me how well-respected 'Robocop' was when I was younger.  Before I saw it and even after my first viewing of the film it struck me as a rather nasty, mean-spirited, unnecessarily violent, semi-Fascistic piece of exploitation much like most of Paul Verhoeven's filmography, or so I thought.  Only as I got older I started to appreciate the satire and political commentary (which I now see is a hallmark of most of Verhoeven's films) that takes a welcome pot-shot at the burgeoning late-80s privatisation of the criminal justice system and the over-commercialisation of culture in general and even if some of the jokes are sledgehammer subtle at least it's now clear that Verhoeven was always criticising rather than endorsing the hard-line, ultra-reactionary and corporate viewpoint espoused by the majority of the characters at the centre of his film (something which Frank Miller would unfortunately repudiate with his genuinely nihilistic 1990 follow-up).

My feelings about the first 'Robocop' are still relatively mixed as a result of my initial response to the film but I do think it's a cleverer than its ultra-violent façade might otherwise suggest.  Not all of the satire is directly related to the central plot (i.e. the 'I'll but that for a dollar' mindless TV skits that appear throughout the film) but the overall pot-shots at privatisation and corporations in cahoots with public sector agencies where the bottom line is the fatcats' balance sheets rather than any pretence to providing public safety is at the core of the movie as we watch dodgy executives doing deals with criminals in order to one-up their corporate rivals when it comes to providing the 'best' (i.e. the most profitable) law & order model.  The interesting thing when you really think about it is that the film at its heart is as much an indictment of the system that has created Robocop as it is an endorsement of all the 'oh-so-cool' hardware on display. 

[Silver Nemesis]

That's an excellent post, Gobbs. I respect everyone's opinion, and I get why some people might not like RoboCop. But to say that it's a bad movie... I just can't agree with that.

As you say, the original film contains an incredible amount of political and social commentary. The whole movie is a critique of corporate greed and the materialistic excess of eighties America, as well as an exploration of the indomitability of the human soul. On the one hand you've got characters like Dick Jones and Bob Morton trying to privatise the police force and gentrify Old Detroit as part of their Delta City redevelopment project. And on the other hand you've got Alex Murphy struggling to regain his basic humanity and free himself from the mechanical captivity of his programming. His internal conflict is representative of the wider social struggle depicted elsewhere in the film; namely the subjugation of the human spirit by the unfeeling corporate machine that is OCP. It's a wonderfully layered narrative laced with irony and subtext. You seldom find that level of depth in modern action films.

I think it's also a very funny film. I know the extreme violence can be off-putting for a lot of people, but if you can look beyond that it's a terrific satire. The fake commercials were always a highlight for me, as well as the over-the-top portrayal of the yuppie "sharks" competing for the Old Man's attention at OCP (another classic example of this character type would be Ellis from Die Hard: "Hey, business is business. You use a gun, I use a fountain pen. What's the difference?"). The filmmakers also took advantage of the Detroit locale to take a few shots at the American automotive industry, with the malfunctioning ED-209 model (a less-than-subtle metaphor for American cars) and the running gag about the 6000 SUX ("An American tradition"). The violence, while at times horrific, is just as often used for comedic effect. The best example of this being the ED-209 scene where that poor guy is shredded by a needlessly excessive onslaught of gunfire. At first it's horrific, but it goes so far that it actually becomes funny in a twisted sort of way. And the reactions of the characters afterwards – with one guy calling for a doctor, and Dick Jones dismissing the malfunction as "only a glitch" – only add to the air of absurdity.

It's a terrific script, full of quotable lines, timely satire, ironic humour and weighty subtext. I think the performances are excellent too, especially Peter Weller, Miguel Ferrer and Ronny Cox. And special mention has to go to Kurtwood Smith for creating one of the most memorably loathsome villains of all time in Clarence Boddicker. It's interesting to note that Weller voiced Batman in the two animated films of The Dark Knight Returns, and now Smith is voicing Gordon in Beware the Batman. I've also got to mention Basil Poledouris' score. The scene where Murphy returns to his family home and wanders its vacant rooms is one of the most poignant and lyrical sequences I've ever seen in an action movie. There's hardly any dialogue. Instead it's all buoyed by Poledouris' music and Weller's performance. And as for the main title theme, well, that's simply one of the best superhero themes ever.

It's also a very sad film, with brutal action scenes that are offset by moments of potently affective drama. I'd rank it amongst the all-time great cinematic revenge tragedies. Even the musical spoof was really sad.

While the 1987 film was based on an original script, you can nevertheless see the intertextual strands that connect it to other works. The influence of the British comic 2000 AD is very noticeable. I've said this in others threads, but I'll say it again now: RoboCop (1987) is a much better Judge Dredd movie than either of the official adaptations. The influence of Frank Miller's writing is also apparent, which is presumably why they chose him to work on the sequels. And you can see cinematic influences ranging from Fritz Lang to James Cameron. And yet it still feels like a very unique and original film with its own distinct tone and aesthetic.

By contrast, the remake looks like a generic CGI-filled superhero flick riding on the coattails of Iron Man's success. I may be wrong, but I'm expecting it to be to the 1987 film what last year's Total Recall was to the 1990 original.

[Azrael]

As already said... looks underwhelming. Need some antidote

While the 1987 film was based on an original script, you can nevertheless see the intertextual strands that connect it to other works. The influence of the British comic 2000 AD is very noticeable. I've said this in others threads, but I'll say it again now: RoboCop (1987) is a much better Judge Dredd movie than either of the official adaptations. The influence of Frank Miller's writing is also apparent, which is presumably why they chose him to work on the sequels. And you can see cinematic influences ranging from Fritz Lang to James Cameron. And yet it still feels like a very unique and original film with its own distinct tone and aesthetic.

By contrast, the remake looks like a generic CGI-filled superhero flick riding on the coattails of Iron Man's success. I may be wrong, but I'm expecting it to be to the 1987 film what last year's Total Recall was to the 1990 original.

Agreed. Also, it has come full circle since last years Dredd had a certain Robocop "feel" in places.

[The Laughing Fish]

Only as I got older I started to appreciate the satire and political commentary (which I now see is a hallmark of most of Verhoeven's films) that takes a welcome pot-shot at the burgeoning late-80s privatisation of the criminal justice system and the over-commercialisation of culture in general and even if some of the jokes are sledgehammer subtle at least it's now clear that Verhoeven was always criticising rather than endorsing the hard-line, ultra-reactionary and corporate viewpoint espoused by the majority of the characters at the centre of his film (something which Frank Miller would unfortunately repudiate with his genuinely nihilistic 1990 follow-up).

I think the first one is just as bleak too. The characters are either evil, or just plain dumb - I really don't find anyone likable at all.

And on the other hand you've got Alex Murphy struggling to regain his basic humanity and free himself from the mechanical captivity of his programming. His internal conflict is representative of the wider social struggle depicted elsewhere in the film; namely the subjugation of the human spirit by the unfeeling corporate machine that is OCP. It's a wonderfully layered narrative laced with irony and subtext. You seldom find that level of depth in modern action films.

The biggest problem I have that stops me from having any sympathy for Murphy's death is how incredibly dumb he and Lewis were for going after five mad gunmen inside a steel mill, despite that the two cops were outnumbered. I literally shouted out "Don't go in there alone you farken idiots, CALL FOR BACKUP NOW!!!"; to me it felt like they were asking to be killed. It was such an idiotic and moronic way to have him killed, and it would've been funny if he hadn't been brutally mutilated to death by gunfire. If Murphy had died during a police shootout, I definitely would've felt sympathy for him.  In a way, Murphy getting maimed in a car explosion is a lot more tragic because it's unexpected.

And I'm not a prude, I've enjoyed a lot of cheesy films that had over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek violence like The Running Man and even Machete. But RoboCop's violence, especially Murphy's murder, was just perverse, sadistic and pathetic. The "humour" was tough to swallow when the film shows people getting murdered in the most sadistic manner possible. And I know that it's a subjective thing, but again, I found the so-called comedy to be obnoxious and annoying, unlike another film like The Running Man.

I don't really mind the whole corporate-corruption theme, but I thought a lot of those commercial parodies didn't really contribute much to the plot at all, and if there is one thing that I've become less tolerant with movies nowadays is having subplots or themes that don't really add much to the main plot. These sort of parodies like that 6000 SUX ad would be better suited to a movie like Network, a film which criticises the media for its dehumanization of the audience for the sake of ratings and profit. I just don't think they added much to RoboCop's plot at all.

I'm sad to say I'm no longer fond of the original, and honestly I'm very embarrassed to admit that I actually enjoyed it as a kid. But again, it doesn't mean I'm going to support the remake either. If this was made ten years ago, I might have been excited for it. But the problem is all those special effects have been done before, so it's not offering anything new. And the TV movie-look and feel doesn't give me a good impression either.

[riddler]

It  definitely seems this one will be a reboot and not a remake.

Murphy seems to have far more of a recollection of his former life, to the extent he doesn't even realize he's dead. I don't think I like that better, I liked the original theme of looking at robocop and realizing there is still a man in there. This one makes him feel more like the six million dollar man.