RoboCop remake in 2013

Either that, or they're somehow brilliant masterminds screwing with us on an extremely meta level. If this was an in-universe thing then it would kind of make sense.

That's what I thought it was.

So I went ahead and decided to try to answer Mr. Jackson' question from the trailer...

I would have used the robots patrolling a small middle eastern town like it was ruled by Dr. Doom as the picture but I do like the response sentence.

I recognized everything except that thing in the lower left corner. What is that?

Replicator from Stargate SG 1.

I just came back from watching it. AWESOME. Bring earplugs. Hope your English is comfortably fluent, because the newscrawls are funny as heck. None of them are spoilers AFAIK. Posting them here for putting in the page if/when it's up.

Eg. "Giant Squid Sushi banned in California" "Greenpeace website hacked by Wikileaks activists" "Mexican President (deports?) Illegal Americans, Calls Them Aliens" "Brazilian Surfer Jose Padhila(The director!) rides monster..." "Seti Message Translated: T..."(The Unreveal!) And on the newspaper near the end: "Robopup Wins Best In Show!"

Eh, I'll be seeing this but I know I'll just be filled with some senseless fanboy rage when I walk out. That Robocop DVD was worn out when I was younger and I truly hope that it'll be watchable at the very least but from the looks of it I'm just not a fan of the direction that this movie seems to be going in.

For example, the car bomb. In the original Robocop, Murphy getting brutally blown apart by shotguns just went to show the audience how Clarence and his gang were true scumbags. It's a torturous ordeal that's almost like a baptism by fire for Murphy. Verhoeven even went as far to try to make the scene seem like it was "Jesus being killed by Satan", his words not mine. When Robocop tries to get retribution, you really want to see these guys go down as horribly as possible.

A car bomb just seems so impersonal and hands-off.

edited 3rd Feb '14 9:47:54 PM by Kentok

All the better the satirize the near sociopathic nature of corporate America with my dear.

It's just a different method of telling the same story. The original movie had it that Alex was a blank slate after the robo-procedure, slowly regaining his memories and tracking down the common thugs that killed him. That leads him to OCP and the reveal of the Restraining Bolt, which is all linked into the Central Theme of a man who had their soul taken away from them and has to earn it back.

This movie seems to have Alex fully self-aware immediately after, I would speculate that he will start looking into the carbomb that nearly killed him and that leads to some OCP conspiracy. He will then have a similar dilemma where he has to fight against the OCP programming and prove who is really in control. It's the same Central Theme but reworked.

Again, I'm still really hesitant about this film. The original is one of my all time favorite films, and as a result, I'm not quite sure that the remake will be able to capture the same philosophical and political wit of it. Not to mention that it being PG-13 really makes it harder to buy into the ruthlessness of it, as it obviously means that it's being geared for a wider audience.

That said, it is good to hear that it is at least trying to go for a different route while keeping with the themes of humanity vs technology.

Eh, I could do with less violence. I just found it way over-the-top and distracting.

Except the ending, then it was funny.

Just as a matter of interest, have you watched the first two (real) Robocop movies at all?

I rewatched the original in anticipation of the remake and watched some more clips and trailers of the reboot (which I haven't seen yet and haven't spoiled myself). From what I can tell, while the remake will be much less dark and gorey, it still retains a lot of the elements of the original, especially when it comes to the satire of big corporations.

Also, it seems like the remake uses all the same elements to tell a similar story, but at the same time some things have been turned around.

• For one, the new Omnicorp already has ED-209s and robots built and in use by the military, where in the original they were still having issues with the ED. The new Robocop is developed to try and sell robots to a "robophobic" America when military robots are used everywhere else. Originally, he was just a safety net for the failure of the ED-209.

• From what I gathered from some clips, and has been mentioned, in the remake Alex seems to keep his consciousness after his conversion, and this causes issues with Omnicorp since it makes him harder to control, and I imagine part of the film involves Omnicorp trying to erase his human consciousness to make him into a true puppet. The opposite happens in the original, where he slowly regains his humanity.

Despite these differences, both films still seem to share the same core theme of technology and big, greedy business versus the human individual, but the remake does lose a lot of the religious parallels as has been mentioned. I don't expect it to have the same kind of emotional kick and it looks like it will be kind of an average action blockbuster, but it probably won't be too bad.

edited 4th Feb '14 6:39:06 AM by StarOutlaw

The first one, well, honestly, it's been a while, so I don't remember much. The second one, never. I heard the sequels were bad, so I skipped them. I also remember the Robocop cartoon.

I did remember feeling irked by all the gibs in the first one though.

hmm. If you don't like the first one because it is too violent I can probably appreciate that. I don't really understand it though because I love the film. It's one of Verhoeven's best movies and he is at the height of his powers as a director during it.

I took the time to watch it again and refresh my memory. Yeah, it's as bloody as I remember. Are the blood geysers supposed to add to the satire? I just found them funny.

I like the film overall, it's just the inhuman amounts of blood splatter that seem to distract from the overall feel.

They took their time with the gory little details too, like Emil's fingertips separating from his fingernails when he's a toxic waste zombie, and the blood splatter on the windows before the entire crane control room blows up. I actually liked those.

When you shoot someone with a heavy calibre handgun or a shotgun things tend to get messy. If anything the shootings in Robocop were far more realistic than most Hollywood depictions. There's a reason why we have the trope "Pretty Little Headshots" and "Bloodless Carnage" after all...

Realistic, perhaps, but my point is Robo Cop could probably do just fine without the ultraviolence, compared to, say, Judge Dredd.

That's the key word, "ultraviolence." It is Verhoeven's Signature Style and asking someone else to mimic it diminishes originality.

The first Robocop is a little uncomfortable because of how over-the-top it is but a good amount of it is offset because of the satire of how clinical and dissociated they are to the violence (like the ED-209 in the board room, it has more of a Face Palm tone to it). In contrast the violence in Robocop 2 doesn't have that same satire, feeling a lot more mean spirited and more associated with torture porn (like the dismantling scene).

The two goriest scenes in the first movie are different despite essentially both being "guy is shot into hamburger." The boardroom scene is supposed to be so over the top it's hard to take entirely serious (though I really did feel pretty bad for the poor guy). When Alex is killed, that goes on longer and is more drawn out, and you really feel how agonizing it is and it makes you absolutely hate Clarence's gang. It's like the pinnacle of sadism in film, or as far as I can remember.

I agree. It may be for the best that the remake doesn't go for that same level of ultraviolence. I think that it will probably be at least an alright movie in its own right, taking the basic themes and characters but doing it in its own way.

I read a bit on the plot, and parts of it do indeed revolve around them subtly manipulating Alex's thoughts to make him more efficient. I think something like that was in Robo Cop 2, but I can't remember exactly.

I think Samuel Jackson might end up being the best part of the movie. From the looks of it I think the character he's playing might have fit really well in the original film's universe.

^ I guess we can compare Murphy's death in the first to the dismantling scene of the second (which horrified me when I first saw it). Boddicker is a sadistic monster and his entire crew took pleasure in what they did to him. It was gory, but it had a purpose in defining Murphy's desire for revenge.

The dismantling scene in 2 had Cain's crew go about it in a chillingly impartial manner. It was done for some plot relevant reasons (speed up Robocop 2 development) but at this point Murphy already knew they were the bad guys and was trying to stop them. From what I remember Cain wasn't even really a part of that. Violence for the sake of violence.

I just saw the trailer.

They're ripping off Metal Gear!

"Police work... has changed..."

Are you kidding? Quite apart from being an expy of Dredd in the first place, the ultraviolence is the best thing about the film!

Yup, it's kind of the whole point.