Other than the slick new robo-suit, this doesn't look like it'll hold a candle to Verhoeven's original; for one thing it appears to take itself way too seriously, unlike the decidedly black-comic tone of its predecessor.
IMO, this looks like yet another in a long line of remakes that should never have been made in the first place...
I'm happy to see Joel Kinneman getting a major leading role. He's been really interesting to watch in "The Killing" and seems like he could bring some depth to action-character roles.
Kind of seems that Dredd (the Keith Urban one, not Sly's) comes closer to the gritty, nearly lawless cityscape from the original Robocop. At least in the trailer, detroit looks more like a semi-decrepit LA county.
Hollywood has officially admitted that it is out of ideas. Retreads are all you get, world. Suck it.
Is it wrong that the existential crisis I wondered about when thinking about a man trapped in a robot was whether or not they saved his penis? I think most guys would be perfectly fine being made half-robot, as long as their manhood was intact. If numb from the waist down, living inside a metal case would be a nightmare.
pg13? Robocop is defined by its guns and gore. Does not bode well. And this looks more like a robo suit (suspiciously similar looking to N7 armor from Mass Effect 2 and 3), and less like a robot body that Robocop is supposed to have.
This movie was one of the rotten seeds at the core of today's over-aggressive, militarized police force. Every kid who had no power in his life wanted to put on a suit of armor and kick anonymous bad-guy ass, free of the constraints of legality, because they _WERE_ the law.
The kids creaming their jeans over the original RoboCop grew into the cops kicking down your door and shooting your dog over an expired license tag today.
I loved Robocop when it came out. I saw it again recently and aside from the now-dated effects, it's still a terrific movie, what with the black humor as noted above, but particularly the biting social commentary which is all but gone from Hollywood today. This doesn't look like it's restoring any of that.
But the new angle on how the man is handling being a machine looks like it has potential. The action looks like it will be good. Michael Keaton looks ideal for the role he's playing. I might catch a matinee showing at the Alamo Drafthouse here in town. I won't expect anything to match the 1987 version (except maybe in the action and effects department), but it doesn't look like the kind of awful remake that, say, Nicholas Cage's "Wicker Man" was.
@21 - I think you missed the satire at the heart of the original, though I imagine a good many meatheads did, as well (as they did with Verhoeven's other sci-fi masterpiece, Starship Troopers, where he basically calls out the militarism in Heinlein's book for its crypto-fascism).
@23 There was a radio-lab episode where they discussed findings that they - brain-scanning scientists - can measure a person's mind has made a decision BEFORE - well before - the person is conscious of it.
I've been unabke to quite make sense of what that means but this film might touch upon it.
That we tell ourselves we are making a decision when, in fact, we already did, and have only come to realize it.
That is to say we think we are doing something by choice but, apparently, we - the conscious we - are not.
@25: there is an attempt to make a movie of "Bill the Galactic Hero" which was written precisely as an antidote to a straight reading of Heinleins' "Starship Troopers".
I am intrigued with that Robocops illusion of free will line.. That has some real possibilities.
...but if they ever remake Buckaroo Banzai, I may be done with scifi movies for awhile.
IMO, this looks like yet another in a long line of remakes that should never have been made in the first place...
How about a Hogan's Heroes remake with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Colonel Klink?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZStaaVuxs…
#3
Just watched Formula 51on Crackle...good flick, but yes, even in a kilt...he still plays Samuel Jackson.
Is it wrong that the existential crisis I wondered about when thinking about a man trapped in a robot was whether or not they saved his penis? I think most guys would be perfectly fine being made half-robot, as long as their manhood was intact. If numb from the waist down, living inside a metal case would be a nightmare.
Guess they listened.
The kids creaming their jeans over the original RoboCop grew into the cops kicking down your door and shooting your dog over an expired license tag today.
I loved Robocop when it came out. I saw it again recently and aside from the now-dated effects, it's still a terrific movie, what with the black humor as noted above, but particularly the biting social commentary which is all but gone from Hollywood today. This doesn't look like it's restoring any of that.
But the new angle on how the man is handling being a machine looks like it has potential. The action looks like it will be good. Michael Keaton looks ideal for the role he's playing. I might catch a matinee showing at the Alamo Drafthouse here in town. I won't expect anything to match the 1987 version (except maybe in the action and effects department), but it doesn't look like the kind of awful remake that, say, Nicholas Cage's "Wicker Man" was.
I've been unabke to quite make sense of what that means but this film might touch upon it.
That we tell ourselves we are making a decision when, in fact, we already did, and have only come to realize it.
That is to say we think we are doing something by choice but, apparently, we - the conscious we - are not.
I am intrigued with that Robocops illusion of free will line.. That has some real possibilities.
...but if they ever remake Buckaroo Banzai, I may be done with scifi movies for awhile.