1/6 ThreeZero Robocop 2014

[MoMo]

I wasn't at all interested in this movie until I started watching The Killing on Netflix. Now after seeing how good of an actor Joel Kinnaman is it's more than piqued my curiosity.

 

[olbertfrog]

I wasn't at all interested in this movie until I started watching The Killing on Netflix. Now after seeing how good of an actor Joel Kinnaman it's more than piqued my curiosity.

Same here.
Hes a cool dude and i want to see him in more stuff.
So ill Check the movie just for that.
Even if it was called super robot ninja^^

 

[Ataricade]

Same here.
Hes a cool dude and i want to see him in more stuff.
So ill Check the movie just for that.
Even if it was called super robot ninja^^

He looks that robot Ninja from Metal Gear

 

[Mr Walker]

There's a certain clunky charm to the original - but it's not a great film. I like the designs of the new film, the actors are excellent and they seem to have updated the satire of the original. It just looks like people are prepared to hate it because it's a reimagining of a beloved movie.

 

[vodoun]

Let's see if the discussion starts to form an IMDb feel. It's getting there…

 

[jlyc]

We'll see. The re-imagining of the other little Paul Verhoeven movie Total Recall sucked a lot and it had decent actors and special effects too. One aspect that left a life-long impact on me personally was the execution of Murphy. The brutality literally gave me nightmares for weeks as a kid and Paul Verhoeven was very smart in that he said since the audience did not have a chance to know Murphy well his death must be memorable, so it's not gratuitous violence. Making the new movie PG-13 is a lame move. I rewatched the trailer couple days ago and it appears that when the new robo walks he walks a bit like the old robo but during all the action scenes he moves not like a machine but a human ninja. Anyway I'll reserve my final judgement..just can't believe it's released in North America 2 weeks after Asia.

 

[RIDDICK]

There's a certain clunky charm to the original - but it's not a great film.
I like the designs of the new film, the actors are excellent and they seem to have updated the satire of the original.

I do like the new ED design.

Well - that's an improvement then.

people are prepared to hate it because it's a reimagining of a beloved movie.

Or it's just you, Machiavellian yet tasteless and ignorant.
Certainly a great improvement over basic logic and years of cultural development

 

[olbertfrog]

Im pretty happy that the movie is not trying to copy the original save for his basic premise.
No point of trying to do the same movie.
Now the movie can suck but i like that they are going another way.

 

[a-dev]

Or it's just you, Machiavellian yet tasteless and ignorant.
Certainly a great improvement over basic logic and years of cultural development

*garble-speak due to locked teeth and tense jaw* Duuude! That's the board administrator!

 

[Wah]

i see what some of ya'll are saying and some points make sense. still, i don't think it'll be as horrible as some of ya'll may think. it may not be a classic as the original, but lets be honest not many remakes/re-imaginings are. i'll still watch it with an open mind and hopefully i'll leave impressed. my expectations are fairly low so there's only going up.

 

[5x10]

Can't be worse than superman returns spin on superman, or lets hope not

Robocop is one of my all time favs, no way this movie will come close

 

[a-dev]

I think it could be worse. It could end up like the Man of Steel spin on Superman.

 

[olbertfrog]

Man of steel rocks!

 

[a-dev]

Man of steel rocks!

 

[Khev]

I think it could be worse. It could end up like the Man of Steel spin on Superman.

Well RoboCop 2 kind of went the MOS route already with Murphy provoking Cain into murdering half the city before killing him himself.

But seriously, if ONLY Robo 2014 turns out to be at least as good as RoboCop 2 then I'll be happy. So I'm not concerned about the audacity of them "reimagining a classic." I just want it be good, kick ***, look cool, any of the above. After that last clip I just fear it'll do none.

 

[Wah]

I think it could be worse. It could end up like the Man of Steel spin on Superman.

sorry you feel that way about man of steel, but i'd have to respectfully disagree. i thought man of steel was a great movie and loved snyder's spin on it. i personally loved it. if this turns out anywhere near how man of steel turned out, then i'd be ecstatic.

 

[a-dev]

sorry you feel that way about man of steel, but i'd have to respectfully disagree. i thought man of steel was a great movie and loved snyder's spin on it. i personally loved it. if this turns out anywhere near how man of steel turned out, then i'd be ecstatic.

The word 'ecstatic' and that bleak Superman film, just doesn't compute for me. But to each their own

 

[Khev]

There's a certain clunky charm to the original - but it's not a great film. I like the designs of the new film, the actors are excellent and they seem to have updated the satire of the original. It just looks like people are prepared to hate it because it's a reimagining of a beloved movie.

History tells a different story.

Here's Roger Ebert's review from 1987. I found it pretty interesting (though he's obviously wrong about Weller's nose being visible through the mask):

There is a moment early in "RoboCop" when a robot runs amok. It has been programmed to warn a criminal to drop his gun, and then to shoot him if he does not comply. The robot, an ugly and ungainly machine, is wheeled into a board meeting of the company that hopes to make millions by retailing it. A junior executive is chosen to pull a gun on the machine. The warning is issued. The exec drops his gun. The robot repeats the warning, counts to five, and shoots the guy dead.

This is a very funny scene. (Whether it was even funnier before the MPAA Code and Ratings Administration requested trims in it is, I suppose, a moot point.) It is funny in the same way that the assembly line in Chaplin's "Modern Times" is funny - because there is something hilarious about logic applied to a situation where it is not relevant.

Because the scene surprises us in a movie that seemed to be developing into a serious thriller, it puts us off guard. We're no longer quite sure where "RoboCop" is going, and that's one of the movie's best qualities.

The film takes place at an unspecified time in the future in Detroit, a city where gang terror rules. There has been a series of brutal cop killings. A big corporation wants to market the robot cops to stamp out crime, but the demonstrator model obviously is not up to the job.

A junior scientist thinks he knows a better way to make a policeman, by combining robotics with a human brain. And he gets his chance when a hero cop (Peter Weller) is killed in the line of duty. Well, not quite killed. Something remains, and around that human core the first "robocop" is constructed - a half-man, half-machine that operates with perfect logic except for the shreds of human spontaneity and intuition that may be lurking somewhere in the background of its memory.

Nancy Allen co-stars in the movie as a woman cop who was Weller's partner before he was shot. She recognizes something familiar about the robocop, and eventually realizes what it is: Inside that suit of steel, it's her old partner, Weller. It actually shouldn't have taken her long to figure that out, since Weller's original nose, mouth, chin and jaw are visible. His inventor apparently agrees with Batman and Robin that if you can't see the eyes of someone you know, you'll never recognize them.

The broad outline of the plot develops along more or less standard thriller lines. But this is not a standard thriller. The director is Paul Verhoeven, the gifted Dutch filmmaker whose earlier credits include "Soldier of Orange" and "The Fourth Man." His movies are not easily categorized. There is comedy in this movie, even slapstick comedy. There is romance. There is a certain amount of philosophy, centering on the question, What is a man? And there is pointed social satire, too, as the robocop takes on some of the attributes and some of the popular following of a Bernhard Goetz.

Oddly enough, a lot of the robocop's personality is expressed by his voice, which is a mechanical monotone. Machines and robots have spoken like this for years in the movies, and now life is beginning to copy them; I was in the Atlanta airport a few weeks ago, boarding the shuttle train to the terminal, and the train started talking just like robocop, in an uninflected monotone. ("Your-attention-please-the-doors-are-about-to-close.")

I laughed. No one else did. Since the recorded message obviously could have been recorded in a normal human voice, the purpose of the robotic audio style was clear: to make the commands seem to emanate from a pre-programmed authority that could not be appealed to. In "RoboCop," Verhoeven and Weller get a lot of mileage out of the conflict between that utterly assured voice and the increasingly confused being behind it.

Considering that he spends much of the movie hidden behind one kind of makeup device or another, Weller does an impressive job of creating sympathy for his character. He is more "human," indeed, when he is a robocop than earlier in the movie, when he's an ordinary human being. His plight is appealing, and Nancy Allen is effective as the determined partner who wants to find out what really happened to him.

Most thriller and special-effects movies come right off the assembly line. You can call out every development in advance, and usually be right. "RoboCop" is a thriller with a difference.

Ebert calls attention to a huge, huge element of the original RoboCop. That you literally didn't know what was going to happen from one scene to the next. The ED-209 boardroom scene and Murphy's death were so shocking that you never really knew what was off the table from those moments on. Which was so utterly brilliant in that it basically followed the superhero "formula" largely pioneered in the original 1978 Superman. Except that he doesn't get the girl at the end. In fact he's incapable of getting any girl. And even though Lewis returns in the sequel without a scratch Verhoeven left her fate unanswered. "They'll fix you, they fix everything."

With this new 2014 Robo it seems to eschew that off kilter narrative that defies audience assumptions and looks not only cookie cutter, but possibly "Stephen Sommers cookie cutter," which is the worst kind. Now I'll admit that as a teenager in 1987 I thought the original Robo trailers made it look like a goofy action movie that probably offered nothing more than a cool looking hero. So previews don't always get the point across. But man, some of the creative decisions and that Rise of Cobra-esque training clip just don't inspire confidence. I hope there's a gem of a movie buried somewhere, or at least one that is mindlessly fun, but my expectations are quite low at this point.

 

[Lee in MI]

It looks entertaining but they seem to have taken more of a man in suit approach. Not sure how that's gonna play with the movie's premise.

This movie looks to be taking a whole different route than the original. That could be good but in general the best we can expect from remakes is that it's entertaining...didn't I say that already?

 

[Fizzgig]

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