Release Date: 02/02/2014
In 2028 Detroit, when Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) - a loving husband, father and good cop - is critically injured in the line of duty, the multinational conglomerate OmniCorp sees their chance for a part-man, part-robot police officer.
RoboCop is an intriguing wildcard at this point. It doesn't come out until February, so we definitely haven't seen the final trailer, but this second one makes it look much more interesting, and might even - if not fix - at least address a few shortcomings in the original. For example: a running joke with the original is why not just shoot him in the mouth? The 2014 answer: because his humanity has to be visible to calm the masses about an unkillable cyborg patrolling their streets. You may have noticed that that didn't really answer the question, but it seems about as close as you can get. Some of the high-speed CGI of the trailer looks forgivably shaky, but is at least a reason for concern. The political commentary that was so prevalent in the original but so lacking in the first trailer actually makes a bit of a comeback in this trailer with an update for the drone age.
Where the original hid its satire behind over-the-top gore (at least it was in the innocent time before torture-porn like Saw and Hostel), this new one could hide it behind over-the-top action. So on the one hand, we have the possibility of an updated classic (yes, I said classic; Paul Verhoeven is underappreciated), and on the other hand we have Total Recall. And what a scary hand that is.
I still prefer to separate the moviemakers themselves from the studios that bankroll them, so while these remakes may be blatant cash grabs for the financiers, I think the cast and crew may still be well-intentioned. Total Recall, however, is still a perfect example of what can go wrong in these remakes: in their eagerness to update the effects of a beloved sci-fi story, they can drown the story in those pretty effects. The "which life is real" uncertainty of the original Total Recall was replaced with a fairly-straightforward thriller and they hoped the awesome effects would distract us. The fact that this RoboCop seems to tongue-in-cheek acknowledge its modernizing - Michael Keaton might as well wink at the camera when he says, "Let's go with black" - is encouraging.
There is a right way and a wrong way to pay homage to what came before. The right way is something like Q telling Bond "We don't really go in for that sort of thing anymore" when he asks about exploding pens in Skyfall. The wrong way is pretty much anything they did in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Seriously, take your pick: the "Lady's Night" version of the T2 bar scene, the "she'll be back" mauling of a great one-liner, etc., but I digress. The best case scenario incorporates the hope that if this RoboCop includes several nods to its predecessors, it won't go overboard.
The best case scenario is that Samuel L. Jackson cares, Michael Keaton finally gets his comeback role, Kinneman nails the part (easier now that you can see his entire face - he won't have to act entirely with his jaw), and the elements that can make a dystopian story compelling haven't been boiled off for longer fight scenes, with a handicap for having to tell the origin story again. The worst case scenario is that pretty much everything that went wrong with Total Recall goes wrong here. I can't see this thing cratering past 1.5 stars though just because the RoboCop idea is so awesome, it's difficult to completely botch (Hi, RoboCop: Prime Directives!). This could be a case of an awesome trailer hiding a terrible movie (Hi, Texas Chainsaw Massacre from '03!), but we can always hope...
Where the original hid its satire behind over-the-top gore (at least it was in the innocent time before torture-porn like Saw and Hostel), this new one could hide it behind over-the-top action. So on the one hand, we have the possibility of an updated classic (yes, I said classic; Paul Verhoeven is underappreciated), and on the other hand we have Total Recall. And what a scary hand that is.
I still prefer to separate the moviemakers themselves from the studios that bankroll them, so while these remakes may be blatant cash grabs for the financiers, I think the cast and crew may still be well-intentioned. Total Recall, however, is still a perfect example of what can go wrong in these remakes: in their eagerness to update the effects of a beloved sci-fi story, they can drown the story in those pretty effects. The "which life is real" uncertainty of the original Total Recall was replaced with a fairly-straightforward thriller and they hoped the awesome effects would distract us. The fact that this RoboCop seems to tongue-in-cheek acknowledge its modernizing - Michael Keaton might as well wink at the camera when he says, "Let's go with black" - is encouraging.
There is a right way and a wrong way to pay homage to what came before. The right way is something like Q telling Bond "We don't really go in for that sort of thing anymore" when he asks about exploding pens in Skyfall. The wrong way is pretty much anything they did in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Seriously, take your pick: the "Lady's Night" version of the T2 bar scene, the "she'll be back" mauling of a great one-liner, etc., but I digress. The best case scenario incorporates the hope that if this RoboCop includes several nods to its predecessors, it won't go overboard.
The best case scenario is that Samuel L. Jackson cares, Michael Keaton finally gets his comeback role, Kinneman nails the part (easier now that you can see his entire face - he won't have to act entirely with his jaw), and the elements that can make a dystopian story compelling haven't been boiled off for longer fight scenes, with a handicap for having to tell the origin story again. The worst case scenario is that pretty much everything that went wrong with Total Recall goes wrong here. I can't see this thing cratering past 1.5 stars though just because the RoboCop idea is so awesome, it's difficult to completely botch (Hi, RoboCop: Prime Directives!). This could be a case of an awesome trailer hiding a terrible movie (Hi, Texas Chainsaw Massacre from '03!), but we can always hope...