Pages

Friday, February 14, 2014

Robocop Review: Dead or Alive You're Coming With Me

Okay people.  This is a remake.  Here's the thing about remakes.  They are just a no-win situation.  If you do a completely faithful remake of a old classic, you're accused of having no creativity.  If you make changes to same said classic, you're bastardizing the original for the sake of making money. 

Most of the time I hate remakes.  I don't see the need.  I just feel like it's a cash grab.  However there are times where a remake is actually much better than the original source material.  One of my favorite movies is John Carpenter's The Thing.  That was a remake of The Thing From Another World.  The Thing was very different from The Thing From Another World but it didn't betray the original movie and go hog wild.  Same can be said for Sleepless in Seattle which was a loose remake of An Affair To Remember.  That seems to be the key when it comes to remakes: change some details, but be true to the spirit of the original.  That's my review of Robocop.  The details have changed, sometimes quite a bit, but it stays true to the spirit of the original. 

The original Robocop movie was a very interesting film.  It was a brutal movie but it was also a dark comedy with some very amusing scenes.  And on top of that it was also a social commentary about the over reach of corporate America suppressing Constitutional freedom in a city overrun with crime.  Not only that, but you have Robocop himself where he starts out as a straight arrow cop gunned down in a drug bust, put inside a robot, had his humanity suppressed, and it's a fight against the machine inside him, and the corporate machine strangling Detroit. 

This movie is largely the same.  At least in terms of the broad strokes.  There were plenty of details changed.  Most of them I initially didn't like, but I saw the movie and I understand why they made them.  I'd love to talk about them, but so many of them go into spoiler territory so I can't.

But I will talk about the new look of Robocop.  This was the change I hated just on it's face.  He didn't look like Robocop anymore.  He looked like Tron from Tron Legacy.  I absolutely hated it.  He looked like a robot ninja and not a Robocop.  But they actually address that!  There's a great scene where they are discussing it and they initially have the original Robocop suit.  Then as a marketing decision they want it to look sexier, and more like a hot rod.  More "tactical" was the term they used.  And I'm okay with it.  Because the whole message of the movie is a satire of how corporations work and make decisions based on marketing!

If I had any negatives to say is that the building scenes take way too long and once Robocop hits the streets it tends to hit the fast forward button on the action.  The ending is a little rushed.  And then there are twists and reveals that come completely out of nowhere.  Those strike me as out of necessity because the movie is 2 hours long and it looks like a lot of the plot was cut to meet the run time.  It has me curious what the working script looked like.  I want to know what was cut.

 I think it's a great movie and a great remake.  It's worth watching for any superhero movie fans.  It's not as bloody or as edgy as the original with the mature language or the dark humor, but it does manage to stay true to the narrative.  Go see it.

No comments:

Post a Comment