Okay, let’s get this out of the way first. If you haven’t already done so, check out the first trailer for the upcoming Robocop remake.
Done? Good. Are you angry yet? And if not, why the hell not?! He still has a human hand! The suit looks totally different! There’s no hint of the satire that made the original a classic, let alone any of the violence. Red Foreman has been recast as a bad-tempered car. Michael Keaton looks more washed-out and bloated than Guybrush Threepwood after the ten minutes are up. And - I cannot stress this enough - he does a neck-snap on a fucking robot!
But let’s calm down a minute. In what is probably the straw-graspingest display of desperation this side of a 50 Shades Of Grey fan convention, here are the three reasons that Robocop 2014 might - might - just turn out to be okay…
The Satire Of The Original Being Removed Is The Right Call
The original Robocop is a classic not just because it’s a great, over-the-top 80s action flick - hell, the second and third dropped the satire and upped the action, and they were ballsweat. No, what made Robocop such a great film is the genuinely intelligent script and the biting satire that peppered the action. None of which is evident in the trailer for the remake.
Now, putting aside the obvious point that satire is hardly going to be revealed in a two-minute montage designed to attract the Michael Bay-loving, explosiogasm crowd, there’s another obvious reason why the deeper messages of the original Robocop flick don’t seem to be present: they’re kinda old-hat now.
Without wanting to make you feel old (or make you do maths in your head), the original movie is more than twenty-five years old. Any remake that tried to throw in the same social and consumerism commentary as the original would immediately look trite and hackneyed in today’s era. Just as a novel written now - in the age where we have taken the concept of “Big Brother” and tamed it to the extent that it is now synonymous with Screech off of Saved By The Bell arguing with Janice off of Coronation Street - would not appear nearly as cutting edge as 1984, even if the message was exactly the same, a movie released in 2014 lambasting the rampant consumerism of the late 80s would just seem irrelevant.
While Alex keeping his hand is doubtless the most contentious part of the trailer, it is a very interesting - and perhaps very deliberate - move on the part of the film-makers. In the original, the shady corporation chop off these appendages (albeit the left, not right, hand) in order to make him even more Robocop. And so, duly, we get a very 80s tale making us question what it is that makes Robocop more man than machine. But that type of moral quandary was kinda old hat even then, and now in our age of Snookies and Kardashains, we as a society have basically blurred the line between human and “other” to the point that we can get the same sort of “what measure is a man” philosophising watching an average episode of reality TV.
Are we still taking the piss out of Snooki? Is that still a thing?
We need a - not necessarily deeper - but different take on the premise. Which is where the hand comes in. The trailer, with all of its talk about “simulated free will” and other such gubbins, seems to hint that this movie may be taking the franchise in a different direction (and, let’s be honest, having something fresh to say should be the major requirement when attempting a remake) - rather than a tale of a man resisting becoming a machine, here we seem to have a story of a machine being fooled into thinking he is a man, and what better way to do that than by giving him a human hand.
Not a lack of satire or deeper meaning, just… exploring different issues.
Although if there’s a scene when Fauxbocop (as nobody is calling him) decides to be human and throw off his programming because he uses the hand to touch his son’s face, I reserve the right to disavow all this cautious optimism and kick this movie in its Roboballs.
(I did a Google image serch for "Roboballs" and this is what came up.)
The Cast Is Excellent Across The Board
Let’s talk the lead first. Joel Kinnaman is most likely not a name that would top anyones list of potential Robocops. His lanky, wiry frame and slightly ratty look makes him seem more like a shady junkie type, or the token wacky best friend who gets killed in the first reel. But that’s just why Jo-Kin (as nobody is calling him) is a great pick for Alex Murphy. He doesn’t look like an action star in the slightest, and his face looks almost comically uncomfortable in the suit. He’s got that everyman thing going on, and you can believe that he’s a man living a half-life that he just shouldn’t be. But on top of that, he’s got some serious gravitas, despite his inauspicious look. The dude practically carries The Killing single-handed, and is no doubt one of the only reasons a lot of people made it through the over-long, red-herring filled Rosie Larson story.
Spoiler alert: It was this bitch.
Sam Jackson and Gary Oldman speak for themselves (and these days its hard to imagine a blockbuster without at least one of them in there), but the rest of the supporting cast are hardly shabby. Who isn’t kinda glad to see Michael Keaton back in a major movie (even if he does look a bit past his prime). Aside from some Pixar voiceover roles, the most notable thing the guy has done since Jackie Brown is not being Jack off of Lost. Anyone who didn’t get a warm flush of nostalgia when they saw him in the trailer is dead inside (and isn‘t nostalgia an important part in bringing back old franchises?). Then there’s the wonderfully creepy and versatile Jackie Earl Haley, who was hands down the best thing about the Nightmare remake a few years back. His recent career has shown that no matter how dubious the quality of his movies, he at least will always be worth watching. And the cast is rounded off with two of television's most engaging supporting actors - Michael K Williams, currently of the sublime Boardwalk Empire, but most famous for playing Omar in The Wire, and Zach Grenier, who steals every episode of The Good Wife he appears in. (There's also some blonde lass who's never been in anything I've seen, and the nanny off of Dexter, but mentioning them would probably undermine my point, so...)
Of course, a great cast isn’t a guarantee of success - Movie 43 had (possibly literally) everybody in it, and we all now how that turned out. Well actually, none of us do, because nobody bothered going to see it.
But even if it is all pew-pew-pew action with no updated satire or deeper meaning, and even if the cast isn’t enough to save it, there’s still more hope for the movie, in the form of our third point:
It isn’t Robocop 3
Which is something at least, right?
Now, I’m of course not saying that RC14 (as nobody is calling it) is going to be a good movie. Too many Total Recalls and Fright Nights have come along in the past few years to fill me with anything other than a sense of weary apathy (and curious thoughts about Colin Farrell) when it comes to remakes of 80s/90s classics, and the film does look depressingly similar to countless other slick, shiny and ultimately soulless sci-fi action movies over the past four or five years. But with the recent trailer garnering more pre-hate for a movie than probably anything will until the Episode VII teaser hits, it just seemed like the time to throw out a little perspective.
Although, seriously, he neck snaps a fucking robot….
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