Sunday, August 19, 2012

Thoughts On the Hilariously Shitty Remake of "Robocop"



Everything gets remade these days, from classics like “Psycho”, “Dawn of the Dead”, and “Total Recall” to even lesser-renowned films like “The Stepfather” and “The Fog”; so absolutely nothing is sacred anymore…even Robocop. A surprise smash hit in 1987, the original “Robocop” is a classic action film that features more scathing social and political commentary laced in it than many other mainstream films from the era. Now here we are in 2012, and there’s a remake of “Robocop” coming very, very soon…for better or worse.

The new take on Robocop doesn’t come out until at least 2013, but there’s already been a fair degree of viral marketing to facefuck the masses with for now. From ads about OCP (the corporation behind the creation of Robocop) and the ED-209 (the homicidal, often malfunctioning robot that growled), to revelations of some big name casting so far (Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson, Jackie Earle Haley, Jay Baruchel, and Hugh Laurie among others so far), this new Robocop flick is coming along fairly nicely so far, and hey, maybe it’ll even turn out half decent…wait what am I saying? Of course it fucking isn’t…

First off, the prototype art of what Robocop’s new look is going to be was fucking laughable. For Christ’s sake he looks like a goddamned Micronaut. To make matters worse, elements of the film’s script have been leaked…and things are about to get more unintentionally hilarious. While the basic elements remain the same: Detroit cop Alex Murphy is killed in the line of duty and transformed into Robocop, things are drastically different in almost every other regard. He goes through different versions (including the classic and iconic look, which gets laughed at by a “criminal focus group”…yes I’m serious) until finally getting tested on Al-Qaeda terrorists. Oh, and he’s also a transformer. And he can make himself look human and normal when need be. And he has a pet cyborg tyrannosaurus that he rides like a horse. Ok, that last part I made up, but the rest is true.

Anyway, the idea of remaking “Robocop” I can understand. Back in the day, the film was such a hit that it spawned two inferior sequels, a plethora of video games and comic books, a live-action TV show, two animated series, TV-movies, action figures, and more besides…meaning that this was a cash cow once upon a time. Getting a modern day remake of it with the hope that there’s still a decent amount of cash to squeeze out of it makes sense, but making all these changes to Robocop don’t make sense at all. Updated technology is fine, but really making him fight Al-Qaeda? Really? Is he going to have a logo on his chest plate that says something like “Anti-terrorism Cyborg Cop”? That’s not being relevant with modern times, that’s just fucking stupid. And speaking of fucking stupid, why the fuck is he a transformer? Is he going to turn into different vehicles and have all kinds of artillery pop out of his orifices too? Good fucking lord, what a bunch of shit. It’s no surprise that when the plot points got leaked over the internet that it’s been ridiculed all over the place already, and it hasn’t even started filming yet!

All in all, you can tell that I’m not exactly thrilled about there being a “Robocop” remake, but I’m even less thrilled that we’d be getting what surely sounds like one big pile of shit. All we need now is it being in 3-D. Wait what? It is? Great. Stick with the original folks, and give this shit-tastic money-grubbing pile of fuckness a big old middle finger.

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