Escape to the Movies: Robocop

[Kargathia]

Better watch Tropa de Elite 1 and 2. They were directed by the same guy, but you'd never knew unless someone told you. I guess Hollywood producers decided to use him as a director only because his films were smash hits in Brazil, so the would capitalize on that. Everyone else will go just because it's Robocop. And it's pg-13, so they'd bring kids. Fuck you, fuck you and fuck you Hollywood.

... Seriously? That honestly kind of blows my mind, judging by just how much of a polar opposite this is, in everything apart from the law enforcement protagonist.

 

[Darth Sea Bass]

Pretty much thought he'd tear it a new one and i wasn't disappointed. Whatever i thought it was alright.

 

[Imp_Emissary]

I'm not surprised, Robocop, I'm just disappointed. I should have guessed when people were getting all up in arms about the rating that they were going to replace the criminals with robots that can be shot to pieces without gore.

Off-Topic, I think that Eisenberg can do a good Luthor; we know from Social Network that he can sneer properly. But for the love of God, get the boy some protein powder; I want to see this finally be present in a movie Luthor:

If they went with Bob's pick we could have had that.

Spoiler: Also,

[http://s123.photobucket.com/user/robertklish2/media/dwayne_the_rock_johnson_616748_zps22792032.jpg.html]

[http://s123.photobucket.com/user/robertklish2/media/lex-luthor-dwayne-johnson_zps803cb34f.jpg.html]
We could have all joked that "The Rock" was going to hit "The man of Steel"!

All that, wasted. >.<

Yeah, the best review I've seen so far of the movie has been people saying "it's okay". Shame because they seemed like they were kind of going in the opposite direction they went with in the original. Going from being very human at the start, to very robotic, instead of the other way around.

But as Bob says, they don't really do much with that, and I've heard people complain that they don't even take much of a stance on the whole drone thing either. Like Bob said, it's just kind of there to get attention, because "HEY DRONES! That's a thing eh?"!

Oh well. Perhaps because this part of the franchise has been so different from the original, maybe the sequels will be better?
If not, we will always have the original.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

"if you want an intelligent movie with genre defying action scenes, you should just go see the Lego movie again instead"?

Ouuuuuch...That burn is so amazing that the temperature just went up a few degrees up here. Keep doing it, I hate winter.

When your "badass action movie" is beaten by LEGO, you need to rethink your career as a director. XD

 

[webkilla]

What bothers me the most is the PG-13 rating

One of the things that the original movie's R-rating allowed was for real violent crime to be shown. Sure, it also allowed for a lot of wonderful blood squibs to be useds in most of the gun fight sequences, but by letting the movie show the audience that "here hoodlums try to rape women" you create a setting that is far more dangerous - you create a setting where having a cop in robo body-armor makes sense.

In this... CG action, no blood squibs. CG is great and all, like with the LEGO movie, but CG'ing in blood on regularly clothed actors just doesn't have the same bite as a good blood squib

 

[Elijah Newton]

*sigh* When I heard that "He-thinks-he's-in-control-but-he-isn't" line in the trailer, I thought that just maybe this movie had a slight chance of not sucking. I didn't really believe that that would be the case, but it was a small ray of hope.

Yeah, that coupled with the line moments later, "This is what American justice looks like" had me looking hopeful, too. Seemed to set up a lot of potentially strong social commentary which would be metaphorically reinforced through the actions of Robocop. Keaton's updating the CEO from corporate blazer-and-tie to Steve Jobs slacker savante seemed nicely poised to deliver a message about the danger and potential of seductively designed technology.

Tsk. Wasted opportunity.

 

[Sanunes]

To me after seeing The Tropa de Elite I think this movie suffers from studio interference with a by the numbers committee design by using an established franchise. I might not have disliked the movie as much as Bob seems to, but most of his criticisms are the same as mine.

Really at the end of the day it felt like nothing more then a brainless action movie that might have once wanted to reach further beyond that, but because of interference or mismanagement failed to reach those goals.

 

[Tradjus]

That thing where Jesse Eisenberg is going too play Lex Luthor tells me right away that they're going too rebrand Luthor as a twenty something computer genius who founds some analog too Apple Computer, except Evil... or.. I guess, -more- evil.
So that in mind, how will he possibly threaten Superman? Superman destroyed two fucking cities last movie, oh, but watch out for Lex Luthor, he's going too somehow challenge the alien space god that straight up snapped the neck of another alien space god.

 

[rcs619]

It really does seem like they completely missed the point of the original. And, am I the only one that's really put off by how the new Robocop moves? The original was this slow, plodding tank that walked through whatever bullets, people and/or walls were in between him and his objective. The new one just, moves like any generic superhero, but with guns.

Also the dirt-simple "Drones are bad" sort of message really does bug me. The way the US currently uses drones (distant assassins who kill legitimate targets and innocent civilians with complete impunity, and often without even knowing who they are actually shooting at or whether or not they are actually legitimate targets) is bad. It is both morally reprehensible and a complete diplomatic clusterfuck. But... robotics are the future, and there are a lot of potential merits to both military and civilian robotics, especially once we begin to design machines capable of semi-autonomous or fully autonomous action. It just seems like they latched onto a currently hot-button issue and were like "Let's take this to hilariously evil extremes."

Also, the idea that the US is the last country in the world without robots patrolling the streets? Laughable. Law enforcement agencies across the country are all but climbing over each other to get their hands on civilian-variant predator drones.

Yeah lot's of potential merits! the USA will be able to invade any country that does not possess it's own nuclear weapons with impunity. After all if no US lives are lost who cares? I doubt the news will, no casualty's on your own side equal no interest.

I'm more talking about battlefield support than replacing the whole military with robots As useful as robots are, and no matter how good we make them, you cannot take the human factor out of the control loop. Machines malfunction, mechanisms make mistakes. That's why the sentry guns they're placing along the Korean DMZ really do bother me. There is no human control. If someone enters their field of fire, they kill them.

But in terms of battlefield support they can, and already have, saved lives. One thing that predator drones did very well (before we decided to use them as Doctor Doom-style killbots) was hover above a combat zone and spot snipers, and ambushes before our people would run into them. Or to patrol areas around military bases or unstable regions to catch people in the act of planting IED's, or performing hit-and-run mortar attacks.

Then you have things like the MULE, which would help carry a lot of an infantry squad's equipment and supplies, and dramatically decrease the weight and strain on the average soldier (seriously, look at the sort of kit the average infantryman has to haul around with him and imagine the hell it'd be to do that in anything other than, say, California-like weather conditions).

Bomb disposal drones are already very useful, as they allow us to outright diffuse bombs, or trigger their detonation when no one is around to get hurt. I'm not sure you could really automate them without some serious increases in AI tech though, so those would likely have to remain drones for the foreseeable future.

And there are other theoretical ideas, like automated medivac robots. Medivac operations are some of the most dangerous jobs in the modern military. People flying into a combat zone to try and get injured soldiers out before they die. If we can make robots just as capable of doing the job, then it lets us avoid sending flesh and blood humans into the same sort of danger. And it lessens the cost of failure. If a regular medivac unit goes down, you've just lost a bunch of people and the injured soldiers are probably screwed. If a robo-medivac goes down, well, then you can just send in another and try again. Maybe wind up succeeding another time and saving someone's life.

I'm not completely opposed to robotic combat units, but it's going to be a very long time before any sort of AI tech is developed that is complex enough to perform satisfactorily in that sort of situation. The battlefield, especially the modern, urban battlefield is just too fast and too chaotic for autonomous combat machines. Some of the time it's too fast and too chaotic for flesh and blood humans. Any sort of machine would need to be able to make complex decisions on the fly, and be able to distinguish between friend, foe and noncombatant, and we're just nowhere close to that. Even then, I wouldn't be able to support a fully-robotic military. There has to be humans in the loop. I could see robotic combat units attached to human infantry squads though. Most likely in a scout sort of capacity due to the inherent expandability of the robot.

Honestly, by the time we an make robots with complex enough decision-making to allow them to be viable as battlefield combatants, we'll probably have things like powered-support gear or outright powered-armor availible to our soldiers. Which really does go to negate at least some of the natural benefits of a combat robot. At least in terms strength, and to a degree, endurance.

 

[inkheart_artist]

It's sad that they're just making it a by-the-numbers thoughtless action movie. We could really use something that takes an honest look at the way special interest groups buying out governments is damaging to society. A modern take on Robocop with an intelligent narrative like the original could have really done that well...

A lot of people are upset about the lack of gore it seems, but I'm far more unhappy with that.

 

[medv4380]

As good as the Original is, it is an example of just how unethical Hollywood is at times. The original is a R rated film cut down from it's original X rating. R and X rated films are supposed to be off limits to kids. Were not even talking teenagers here. Were talking 6 year olds, and yet all the marketing for Robocop was directed at 6 year old audiences. Making a movie that has a rating that as a society we agreed wouldn't be intended for children and then marketing it to children is equivalent to Cigarette companies using cartoons to directly market to children something that as a society we agreed wasn't for children.

I don't know what I find more disturbing: that you consider the MPAA an ethical barometer, or that you consider the MPAA to represent the views of "we" and "society".

Nice strawman. Are you actually trying to argue that the Original Rating of R and X was too high, and that it should have been PG-13, or are you arguing that Marketing the Original RoboCop to 6 year olds was appropriate? Because if you actually are that is far more disturbing than anything I said, or that you could twist.

 

[SnakeoilSage]

Strangely enough my biggest gripe with this movie is how weightless Robocop and pretty much all the robots are in this. The original Robocop was heavy, ponderous and Frankenstein-like, making up for his lack of finesse with computer-guided accuracy and a bullet-proof chassis. His footsteps had that intimidating thud-thud beat that made you know he was a big heavy robot and when he got into cars they dipped down to say this guy weighs in at a few hundred pounds.

This movie takes the I, Robot approach of making robots into Spider-Man, able to run, leap and dance around enemies. It's just an immersion-breaker for me, especially when we know even our most advanced modern robots are nowhere near graceful or light on their feet. I really don't know where they get the idea that a few hundred pounds of metal can just fly through the air like a bird. Because robot muscles, I guess.

 

[K_Dub]

Kinda wished Bob had touched on the effects of the movie a bit. I mean, it at least LOOKS good based on the trailers I've seen, but that's really all I can say about it.

 

[Rad Party God]

Those Metal Ge... I mean, those "ED-209" scenes, makes me want to play Metal Gear Rising again and that game is a better Robocop than this film.

Yeah, pretty much like Total Recall, a generic and forgettable remake of a classic 80's sci-fi film.

 

[Jhonny Malkav]

Better watch Tropa de Elite 1 and 2. They were directed by the same guy, but you'd never knew unless someone told you. I guess Hollywood producers decided to use him as a director only because his films were smash hits in Brazil, so the would capitalize on that. Everyone else will go just because it's Robocop. And it's pg-13, so they'd bring kids. Fuck you, fuck you and fuck you Hollywood.

... Seriously? That honestly kind of blows my mind, judging by just how much of a polar opposite this is, in everything apart from the law enforcement protagonist.

What I was trying to say TdE 1 and 2 are much better films. I find it weird not a lot of people are familiar with them. Padilha's previous works became cultural phenomena back in Brazil. And that's the only reason Hollywood must've contacted him. Because money. Why he accepted their proposition is his own business, all I know it makes me very sad. Hopefully he just needed money for some new project, his first movie was a documentary so may be he decided to return to that... Gotta go, my tinfoil hat is melting.

P.S.: If you enjoyed playing Max Payne 3 you definitely should see those movies. I believe Rockstar drew inspiration from them.

 

[Antsh]

Future Detroit seems a lot safer than current Detroit

 

[sonicstormer]

Also, not even a nod to Gary Oldman's sympathetic, but ultimately flawed character. He nailed it in my opinion.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Hmmm.. I do not agree. At all. Not even slightly.

I went to see this on Wednesday and came out entirely satisfied. It's not flawless, but it's nowhere near as bad as Bob says.

The story isn't a scene for scene retread of the original (which Bob hated with Oldboy)
It deals with issues of this generation (i.e. the ethics of using Drones to take human lives and the removal of civil liberties)
Corporate lobbying to get laws changed in the corporation's favour.
The nature of what makes us human and how much you can strip away before being classed as merely a machine.
Manipulation of the media
Manipulation of the individual
Freedom and the illusion of freedom
CCTV and abuse thereof.
The De-humanizing of anyone Not American.

If a cop makes a mistake and kills someone, the cop is held accountable. If a drone goes wrong, who is to blame? How easily it is to use a machine to commit atrocities with the get out of jail free card of "The robot went wrong, it's just a machine"

The effects were brilliant and I felt sorry for Murphy on his journey, he'd lost everything. His family, his body and even his free will.

So, no. This wasn't a bad film by any stretch of the imagination.
I wonder how much was Bob expecting to hate it and it not being the exact retread of the original with a fresh coat of paint to bring it into the current age he expected and defaulting to his initial opinion, 'cos to be honest, the original is pretty dated now.


And Tazer because guns for cops are mostly for defence. Robocop is almost invulnerable and so he doesn't have the kill or be killed justification. His job is to protect and apprehend, it's society's job to punish.

Seeing as how several or so of the Escape to the Movies/Moviebob blog ending bits had some variation of "fuck everything about this [shows poster for remake]" it's pretty much a given Bob went in with a hate-on for this movie. Besides, fetishization of stuff from his youth (Nintendo, eighties movies, shitty eighties cartoons) is pretty much par for the course. What, so New!Robocop isn't about what the first one was about and that makes it bad? It's a product of the times, just like the last movie. It's not like Old!Robocop was flawless either; It lacks tension in the fights, the satire only works if you were alive in the eighties and aware enough to get it, and some of the scenes are just stupid (who's dumb idea was it to arm ED with live ammo INDOORS?).

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Strangely enough my biggest gripe with this movie is how weightless Robocop and pretty much all the robots are in this. The original Robocop was heavy, ponderous and Frankenstein-like, making up for his lack of finesse with computer-guided accuracy and a bullet-proof chassis. His footsteps had that intimidating thud-thud beat that made you know he was a big heavy robot and when he got into cars they dipped down to say this guy weighs in at a few hundred pounds.

This movie takes the I, Robot approach of making robots into Spider-Man, able to run, leap and dance around enemies. It's just an immersion-breaker for me, especially when we know even our most advanced modern robots are nowhere near graceful or light on their feet. I really don't know where they get the idea that a few hundred pounds of metal can just fly through the air like a bird. Because robot muscles, I guess.

Well, they say that Carbon Nanotubes could be used in the construction of artificial muscles. Raiden from MGR is built almost entirely out of the stuff, and he's a fucking ninja. A ninja who can judo-flip a city block sized robot spider, on foot.