RoboCop: Still Relevant

I am all about movie remakes, not always, but usually. Especially if the movie being remade is a good/cheesy sci-fi flick from the 80’s that’s long overdue for an upgrade. I was weaned on Peter Weller as RoboCop. The phrase “Thank you for your cooperation” took new meaning and could never be said without making me feel like a badass cyborg law enforcer. So when I heard that they were remaking it, my only hope was that they not muck it up. Especially when it comes to casting.

How can you destroy a good movie remake? Cast the wrong people in titular lead roles.

It’s the same thing that would ruin a regular movie, imagine how hard it is to get it right when you have an iconic film and you are going to update it for the new millenium? Take, for example, Total Recall. There was a movie that I thought no one would touch, ever.

First, it had the biggest name in action stars in the lead: The Schwarzenegger. Second, it was a sci-fi movie based on a short story. Third, the 1990 version loosely, but closely, followed the plot of the short story, although the movie expounded on the Mars/alien storyline. Doesn’t matter, it was fantastic. A great movie.

The special effects were, as one would expect watching it 23 years later (OMG-I feel OLD)  look cheesy and clearly like something you’d see at an outdated Epcot exhibit. I was hoping when the announcement was made that they were going to remake the movie that here would be the chance to give us that action/sci-fi extravaganza but with the special effects it deserved. Imagine the possibility!

I should have known it was going to be a debacle from the start. But I blindly hoped against all hopes until the release date. The first portent of disaster was when they cast Colin Farrell in the lead role as Douglas Quaid. WTH? I can’t stand Colin Farrell. Even in movies where he is speaking in his native brogue I still can’t stand him. I don’t recognize what other women get all fired up about with him. He’s not really all that interesting to look at, he’s certainly not heartthrob material (in my opinion) and his acting is so so. So he gets cast in the lead, ugh, broke my heart. He’s no action star! He’s lame. The rest of the casting was as equally not-well-thought out. I love Kate Beckinsale and even she couldn’t elevate the level of this film out of the muck it had become.

The final blow to the nail on the coffin of the remake of Total Recall was how they butchered up the storyline. It was HORRIBLE. Even if their earthbound adventure hadn’t been riddled with plot holes and seemed as if it was conceptualized on the back of a cocktail napkin, there was NO REASON to remove the Mars/alien element! It’s what made the story so fantastic! What were those writers thinking? So instead of being an opportunity to repeat the blockbuster phenom of the Total Recall franchise, they killed it with bad casting and a terrible script.

Which brings me back to RoboCop coming out in 2014. I hoped that this time they wouldn’t cast some other jackass in the lead role just because, and actually put some thought into casting someone for the role of Murphy. It was important that they not get some jackass big name who would have to contractually spend more time without the cool cyborg face shield, so the actor could have a percentage more screen time with his face plastered in the scenes.

So it had to be someone good, but someone you could believe would be conflicted about not only his altered role as a law enforcement employee, but how his life would be altered by having been resurrected as part-machine! So imagine my glee when I finally see the trailer and I see that they have cast my all time favorite character Stephen Holder (played by Joel Kinnaman) from the AMC show “The Killing” as Murphy!! Woo hoo!!

The trailer for RoboCop looks promising… I get a real fangirl thrill from seeing actors from shows that I love pop up in movies in other roles. Especially if the show is obscure, or not mainstream, and the actors virtually unknown outside of that series. Like when I was super psyched to see Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos) show up in World War Z as the mother. That was super cool.

RoboCop as a film about the future written in 1981, is eerily accurate when you look at the future now and see the scary similarities. I think the audience of today is  still going to be able to relate to the morality struggle of the dystopian future portrayed in the 1987 classic, and if they keep those concerns in the remake (and it looks like they do from the bits of the trailer) then the movie will be just as thought-provoking now as it was back then. I found it interesting that though might not be as shocking conceptually, the ethical concerns of cyborgs, and the “corporatization” (is that a word?) of law enforcement and politics are issues that are very now. So the movie is just due for a remake. Though it will have to fill some big shoes, cause cheesy or not, the original is still fun to watch.

The Detroit of the future, (which was actually shot in Dallas! Shout out to TX!) the hell hole that the original RoboCop film was addressing, may still yet exist. No offense Michiganders, but the economy has not been kind to you, or many other states for that matter. So replace Detroit with whatever urban/suburban metropolis has undergone a recent decline and is suffering severely because of the economic change, the technological advances and NAFTA, and there you go: recipe for dystopian future complete.

I totally would not be surprised if one day in the future some mega-corporation or government contractor came forward and offered to privatize something like the law enforcement of a huge city like Los Angeles, in exchange for tax breaks, bringing new jobs into the local economy and then turning the crime rate on it’s head, making the city a better and more desirable place to live. Maybe it won’t happen first in the USA. Maybe it will happen first in another country with less stringent regulations of the privatization of municipal services. But it will happen. I don’t doubt that in the least.

So there you go. Hope they don’t jack it up. Glad to see Kinneman in another role, and the movie already has me jazzed by promising great actors like Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Keaton!! Super duper psyched.