So this Robocop reboot's been through the ringer, huh? First...well, I can't even claim to know when "first" this project came about, but we can all agree that Darren Aronofsky was the first big name to be attached to the film, right? As curious as we all are to see what his re-imagining would be, his deal fell through, and now it's up to Jose Padilha, director of the highly-regarded Elite Squad films, to take the character and make him fresh for a new generation.
Bizarrely, part of that reboot apparently extends to the actual look of Robocop, as the star of the reboot, Joel Kinnaman (of The Killing and Safe House) apparently decided to spill a few beans to MTV recently. Here's an excerpt of the interview which will likely be getting Kinnamen in trouble with the PR people at MGM:
RoboCop is going to be a lot more human," Kinnaman said. "The first movie is one of my favorite movies. I love it. Of course, Verhoeven has that very special tone, and it’s not going to have that tone. It’s a re-imagination of it. There’s a lot of stuff from the original. There are some details and throwbacks, but this version is a much better acting piece, for Alex Murphy and especially when he is RoboCop. It's much more challenging."
Kinnaman went on to say that because the character will have more human characteristics, we'll see more of his actual face. "It's not going to be jaw action. They’re still working on the suit and how it’s going to look, but the visor is going to be see-through," he said. "You’re going to see his eyes."
Obviously we, as connoseurs of Robocop, can have mixed feelings about this. I always thought that the visored look of Robocop was part of the appeal of the character. If we work backwards from the western tradition, which consider the eyes as the window to the soul, the visor of Robocop is perfectly placed: when his human soul is obscured by the machine, his eyes are covered, but near the end of the film, as Murphy begins to reassert himself as a man and as a human being, the eyes are revealed once again, thus placing his humanity front and center. I'm not sure that a costume choice that doesn't change the appearance of Alex Murphy drastically between his human self and his cyborg incarnation will be as powerful as something that ensures that we feel that it's almost two different characters.
More and more, I've lately come to feel that Verhoeven is the preëminent auteur when it comes to modern satire. I'm not sure that anyone will come to match Robocop, Total Recall, or Starship Troopers when it comes to pure, modern madcap insanity and criticism of the society in which we all live. The man seems to have internalized the lessons of Catch-22 (the book, not the movie) and made them real via the visual medium. We can only hope that the new Robocop has some kind of satire to it, but I worry that it'll be some PG-13 action-adventure that loses all of the subtlety of the original film. We'll find out in 2013, I suppose!
I'd rather have a Judge Dredd
"If we work backwards from the western tradition, which consider the eyes as the window to the soul, the visor of Robocop is perfectly placed: when his human soul is obscured by the machine, his eyes are covered, but near the end of the film, as Murphy begins to reassert himself as a man and as a human being, the eyes are revealed once again, thus placing his humanity front and center."
I've never even considered that reading before. My mind has been blown for the first time this week.
*goes and re-watches Robocop*
If it is PG-13 I probably won't watch it. Honestly, if they go ahead and show his face through the visor, I kind of hope they don't show it in the trailer... just the voice over a black frame.
Dont' worry I doubt it'll be PG-13. Kinnaman talked about that in an interview with Collider. I absolutely love the original RoboCop and I think this will actually be really good because Padilha knows what he's doing.
I think you summed it up Matt, trying to make him more "human" after he's been changed into Robocop already sounds like it goes against the original tone of the story and what made the reveal near the end more dramatic.
The fact that he's less human was fitting because he was more of a machine now and that's how his creators at OCP saw him. He was a product that was made for the sole purpose of doing what he's told and make the company look good. That's why the scientist guys freak out when he has interaction with Louis and she says his actual name because his makers didn't want him to be human! It's also why they wiped his memories cause they knew how he'd react and what he would do.
So yeah I don't know maybe it'll be too soon to tell and maybe they can pull off something good with a PG-13 rating but at the moment it's not sounding good.
Thats coming out sometime soon too, but supposedly Dredd will never reveal his face.
Robocop isn't a title that should be used in this day and age.
Will the police force still be driving Ford Tauruses that have been spraypainted black?
Sure, obscuring the eyes is a way to make people less human. But I always thought that thousand miles stare he had, whenever the visor was off, made Robocop more creepy and dehuminized in a way. When the visor was on, he was though, when it was off, he was just cold.
Or am I thinking of Robocop 2... hmm
Can we just put a bullet in this remake??? It's gonna be absolute dogshit no matter what. I can cope with Total Recall being remade as that actually looks quite good (going off that teaser) but this has disaster written all over it.
@aseddon130 said:
Yeah, I mean I am not sure what these remakes are achieving if they don't play to the older audiences of the originals, but also have no context or connection for the younger generation.
But then again, what do I know. Transformers was and is still huge... yet those movies blew. The first wasn't terrible, the second was garbage that had been vomited on, and the third was a little better, but nothing revolutionary.
They already made perfection with the first one, so really why bother.
It's been quite a while, but wasn't the whole arc of the movie that he IS considered a soulless machine for the majority of the film until he finds his humanity?
I don't want to see his eyes either.
I think we all need to follow our prime directives;
Serve the public trust, protect the innocent, never give money to pointless, exploitative "remakes".
I'm glad I'm not the only person who considers himself a "Robocop connoisseur." But just like I will never say no to cheap, shitty wine, I'll go ahead and take a cheap, shitty Robocop if it's offered to me.
Cops don't like me, and I-don't-like-re-boots...
Just re-make the sequels, the first one totally stands up on its own.
Never heard of him or the Elite Squad Movies.... all i know is, this project will in all likelihood, kill his career, when it bombs on its ass
I've never understood Hollywood's obsession with remaking perfectly great (even perfect) movies.... Why doesn't it go back and try and fix up movies that had good ideas and stories, but failed somewhere in their direction/production
When you Look at the first movie it does stand on it's own! They did a Great Job!