Saturday, September 07, 2013

(Spoilers) "Robocop" Remake Trailer Impressions

***SPOILER WARNING: Spoilers may be found in the post below about VARIOUS ITEMS. And I'm going to add in a bit of filler text here to limit how much of the main article gets shown in a preview. That should take care of most of it. Hopefully. And away we go. SPOILER WARNING. ***

Check out here-ish.

A new full-length Robocop movie trailer came out this past week and it's looking interesting!

The original
The original movie came out in 1987 starring Peter Weller as Robocop and it is "sick" -- both good and bad. It's well known as an ultra-violent movie and a classic at the same time. I remember watching it as a kid -- big mistake -- on VHS. Now, I don't want to say I was traumatized, but it was definitely a "special" movie.

Whenever it's shown on TV nowadays, I can't help but watch it. The movie, to me, is not a simple and stupid violent film. There is depth and it is a well put together film. Paul Verhoeven's style probably has a lot to do with this.

The remake and differences
After seeing the new trailer for the remake, it looks like a lot of changes have been made. It still looks violent, but there are some pretty major changes to the story compared to the original.

First, let me go over the case though: Holder from The Killing or Joel Kinnaman as Alex Murphy, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson, and Gary Oldman. Pretty expensive and quality cast.

***Spoilers Below***
The biggest difference I see from the trailer is how Alex Murphy ends up as Robocop. Instead of the torture scene in the original where the gang shoots off Murphy's hand and pelts him with shotguns, it looks like he gets hit by a car bomb at home. The trailer seems to show that he loses an arm and leg while suffering major burns, but remains alive and may be turned into Robocop from there. In the original, he dies and is brought back to life.

It's not really about the shooting and bomb though. The torture scene in the original movie is the event that transforms Alex Murphy into Robocop and transforms Robocop back into Alex Murphy. After he becomes a machine, he sticks to his programming until he gets flashbacks or nightmares about his torture and death. This is when he starts breaking free of his programming and goes to hunt down the people who killed him, which leads to the top of OCP, and the eventual showdown. In short, that torture and death are essentially the entire movie.

For the remake, I guess the car bomb could be used in place of the shooting, but the instantaneous nature of the bomb versus the long torture doesn't seem as strong of an event.  What this may mean is that the story is completely different, which isn't a bad thing. The trailer says something about how Robocop is beginning to break free of his programming, and there are scenes where he interacts with his family, which didn't happen until the sequel, Robocop 2, too.

Impressions
I am absolutely impressed by this movie, and as a fan of The Killing, it's nice to see Joel Kinnaman in another role. However, trailers make even the boringest movies look good. Oh well, it looks good and I'm curious about how things unfold. Come on 2014...

No comments:

Post a Comment