http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INmtQXUXez8&feature=youtu.be
The trailer for the remake of the 1987 film “RoboCop” was released this week. It is a high tech, action packed thrill ride that certainly hopes to draw from the legions of fans that surround films such as “Iron Man” and “The Dark Knight,” as both its graphics and themes reflect its superhero predecessors.
What We Love: It’s an action movie. If the graphics are good, who doesn’t love a good thrill ride? Also, we love the dystopia. Futuristic movies always pull at our secret fears, and the idea that machines will dominate our lives, while frequently emphasized in contemporary film, still gives us the creeps. Even if the idea that human emotions can win against machinery is overdone, we still love it. I mean seriously, who wants to go to a movie that ends with the human race entirely controlled by machines?
What We Don’t: We’ve seen this all before, so we know how it will end. “RoboCop” screams “Star Wars.” Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnanmen) becomes RoboCop because he is fatally injured. The machinery saves his life, but now he cannot live outside of it. Is this not the same course of action that led Anakin Skywalker to morph into Darth Vader? And then there’s the issue of the theme. Haven’t we all seen the “man vs. machine” drama play out in Proyas’ “I, Robot?” Don’t we all know how it ends? “RoboCop” is a remake; the original was released in 1987, so it can certainly be argued that, at the time, these tropes weren’t as played out as they are now. That doesn’t change the fact, however, that mainstream media’s been flooded with them since, and that “RoboCop” risks coming off mundane if it doesn’t add anything new to the genre.
