ROBOCOP remake finds its director and star

^ The only reason the DeLorean was chosen was because Zemeckis and Gale had that neat single-scene gag about old man Peabody in 1955 mistaking it for a flying saucer and chasing after it with his shotgun. Any other benefit of having it in the movie was simple serendipity.

Truth is that Back to the Future saved the DeLorean's reputation. The car had pretty much already tanked by 1985, and it would be remembered solely as being a high cost failure if not for the movie turning it into such a pop culture icon.

Even Marty feels the need to kick the shit out of it in the first scene it appears in, by declaring incredulously:

"Let me get this straight... you made a time machine... out of a DELOREAN?!?"

 

Fair enough, but your first point does reinforce that it was used because it clashed with the ideal 1950s setting.

As for the second point I made, I was mistaken and spoke too soon. Apologies to Trekker.

 

Ah, I see the typo. Argh. Thanks.

 

This.

I walked out thinking they should have called it "EmoCop". It looked pretty, but all it really did was make you miss Peter Weller and Ronny Cox.

 

I liked the movie but I didn't love love it. It opened very strongly, and looked to be very interesting by making it be about unmanned drone ethics... but then they spent an inordinate amount of time on his recovery... it needed more big action scenes. The only really standout sequence was when he took on 3 ED-209s at once. I really don't understand how this movie cost $100 million when there's so little action in it.

 

It needed a "Robocop's first few missions sequence" much like the original had.

There's a moment where Sam Jackson's reporter character is talking up Robocop, and the theme starts building up, I really thought this would lead to a montage of sorts of Robocop doing Robocop things (taking down muggers, convenience store robbers, etc.).

Nope, after the theme kicks in, Sam Jackson talks some more, and then we cut back to Robocop in a lab or something dull.

 

Yeah, there was a good sequence of that in the original of Robocop doing things. Even when it arrested one of the main villains at the gas station that was still fairly a "regular duty" type mission, even if he was on the trail of his own murder.

The only "ordinary" work he did was the one at his unveiling showing how effective he would be at doing his job. Then that's it. And was Sam Jackson's show simply about him yelling about America needing robots?

 

I think the Sam Jackson character was an attempt to take a jab at political commentators, but it didn't seem very well thought out...like most of the movie.

In fact, I know this movie went through several rewrites before becoming the movie we are seeing at theaters. Perhaps in an earlier draft the satire made more sense?

 

In the original, this sequence was basically a parody of Superman the Movie. Would there be an equivalent in modern movies to parody?

 

The similar sequence from 'Superman: Returns?'

 

I just saw the original Robocop for the first time since I was a kid; after having seen the remake. And I have to admit the original is better. It moves a lot faster and has a lot more action in it. And it has the ED-209s in it, too! I could have sworn that was something introduced in the sequel.

As others have said, the original did a good job of showing a bunch of day in the life action sequences. Also, it didn't spend 45 minutes of misery and recuperation for Murphy...

I especially loved when Robocop defeats the ED-209 by running down a flight of stairs which it trips and falls over

 

You may be thinking of Robocop Mark II, aka RoboCain.

 

I know the remake should be judged as it's own film and not compared too much to the original. But all through Murphy's recuperation (was it really 45 minutes!?) I couldn't help thinking that Murphy became Robocop pretty much ten minutes after we saw him blown away by Boddicker and his crew.

 

Oh, I know what it was a jab at but, like you said, it didn't come across well. It also was likely this movie's equivalent of the news/TV segments. But it needed more topics to sell that idea and give us a feel for the "character" a bit more than him always ranting about America needing robots.

 

Speaking of the whole "America outraged that Robocop was around..." That was another angle that went nowhere. To be perfectly honest I didn't care one way or another if the Senate voted to repeal that act or not. Again, just like the news program in this thing, the whole public outrage over robots was not really expanded much upon.

 

Yeah, that didn't seem developed much either. I think we saw "glimpses" of that with the protest signs in front of the police station and stuff but, yeah, it did seem like some ideas or plot threads weren't developed very much. Again, way too much time spent on his rehabilitation/"learning his powers" that should have been spent on plot lines like that.

Again, the villains in the movie weren't even that big of a deal. That was their whole game? To get Congress to overturn a bill so they can sell robots in America? I mean.... huh? When the bill was overturned I was half expecting Detroit to go into a police-state coup run by OCP with the ED-209 and full-droids dong the whole thing they were doing in Afghanistan and Robocop was going to have to prevent or stop it.

But, nope. It was just all about a company scheming to sell more product.

 

Something from Avengers or Iron Man or the Nolan Batman movies?

 

I'm glad the movie spent time on his recovery, family life and what went into making a man a cyborg. I wouldn't have wanted all that glossed over so we could get more action. We got that too and I thought it was adequate. How much shooting and crime-fighting does a movie need?

And the ED-209s were called EM-208s here.

 

I think the ED-209s are the same, the EM-208s are the humanoid soldier ones.

 

^ Looks like you're right. I think I made that mistake because I saw an ED-209 on the screen at the same time "EM-208" was said in the voice over.