I always wonder why people complain that cartoons are kid-friendly. They are cartoons for crying out loud. Robocop is not a R-rated concept per se. It's about a man who got turned into a police robot (cyborg, get the fuck off my back). Kids love that.
Adults got their violent film, kids get their version.
What's with the feeling of entitlement? I'm old now, I demand adult stuff!
I guess to me it just feels like they're promoting adult stuff for kids, and that kind of bugs me.
They are promoting the kid friendly version of adult stuff for kids.
If you see it from a kid's perspective, it doesn't matter. There's his cartoon robocop, and if his parents are smart, he won't even know about the live action film until he's old enough. And then he's surely not going to complain "Oooh, how kidified and dumbed down my favorite cartoon show was!"
Similar complaints about the Star Wars prequel trilogy annoy me as well. Fans of the original trilogy are old fucks now, and they hate the prequel trilogy for being aimed at kids with Jar Jar and more funny droids. Some even criticize the Clone Wars cartoon for similar reasons.
It also goes the other way round. People complained when in the A-Team remake they started killing bad guys. Because in the original show we never saw them kill someone. People have big problems with changes to something they liked, that's what it is.
Nobody forces you to watch the "kids version" of live action Robocop. You already got your superior super brutal 80s Verhoeven version.
I am against PG-13 ratings for films like Rambo or Expendables, because those are war films and wars are ugly, or films like Die Hard, when the actors starring in these kind of films are at their best when their dialogue is completely unrestricted, and the characters are inherently R-rated. But a Robocop film doesn't need an R-rating to be good.