Click here for the first half of Original Vs. Remake: Robocop (1987)!
I was PISSED when
I first heard Hollywood was attempting a Robocop
remake. And I do mean pissed, we're talking Internet Fanboy levels of
rage here. This was a few years ago, I was totally used to Hollywood
remaking stuff because they were literally out of ideas for
mainstream films at that point.
But THIS was
different. Up to that point they'd only remade stuff that wasn't
worth getting upset over because it was all so “blah”, like the
Footloose
remake for instance. Robocop is
literally a cinematic classic. It was a critical success in 1987, and
its legacy has only grown since then with people WAY smarter than me
writing big, fancy words about WHY it's one of the greatest movies
ever made.
This remake is the
harbinger of something very dark to me, as I consider it Hollywood
“testing the waters” to see what they can get away with. If this
worked, then it's OPEN SEASON on all the classics. The Good, The
Bad and The Ugly, the Godfather, To Kill a Mockingbird, the Princess
Bride, the Silence of the Lambs, nothing is safe anymore.
And guess what?
This did work. The film had a bloated budget of $130 million dollars,
literally TEN TIMES that of the original. While the film did pretty
much bomb in America, making only $60 million dollars, it was a hit
overseas where it made almost $185 million dollars. Since the only
number that matters to Hollywood anymore is the international total,
that $240 something million gross was a home run for them.
Be afraid. Be very
afraid as you read A Ghoul Versus Robocop (2014).
We begin with
Samuel L. Jackson doing vocal exercises in a dark room, as apparently
the makeup team for this movie thought this was the sequel to
Unbreakable judging by the wig they stuck him in. He is
playing Pat Novak, host of the Fox News show The Novak Element.
I'm going to break
from tradition here with this review. Usually I try to do these
reviews sequentially without spoiling story events in advance, but
this one's going to be special. The original movie would break up
scenes with footage from Media Break News, highly satirical political
broadcasts where they'd commentate on horrific world events with the
same casual attitude as an E! TV journalist. It worked SO well, and
for a lot of people is the highlight of the movie.
The 2014
incarnation attempts this with The Novak Element, as Samuel L.
Jackson's character is an ultra-right wing shock jock clearly modeled
on Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh or whatever Fox News mouthpiece of
your preference. Which is fine, it's a great idea to introduce the
element we're about to see in the upcoming scene. The PROBLEM is the
movie plays this completely straight up, hell I'm not even sure this
WAS supposed to be satirical.
Right, with that
in mind, Novak is interviewing an Army General from the Pentagon
about a current US operation in Tehran, Iran. We see the Army is
using drones to police the city and keep the peace, and we get to
meet the first remake characters from the original movie: the
ED-209s. They're
the only characters who barely got changed from the first movie, so
naturally they're the best thing in this movie!
Just like in the
1987 version, they are made by an American corporation to uphold the
law more efficiently than humans ever could. The remake does a little
further with this, as they are now treated as combat drones to push
the next major political element of the movie: the moral debate over
using drones in combat. Sadly though,
they're barely in the movie at all as they take a backseat to the
OTHER drones in the movie: the EM-208s.
I literally have
no idea why they're in this movie. Like the EDs weren't enough? Every
single scene involving the 208s could have been replaced with the EDs
and it wouldn't have changed a single thing in the scene besides
making for some better action scenes. I have a theory though,
something I call “I'm A Better Writer Than You!” Syndrome. You
see this ALL the time in every adaption/remake/whatever, where they
change the smallest details of the source material because they can.
It's THEIR story now, dammit!
Damn, we're a page
in already and the movie hasn't even started yet. That's a bad sign
if ever I saw one. Alright, so we're in Tehran where Novak's film
crew is live on location broadcasting the drone occupation of the
city. NO WAY THIS GOES WRONG, as the Middle East has a FANTASTIC
record for being a completely peaceful region.
Supervised by
OmniCorp tactician Rick Mattox- oh, and how about that: Omni Consumer
Products isn't actually the company behind RoboCop anymore. Now it's
their SUBCOMPANY OmniCorp behind things, because “I'm A Better
Writer Than You!”. Why? What does this accomplish besides
needlessly adding things to the movie that do NOTHING? Mattox
is played by Jackie Earle Haley, who is going against all of his
previous type casting and playing a psychopath.
Mattox is giving
the film crew a rundown about how the drone program works blah blah
blah whatever, what I want to talk about is how the film's tone goes
right out the window in this scene only a few minutes in. We've
established our serious political tone already, so what kind of
events do we see scrolling across the news ticker at the bottom of
the screen?
“...Brazil
legalises marijuana, stoned Congressman celebrates...”
“...Presidents
gives OK for astronauts to take hookers to space...”
Get used to this
folks, the movie in incapable of going a few minutes without doing
something stupid. Now this stuff is OBVIOUSLY satirical and is
actually funny, but completely breaks Novak's serious tone from just
a minute earlier. The film only has one credited writer to it, but
this story REEKS of multiple rewrites and ghost editing.
The drones parade
down the city streets, announcing IN ENGLISH for all the citizens to
come out of their homes and be scanned for threats. Novak talks about
how great this is, how there is no risk to American lives and how the
HONEST citizens of Tehran appreciate this too since they get to watch
their children grow up in an environment of safety and security.
Again, this so could have worked as being subversive in the classical
Paul Verhoeven fashion, but Jackson plays this so straight I have no
idea what they're going for here.
But in an amazing
plot twist, we learn the citizens of Tehran DON'T appreciate the US
intrusion into their homes, as we cut to a group of suicide bombers
planning an attack on the drones because OF COURSE they are. Just as
Novak's reporter is talking about the perfect harmony of the city
they strike, blowing themselves and as many of the drones up as
possible.
A teenage son of
one of the men watches this from his apartment window, grabbing a
KITCHEN KNIFE and running outside to avenge his father. This goes
about as well an you'd expect, as an ED blows him into smithereens. I
could bring up how we get a shot of ED's Heads Up Display assessing
the knife as a threat when it couldn't even have made a scratch on
his armour, but if I stop to talk about stuff like that the review is
going to be longer than War and Peace.
Also I'm just
assuming the kid got shot up, as all we see is a huge dust cloud the
bullets start hitting him. Because the movie had to hit as many
demographics as possible, they made it PG-13 so all the kiddies can
go see it! I find that quite odd, as SO many more kids saw the
original Robocop (which as a HARD R) than will likely ever see
this rubbish. I'll get to the PG-13 stuff much later though, just
keep in mind this entire movie is as bloodless as a G.I. Joe
cartoon.
It's at THIS point
the Pentagon decides to cut the live feed, because they were totally
okay with showing suicide bombers completely contradicting how well
Operation Freedom was really going. Novak rants about Senator Hubert
Dreyfus, the mastermind behind a bill that bans the use of these
drones on American soil. His opposition is the CEO of OmniCorp,
Raymond Sellars, who is lobbying very hard to have the bill
overturned. Sellars is played by Michael Keaton, who is still alive
apparently. Huh.
Don't bother
putting much though into this opening scene though and the questions
it raises about combat drones or the continuing failures of America's
attempts to bring peace to the Middle East, because NONE OF THIS is
ever referenced again. In fact, I'm not even sure this was a part of
the original script as this is probably something they just added
later on. They just included it because they desperately wanted this
movie to be topical and thus give the impression it had something
deep to say. Spoilers:
it doesn't.
The movie actually
starts now in Detroit, as we join the legendary Detective Alex Murphy
as he reports to his chief about an undercover operation that went
south on him. I am legit shocked they didn't change his name to “Alec
Murphy” or something similar, but the fact they changed Murphy from
a regular cop to a gritty undercover detective will have to do.
See, in the
original Murphy kind of had a naïve innocence about him as he was
from a much nicer part of Detroit and wasn't used to the insane
levels of crime he'd come to experience, but make no mistake about
it, he was still a pretty bad ass professional whom you should NOT
mess with. This made him very likeable and he felt like a very real
character, he could kick ass but still retained his humanity and
wasn't some burnt out husk like you see in pretty much every cop
story ever. Oh
hey, like this one for instance!
Alex Murphy is
played by Joel Kinnaman, who is a STRONG frontrunner for Worst Actor
in the 2014 Razzies thanks to his performance in this movie. Oh no,
there was an Adam Sandler movie this year wasn't there? Okay, runner
up then.
To study for this
role, I believe Kinnaman did a marathon viewing of the Fast and the
Furious movies and went “yeah, that's EXACTLY how I should act!”
because he tries so hard to be this down, street-wise monotone thug
and fails miserably at it. Hmm, that's not fair at all. He does NAIL
the monotone part. Through a flashback, Murphy details how he and his
male partner Lewis- wait, what the fuck?! No seriously, WHAT THE
FUCK?!? THEY TURNED LEWIS INTO A MAN?!? Anne Lewis from the original
was a groundbreaking character in what had been a testosterone soaked
genre up to to that point: she was a strong female character that
WASN'T in love with the male lead and never played the damsel in
distress and
could kick every bit as much ass as Robocop!
But no, let's get
rid of all of that and make her a man. And a totally useless man at
that. I do want to say this is absolutely no disrespect towards the
actor Michael K. Williams, who is the definition of “Awesome” in
the Ghoul Dictionary, but he is given absolutely NOTHING to do
besides be the black partner whose shooting motivates our noble white
hero to go out GET REVENGE!
Murphy and Lewis
were working an undercover sting where they were buying Army-level
assault rifles from a minor dealer named Jerry, who works for a major
dealer named Antoine Vallon. They ran the serial numbers on the
rifles and found out they were supposed to be in police evidence, but
somehow got out. So naturally instead of getting Internal Affairs
involved, the two cops went out on their own to solve the whole thing
because that's the kind of movie this is.
Vallon is the
Clarence Boddicker of this movie and I wish you could hear how hard
I'm laughing right now as I say that. Boddicker, of course, was one
of the most memorable and vile villains in movie history, and I
really wasn't joking when I said it was a crime he wasn't nominated
for Best Supporting Actor in 1987. Vallon is, um... well, I guess
he's a bad guy because he sells stolen guns and uh... well, he does
order the deaths of police officers but that sure is a far sight from
Boddicker.
Our heroes meet
with Vallon, who gets a phone call tipping him off to their true
identities He orders his men to kill them, and we get ourselves an
insanely lame PG-13 restaurant shootout where you never get to see a
single bullet land. For some stupid reason that I'm sure amounts to
“it looks cool”, most of the shootout is filmed over shoulders of
the actors like a damn third person video game. I
kept checking the corner for his health meter and remaining ammo.
The flashback ends
with Lewis getting shot and the bad guys escaping. The chief warns
Murphy to not take any more action against Vallon until she approves
it. She sadly doesn't take his badge and his gun, nor does she yell
at him. And she calls herself a police chief?! Booooooo! On his way
out Murphy butts heads with the two undercover cops originally
assigned to the Vallon case.
We go to
Washington DC for a summit between Dreyfus and Sellars that only
repeats what we saw earlier. Dreyfus is all “robots bad!” and
Sellars is all “nuh-uh!”. This is another scene that STRONGLY
makes me believe the Tehran scene was added on after the movie was
done, because Dreyfus makes a point about how the drones have no
humanity in there actions and would feel nothing if they shot a
child. Um...
they- they did that. Were you not watching the movie like the rest of
us? I don't blame you if you WEREN'T, but my question still
stands.
This sets up the
next scene, as Sellars is back in the OmniCorp Tower in Detroit
brainstorming with his Yes Man and Yes Woman how to sway public
opinion on drones. Sellars concludes they're going to give the public
a product with a conscience and put a man inside a machine. Elsewhere in the
tower we meet Dr. Dennett Norton, played by the “I'm WAY Too
Awesome To Be In This” Gary Oldman. Just like Michael K. Williams,
he's an actor of deity-like levels but his character is just written
horribly. Hope the paycheck was fat as hell.
Norton works in
the Rehab Division of OmniCorp, where he outfits patients with
cutting edge robotic prosthetics. We see the scope of his work as
he's given a patient robot hands, the man able to play the guitar
with them. To be fair, this scene is pretty phenomenal and features
some of the best CGI I've ever seen in my entire life, both regular
and undead. I'm also pretty sure they blew the film's entire budget
on this one scene, because WOW the rest of the CGI is Godawful.
The man starts off
playing amazing but starts bobbling notes. Norton's assistant Kim,
played by a totally bored Aimee Garcia (a/k/a the
nanny on Dexter who fucking hates clothes), is
monitoring this via computers and tells him the patient's emotions
are spiking. Norton explains you can't get too emotional or it'll
mess up the chemistry of the robotics. Remember this for later, there
will be a test.
Sellars meets with
Norton about his plan, Norton immediately establishing he's the “I
Don't Want My Research Being Used For Killing!” kind of scientist,
he only wants to help people. But he's also the stupid kind of
scientist, as Sellars talks him into doing it because it'll “save
thousands of lives” or whatever. Sellars is a
strange character to me. He's a combination of Dick Jones and Bob
Morton from the first movie, but lacks all of the things that made
them memorable, surprise surprise. Jones was a pure monster who would
kill anyone who got in the way of his profit and Morton was an
asshole trying to follow in his steps.
In this movie
Sellars just doesn't really have a point other than he really wants
to get public support for his drones so he can overturn the Dreyfus
bill. He doesn't care about making America safer, he just wants more
money but you CANNOT tell me he'd make more money from a domestic
contract than the insane internationally military one he already has?
He's WON! No one throws larger piles of money at anymore more than
the military, especially when it comes to the Middle East.
Across the city,
the two undercover cops Murphy clashed with are revealed to be in
cahoots with Vallon. Okay, so earlier in the movie we saw Jerry had
CRATES of assault rifles that they stole from police evidence. HOW
DID THEY DO THIS?! In my Alex
Cross review we saw Alex had to
knock out the security system of the whole damn police headquarters
and give a fellow officer brain damage just to steal two measly
pistols, how did these two idiots smuggle out huge crates with no one
noticing? This is made even more impossible as later on we find out
Detroit has security cameras every 2.3 feet, so there is no way they
got away with this unless the entire police department was in on it.
Idiot #1 tells
Vallon that Murphy is going to be visiting Lewis in the hospital
later that day. Vallon uses this chance to have one of his men plant
what I assume in a bomb on Murphy's car in a scene that I guess
explains how the Idiots were able to steal the guns. The thug calls
Vallon to make sure the cameras are off below planting the bomb.
Vallon has the ability to control the cameras in the city, doe he? I
sure hope he made sure he turned them off when he had that very
public meeting with the Idiots!
I was wrong about
it being a bomb, as the next scene has Murphy comes home to his
loving, monotone family. His wife Clara is played by Abbie Cornish
whom I'm not familiar with but I assume she must have had a horrific
Botox accident involving the same doctor that January Jones uses
because her face can only make one expression.
His son David is
played by Child Actor #59087 who is a huge Detroit Red Wings fan. I
don't like to bash on child actors so I won't, let's just say it's a
good thing he's barely in this film. Kinnaman and Cornish are
absolutely the frontrunners for Worst Screen Combo in the 2014
Razzies because they have NO chemistry whatsoever. Cornish, who is
also in the running for Worst Supporting Actress at the Razzies, is
more monotone than Kinnaman which is almost mind boggling. Whereas he
prepared for his role by studying Vin Diesel and crew, I believe she
just overdosed on horse tranquilizers for her role between takes. So
thank God we segue to one of the most awkward and uncomfortable sex
scenes in history! It's PG-13 so she only takes her shirt off, but
they kiss each other with all the enthusiasm of a brother and sister
having to kiss on the lips.
Click here for Part 2!
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