Generic Future Armor Man, I mean Robocop trailer

I'm not someone who automatically hates remakes. Some remakes are very good. One of my favorite movies of all time is John Carpenter's The Thing, a remake. What I do hate is this recent glut of uninspired generic remakes of classic 80s sci-fi movies made for no other reason than name value. All they do is lessen the original.

Case in point, here's the trailer for the Robocop remake,



Feel my hate after the break,

From the first shot we're off on a bad start. My first thought was "Is this just Elysium again?"

Then there's our leading man, Generic brown-haired white guy. Generic brown-haired white guy has a loving family and is grievously when his car explodes. Wrong way to go already. In the original, Alex Murphy was brutally murdered in the line of duty. This established that he was a good cop who was willing to sacrifice himself and also how vile Clarence Boddicker was, because he and his gang casually blow a man to pieces and laugh while doing it. So when Murphy came back as Robocop, his antagonism with Boddicker came from the character and was understandable. He wanted to bring Boddicker in not for revenge, but for justice for his former self. The anonymous car bombing here completely removes the personal connection between the hero and villain. I bet whoever this movie's version of Dick Jones will be behind the bombing too, to set up some kind of cliched conspiracy bullshit.

The suit still sucks. I groused about this a long time ago but it's still true. The new suit looks fine when it retains the original silver and black coloring, but when it switches to all black it just looks generic. Like Christian Bale's Batsuit without the pointy ears and cape. And it seems like it's going to be full-black for the majority of the movie because otherwise why would they include the scene of Michael Keaton (what the fuck is he doing in this by the way?) saying make it black? I don't understand why you take one of the most iconic movie characters of the 80s and redesign away his distinctive look. If you're going to make a Robocop movie, don't you want him to look like Robocop so people know it's a freaking Robocop movie?

Generic brown-haired guy's family apparently also sticks around in the remake, presumably for some kind of romance angle with the wife. Again, missing the point of the original. Murphy's family leaving after his accident in the original heightened the tragedy of the situation. His family thinks he's dead and has left, his body was destroyed and rebuilt and even his memory has been locked away for service to his machinery. Alex Murphy was not only killed by Clarence Boddicker, but his life was destroyed to make him Robocop. That was where the pathos came from. Murphy regaining his identity and bringing his killers to justice was the emotional drive in the original. It's why when he subconsciously spins his gun like his son wanted we know Murphy is still in the machine and the audience has hope. It's why when Robocop dreams of Murphy's memories he freaks out in existential panic and the audience is scared with him and of what he'll do. It's why he doesn't remove his helmet until the end of the movie, because he's finally become Alex Murphy again and not just Robocop. Keeping Murphy's family alive lessens that tragedy and removes the pathos.

Oh and that theme of man overcoming technology and using it as a tool instead of being consumed by it? You know, the central theme of the original film? Also missed by this film. Going by the trailer generic brown-haired guy will not lose his memory when he becomes Robocop. Again, in the original film, Murphy losing his memory and becoming an unthinking tool of law enforcement only to regain his identity and use the Robocop technology to bring justice to Detroit played into the theme. Instead of being consumed by technology and turned into nothing but a programmed robot, Murphy held onto his humanity and made the technology his tool. That's what Directive 4 was about. So even if Murphy did get his memory back, Dick Jones (representing technological control) could still have power of him. But because Murphy and the old man get around Directive 4 (showing how humans can make technology work for them) Dick Jones is still defeated. You can see this with ED-209, Dick Jones' police robot, who is what Robocop would be like without his humanity and is defeated by the low-tech flight of stairs.

But no, why show this theme through symbolism and clever filmmaking. Let's just have Gary Oldman directly say it to the audience. Incidentally, Murphy keeping his memory but also having a Directive 4 type device , the "Illusion of free will" thing Oldman is talking about, doesn't make any sense. If you want to directly control him, why keep his memory? Would it not be easier to control Robocop if he was just a programmed robot like in the original? That way if you had him do something he didn't agree with he wouldn't agonize over a guilty conscience? Or come after you when he finds out you're actually controlling him? See, this has opened up plot holes already!

Maybe I'm overreacting. It is just a trailer after all. Maybe the movie is perfectly fine. But I do know that I just got four paragraphs out of explaining how this seems to miss the point of the original. I know the word that keeps coming to me to describe this is "generic". And I know it doesn't make me want to see the movie, which is the only thing a trailer is supposed to do.