When RoboCop first hit theaters in 1987, the ad campaign and coming attractions gave you the impression this was just a typical action/sci-fi flick.
Once you saw it, though, nothing could have been further from the truth. RoboCop was of course a deep, intelligent, and very funny movie that didn’t take the easy approach to its material. It certainly wasn’t a typical big, dumb action film and stands as a genre classic today.
Yes, there are currently plans to remake RoboCop, but the original’s still a pretty tough act to follow. In fact, RoboCop himself, Peter Weller, did a live Q&A for the Hero Complex film festival in L.A. where the film was screened, and he said he “could give a [expletive deleted]” about a RoboCop remake.
“I saw God bless ’em, man, go make another RoboCop. You can throw a lot of CGI at it. The morality that’s endemic to the movie is hard to replicate. It makes you laugh and cry and moves you, and it’s hysterical and horrible and all those unbelievable things at once.”
And indeed, director Paul Verhoven and company did a very good job balancing dark humor, pathos and tragedy with RoboCop, which again took it up many notches from the usual big budget sci-fi fare.
At the same time, Weller told the L.A. Times, “I don’t do warm and fuzzy well. But you know, motorcycles and guns and horses and car wrecks and bar fights and hookers, that’s my thing.”
As I’ve noticed in writing about horror films, sometimes the best scare flicks in history have been made by people who didn’t like the genre, and Weller admitted he wasn’t a fan of sci-fi, but he does like Philip K. Dick, and still appreciates the depth that RoboCop has.
After seeing it at a recent screening, Weller said, “I got past the hoopla of the film and was genuinely proud to be a part of it, really proud to be part of this film. I think you could watch it in 100 years, and it would [still] resonate.”
