There was a bit of a disturbance in the geek-o-sphere recently when a well known chronicler trashed the screenplay for the remake of RoboCop on Twitter.
We all know genre fans can be pretty tough to please, and have high expectations, but we also know a lot of times they may go a little too far as a knee jerk reaction. Then again, it is far, far too easy for Hollywood to get it wrong, especially with the kind of films genre fans really love.
Many would question a RoboCop remake in the first place because the first one is a classic, it really hit the bulls-eye, and like the saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Peter Weller recently told the L.A. Times, “I say 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.”
Similarly, Ronnie Cox told The Wrap, “I hate sequels in remakes… I don’t see the point in finding something good and just doing it again.”
While it’s unclear how close a remake this will be to the original, Joe Padilha, who’s directing the new RoboCop, told The Telegraph the film will keep the satiric edge of the original, “that kind of social, aggressive satire I haven’t seen done well in movies lately.”
And now a RoboCop synopsis has hit the web, and here’s what the site GiantFreakinRobot.com has to say about it…
Basically, the new RoboCop takes place in 2028, and the company OmniCorp is the leading company dealing with robot technology. The robots they create are helping us win wars, and now they want to use that kind of technology to protect us at home. We pretty much know the rest from here. Alex Murphy is a loyal family man and cop who gets critically wounded on the job, and OmniCorp saves his life by making him a cyborg, which as we saw in the original film came with its share of up and downs.
Whether or not a new RoboCop can reinvent and revitalize one of the best sci-fi films of all time, or will end up another tired, pointless remake remains to be seen because it’s just starting production now for an August 9, 2013 release date.
While the new Total Recall was a disappointment, I was keeping an open mind and hoping for the best, and I’ll do the same here, even though this remake’s definitely going to have to go a long way to appease the geeks.
