RoboCop

The great thing about not getting paid to pay attention to your blog is that, by the time you get around to fleshing out a thought or idea that's been bouncing around your head for a few weeks, someone else who does it for a living has probably already written about it. Two weeks ago I watched the original 1987 RoboCop starring Peter Weller, hoping to validate next year's remake. But of course, being a grad student and all, among other setbacks -- cough, Mark never got around to watching it, cough -- I did not have time to write until now. A couple days later a Cracked article was published covering pretty much the same topic. Being a good sport and all (and an avid reader of Cracked), I'll go ahead and link the article here.

(I'll point out that I avoided reading the article before writing this, as not to steal any ideas, consciously or otherwise)

I won't blame you for choosing their article over this one; they have funny pictures. But damn it, I sat down to watch this movie and by God, I'm going to write about it!

Where to begin. How about I first remind everyone of the plot. Alex Murphy (Weller) is a policeman in near future Detroit, where crime is out of control, and the police force is privately owned by a technology company currently developing a machine that will replace cops and more effectively restore order. When Alex Murphy gets killed in the line of duty, he becomes the guinea pig for an alternative program at the same company, one attempting to meld man and machine. As a result, he becomes RoboCop (I think in the '80s it was just cool to prefix words with robo-).

Directed by Paul Verhoeven (Starship Troopers) you should pretty much know what to expect. For one thing, I am now convinced that his main method of world-building is cutting to faux commercials that provide exposition of the setting and time period: futuristic organ transplants, extremely violent video games, and other things meant to juxtapose advanced technology with a declining society. Part of what irritates me about this is that in some sense, this vision of the future has already been achieved. We have medical technology these days that would boggle Asimov, and violence in video games is laughable. And yet, unlike the world of RoboCop, our society continues to function.

RoboCop, having spawned a couple of sequels, seems like a bit of a cult classic. It has the shoddy plot, ultra-violence, and poor CG that are the mainstays of a 'great' '80s sci-fi actioner. And yet, watching it, I was mostly annoyed at how terrible a cop RoboCop proved to be (each perp either got away or was brutally murdered). It also aligned disturbingly well with The Crow, if you replace vengeful ghost with cyborg, right down to the cartoonish villain archetypes. Now that I think about it, a Crow-RoboCop crossover would be pretty awesome (RoboCrow? Crowbot?).

Anyways, let me rope myself in here. This movie is being remade, because robots are obviously a new theme with seemingly endless cinematic possibility.

That is assuming you ignore Elysium, three Iron Man movies, Dredd 3D, and to a lesser extent Avatar, the Matrix, AI: Artificial Intelligence, and Wall-e, all films that ask us what it means to be human. (Well okay, I put Dredd in there because I like it, and the new RoboCop suit is a blatant ripoff of judge armor).

Decide for yourself...

At least Urban gets an ass kicking chin.

Okay, this is just frustrating.

I mentioned something earlier about endless possibilities. I do truly believe that there are new ideas out there to be explored, even in the realm of robot sci-fi. There are thousands of original and exciting robot and man/machine stories waiting to be told. (I'll reference Isaac Asimov again; I'll do it, I swear). And as I said, the technology of RoboCop is not far off, what with pilotless drones and constant advancement in military robotics. So why limit a story idea to remaking a hokey, ultra-violent '80s action movie, when the real world that we live in is already more futuristic and interesting? On top of this, the next few years are going to be overwhelmed with sci-fi movies, all trying to up the "wow, future" ante.

In conclusion, the 2012 remake of Total Recall is a good example of why remaking an '80s sci-fi film just doesn't work. Oh hey, and that was also based on an original by Paul Verhoeven.

As it happens, the trailer for the remake was recently released. Check it out and see what you think.

Elysium

Reviewer: Mad Mark

So I will be the first to admit, I am not a huge fan of most of District 9.  Now hold on, put down that pitchfork and napalm, there were a bunch of things throughout that movie I liked about it.  How seamlessly he blended the fiction with reality through story and CG, as well as the stellar first and second acts.  I really enjoyed the documentary style of the beginning, and I was still engaged when Wickus was on the run.  But when people started exploding and it kinda lost itself in the violence, I was lost.  So all this rambling sums up my interest in Elysium: interested but very wary.  From what I’d seen, Elysium was more action and excitement, so I was conflicted about it.  But still I found myself in the theater.  So I hoped this would have that action, but blended better with the politics and story.

Oh how hopelessly naive of me.

Man, the next Wii is intense.

First off let me say that this is by no means a bad movie.  There is a lot here, much like District 9 for me, that was done right.  And then there were a lot of places where it misstepped and cracked it’s skull open.  And then exploded.  I guess, on the highest level, this story was incredibly predictable and straightforward.  Things happened obviously without skipping a beat.  Things happened conveniently for Max (Matt Damon) throughout the movie.  Not always good, what with the whole lethal blast of radiation after we watch as his life as an ex-con trying to go straight proves difficult in an unforgiving world, but still, everything lead into each other without any turn.  And any pretense for a “twist” was shown and obviously set up a few scenes prior.  But what of the political messages and social commentary, cry the voices in my head?  They’re there.  Right there, on the surface for all to see.  And that’s where they stay.  Oh so the 1% sit in space while the 99% survive in squalor, forced to look up at what life could be, fully knowing that they’ll never reach it?  Yep, don’t expect it any deeper than that.  Headlines from recent newspapers are lifted and given a sci-fi tune up and then thrown in.  Medicare?  Machines that heal literally anything, but only the 1% can use them.  Why?  Cause the 1% are dicks, as it seems on Elysium.  Immigration laws?  Jodi Foster blows illegals out of the sky if they try to make it to Elysium, but then this is seen as a tad, shall we say, brutal.

Speaking of Jodi Foster, that was one of the worst performances I’ve ever seen from her.  It was bland and uninterested from the word go.  And she puts on an accent that can’t be placed, and while you can use the logic defying statement of “it’s the future”, no one else has it.  She’s a cardboard cutout; no depth or complexity.  That really goes for everyone.  Damon gives Max some emotional depth, but he gets to concerned or angry and flips between the two.  Sharlto Copley returns as Kruger, the psychotic agent of Foster’s Minister of Defense, who plays evil like it’s the only song on the jukebox and it’s free song night.  He’s entertaining to start, with his wild abandon style of murdering, but soon it just becomes grating, since there’s nothing else he can do.  And there are moments when there seems to be something else to him, but then he kills that and keeps killing and shouting and killing.  And let me bring up the love interest/plot progressor Frey (a bland Alice Braga).  There, I brought her up, which is about what they did with her in the movie.  I honestly forgot she was in the movie for stretches because she felt so irrelevant until she was used to move Max along.  There are a plethora of side characters, but each is as forgettable as the last, so lets not waste anymore of your time.

And then there was the violence.  I have no problem with violence, as long as it serves a purpose.  Wanton violence does nothing but diminish the impact of the story and this movie reveled in it’s violence.  Or to be more specific, reveled in the explosions.  Honestly, Neill Blomkamp is the artsy, more refined clone of Michael Bay.  Now before anyone thinks I’m giving Michael Bay some praise or something, let me explain.  Almost every death happens via some variation of explosion.  Almost always, as well, in slow motion.  Making us really watch as the futuristic tech does it’s thing and then explode.  And of course the violence is on the level of Drive, in that Neill pulls no punches.  When one characters face blows off, we watch it break into bloody pieces.  And then later watch the medicare machines rebuild it, healing that elevated case of tension, much to my chagrin.  It’s only to look again at the violence and carnage.  And the final climactic fight between Max and Kruger?  It’s an over edited mess; I couldn’t make heads or tails as to who was hitting who until we stopped to show them standing apart before diving back at each other.  And guess how it ends?  If you can’t, go see this movie.  At least you’ll be surprised.

And then it ends as predictably, as explained earlier in the third act.  Just with some emotional baggage that feels weightless when we realize how little was given to the building of the relationship between Max and Frey.  Oh there were flashbacks as them as kids, but not nearly enough to make me care about the choices he was making for her.  And then we end.  And here I am now, mouthing off like a know a damn about this.  But in my opinion, as this is all it is, the movie was good.  It has a lot of faults, some very glaring and others just subtle ones the bugged throughout.  But it was still an absolutely gorgeous film with some stunning set pieces.  This was a technically brilliant film.  It’s just a shame that the story and acting can’t even reach that same height.