The “Robocop” remake will be completely redundant …

Even if it’s good. 

The new “Robocop” remake will be completely redundant — even if it’s good.

There’s a number of reasons why — which I will go into below — but the biggest one is this: We are literally just catching up to and reckoning with what Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 original “Robocop” had on its mind, and no matter how on-target the remake is, it can’t add anything new to the debate, it can only — and this may be reason enough for it to exist — reignite the conversation that Verhoven and screenwriters Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner were astute enough to kick up twenty-seven years ago.

JUST HOW EXCEPTIONAL AND PROPHETIC IS THE ORIGINAL “ROBOCOP”…

Ken Russell, famed British director and master of cinematic bombast, said upon Robocop’s original release in England that it was “the greatest Science Fiction film since Metropolis.” Mind you this quote is post-“Blade Runner” (Ridley Scott, 1982), which is generally regarded by the critical establishment and fan circles as the greatest science fiction film since “Metropolis”, if not ever. However, in this particular case, Ken Russell is right. “Robocop” is the greatest sci-fi film since “Metropolis”, and while “Blade Runner” may be the most visually influential film since “Metropolis”, it’s an A-/B+ science-fiction film. Let’s not confuse aesthetics with philosophy. “Blade Runner” looks great, but “Robocop” has more to say about being human, which is the core of the best science fiction.

Part of “Robocop’s” substantial legacy is its subversive shell, which in 1987, was so radical that many missed it, and just enjoyed the film as pure action-sci-fi, which in all fairness, is perfectly legitimate when the filmmaking is so extraordinary.

“Robocop” tells the story of “Old Detroit” which is crumbling under crime, drugs, and debt. Omni Consumer Products or OCP, (a security company/multi-national corporation) not only wants to take over the city, it wants to mechanize, weaponize, and most importantly privatize the police force, by replacing human officers with robots. The first robotic test-case ED-209 proves to be too trigger-happy, so an enterprising executive creates “Robocop” from the remains of fallen police officer Alex Murphy, who being part-man/part-machine (or a cyborg) will hopefully be more manageable than pure hardware. Then the film becomes a combination of crime-drama, revenge movie, and corporate intrigue satire, in addition to a meditation on free will, and just how many memories still make you human.

Not exactly a short order and the film carries it off flawlessly.

So to summarize, we’ve got Detroit going under, robots replacing police and soldiers, multi-nationals buying up our decaying, debt-ridden cities (for further reference check out the “Carlyle Group” suddenly buying real-estate and trailer parks), and the militarization of daily life juxtaposed with the simultaneous hollowing out of public works and services.

Sound familiar to anyone watching the news these days?

And from what I can tell watching the trailer for 2014 ‘s “Robocop” and reading interviews with director Jose Padhilla — the remake is about the exact same things — except they added drones. And of course, an A-list cast, and bucket loads of CGI.

So why bother remaking it when the original hasn’t even come close to going out-of-date?

B-MOVIE DECAY VERSUS HOLLYWOOD CGI AND WHY “BLADE RUNNER” HAS AGED BADLY…

I’m not going to make this whole article about why I think “Robocop” is superior to “Blade Runner” but here’s one thing that’s generally overlooked in all the discussions comparing the two. Part of the reason “Robocop” seems as fresh today as it did in 1987 is that it didn’t go in for Ridley Scott’s future phantasmagoria of flying cars, random flames, and Atari billboards (OUCH). “Robocop” resisted the desire to make the future look better. It just imagined that due to debt and chaos what we have right now would look a lot worse (except for those few areas under corporate control like skyscrapers and apartment buildings).

And this is why B-movie budgets tend to provide us with better insights into what our future will look like. They envision scarcity for most and luxury for a shrinking few. “Mad Max”, “The Road Warrior”, “Robocop”, Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil”, even — although it’s not exactly futuristic — Darren Aronofsky’s “Pi”, all imagine that our futures will be rife with decay. They do it for budgetary reasons, but damn if they don’t tend to age better. Ironically, Ridley Scott did get this concept in “Alien” where the ship is in a constant state of rusting disrepair. And I’d argue this is why “Alien” has aged better than “Blade Runner”.

2014’s “Robocop” — from the trailer to be fair — looks like a green-screen fest with gleaming corporate cityscapes interspersed with crime-controlled areas patrolled by drones and robot armies. In short, it looks too good; too expensive; the Robo-suit is too sleek. That’s not the point of “Robocop”.

PAUL VERHOEVEN VERSUS JOSE PADHILLA…

Jose Padhilla isn’t a bad choice to direct a “Robocop” remake. Paul Verhoeven, on the other hand, was an inspired choice to make the original.

Prior to “Robocop”, Verhoeven had been the bane of the European censors unleashing such sex-and-violence shocks as “Turkish Delight”, “Spetters”, and “The Fourth Man”. He was a true enfant terrible even as he approached fifty. Hiring Verhoeven to make “Robocop” is the present-day equivalent of handing over a potential franchise to Lars Von Trier, or a pre-“Drive” Nicolas Winding-Refn.

Padhilla is primarily a documentary filmmaker, and a fine one at that, and his narrative film “Elite Squad” is a solid effort, but it’s not exceptional, and he’s certainly not a professional shit-stirrer like Verhoeven. I quote at length from an interview Padhilla gave to the online publication “Den Of Geek”:

“The original RoboCop idea has Alex Murphy inside a machine fighting its directives. That’s perfect to talk about the drone issue, to talk about the philosophical thing about what’s the difference between man and machine. What I saw was a very fertile idea, which in 1987 was sci-fi, but now is going to become real. It’s going to happen.

So I thought that’s a good concept to use to reach a broad audience, and Hollywood is interested in remaking RoboCop, because they see it as something that has a chance to succeed. And so I thought I could merge those two things. Having said that, it’s not easy to get a movie that has these ideas in it, and get it through a studio process. It’s not easy, you know? You’ve gotta do well in the first preview!”

I don’t think Paul Verhoeven ever cared what preview audiences thought of “Robocop”, and although he certainly wanted a career directing movies in America, he wasn’t about to compromise. Hell he’d already waited a good decade and half for Hollywood to come calling. Padhilla seems more than happy to meet the executives halfway, which is a problem when your job is to remake one of the most subversive genre films to sneak out of Hollywood.

A DETOUR INTO FASCISM…

There’s another core difference between Verhoeven and Padhilla and it comes down to their views on fascism. Again, I quote Padhilla from another online interview:

“It’s true that the automation of violence opens the door to fascism.”

What we’re looking at here is Verhoeven’s European vision of Fascism versus Padhilla’s South American vision of it. Verhoeven, at least judging from his cinematic output, clearly views Corporatism as the soul of Fascism. He sees Corporatism — not automation — as the syndrome that strips humanity bare and leads to violent desensitization. South Americans — after suffering through decades of dirty wars — undoubtedly have a different view of Fascism than Europeans. The strain of Fascism that ran rampant in South America was more Militaristic — replete with “death squads” — than Corporatist, mostly a result of years of imperialism leading to an underdeveloped private sector. The only place Fascism and Corporatism really went hand-in-hand in South America was Chile, but that’s because a bunch of University of Chicago economists were brought in to administer “shock therapy”.

Could you make a movie about South American militaristic Fascism and use “Robocop” as a metaphor? Sure you can. But it doesn’t seem like they did. It looks like Padhilla has remade Verhoeven’s film and implanted his own views on Fascism — that don’t necessarily gel — with a Fascism based in Corporatism.

“Robocop” is about a man retaining his humanity in the face of corporate control, not computer automation/militarism (remember the Corporation provides him with his commands/orders). The corporation has automated him; his emotions have literally been privatized. “Robocop” is a rallying cry against the soullessness of private enterprise and how the body gets turned into literal meat for the gristmill in their quest. If you want to keep those themes you’re running directly in Corporatism. And if you’re in Corporatism then militarism/automation is the effect, not the cause.

If Mr. Padhilla wanted to explore a different kind of Fascism then he should have exploded the original “Robocop” template. Or, and this could be the case, maybe Mr. Padhilla doesn’t share Mr. Verhoven’s views on the evils of Corporatism. It seems Padhilla finds the militarized state-sponsored version of Fascism far scarier, and I think that’s likely a result of his exposure to a particular type of South American Fascism. It’s a perfectly valid view, but remember, he’s also remaking a corporate satire, and he seems a little chummy with the suits.

TO X OR TO PG-13?…

At heart, Verhoeven is a satirist with a virulent streak of pessimistic humanism. He clearly saw “Robocop” as a veritable potlatch of Reagan America’s 80’s excesses that he could set on fire. Greed, cocaine, crime, corporatism. It’s not an accident that one of the “Robocop” villains is dissolved in a vat of Toxic Waste — the ultimate corporate by-product. Appropriately, the film is excessively violent, incredibly violent, because it mirrors what a lot of people felt Reagan was doing to America. And for all it’s prescience the original “Robocop” was slapped with an X rating several times before being recut and granted an “R”.

Padhilla’s film is clearly playing ball with the corporation (remember those “test screenings”), letting them off the hook and setting his sights on the military instead. The remake is not excessive, guaranteed not to offend, and — appropriate for a corporate enterprise — labeled with a PG-13 rating.

Verhoeven pulled no punches in his “Robocop”, it was a piece with integrity, and consequently also a huge box office hit, raking in $53.4 million in 1987. If you adjust that figure for inflation, Padhilla’s version would have to make $260 million to compare. I could see the original “Robocop” making that today, but I have a hell of a hard time imagining this sleek, soulless — albeit potentially successful on it’s own terms — corporate enterprise called 2014’s “Robocop” making half that.