Robocop 2014

At first  I thought MGM decided to mock their famous Lion with a bizarre soundclip that replaced the trademark growl.

Turned out it was Samuel Jackson's Pat Novak. The guys's pre-broadcast mouth calisthenics that produced all that sound. It's there where I concluded Jose Padilha's remake of the 1987 Paul Verhoeven classic was a different entity altogether. 

Like the 1987 incarnation, the upgraded version never fails to underscore media's role into molding the public to puppets dancing to the tune of the most powerful corporations. That of course, and the neverending romantic theme of every successful fairy tale about the ages-old question of what makes us all human. 

The over the top R-18 violence that made the 1987 version so compelling was toned down for a more PG-friendly version this time. OCP is still the evil corporatation, and in place of the 'Old Man' we have a Steve Jobs-like CEO named Raymond Sellars. I never really liked Michael Keaton before The Other Guys but his performance in RoboCop made me a fan. The guy managed to make the character a very likable villain. Along with Jackie Earle Haley's mercenary and company military tactician and Jay Baruchel's goofy marketing executive, the film had all the makings of a very compelling movie by virtue of its villains (no Clarence/Jones but equally good) but somewhere in the middle the entire thing goes...level.

It's not that the movie was bad. In fact it's good---if it didn't have the specter of the original hanging around the back of your head to compare it with. The story and the overall direction of the new one is totally different in tone and even in story than its predecessor. That alone is reason enough why the movie is an excellent stand-alone entity on its own. I guess my major gripe about it is that the main character somehow lacks the charisma and bad-assness you'd expect from it. Granted that it's somehow a major improvement over the original considering it can move faster and has a whole lot more sophisticated access to technology and weaponry. I can't blame the actor (Joel Kinnaman) if that was how the character was written. You just can't empathize with it enough. Desensitized? Probably.

Had it not been for Gary Oldman's character, the film would have been a total waste.  Dr. Norton is the moral and humanist center of the story. They detached it, because RoboCop seems to be more like a machine in this version despite his human memories being intact.

There are a lot of allusions to the original other than the shared similarity of the characters' names. In place of the notorious 'Directive 4' we have the red band. Still a powerful tool to remind our hero that he's still just a product and still in the mercy of the company that made him. Good action/drama film overall. If only you haven't seen the original to compare it to. You just can't avoid it.

A nightmare, alright

I held off watching the remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street for a variety of reasons. One of which is Michael Bay being attached to the project. And the other, most important point: Why bother?


It's always Hollywood and its endless fascination with remakes. There's always an enterprising studio exec in there somewhere, with a bright idea that probably goes somewhere along these lines: "Hey! Why not reboot an 80s era blockbuster to fit today's braindead audience who has no chance of seeing the original despite the presence of Google and man's innate nature to go looking for things? Let's save them from that 'looking' and make truckloads of money while we're at it." 


If the studios are doing it to explore artistic reinterpretation, then Michael Bay is a modern day Fellini. 


The thing about remakes is that 9 times out of 10, most are simply sub-par, and dreadfully inferior versions of the original work (see: Psycho, The Ring). Unfortunately 'Nightmare...2010' is no exception. 


Remakes do unimaginable harm than good to almost everything, especially on movies that require suspense and rely heavily on the viewer's apprehension and uncertainty about what character will die on the next sequence.


And on a horror-thriller at that. What's the point of watching a 'thriller' if you already know what happened to every major character? For the new generation to be familiar with a 20+ year old celluloid boogeyman? Has spoonfeeding really degenerated to this?


There's the hype of it being the more 'serious and less comical interpretation' that is guaranteed to give you more scares than the original. That Jackie Earle Haley's Freddy Krueger is a lot more brutal and scary than the original Robert Englund version.

Freddy, 2010 incarnation

That would have been very promising except that Freddy is not Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. Dour, silent killers with no sense of humor.

Freddy's appeal on the other hand, is in the various creative ways he toys with his victims. Always in that nasty sadistic toying and humiliation before going in for the kill.In a lot of ways "Nightmare..." is not exactly a 'horror/slasher' film than a curious fascination on how Freddy will come up with new ways to dispose of his prey.


One memorable sequence in an early installment had him transfer a teenager as a playable character in a video game he was playing. Or a woman bring eaten face-first by a television set. Or Johnny Depp being swallowed by the bed and regurgitated as a bloody mass of pulp back to the ceiling. Horrifying at first, but then you realize it's a movie not meant to be taken seriously.

 

Englund nailed the character's brilliance, nastiness, and most of all, amusing sense of humor and the acerbic kiss-offs that's noticeably missing in Haley's version. Not his fault---a good actor---but what can you do with a character that is so familiar and embedded so deeply in the pop culture landscape people practically know him as how Englund played him? 


They already started with Freddy vs Jason, a fun and satisfying fanboy celebrity deathmatch fantasy came true. Whatever these studio heads are smoking for them to see things like this and resort to the abominable stance of doing a remake, ought to be very expensive.


I wonder how that Fright Night remake is gonna pull it off.