I have a lot of weird feelings attached to RoboCop... on the one hand, it is a Marxist critique of Frankenstein. On the other hand, it is packaged as a glorious reactionary circus. An evil corporation takes over Detroit's civic functions, builds soulless mechanical monstrosities that randomly kill people, and it all turns out okay because a Reagan-esque old guy fires the bad guy. (Who, unlike Aliens, doesn't happen to be a Jew... progress!)
What can you possibly add to RoboCop? It is a bizarre, freakish mockery of social commentary that happens to be a super-awesome action movie. With robots and cyborgs. And Peter Weller!
Honestly, I believe this should have been an awesome franchise, but that it buckled because no one had the balls to take it where they should have. But then, they did with Alien, and that resulted in Alien3... which was awesome, but kinda killed the franchise. And then Joss Whedon walked in an gave the dead horse a facial.
(And, when you hear Joss's side of it, he says, "I wouldn't have ended it with Ripley making out with a pumpkin." Which is similar to his alternative to Return of the Jedi, "I wouldn't have ended it with Lando piloting the Falcon next to a weird frog person." Very creative, Joss, pointing out what is wrong without actually describing your better ideas. The correct answer is, "no magic powers for Ripley, and no Ripley either cuz she's dead," in the former and in the latter, "Ewoks, Ewoks, Ewoks." You suck, and if you had any sense, you would have let Ben Edlund write Serenity and have found a sea cucumber to direct it. If you were my twin, I'd get facial reconstruction surgery so no one would confuse me with you.)
A RoboCop remake? Really? Cuz, I discovered the remake thinking they could do a great 25th re-release in theaters... in 2012. Remakes, as a general rule, are a dumb idea. Remaking something young enough that I'd brag about fucking it? Fuck you.
And Darren Aronofsky? The only thing that could improve RoboCop is for it to be more like Pi, Requiem for a Dream, and The Wrestler. ...which actually might be the one good idea in there. The basic essence of RoboCop is so horrible that I you don't need to twist the knife to drive the point home. But you can. And if Darren Aronofsky does one thing well, it is draining the fun out of something (math, heroin, professional wrestling) and using it to make you give suicide serious consideration. I hope he does cyborgs next. Weeeeee!
And, why a remake instead of a fun, exploitative crossover? The Terminator franchise is on the rocks. Make this movie:
A remake of Robo-Cop will un-doubtably do a few things.
ReplyDeleteOne: Sell massively at the Box office, the hundreds of millions of lemmings known as the general consumer will eat it right up, just like every damn re-make there ever was.
Two: Severely trouble the true fans. Those who love the movie because it plucks all their strings to create a magical melody. Those poor bastards will probably cry themselves to sleep on premier night.
Three: Have a cast of sad sack actors who are either just blooming in their careers(Chris Pine,Anton Yelchin) or are scrapping hard to keep it alive (John Travolta).
I would like to at this time re-enforce a re-release idea, a digitally re-master or fuck even a 3D deal. I am one of the poor bastards who was too young to see the Original Star Wars Trilogy in theaters but thanks to Lucas I have the bragging rights to claim to have seen EVERY Star Wars film on a midnight showing, and yes one involved me yelling at the screen " What the Fuck is a JARJARBINKS!?"
I am already crying myself to sleep over this one. I just... I just don't understand it.
ReplyDeleteI'm fully on board with this re-release notion... it can't cost much to prep a pristine print for digital release, and you're going to have people who up to see it. Especially for anniversary-timed classics. Blade Runner, Star Wars... even shit like Tootsie and The Last Star Fighter would make money.