People who decide to remake movies – especially past hits – have a lot on their shoulders. Not only does the director have to make a movie, he’ll also have to find a way to make sure the purists don’t bitch too much about the remake – if he cares.
Personally, I’ve learnt to manage my own expectations when watching movies like these. Y’know, those superhero-type movies that are now featured in IMAX screens with crazy CG effects that can stimulate your senses the way theatres decades ago never could, and make it seem as if you were in the movie itself.
But, I digress.
The Rating
For those of you looking for a lowdown on whether the RoboCop “let’s-go-with-black” 2014 is worth watching, in my personal opinion this version gets 3 stars out of 5: meaning it’s nice and shiny and all, but I wouldn’t be missing out much if I missed it.
Pros: Yes, they did use the old theme song just to get the fans of Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 version to drool a little. They’ve also got some pretty slick robot designs going on in there, and some of us might even think that we’re in the middle of a Metal Gear Solid game at the start of the movie (you’ll know what I mean). The movie did have some pretty good moments, like some – not many – of TV presenter Pat Novak (Samuel L. Jackson)’s lines as he tries to convince the public about the amazing advantages of drones and RoboCop.
Cons: Besides that, though, the movie isn’t so big on the themes that Paul Verhoeven’s had, so the plot and lines were generally pretty straight-forward even to a new audience. Even so, you’d expect RoboCop to make up for it with some awesome action scenes but in fact it’s nothing much to shout out about. Maybe 2028 is too near into the future for OmniCorp to impress us anyway.
Still, it’s a movie that you can enjoy if you haven’t anything else to watch in the theatres, and if this one does well enough we might be looking at a RoboCop 2 – these things tend to get darker the more sequels they have, don’t they?
Here’s a trailer of the movie if you haven’t checked it out yet:
This isn’t really a fair comparison, but if you haven’t caught Dredd (2012), the remake of Judge Dredd (1995), you need to. That’s a film that knows how to balance its action, effects and storyline in order to captivate its audience.
