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Twenty-seven years ago Robocop hit cinema screens to an overwhelmingly positive reaction and now in 2014 we await the imminent release of the remake. We’ve endured the expected reaction of seething rage from diehard fans, but is it really that bad for further elements of the Robocop world to be explored?

With a recent outbreak of viral videos flooding the internet in the build up to its February 7th release, it’s interesting to see an active effort to explore new avenues unseen in the Paul Verhoeven original. The 1987 film examined ideas of big corporate greed as well as man as a consumer commodity by building a product that’s part man and part machine. Instead, Jose Padilha’s interpretation presents Joel Kinnaman’s Robocop as a “man inside of a machine”. It appears that instead of ripping Alex J. Murphy of his humanity it is exploring the very nature of humanity as Murphy adapts to his new guise and operating system controlling him that will create the illusion of freewill.

Unlike the original, there’s the idea in Padilha’s that Dr Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman) is the man solely responsible for creating Robocop rather than OCP’s Security Concepts department. We see in the trailer Murphy, on some sort of hi-tech medical bed, coming face-to-face with his creator, echoing ideas of Dr Frankenstein meeting his monster for the first time. Will Padilha explore this throughout the film? That remains to be seen but alluding to the idea, deliberately or not, is intriguing.

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There’s also the added element of the family dynamic after Murphy’s transformation, giving way to a more emotional approach to the original story. This is an area that is touched upon in the original as Murphy begins to regain his memory, with fragments appearing as troubling hallucinations, but it is not explored in depth. As Paul Verhoeven stamped his signature on Robocop, its looks increasing likely that Padilha is bravely attempting to do the same through his own artistic vision. He looks to be addressing the political issue of drone warfare and who is ultimately responsible for the machines, adding to the film’s relevance to today’s society.

 

Another interesting addition is the eccentric media mogul character, Pat Novak (Samuel L. Jackson). We see Novak actively campaigning for the use of Omni Corp EM 208 and E.D-209’s on American soil and poses the question of “Why is America so Robophobic”? The PR juggernaut controlling and shaping the image of big corporations today is one we are well accustomed to and elements of this are at play in Omni Corps attempts to expand their marketplace in the U.S.  We simply don’t get the same in the original making Pat Novak an intriguing character.

As near flawless as the original Robocop is, we never really get an insight into OCP and what came before their biggest success in robotics. We only see a snippet of OCP’s other ventures as Dick Jones is preparing to introduce E.D-209 to colleagues. There appears to be more of an origin story revealed in Padilha’s Robocop in the way we see EM 208 and Omni Corps’ other projects all of which paving the way to the R.C-2000 project.

RoboCop RemakeIt is also evident that Omni Corp are not just a major corporation in America but that there reach is far greater and extends all over the world, which you don’t necessarily get from the original. This is not to detract from the 1987 film, it is far easier to imagine (indeed, to expect) a huge corporation with a global reach and the resources which come with it.  As ludicrous as it may seem but you can almost believe that Omni Corp has the knowledge and means of merging the latest robotics with “Human Resources”.

What all Robocop and film fans can agree is that a remake cannot be any worse than the sequels the original spawned, “unholy creations” – if you will. No wacky re-programming of Prime Directives and no flight pack, thankfully. So, we shall wait with baited breath that all the signs pointing to a successful Robocop remake are more than mere hope and self-delusion.

Either way it will be interesting to find out.