What the fuck? They've remade Robocop as a PG13 Movie?
This betrays everything I loved about the original.
Does it? Does it really?
The original Robocop in my opinion was about the possibilities of a police state and over the top violence used by police in real life on a regular basis. It's funny that the film was made so long before computers and the internet actually made it possible for the US Government to become a real life version of OCP. From the spoof ads to the nature of the big evil in the Robocop films(One and two-don't bother going any further) in many ways Paul Verhoeven's dark view of the future has become all too true.You only need to go to youtube and search police violence at protests to find out that a big chunk of our police forces are completely out of control at this point. Marry that with the truth we all now know about the NSA Surveillance programs and it is down right terrifying how much life imitates art these days.
What does this have to do with the Robocop remake?
When I first heard that the remake would be a PG 13 version I was apprehensive to say the least.
The original Robocop was ultra violent and that was the point. In the late eighties before the internet and checking in on Facebook, Twitter etc. it would have taken a pretty violent police force to get people to check in with authorities on a constant basis. We were terrified of anything that carried even a whiff of Orwellian undertones.
It's a sick sad world and as much as we need a Robocop more than ever, we don't need the same Robocop from the late 80's. Let's face it, if you build a Robocop in 2014 all you need to do is add a Facebook ap, a camera and throw us some points towards some stupid fucking farming game and most people would willingly comply and he never need fire a single shot. In 2014 you don't need bullets to coax Americans into giving up their rights. It's far easier to create a fear and conveniently be the only ones with a plan to protect us from that fear. Robocop doesn't have to be violent he just has to wrap himself in an American flag and promise safety.
This is not to say that Police brutality is no longer an issue. As I mentioned before you can find countless examples of it on youtube. Unfortunately in the comments under each of those videos there are just as many people who think the victim had it coming.
"Well they shouldn't have been protesting, the cops are just doing their job."
That's the mantra of a busy, complacent, and lazy public too scared to ask any real questions and too helpless to demand answers if they did ask questions. Robocop doesn't need to be overtly violent anymore. We just assume if police are involved that it's violent. The violence is no longer effective in the story telling because we all know it. Most of us just don't care.
I guess my point is that Robocop can totally work in 2014 as a PG 13 movie. My hope for the film is that much like the world we live in the surface level of things is sanitized and shiny to draw as many people in as possible. Hopefully, the layers underneath have the same grimey quality as the original. Even though I won't see a recreation of the Dad from that seventies show snorting coke off of a hooker's tits I look forward to seeing this new take on an American classic. I just hope the director/writers have put as much thought into it as I have.
In the end I will approach this the same way I do every remake. Ultimately, I won't care unless someone goes around destroying every copy of the original.
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