RoboCop (2014)
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 Crime has a new enemy, dead or alive, this movie is unnecessary to kill a franchise.
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RoboCop is a 2014 American superhero film directed by José Padilha and written by Joshua Zetumer, Nick Schenk, Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner. It is a remake of the 1987 film of the same name also written by Neumeier and Miner. The film stars Joel Kinnaman as the title character, with Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson, Abbie Cornish and Jackie Earle Haley in supporting roles.
Plot
In 2028, OmniCorp is at the center of robot technology. While its drones have long been used by the military overseas, their use is forbidden in American law enforcement. However, OmniCorp gets a golden opportunity to crack that market when Detroit cop Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) is critically injured in the line of duty. By transforming Murphy into a cyborg, OmniCorp executives hope to rake in billions for their shareholders, but they forget one thing: There's still a man inside the machine.
Bad Qualities
- This film is completely unnecessary, as the third film had already killed the franchise twenty one years earlier. Not to mention the fact that there are many changes to the story compared to the original which do not help in the slightest with its other major flaws.
- Mediocre acting by Joel Kinnaman as the titular character, and he is nothing like Peter Weller's version of RoboCop as he is seriously miscast.
- Unlike the original classic and second film, which are both R-rated, this is PG-13, just like the third film, which indicates that the violence level is lower than in the first two films.
- There are some divergences from the original source material that were met with mixed responses overall:
- Alex got his accident from a car explosion than being injured by Clarence Boddicker and his gunmen.
- Some of the characters from the 1987 film like RoboCop/Alex Murphy's partner, Anne Lewis (who is replaced by a male person named Jack Lewis), the chief executive of OCP, The Old Man (replaced by Dennett Norton), Sergeant Warren Reed (replaced by the female Chief Karen Dean), along with fellow villains, Clarence Boddicker, and OCP Senior Vice President Dick Jones (who is replaced by CEO of OCP Raymond Sellars) do not appear in the remake.
- The storyline is not at least 100% percent faithful to the original 1987 movie and not retaining much of the material that makes it so special.
- Similar to Dragonball: Evolution, RoboCop is given a very questionable characterization.
- While making changes to a character is to be expected in an adaptation, the changes given to this incarnation of RoboCop are too drastic, to the point where he doesn't really feel or look like he's actually RoboCop. Also, the RoboCop suit looks nothing like the iconic one from the original three films, despite still looking cool.
- Instead of focusing more on action scenes, it is more of a drama than an action film. In fact, the film feels more like a police drama film than an exciting action thriller film.
- Average direction by José Padilha.
- While the visuals have been improved in some aspects compared to the previous Robocop movies, the special effects still could have been better as they try to be more video game-like, which can seem superficial for viewers.
- The humor falls flat compared to the humor in the previous films.
- Weaker social satire compared to in the 1987 original.
- The toy line for this movie (mostly by Jada toys) weren't all that great and they didn't sell very well.
Good Qualities
- The overall movie is still considered a huge improvement over Robocop 2 and Robocop 3 (especially the latter), avoiding most of the problems those sequels suffered from, so that is saying something.
- While it could have had a better grasp of the source material, it is still nice that the movie tried being different from the original, rather than rehashing it, and visually, it doesn't deviate too heavily.
- Also, the idea of the remake delving further into Alex's relationship with his family and the thing about him dealing with being a man or a machine is not a bad change at all, and some may be happy that Alex gets to live happily with his family in the end, unlike in the original.
- The soundtrack composed by Pedro Bromfman is very good, and the original theme can be heard in a few parts of the movie as well.
- Decent performances from Michael Keaton, Gary Oldman, and Samuel L. Jackson (who was absolutely hilarious as Pat Novak).
- While Joel Kinnaman's performance could have been better, there are still times where he does capture the charm of Peter Weller, and the scene where he sees most of his body gone after undergoing the procedure of becoming a cyborg is pretty sad.
- The cinematography looks pretty nice and befitting for the movie's more futuristic production values.
- Though the special effects leaves some to be desired as mentioned above, the action is still pretty good and moderately exciting, if not as good as the original film.
- It has some decent political and media satire.
- Some scenes are still fairly emotional, such as the scenes with Alex and his family, especially the part where Alex's system shuts down after shooting Raymond Sellars, before Alex comforts his wife (Clara) and his son (David), who are saddened by what has happened to him.
- The production values are pretty good overall and the designs of Robocop (both the 1.0 and 3.0 suit), the army of ED-209, and the ED-208 robots look pretty cool and appropriately futuristic.
- The original Robocop suit does make a cameo appearance in the film, which is pretty cool.
Reception
RoboCop received mixed reviews from critics, audiences and fans of the original film with praise for some of the cast's performances, some of the action, updates, style and political/media satire, but criticism for its lack of violence, social satire and humor compared to the original film. The film holds a 49% on Rotten Tomatoes with an average of 5.65/10 and a critic consensus that reads "While it's far better than it could have been, José Padilha's RoboCop remake fails to offer a significant improvement over the original.". On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average based on selected critic reviews, the film has a score of 52 out of 100 based on 41 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a "B+" grade, on an A+ to F scale.
Box Office
RoboCop opened up at #3 on its opening weekend grossing $21,681,430 domestically. It later made a domestic gross of $58,607,007. In overseas territories, the film grossed $184,081,958. Overall, the film made $242,688,965 against its $100 million budget. The film was deemed a box office bomb.
Trivia
- There were plans for a sequel and a reboot after it was released. Fortunately, the sequel was cancelled in September 2015 after the film failed at the box office.
- Instead, a direct sequel of that 1987 film, RoboCop Returns, will ignore the events of this film and the original two sequels.
- Russell Crowe, Michael Fassbender, and Chris Pine were all originally approached for the lead role.
