Hey Kids, Cartoons! Violent, R-Rated Cartoons!

Just a reminder that there was a time when the cocaine flowed freely in Hollywood, and network executives thought it'd be a great idea to take violent, R-rated movies and turn them into kids' cartoons.

While it definitely seems ill-advised and just plain wrong, you gotta remember that these movies came out during the golden age of video stores. Despite the fact that kids were prohibited from seeing these movies in a theater, they ended up seeing them anyway— in the comfort of their own homes! 

Parents routinely rented these films, brought 'em home and then watched them with the entire family. So kids were well versed in R-rated fare, and were big fans of their action hero stars. When you consider that, the idea of a watered down, kid-friendly version of the character doesn't seem quite so outlandish.

RoboCop, as you might imagine, was based on the 1987 film of the same name. The animated series ran for one season in 1988. As you might expect, the animated series was quite different from the hyperviolent film. Handguns were replaced by laser blasters, and the world of Old Detroit was much more technologically advanced. 

Rambo: The Force Of Freedom (aka simply Rambo) was based on the Rambo franchise. It ran for sixty five episodes in 1986.

Unlike the Rambo of the movies, who was a one man army, the animated version of the character led a special paramilitary unit called The Force Of Freedom. They regularly clashed with a terrorist organization called S.A.V.A.G.E. 

With its cast of colorfully nicknamed characters, the series was a knockoff of G.I. Joe.

Toxic Crusaders was a 1991 animated series based on Troma's The Toxic Avenger movie.

As usual for these kinds of series, they had to extensively revamp the character to make it suitable for kids. The animated version of Toxie lead a group of mutant misfits who were all environmental activists (!). 

Obviously the edgy violence and sexual innuendo of the movie was toned down or eliminated altogether as well.

Conan The Adventurer was an American/Canadian production that aired in 1992. It was based on the 1982 Conan The Barbarian film, as well as the books by Robert E. Howard. It ran two seasons, for a total of sixty five episodes.

As with all the other shows, Conan was saddled with a team that accompanied him on his adventures. And of course the violence was toned way down for children's TV, completely negating the point of the character.

What's even more amazing is that each of these shows featured its own action figure line! Kids could actually stroll into Toys R Us and buy RoboCop, Rambo, Toxic Avenger and Conan figures!

Personally I'm still waiting for kids' shows based on Eraserhead, Santa Sangre, Pink Flamingos, A Clockwork Orange and Silence Of The Lambs!

It Came From The Cineplex: Upgrade

Upgrade was written and directed by Leigh Whannell.

Whannell is an Australian writer and director, as well as an actor and producer. He previously wrote Saw (both the original short film and the full-length feature), Saw II, Saw III, Dead Silence, Insidious, Insidious: Chapter 2, Cooties (which I liked quite a bit) and The Mule (Which is about a man transporting drugs in his rectum, who has to keep from pooping them out for four day or else be arrested. No, really) and Insidious: Chapter 3.

He also played the character of Specs in Insidious, Insidious: Chapter 2, Insidious: Chapter and Insidious: The Last Key. And he had a small part in The Bye Bye Man, which I'm sure he considers his proudest achievement.

Whannell made his directorial debut with Insidious: The Last Key.

Upgrade is a decent little concoction that's a combination of thoughtful science fiction, superhero origin story, revenge movie and body horror. It feels like a throwback to the kind of film Arnold Schwarzenegger regularly made in the 1980s and 1990s. That's a good thing, by the way!

It's also a lean, tightly constructed movie that's fast paced and gets right down to business. Every scene is there for a reason and leads directly into the next, with absolutely no fat or superfluous dialogue or side quests. That's a rarity in these days of bloated, big budget effects movies.

It's a smartly written and thought provoking film, right up until the end. Unfortunately there's a massive plot hole in the final minutes that pretty much torpedoes the entire film. If you can manage to overlook that, then you'll likely have a good time.

The acting's all over the place, ranging from surprisingly good to shocking bad. Star Logan Marshall-Green is the MVP, playing a man slowly being taken over by a cybernetic intelligence, and becoming a passenger in his own body.

Upgrade's also a dark and nasty little film, featuring a surprising amount of gore. I guess that shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, seeing it was written and directed by the creator of the Saw franchise.

So far the movie's grossed a little under $12 million against its "$3 to $5 million" budget (I couldn't find an exact figure). That makes it a very mild success.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD! THIS IS A MOVIE BEST SEEN "COLD." YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!

The Plot:
Sometime in the near future, humanity has begun augmenting itself with cybernetic parts. Grey Trace (played by Logan Marshall-Green), is a traditional, hands-on kind of guy who shuns technology, and loves to restore old muscle cars. His wife Asha is just the opposite— she works for a high-tech company called Cobalt, and depends on the couples' smart home for everything.

Grey finishes working on a car for a client, and asks Asha to help him deliver it. They drive it to the advanced underground home of Eron Keen, a young, reclusive billionaire genius. While there, the social awkward Eron shows them his next innovation— an advanced computer chip called "STEM," which he claims will revolutionize the medical field. He tells them STEM could be used to restore mobility to paralyzed patients (FORESHADOWING ALERT!).

As they return home, Grey and Asha engage in witty romantic banter. Suddenly their self-driving car is hacked by someone. It speeds through the streets and flips over several times in a junkyard. As they come to, they're dragged from the wrecked car by several goons.

The leader of these thugs shoots Asha in the gut, as a horrified Grey looks on. When he tries to fight back, one of the goons shoots Grey in the spine, instantly paralyzing him from the neck down. They leave him for dead and scatter. Unable to move, Grey helplessly watches as Asha dies a few feet away from him. Well that all got dark quickly!

Cut to Grey recovering in the hospital, as he stares despondently out the window. Eventually he's sent home, where he's given a high-tech wheelchair that does virtually everything for him. His mother Pam moves in to help him adjust, as Grey falls into a deep depression.

Grey's visited by Detective Cortez, who's working on Asha's murder case. Unfortunately she has no leads and says she may never find out who's responsible.

Despondent, Grey tries to commit suicide by ordering his automated chair to give him an overdose of pain meds. The chair feeds him pill after pill, but stops when it reaches the maximum daily dose. He becomes even more depressed when he realizes he can't even kill himself.

A few days later Grey's visited by Eron, who has a proposition for him. He offers to implant STEM into Grey's spinal cord, which will bypass his injury and allow him to walk again. Grey, who's not a fan of technology, tells him to get lost. Eron, who we've seen has no idea how to act around people, suddenly becomes an expert in psychology, and tells Grey that Asha would want him to walk again. Grey finally agrees.

But Eron's offer comes with a catch— the STEM chip hasn't been approved by the medical community, so he tells Grey he has to keep the operation a secret. Grey agrees, even signing (how?) a non-disclosure agreement. 

Eron implants the STEM chip into Grey's neck. He wakes up sometime later, and within minutes he's up and moving around, without needing to relearn how to walk. That STEM must be one hell of a microchip!

Grey, who now has a reason to live again, returns home. Some time later he's shocked when he hears a voice in his head. It turns out it's STEM, which, in addition to being able to restore Grey's mobility, apparently also contains a sophisticated artificial intelligence. I guess Eron forgot to mention that.

After chatting a while, STEM casually mentions he's been studying drone footage of Asha's murder. He plays the recording, which shows one of the men shooting Asha with a gun implanted in his hand. STEM analyzes the man's face, and says his name is Fisk.

Grey starts to call Cortez, but STEM warns that she'll want to know where he got his info. STEM discovers the identity of another of the goons, whose name is Serk. He then suggests Grey pay him a visit.

Grey sneaks out and goes to Serk's address. He waits for him to leave, then breaks into his house. He checks his emails and finds several from the Old Dog bar. Just then Serk returns, sees Grey and attacks. Grey's no match for the thug, and gets his ass handed to him. STEM asks Grey for permission to temporarily take over his body, and he quickly agrees.

Under STEM's control, Grey expertly dodges Serk's attacks and strikes back with brutal and precise punches. Serk tries to stab Grey, but STEM grabs the knife from him and practically slices off the top of his head, killing him. STEM returns control to Grey, who vomits at what "he" just did. STEM tells Grey he'll need to remove all traces of his presence from the apartment.

Later Eron visits Grey again. He says he's been monitoring his whereabouts, and knows he went to Serk's house and killed him. He reminds Grey of his nondisclosure agreement, and orders him to knock off his little investigation.

Cortez, who's apparently the only cop in the city, sees Serk's body in the morgue. She reviews some more convenient drone footage of his house, and sees Grey zoom by in his motorized wheelchair. Intrigued, she pays Grey a visit and questions why he was near Serk's home at the time of his death. Grey asks if she's seriously considering a quadriplegic as a suspect.

After Cortez leaves, Grey drives his wheelchair to the Old Dog, a wretched hive of scum and villainy. He awkwardly asks anyone who had anything to do with Asha's murder to step forward. A man named Tolan says he was there, grabs Grey's wheelchair and pushes him into the bathroom. Two other thugs follow, and Tolan tells Grey that cripple or not, he's gonna mess him up.

Of course Grey tells STEM to take over, and he easily beats the thugs senseless. STEM then starts torturing Tolan with a knife, until he finally blurts out that the man who killed Asha was named Fisk. STEM then kills Tolan for his trouble.

Suddenly STEM says he detects Eron trying to shut him down. He says if that happens, Grey will be helpless once again. He gives Grey the address of a hacker named Jamie, who can protect him from Aaron. Grey runs out of the bar, leaving his wheelchair behind.

A little later Fisk shows up at the Old Dog, where he finds his pal Tolan's body. As a cyborg, Tolan had a bionic eye, which Fisk uses to see "Grey" torturing and killing him. He turns his attention to the bartender, furious with him for doing nothing as Tolan was murdered. Fisk, who also has cybernetic enhancements, sneezes out a cloud of nanites. They float over to the bartender and infiltrate his body, liquefying him from the inside out.

Grey arrives at Jamie's apartment, just as Eron starts shutting down STEM. He loses control of his legs, and begins crawling up the stairs. STEM gives Grey a reboot code, and tells him to write it on his arm. Grey manages to make it to Jamie's apartment, and gives her a wad of cash. She drags him inside.

Jamie uses the reboot code to restore STEM and protect him from further meddling. Unfortunately it'll take several minutes for him to reboot, leaving Grey helpless. Just then Jamie glances at a security camera, where she sees Fisk and his cyborg henchman Jeffries enter the building. She and her hacker pals vamoose, leaving Grey behind.

Fisk enters Jamie's apartment, where he finds the helpless Grey. Just as they're about to kill him, STEM comes back online. He takes over Grey's body, and there's a big setpiece battle between the three cyborgs. Jeffries corners Grey and tries to shoot him with his literal hand gun. STEM grabs Jeffries' gun arm and causes him to shoot himself in the head. STEM/Grey then escapes.

Grey returns home, where an astonished Pam sees him walking. He tells her about STEM, but swears her to secrecy. Cortez shows up again, wondering why Grey's wheelchair was found at the scene of another murder. He makes up a story about being attacked by muggers, and a dubious Cortez pretends to buy it and leaves.

Grey then roars off in his car, intending to find and kill Fisk once and for all. Unknown to him, Cortez follows him in her own car. STEM notes that Cortez placed a bug in Grey's jacket. He finds it and destroys it. There's another big action setpiece in which Cortez chases after Grey on a crowded highway. Finally STEM takes control of a self-driving car and slams it into Cortez's manually-driven auto, allowing Grey to get away.

STEM tracks Fisk to his home, and Grey confronts him there. They have another big cyborg battle, but it goes badly for Grey, as Fisk can anticipate his every move. Eventually STEM manages to get the upper hand. Fisk admits he and his cyborg ex-mercenary pals were hired to attack Grey, and Asha getting in the way was just a bonus. Enraged, Grey shoves Fisk backward, impaling him on a piece of glass that runs through his head.

Grey checks Fisk's phone and hears a message from Eron, ordering him to go after Grey.

Grey returns to Eron's lab, intending to kill him. He accuses Eron of having him crippled, just so he'd have a test subject for his STEM project. He pulls a gun on Eron, but just then Cortez somehow appears and orders him to stand down.

Eron confesses the plan wasn't his idea, but STEM's. As STEM grew more and more intelligent, it decided it wanted a human body. Somehow STEM blackmailed Eron into hiring Fisk and crew to cripple Grey. Just how a microchip can blackmail a person is left to our imaginations.

Horrified, Grey stabs himself in the hand to prevent him from killing anyone. STEM then takes control of his body without permission. He stabs Eron in the head and incapacitates Cortez. Grey struggles mightily to regain control over his own body. He manages to raise his gun and shoot himself in the neck, destroying STEM.

Grey wakes up in the hospital again. He's shocked when he sees Asha sitting at his bedside. When he asks what's going on, she tells him he's been in a coma since the accident. Grey and Asha embrace, as they have their lives back. Jesus Christ! Not the old "It Was All A Dream" ending!

Smash cut back to Fisk's house, where STEM is now completely in control of Grey's body. He monologues to Cortez that he placed Grey's consciousness in a fantasy world inside his head, where he'll live out his life with Asha and never bother him again. He gloats that he finally has a body of his own, and reveals he has big plans for the world. He kills Cortez and leaves.

Thoughts:
• For some reason, instead of using traditional onscreen text, the opening credits are spoken by a female voiceover, accompanied by a visual soundwave.

• The film was originally titled STEM, which makes some amount of sense. "Upgrade" is catchier and more descriptive though, so I can see why they changed it.

• Upgrade was filmed in and around Melbourne, which just happens to be the hometown of writer/director Leigh Whannell.

• There aren't a lot of flashy special effects in the film, but what's there is very well done and totally believable. The production design was pretty good as well, especially Asha's futuristic self-driving car and Eron's high-tech medical lab.

• Long-time readers of my reviews know I hate it when a sci-fi movie features amazingly advanced technology, but is set in the far off future of ten years from now. Happily, Upgrade doesn't fall into that trap. Like Robocop, it never specifies just when it's happening. All we need to know is it takes place at some point in the nebulous future.

• Speaking of Robocop... You'd have to be blind not to realize that Upgrade features pretty much the exact same plot. Hero has a happy family life, he's brutally attacked by thugs and left for dead, he's given a second chance at life through the miracle of technology and gets sweet revenge on those who wronged him.

In fact the scene in which Grey's attacked and paralyzed by a group of cybernetic thugs is practically a shot-for-shot duplication of Murphy's death in Robocop (the original, not the remake).

Eh, I'm fine with that. At this point it's virtually impossible to come up with a completely original idea. Upgrade puts just enough of a spin on the tale to sufficiently differentiate itself from the source material.

• While we're on the subject of originality, let's talk movie trailers, shall we? The Upgrade trailer was released the first week of April, 2018.

In it, Grey Trace is a mechanic who's been brutally attacked and paralyzed. He's then implanted with an advanced microchip called STEM, which restores his mobility and gives him superhuman powers.

Grey sneaks into Serk's apartment looking for evidence. Serk returns and begins beating Grey senseless. STEM's voice asks for permission to take control of Grey's body. He manages to croak out a "yes" as Serk strangles him. 

Suddenly Grey's body, now under Serk's control, springs upright off the floor.

STEM expertly blocks each of Serk's punches with machine-like precision.

The fight moves into the kitchen, where STEM starts busting dishes over Serk's head, as a helpless Grey looks on.

Serk pulls a knife on Grey, but STEM grabs it from him and stabs him several times before killing him. STEM returns control to Grey, who's shaken and horrified by what "he's" just done.

All in all an intense scene from a pretty cool trailer.

Apparently Sony Pictures were impressed by the Upgrade trailer as well. Just two weeks after it was released, Sony debuted the trailer for their upcoming Venom movie, starring Tom Hardy.

In the film, journalist Eddie Brock's been infected by an alien symbiote, which gives him superhuman powers. His apartment is invaded by two thugs, with the intent to kill him. 

Suddenly the Venom symbiote takes control of Eddie's body and springs into action.

Venom expertly blocks each of thugs' punches with inhuman precision. It also forms gooey extensions from Eddie's limbs, and uses them to choke and thrash the thugs.

The fight moves to another area of the apartment, where Venom starts punching a thug's head, as a helpless Eddie looks on.

After killing the thugs, Venom returns control to Eddie, who's shaken and horrified by what "he's" just done.

Jesus Christ! It's the same goddamned trailer, featuring the same goddamned scene from a movie with the same goddamned premise! It's so blatant it's shocking!

Hell, Venom's Tom Hardy even bears a passing resemblance to Upgrade's Logan Marshall-Green!

So what the heck's going on? Did Sony blatantly copy Upgrade, or is it all just a whopper of an unlikely coincidence? It's hard to say. 

Upgrade began filming in March of 2017, while Venom started shooting in October of the same year. So there was definitely time for Sony to see what Blumhouse Productions was up to and "draw inspiration" from them. I don't have any evidence either way (except for the trailer), so I'll have to reluctantly give Sony the benefit of the doubt. It's still pretty amazing though.

• Logan Marshall-Green turns in a top notch performance as main character Grey Trace. He's particularly amazing in the above mentioned scene in which STEM takes over his body and begins beating Serk senseless. 

Somehow Marshall-Green makes it look like his body's acting of its own accord, while he looks on in shock at what it's doing. It's very impressive, and quite convincing! I'm betting he had to practice the scene quite a bit.

• Harrison Gilbertson, who plays billionaire tech genius Eron, turns in one of the worst acting performances I've seen outside an Ed Wood movie. Apparently when the director told him to play Eron as a socially awkward outsider, Gilbertson heard "wooden, emotionless cipher" and acted the role accordingly. Seriously, he's bad.

• I'm sure it's purely a coincidence that STEM speaks in a soft, melodious and emotionless voice that sounds nearly identical to HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Yep, totally unintentional!

• So Eron invents the STEM chip, but can't test it on a human subject due to the medical community's pesky laws and regulations. He decides to implant the chip into Grey anyway, swearing him to absolute secrecy and making him sign a non-disclosure contract. The operation's a success, and Eron can miraculously walk again.

Did Eron ever stop for a minute to think about any of this? Does he really expect Grey to pretend to be paralyzed every time he goes outside from now on? Did Grey realize he'd only be able to walk inside his home, lest people discover his secret?

It's inevitable that eventually someone would mess up at some point, and the secret would be out.

On the other hand, I guess Eron wasn't really acting of his own accord, and was forced into all this by STEM. I guess STEM didn't think very far ahead either then!

• All movies contain plot holes— it's just an inescapable fact of life. Some of them are minor and can be easily hand-waved away, while others are so big you could drive a tank through them.

Upgrade contains what may be the granddaddy of all plot holes— one so big it pretty torpedoes the entire movie.

See, in the final minutes of the film, it's revealed that everything that happened up to that point was orchestrated by— get ready for it— STEM itself! 

Yep, that's right! Somehow a goddamned microchip arranged for Grey and Eron to become acquainted. It then caused Grey's car wreck, and secretly hired a team of mercs to brutally paralyze him. STEM then somehow blackmailed Eron into implanting it in Grey's neck, restoring his mobility. 

It then revealed itself to Grey, and manipulated him into giving it control of his body. STEM then killed everyone who knew about his plan, tucked Grey's mind away in a fantasy world, and walked away as the sole proprietor of his very own human body.

That's pretty impressive for something the size of a dime!

So here's the plot hole— how did STEM manage to orchestrate any aspect of this intricate plan? Sure, it's an advanced A.I., but it's housed inside an immobile microchip, for frak's sake! It can't move or affect its surroundings in any way. Heck, STEM can't even talk until it's implanted into Grey's neck! How does an inanimate object blackmail a person? It'd be like your lamp suddenly threatening you!

Even if STEM could connect to the internet through wi-fi, I still don't see how it could force anyone to do anything against their will. As soon as it started making noises about blackmail, all Eron had to do was drop STEM on the floor and step on it.

Writer/director Leigh Whannell was smart enough to reveal this plot twist in literally the final seconds of the film, so the audience doesn't have enough time to stop and think about how monumentally silly it is.

• The concept of Jeffries having a shotgun literally built into his arm was pretty darned cool.

It was also done before— sort of. Back in the 1990s, X-Men comics featured a character named Random, whose arm could transform into an organic shotgun. Oh well. It was nice to finally see the idea realized in live action, I guess.

• As a cyborg, Fisk has the ability to sneeze out a cloud of nanites, which can dismantle an enemy from the inside. A couple things here. Hopefully Fisk is immune to these nanites, or they're programmed not to bother him, lest he be killed by his own weapon. Secondly, let's hope he can control when he releases the nanites. Otherwise, he's gonna kill hundreds of people every time he gets the sniffles.

• At the end of the movie, Grey goes back to Eron's house to kill him. Before he can pull the trigger, Cortez appears and stops him. Did I miss a line of dialogue or something? How the holy hell did she not only get to Eron's house right behind Grey, but know that's where he was headed? 

Yes, Cortez placed a tracker in Eron's jacket, but he tossed it out the window before he caused her to crash. I don't see any way in hell she could possibly have known he was heading for Eron's.

Upgrade is a dark and gritty throwback to 1980s sci-fi action movies, that's also smartly written and thought provoking. It also a combination of several completely different genres, that still somehow manages to work. There's a massive plothole in the final minutes of the film, but other than that it's a decent little film. I give it a good solid B.

Happy 30th Anniversary To Robocop!

Happy 30th Anniversary to Paul Verhoeven's classic film Robocop, which premiered on July 17, 1987. For the two or three people out there who've never seen it, it's a truly subversive movie that offers a scathing commentary on 1980s business and politics, wrapped up in the guise of a violent sci-fi film. It's the thinking man's action movie!

The movie's definitely a product of its time, as it satirizes the Reagan era, corporate takeovers and the growing divide between the rich and poor. It also completely failed to predict both the cell phone revolution as well as the internet.

Despite this, the movie's somehow eerily prescient. It correctly predicted the influence the media has on our lives, the dumbing down of popular entertainment, and the contradictory way technology actually tends to isolate us instead as it brings people together. It even accurately predicted the deterioration and downfall of Detroit!

Best of all, it's ultra violent and gory as hell, and damned near got an X-rating back in 1987! What more could you ask for?

Jesus Christ, I remember sitting in the theater watching this movie first run back in 1987! Where the hell has the time gone?

I'd buy that for a dollar!

It Came From The Cineplex: Robocop (2014)

Let's get this out of the way first: I Didn't Hate It.

Believe me, no one's more surprised by that statement than I am. I've been a big fan of the original film since I saw it in the theater in 1987, and in my mind nothing could possibly top it. Ever since this remake was first announced I've been anticipating a disaster, fully prepared to hate it. The trailer that debuted last year did nothing but confirm my fears. I'm happy to admit I was wrong about the film. It's not better than the original of course, but all things considered it's actually pretty good. It's definitely leaps and bounds better than the abomination that was the execrable Total Recall remake from a couple years back.

In a way I kind of feel sorry for this film. No matter how well it turned out, no one will ever be able to judge it without comparing it to the original. It just can't be done. It might have been better if they'd changed the names of the characters and called it CyberCop or something like that.

Robocop (2014) was directed by Jose Padilha and written by Joshua Zetumer. Believe it or not, the remake was first announced way back in 2005 and was delayed numerous times before finally being filmed. Wow, nine years in production? Somebody really, really wanted to make a new Robocop movie!

Even though the film is better than it has any right to be, it's not perfect. It lacks the over the top violence and satirical edge of the original, and worst of all it has no memorable villains.

Maybe those changes are for the best though. Maybe the filmmakers realized they could never make a better movie than the original, so they decided to make a different one instead. To approach the story from another angle and explore other aspects of it. If Hollywood insists on remaking everything, perhaps that's the way to go.

SPOILERS AHEAD (FOR A 27 YEAR OLD STORY)!

The Plot:
It's RoboCop. Surely by now you know the story. Honest cop Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) is grievously injured and turned into a robot designed to be the perfect policeman. Gradually his humanity overcomes his soulless programming and he brings his "killers" to justice.

Thoughts:
• The original film was initially rated X due to its glorious, outlandish comic book violence. It had to be edited several times before getting an R rating. This version is rated PG-13 so the whole family can see it and pump up the box office take. 

The violence may have been toned down, but it still contains its share of disturbing imagery that's unsuitable for kids. That didn't stop the Parent Of The Year I saw bring their four and five year old kids to the theater when I saw it though.

• This film is set in 2028, which is a dumb move in my opinion. Placing your sci-fi movie too close to the present is just asking for trouble, especially when your predictions don't come to pass.

The original was set in a vague and unspecified near future, which seems like a much better solution to me.

• In the original film Murphy's partner was a white woman named Lewis. Lewis is back for the remake, but is now a black man. Sigh... 

So why the change? Is it White Guilt, or are the filmmakers trying to appeal to the widest possible audience, believing that blacks won't see a movie if there's no one of color in it?

Either way, it's a step back. The original Lewis was a capable, ass-kicking cop who took audiences by surprise back in 1987. There's nothing unusual about New Lewis, and he's about as exciting as spent dish water. His main skill seems to be getting shot in the gut, which he does twice (!) in the film.

• In the original (Sorry! I told you it's impossible to not compare them!) Murphy is horrifically tortured by sadistic criminal Clarence Boddicker before being killed. Here Murphy's simply and plainly blown up real good by a car bomb. Yawn.

That said, this time around we see the aftermath of the attack on Murphy's life, and it's suitably gruesome.

• According to Dr. Norton (Gary Oldman), Murphy suffers from fourth degree burns. You don't hear about them often, but believe it or not they're a real thing. They generally affect deep tissue, muscle and bone.

• After Murphy is transformed into Robocop, he believes he's been encased inside an armored suit. Dr. Norton demonstrates that this is not the case by removing his robotic parts, revealing that all that's left of Murphy is his brain, part of his head, his heart, lungs and right hand.

This scene was absolutely horrifying, and pushed the PG-13 rating to the limit.

This is one area where the new version is an improvement. The original film was always kind of vague as to just how much of Murphy was left. We saw the skin of his face stretched over his robotic skull and got a line or two about his "extremely simple digestive system" and that was pretty much it. I'm betting the producers of the original would have loved to have filmed a "reveal" scene like we get here, but were limited by their budget and the technology of the time.

• In the original film, when project leader Bob Morton is told that surgeons were able to save Murphy's arm, he tells them to lose it. In this version they've inexplicably salvaged Murphy's right hand. I can't for the life of me figure out why. Is it so he could still use touch pads? So he'd have a physical link to his humanity? Because they thought it would look kewl?

Keeping the hand makes no sense on so many levels. For one thing it's constantly bare and unprotected. Seems like an easy target to me. They don't have gloves in the future? And how is it even still "alive?" When Norton removes all of Murphy's robotic parts, the hand is just kind of laying there on the table. Are there real arteries and veins that thread from Murphy's heart, down through his robot arm and to his wrist? Lose the hand!

• At the beginning and end of the film, Robocop's body is silver. This new design echoes the 1987 version, but updates it for 2014. I liked it quite a bit.

Unfortunately they couldn't leave well enough alone. OmniCorp president Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton) says he wants RoboCop to look more "tactical," and suggests a sleeker black armor. Unfortunately Murphy sports the black armored look through the majority of the film.

Whether it was intended or not, this scene felt to me like a dig at fans of the original film.

Try as I might, I don't care for the black armor. I don't know what it is about the design, but it looks absolutely nothing like a robot. It looks like exactly what it is— a man in a close fitting armored suit. It looks more like an all black Iron Man or Batman suit than a robot. 

They can foley all the clunking footsteps and servomotor whines into the soundtrack they want, but it isn't gonna convince me I'm watching a robot.

It doesn't help that Murphy keeps raising the visor on the black helmet, revealing Joel Kinnaman's incongruous baby face within.

If there are any sequels to this film (which seems likely) I hope they leave him silver.

• Speaking of Raymond Sellars, he's obviously meant to be an evil Steve Jobs analog. He even says, "People don't know what they want until you show it to them," which is an actual Jobs quote.

• One huge thing that's missing from this new version: a main villain! The original film had a very colorful and memorable bad guy in Clarence Boddicker. This version has no one who even comes close. There's a drug kingpin named Antoine Vallon, but he's dull, unremarkable and a very, very poor substitute for Boddicker.

Instead of one main bad guy, here we get a series of lesser ones. With the exception of Murphy's family pretty much everyone in the film is a villain to a degree. Even Dr. Norton isn't without sin. He lies to Murphy and treats him like an experiment instead of a person before becoming more sympathetic toward him late in the film.
 
• Murphy's wife and son have much bigger parts in this film, even going so far as to meet and have contact with him after his transformation. In the original his family pretty much disappeared (except for the occasional flashback) once Murphy "died." 

I didn't mind this change. It put a different spin on the story and kept it from being a complete cookie cutter remake.

• I miss the satirical elements of the original film. Where's Bixby Snyder, star of It's Not My Problem? You know, the guy who constantly said, "I'd buy that for a dollar!" Where's T.J. Lazer? Where's the 6000 SUX?

Instead we get Pat Novak (Samuel L. Jackson), a Bill O'Reilly type of TV blowhard who's trying to sell Americans on the idea of robotic drones for our protection.

I suppose this was an inevitable change. The original film was a product of its time, and poked fun at the issues of its day. It's only logical that this aspect would be updated for the 21st Century. I just wish they'd have have done so a bit more colorfully. 

• I may have to retire my Samuel L. Jackson Hair Rule. A while back I posited that when Jackson is bald in a film, it has a high chance of being good. When he has a bizarre hairstyle, chances are it's gonna be bad.

Jackson has odd hair in this film and it's not that bad. Maybe my Rule was wrong after all.

• The ED-209 robot in the original film was big, blundering and dumb. It had a lot of personality for a machine.

These new updated ED-209s have absolutely zero screen presence. They look OK, but just aren't as much fun as the originals.

These new ones are just as dumb as their predecessors though. Robocop hides behind one and tricks the other ED units into blowing up their kin. And this despite the fact that their readouts consistently said, "SEARCHING FOR CLEAR SHOT."

• The first film was full of quotable lines that people are still uttering today. I can't think of a single one worth repeating in this remake. 

Rick Mattox (Jackie Earl Haley) offers a weak homage to the original when he says, "I wouldn't buy that for a dollar," but the line thuds to the ground like a sack of wet laundry.

• They used parts of Basil Poledouris' original RoboCop theme a couple of times in the score. It made me positively giddy to hear the old score, but it may have been a mistake. Hearing it made me want to see the original movie on the big screen again, instead of this version.

By the way, last year I examined the official trailer for the film and posted my predictions and assumptions about the plot. So how'd I do? Eh, not so well. Out of the 18 predictions I made, 12 of them were correct. 12 out of 18 sounds pretty good to me. However, that's 66%, which the test grade calculator tells me is a D. Really? More than half right and I still get a D? No wonder I hated school.

An unwanted and unnecessary remake of a classic action film, RoboCop (2014) turned out much better than it had any right to. I can't believe I'm writing this, but I give it a B.

I've Got A Slightly Less Bad, But Still Ominous Feeling About This: The Robocop Remake Trailer

Well, for good or ill the trailer for the upcoming RoboCop remake premiered this week.

RoboCop is a movie that doesn't need to be remade. The original film is as close to perfect as a movie can be. Sure it's full of action, explosions and over-the-top violence, but it has its share of smart moments as well-- it's a thinking man's action film. Murphy's horrifying transformation and his attempts to reconnect with his lost humanity, the depiction of the downfall of American industry and plenty of sharp, social satire (most of which is found in the ubiquitous TV commercials interspersed throughout the film) all work to make it a cut above the usual action fare. I don't see any way to improve it.

Back in May I blogged about the first on-set photos of the new RoboCop suit and how awful I thought it looked. I hated the black, generic Iron Man-like armor and the incongruous sight of actor Joel Kinnaman's baby face sticking uncovered out of the helmet. Everything about it screamed "a ten on the absolute and unqualified disaster Richter scale" to me.

The trailer has calmed my fears slightly. After seeing it I now have a small, atom-thick scrap of hope that it won't be the complete and utter waste of time that it probably will be.

It's slickly produced, the pieces are all there and it has a surprisingly excellent cast. It appears to hit all the same beats as the original (making me wonder "why bother?") with few or no surprises, and worst of all, the satire, humor and humanity all seem to be missing. I see no evidence of any kind of the social commentary that made the original so much fun to watch.

Let's dissect this trailer and give it far, far, more obsessive attention than it deserves, shall we?

As the trailer opens we see a run-down, decrepit city in the year 2028. 

OK, already here's something I don't like-- setting the film in a specific year. 2028 is only fifteen short years from now. Will we really have the technology to put a man's brain inside a robot in fifteen years? I doubt it. You're just asking for trouble when you lock your film into a specific time period. Either the things you predict won't have come true by then or they'll have happened way before then. Either way you and your film just end up looking stupid.

The original movie didn't specify any date. It was vaguely set "in the near future," which is a much smarter move.

OK, back to the run-down, decrepit city. Is this supposed to be Detroit, where the original film was set? Is there a large mountain range like that anywhere near Detroit? I'm thinking nope. This looks more like someplace in the Middle East.

Note that there are what appear to be ED-209 enforcement droids, as well as several RoboCops, patrolling the streets.

From this I'm assuming that this world has all-robotic RoboCop drones that perform less than perfectly or lack human judgement and Alex Murphy will become the first human/robotic hybrid.

Well now this is definitely Detroit! And it could be the present day, not 2028.

Hey, hey, don't send hate mail, Detroit residents (if there are any left). I kid because I love.

Oh boy, another futuristic computer interface that uses broad, sweeping physical gestures to move files around instead of a mouse. I'll bet everyone in all these recent sci-fi movies has tremendous upper-body strength after hurling their computer files to and fro all day.

Is she watching Frank Sinatra while she's supposed to be looking at RoboCop's CAT-Scan? I guess Ol' Blue Eyes still has fans in 2028.

Hey, Iron Man! How's it going?

Samuel L. Jackson!!! What in the name of ill-conceived remakes is he doing here?

I assume he's the equivalent of The Old Man character (played by Dan O'Herlihy in the original)? Except here his name's "Pat Novak." Yawn.

I have an ominous feeling that the "Samuel L. Jackson Hair Rule" may be in full effect here. What's that, you ask? As a general rule, the quality of a film is inversely proportional to how much hair SLJ has and how oddly its styled. If he's completely bald in a film then it's more likely to be good (see The Avengers). If he's got weird hair, well then you're in for a bad time (see The Spirit). 

It doesn't work every time (he had hair in Django Unchained and that one was pretty good), but it's true more often than not.

Gary Oldman!!! I'll say this for it, this gilded turd has an impressive cast. If nothing else it'll be amusing to watch and try to decide whose career it'll damage the most.

Apparently he'll be playing the doctor who puts Murphy back together again.

Well I'll be... Michael Keaton apparently wandered onto the set while the cameras were rolling. Doesn't it look for all the world like they're filming him during the script read-through?

He's supposedly playing the head of OminCorp, so I guess he's the equivalent of the Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) character from the original.

Jay Baruchel, no!!! I'm betting he'll be the Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer) analog.

This is the scene in which the remake craps all over the legacy of the original film. Keaton and Baruchel are seen here critiquing the RoboCop design. Note that the image on the screen is clearly the original 1987 version, and Keaton is saying he doesn't like it and wants it to look more tactical and to make it black. Har, har.

This is obviously meant to be a shout out or a little in-joke, but to me it just comes off as a big F-U to the fans of the original movie.

Aw, look. Alex Murphy's got the perfect family. A beautiful wife, an adorable kid... things couldn't be any better. Nothing could ever possibly go wrong.

Err... um, Murphy, maybe you shouldn't...

Oh Sweet Jesus!

This marks a fundamental difference from the original. There Murphy was personally tortured and slaughtered (with gusto!) by Clarence Boddicker and his gang. This put a face on those who took everything from him and gave Murphy a nemesis he could hunt down. 

It also gave us one of the best villains in all of moviedom. 

I'm not seeing anyone in this trailer who appears to be a Boddicker analog. I suppose it's possible they just didn't have time to cram everyone into it and had to leave him out, but his absence is making me think that in this version, the person responsible for Murphy's slaughter and the creation of RoboCop is supposed to be a secret and will be part of a big reveal in the third act.

So who orders the hit? My guess is one of the above.

Of course I'm basing this theory on scenes from one measly trailer and I could be way, way off, so take all this with a large grain of salt.

I thought MGM went bankrupt a few years ago? Isn't that why The Hobbit was delayed for a decade or so? I guess they must have got better.

"We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better. Stronger. Faster."

Although it sounds weird, Gary Oldman's statement that Murphy suffers from FOURTH degree burns is technically accurate. You don't hear about them often, but there really is such a thing. Of course a fourth degree burn affects tissues well below the skin, such as muscle and even bone, which isn't evident here. His burns look like third degree at most.

Also note the x-ray at the right. It shows Murphy's left leg terminating just above the knee, but his entire leg seems to be gone as we see him lying on the bed. Whoops!

"Why in the name of Data's Pasty Bumhole would you leave me with one flesh and blood hand?"

Indeed. Why would you give a robot a real hand? What possible advantage would there be? So he can use palm scanners to enter buildings?

Note that in the original movie the Bob Morton character was inspecting RoboCop during his construction and noticed that he still had a flesh and blood arm. When he asked why, a medical technician said something about how they were able to save it and Morton barked, "Lose the arm!" 

Is the real arm in this film some kind of weird homage to that scene? 

And even if for some bizarre reason you decided to leave him with a real arm, why the hell would you leave his hand totally unprotected? Do they not have armored gloves in 2028?

And how the hell would that even work? Is it a robotic arm with a flesh and blood hand stuck to the wrist?

The real arm heavily implies that in this remake Murphy's mutilated body is somehow stuffed inside the robotic suit. This was definitely not the case in the original. There RoboCop had a completely robotic body, not a suit. The only parts of Murphy that remained were his brain, a couple of internal organs and the skin of his face that was stretched over his robotic skull.

"What do you mean they cancelled True Blood? Who's responsible for this? Tell me!!!"

OK, I have to admit that he looks pretty cool when his helmet finally slams down in place. So why do I have a feeling that he's gonna spend most of the movie with it up?

When I first saw this on-set photo, it appeared that he wouldn't be wearing any kind of protective visor, which I thought was a monumentally stupid idea. But after seeing the trailer it appears that the two red dots at the top of his helmet are most likely CGI markers so they can add a visor in post production-- I guess because it would be too hard for Kinnaman to see through the extremely narrow slit?

So it looks like RoboCop will have several different looks throughout the film. If I had to guess I'd say he starts out his proper silver color here-- which again looks pretty cool and fairly close to the original-- and then gets a glossy black paint job near the end of the film.

I much prefer the original silver coloring, but that said I admit the black doesn't look too awfully bad (in this scene at least), especially with the infrared eye slit.

"Michael, I'm detecting a felony in the area."

"Thanks, KITT!"

"Also Michael, when are you going to take me in for an oil change? I'm way past the 5 month or 5,000 mile due date."

Here's the OmniCorp building. I guess they're no longer OCP, Omni Consumer Products. Not sure why they would bother to change something minor like that, but there you go.

Here's another huge deviation from the original: it appears that Murphy's wife knows what happened (she even authorizes the robofication procedure!) and interacts with him after his transformation. In the original his wife and son only appeared in flashbacks.

I can't tell yet if this is a good thing or a stupid thing.

"Dad?"

"Yes, son."

"Um... why did they leave your right arm and hand intact?"

"To provide me with a link to my former humanity, so I don't become a soulless machine. Understand, buddy?"

"Uh-huh. But isn't a flesh and blood arm a weakness? Doesn't it make you less strong?"

"No, sport. It makes me stronger on the inside. In my heart. Now how about you? How are you holding up?"

"It's just... you're supposed to be this unstoppable killing machine but they give you an unprotected and vulnerable..."

"JESUS JETSKIING CHRIST, will you forget about the goddamned arm for five seconds? I swear if you ask me about it one more time I will snap your neck with BOTH hands, human AND robot!"

 Jackie Earle Haley? Jesus, how'd they manage to get an amazing cast like this? Blackmail?

Here's RoboCop practicing his "land in an iconic Iron Man pose" jump.

RoboCop apparently battles a couple of ED-209s during the film. 

"Hey, if they liked him fighting one in the original, they'll LOVE him fighting two in the remake!"

Once again I like this silver suit. It pays homage to the original while updating it.

Man Or Machine? Original catchphrase, or horribly trite cliche?

Here's a better look at the ED-209 or whatever they're calling it here. I don't have any problems with this new design. It looks like a decent update to me.

 

Look at that stop sign in the background though. Where exactly is this scene taking place? That's definitely not English. It looks a lot like Arabic or something similar. Is there a "Little Bagdad" in Detroit in 2028?

I'm guessing part of the film takes place in Iraq. Apparently the filmmakers believe we'll still have troops there in 2028 (which given the way things are going, isn't all that crazy a notion).

I'm not exactly sure what we're looking at here. Is this RoboCop? I don't think it is-- it doesn't quite look like any of his suits from the other scenes. It almost looks like this suit has desert camouflage. I think this is most likely one of the RoboDrones.

Here we see some of Tony Stark's extra suits from Iron Man 3 attacking. Or perhaps it's a squad of all-robot RoboDrones (with no human brains inside) that apparently clash with RoboCop.

If you look closely you'll see those are RoboDrones on the scaffolding and the real RoboCop is down there on the ground, posing in the middle of the screen. 

I'm guessing the RoboDrones are guarding and protecting the Big Bad of the film (Michael Keaton?) and RoboCop has to fight his way through them to get to him.

RoboCop using a RoboDrone as a shield. Um... isn't he an armor-clad robot? Why's he need a shield? To protect his ridiculous flesh and blood arm, maybe?

Another good look at the RoboDrones. 

I'm kind of wondering if they're in the film so that RoboCop can massacre scores of them instead of real people, ensuring the film a more lucrative PG-13 rating instead of an R? I hope not, but it would not surprise me.

Nope, I'm not liking the black paint job. Can't really put my finger on why; I just don't. The black helmet looks cool, but the rest of the suit leaves me cold.

"Dead Or Alive, You're Coming With Me!"

You didn't think they film a remake without saying that, did you?

The title card  looks pretty familiar, doesn't it? If it ain't broke, don't redesign it I guess. 

So there's the RoboCop remake trailer. I have to say it looks better than I expected. I still don't believe there's any way it'll be better than the original though. There seems to be little or nothing new being brought to the table and worst of all, it looks completely humorless and totally lacking the social satire that made the original so much fun to watch.

It doesn't look like a complete and utter debacle like the horrible Total Recall remake, but it still doesn't look particularly good. We'll find out for sure sometime next year.