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Robocop

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09.18.2013 4:46am

Salazar
Still here...

The short story Total Recall is based on ends with Quail asking asking the scientists to give him memories where he was nice to some aliens when he was a boy and they decided not to invade the world until while he was still alive. That way he wouldn't do anything stupid to get himself killed and it would be for the good of mankind. Then it turns out they are also real memories and obviously the government can't kill him.

Because he was nice to some aliens.

Good luck making a movie out of that.

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09.18.2013 5:00am

Southern Comfort
silently judging all of you

I didn't say it would be easy. But the point of the story was layered mindfucks all the way down and no one knew the difference between real and implanted fantasy, especially not the reader - aliens were just one more false mindfuck because there was no reality at the bottom of the pile.

The movie was a whooshing noise as the point of the story passed right over Verhoeven's head.

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09.18.2013 6:56pm

Tristan
Just Giv'r

judge_raz said:

Anyone says another negative word against Starship Troopers or Total Recall and we will have WORDS.

Good fun movies and the extra is there for the taking if you want to see it.

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09.18.2013 8:20pm

(Edited on 09.18.2013 at 8:26pm)

judge_raz
Ceci n'est pas une lobster

Right! That's what I love about Verhoeven's action movies (I haven't seen Basic Instinct, so I can't speak to their quality), but there's a lot of shit going on in the background of Total Recall, Robocop and Starship Troopers that are laid out that make the movies a hell of a lot smarter than most other action movies. Robocop is about a guy who gets killed and reanimated and becomes a super cop! And there's also a lot of shit about corporate ownership of public services, identity and corporate power in general, but none of that stuff interferes with the basic storyline and the action. Then there's Starship Troopers, a movie about a bunch of marines that go into space and shoot up aliens! And it's also about fascism, military strikes and the propriety of invasions. And while Total Recall doesn't go into depth with Verhoeven's usual 'and also' sort of approach to commentary in film, it's still a fantastic action movie that has you thinking the whole way through.

How anyone can consider any of those three movies to be anything other than great movies is totally beyond me. It's akin to saying that the first two Alien movies or the first two Terminator movies are bad, to be completely frank.

Southern Comfort said:

No, sorry. Fuck Total Recall, and fuck Starship Troopers. If Paul Verhoeven wanted my respect he should have had some respect for the fucking source material.

Fuck the source material. I haven't read either of the original stories, but the movies that were adapted from them (Well, one of the movies that were adapted from those stories) were really fantastic. I'm sorry, but I completely fail to see how a movie hewing away from the source material makes those movies bad. That just...that does not compute.

"Of Christ's twelve Apostles Judas alone proved to be traitor. But if he had acquired power, he would have represented the other eleven Apostles as traitors, and also all the lesser Apostles whom Luke numbers as seventy." - Leon Trotsky

I have a blog. This is its URL. You should read it. It's about education and skepticism and books and it has a lot of pictures of Batman and Robin in it: https://baldermoon.wordpress.com/

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09.18.2013 9:14pm

Darth Howie
Darthpool
Administrator

Late to this. But my thoughts on the new Robocop trailer is that I hope that it's at least better than Robocop 3, because it looks like being as good as Robocop 2 looks like a reach from what I can tell. The original Robocop is a damned masterpiece as far as I'm concerned and this movie looks like a watered down bastardization that has no teeth.

Woe unto he who tries to be helpful, for upon him shall be lain the burdens of all.

- Squall 15:11

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09.18.2013 9:18pm

The Hulk
Good Boy

judge_raz said:
And there's also a lot of shit about corporate ownership of public services, identity and corporate power in general...

...I like the bit where he spins the gun with his finger...

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09.18.2013 10:36pm

Fincher
Deep Water Horizon

The original Robocop was good; I enjoyed it as a sci-fi action movie rather than as corporate and commercial satire. Total Recall was good as a cross between action and paranoid science fiction, but I could have done without the goofier parts, and Arnold was completely miscast. I liked the remake more. Starship Troopers was too campy for me. I can't say I never like campy movies, because there's stuff I like that's called camp by others, but I don't like things because they're camp. I never go into a movie thinking, "Oh, man, I hope the director deliberately made this movie bad." The tone and characters of ST were a total non-starter for me.

Remakes fall into a trap where they get criticized for being the same thing over again but also get criticized for doing things differently than the original. In theory, I'd say it's better for them to set themselves apart. If I don't like the original, then maybe something different will be better. If I do like the original, it's a safer bet for the remake to create its own separate niche than to try to be a better version of the exact same thing. The problem with the new Robocop suit for me isn't just that it's different. They made it black to try to make it look cool, but at least in the shots where the visor is up, it doesn't look cool at all. In the process, they took out of the sense of being robotic that the original provided. I think they should have either kept it the same or made it more different. They could have provided a more modern interpretation of what futuristic robotics looks like.

Other than that, it doesn't bother me that they're taking a somewhat different route than the original. It just depends on what they do with that route.

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02.06.2014 1:39pm

Indiana Jerico
Sinfully Delicious v2
Administrator

I just got back from seeing the film. It wasn't as cringeworthy as I thought; I actually enjoyed it for what it is. Here is my mini-review which I wrote in my FB wall:

Rubbercop is a watered-down, smooth, and polished version of the raw, gritty, and multi-layered original. It aims to tackle current relevant American issues (re: drones) in much the same way as Robocop tried to paint a satire of 1980s corporate greed and consumerism amidst a backdrop of a decaying society. Both tries to address the theme of man-machine, but where 1987 went out of its way to show the struggle that Murphy went through to eventually reclaim his humanity, 2014 chose the convenient dip-switch route of man over machine over man in a clean, almost clinical, way. This is not to say that the former is better than the latter; it is just a different interpretation of the same theme. It is eventually up to the viewer which interpretation they prefer. The nu-take, though, gives up much of the layers of the original in favor of tres cool cinematics and shoot-bang action. It is the Coke Zero of the original's Coke, the COD: Modern Warfare of the original's Doom.

That being said, I still enjoyed it. It was not the shallow shell I thought it would be, if still light on the themes. It stands on its own, if a bit wobbly. Shut your inner critic and you will find a movie that is, at the very least, worth a rental.

The tactical black though? Fuck that. Silver for life.

Probably a 6/10 for me.

===

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