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seanotron

Robocop 2 (1990)

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I think the remake's biggest sin was being just okay. It really wasn't that bad, but it was also totally forgettable. Between that and the Total Recall reboot, I think the moral of the story is just don't remake Verhoeven films (at least his sci-fi ones).

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The main problem with both those movies is that they took away any ambiguity or message from the originals. Total Recall you didn't know if Quaid was dreaming or not but in the remake they make it abundantly clear that he isn't and for some reason now his non-wife is the main villain. Then in Robocop is the overall theme of what really makes a human human and not a machine, leading to the very end when Robocop asks to be called Murphy. In the remake it's made very clear that he didn't die and he's basically wearing a large prosthetic. I think both could have been done well if the makers of both decided that they needed to be dumbed down for mass audience appeal.

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The main problem with both those movies is that they took away any ambiguity or message from the originals. Total Recall you didn't know if Quaid was dreaming or not but in the remake they make it abundantly clear that he isn't and for some reason now his non-wife is the main villain. Then in Robocop is the overall theme of what really makes a human human and not a machine, leading to the very end when Robocop asks to be called Murphy. In the remake it's made very clear that he didn't die and he's basically wearing a large prosthetic. I think both could have been done well if the makers of both decided that they needed to be dumbed down for mass audience appeal.

In defense of the "Robocop" remake though, depending on where you fall on "Robocop 2", the 2014 flick is still probably at least the third-best "Robocop" thing ever. I'm pretty sure I've said something before about franchises with beloved first installments that spent the rest of their run shitting all over themselves, and this one is no different, with some folks talking about it like it was an atrocity on par with the more terrible things that have happened to the series. See also: Rob Zombie's "Halloween", Platinum Dunes's "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", any other perfectly competent, if not completely unremarkable, remake or revamp of a series that had a really good movie and a half or so.

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See I felt that the first RZ Halloween movie was a pretty good remake as it did a good job of humanizing Michael Myers and explaining some of the reasons he did what he did, though the sequel got kinda weird with all of the psychological aspects. The Dunes Chainsaw movie wasn't bad at creating some pretty tense moments and you can never go wrong with R. Lee Ermey.

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I thought Rob Zombie's Halloween was just awful. There's a reason why Carpenter referred to Myers as 'The Shape' in the original Halloween script. The less you know about him the more frightening he is.

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I thought Rob Zombie's Halloween was just awful. There's a reason why Carpenter referred to Myers as 'The Shape' in the original Halloween script. The less you know about him the more frightening he is.

 

I could not agree more. Pulling back the curtain on what made Michael Myers tick was a huge mistake. The less you know about him, the scarier he is.

 

As for the RoboCop reboot, the concensus is that this movie was fair; not bad, but not great either. Essentially, it's the RoboCop Goldilocks would pick. Honestly, I thought the reboot was boring as shit. The first one was a ridiculous, glorious spectacle and it worked on so many levels (so many great scenes, lines and moments - all wrapped-up in a crackerjack script). The reboot just meandered from scene-to-scene. Compare the end scenes of the two movies, where Robo blasts the big baddie from the top of a highrise. One is exciting and the other is... well... not.

 

I'm so tired of these reboots/remakes.

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RoboCop 3 is easily one of the most insulting movies I've ever seen. It never even occurred to me that it might be for kids, given how violent the first two were. I just know it made me mad. The plot points are almost literally written out on the screen.

 

 

That is why I recommend they watch it for HDTGM.

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RoboCop 3 is easily one of the most insulting movies I've ever seen. It never even occurred to me that it might be for kids, given how violent the first two were. I just know it made me mad. The plot points are almost literally written out on the screen.

 

 

That is why I recommend they watch it for HDTGM.

 

RoboCop 3 is abysmal, no doubt. It fails on all levels as movie, and especailly to as the third sequel to a film filled with gleefully excessive violence, profanity and gore. It's also so, so, SO dumb.

 

But out of the three original films, I feel that RoboCop 2 is much more deserving. They took a brilliant premise, threw the hottest comic book writer at the time in and somehow royally screwed the pooch. While both movies are blatantly slapped-together money grabs, the second film excels at taking everything that worked in the first film, trying to turn the volume up to 11 and fucking up it up completely.

 

The comedy is obvious, mean-spirited and tone deaf, the action mind numbing and repetitive, and the plot is a lumbering pastiche of half-baked ideas. The characters aren't engaging at all, and the film has zero heart. RoboCop 2 is a cynical exercise in cashing-in on successful film without properly analyzing exactly what made the previous film a success. Where RoboCop is a cult classic, RoboCop 2 is a cult tragic.

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Seeing these gifs remind me of how shitty that remake was.

 

Especially when you factor in that (I'm going by UK certification) the original is rated 18, and the remake is 12a, meaning that a child could go into the cinema with an adult.

 

How you can go from an ultra-violent movie to a neutered kids movie is beyond me.

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