RoboCop (2014) DVD Review

This film is difficult for me to review; like a lot of Terminator fans I am also a RoboCop fan. I have witnessed beloved movies literally go down the toilet with sequels,- while T2 was good- RoboCop 2 wasn’t so good but followed the similar approach of having a child feature in the movie (to connect to that younger audience) by the time T2 was released however RoboCop 3 was ready to be released and even the film-makers of RoboCop 3 stated that once they had seen the visual effects of T2, RoboCop 3 was already dated upon just a mere year after it was released and it was aimed fully at a younger audience. The rest is history…

Now we are in an age of reboots, Terminator is being rebooted right now, a Predator reboot (which is now apparently now confirmed as not being a total reboot as we were writing this review) is also now in the works but of course RoboCop was rebooted and now it is time to judge the home release and the movie itself.

The minute the word “reboot” was used it shook RoboCop fans as much as it did Terminator Fans. Fans obviously wanted a sequel to the first two movies (possibly ignoring the third – pretty much what we wanted for the Terminator movies). Peter Weller returning to the role would have been interesting but unlike the Terminator reboot the original star did not reprise his iconic role; instead we get new blood in the form of Joel Kinnaman.

The plot totally mixes up the world and characters we previously knew, introducing new ones. This is pretty much the plan with the new Terminator movie also for example Anne Lewis the faithful sidekick of RoboCop in the 1987 classic becomes Jack Lewis also Alex Murphy’s partner but has had a severe sex and ethnicity change.

The director José Padilha tries to keep the story grounded in reality dealing with real issues like loss of limbs, prosthesis, politics, media, terrorism and more but these issues are tamed down all in the glory of aiming the movie at a mass audience.
In the movie Alex Murphy’s death is devoid of the impact of the original in which a simple car bomb explosion quickly takes us forward in the story, we get no development or emotional connection to the characters and before you know it he is an action figure ready to be sold to children.

The real issues in the movie are interesting, the worldwide fear of A.I. and the military and the new life RoboCop must lead. In this movie RoboCop knows who he is, where as in the original RoboCop deals with a bout of amnesia after his death in which memories start to unlock. RoboCop (2014) does touch upon the issues to an okay standard as Alex Murphy has to come to terms with the fact that all that is left of his body is his face, some of his brain, lungs and his right hand (in the original they destroyed both hands even though one arm was savable). The rest of him is completely robotic, his own brain even has parts that are not his own and if his wife had not have signed consent forms he would have been blind in one eye, paralised, deaf as well as wheel chair bound with missing limbs.
With all this going on you start to imagine the darker implications of this life and how it would destroy his mind, his relationship to his wife, how would he interact with his child… will this result in him losing his family or can he have a future etc. but with the movie being PG-13 how will they ever truly explore these problems without doing a serious and dark movie?

Before the movie was released RoboCop gained the internet social media name of #RoboCrap, especially once it had been announced this was a PG-13 outing. We don’t think he is RoboCrap he just isn’t RoboCop… not yet anyway. He could be but we need a better movie than this and with a harder rating.

The story isn’t bad, Joel Kinnaman does work but in the next movie (if it doesn’t reboot again) really needs to lock-down on the silver suit (with those purple, blue and green pearlescent hue tones) and decide which suit they are going to use,- this isn’t bloody iron man. I don’t mind RoboCop changing into an upgraded suit if required but I liked the first suit and it changed to the black and stayed black for far too much of the movie. It just seemed like a ‘cop out’.

The visual effects are better than average but I thought looking at RoboCop’s lungs etc looked like cartoon CGI shit, if practical effects had been used in an R Rated movie I would have perhaps been disturbed instead of bursting out laughing. RoboCop (2014) was good in the sense I didn’t laugh at the movie bar the lungs and the floating right hand which liked to alternate the side it was resting on when RoboCop was suit-less in the lab.

OCP plays a big role (as it should) and it has been respectful of the material and added some interesting elements… but the age rating has done damage to what could have been considered a good reboot.

RoboCop (2014) is on the same level as Terminator Salvation (2009) both damaged in the quest for money by aiming at a wider audience than targeting the real fan base that are loyal. It is a mistake that Skydance Productions will hopefully learn from or yet again- we get watered down movies that miss the mark.

DVD FEATURES

Deleted Scenes:

1. Pentagon
2. Right Hand
3. Helicopter
4. Lewis and Dean
5. Norton confesses to Dreyfus

The deleted scenes don’t offer much in the way of plot, you can see why they got cut but still nice to see them and they aren’t acted badly. Fans should be sure to check them out anyway. Gary Oldman’s confession although short maybe should have been included in the movie but then again the kids might not have understood what he was talking about.

Omnicorp Corporate:

Quick video reels that are treated like a portfolio of products with a female voice-over. We get the machines featured in the movie mentioned to us (the products of OCP)

• EXO-SKELETON
• EM-208
• ED-209
• XT-908
• CRUISER 1
• TSR-66
• M2-BATTLE RIFLE
• RC-2000 V1
• RC-2000 V3
• NEXT GENERATION ROBOCOP – (is this the hint to a sequel as this product video is not revealed but teased in shadows)

Overall this was nice to see and would be a welcome feature on any future Terminator DVD. Cyberdyne Corporate video please?

The Illusion of Free Will _A New Vision:

A 7 minute 28 second featurette discussing the original movie and re-imagining it in a new modern spin. Interesting to watch.

To Serve and Protect _RoboCop’s Weapons:

A 5 minute 51 second featurette. We see Joel Kinnaman get weapons training from EX Navy Seal Scott “Uncle Scotty” Reitz, so RoboCop could fire fluid streams of bullets. Joel discusses also both individual weapons that come out of both his left and right leg’s that have different usage in terms of how to deal with a felon. The RoboCop bike is also talked about, we like to call it the RoboCycle… originally it was intended to be a transformer like add-on to RoboCop but the director has a problem with that concept due to him wanting to keep the movie grounded in reality. We are aware the director also stood his ground the best he could against the execs, so overall we can’t really criticize him. There was nothing wrong with the visual style of the movie. Nice to hear more about the weapons and how they are influenced on technologies currently being developed by the military.

The RoboCop Suit:

This is the part that will interest Terminator Fans the most, we explore the suit that was made by Legacy Studios, yes if your hardcore you know that Legacy are basically the Stan Winston team minus Stan himself, a re-branding of a truly reliable practical effect creating company that will also be involved in the new Terminator movie currently titled ‘Terminator: Genesis. John Rosengrant talks  about the suit, comparisons are also made to the Bat-Suit due to Keaton’s role in the movie and we find out that Keaton jokingly gave Kinnaman a hard time if he moaned about the wearing the suit due to his cooler system in which a vest is pumped with cool water in order to reduce heat temperature on the suit where as Keaton wore rubber with no sort of ventilation other than his mouth and eye holes.

Trailer:

If you haven’t seen the trailer then you can go here to watch it.

Summary:

The movie has a lot to live up to, it is a mere pass just by the skin of it’s teeth but this isn’t enough to please original fans. Insert the gore back into the RoboCop franchise then we might be looking at a possible new successful run for RoboCop but I personally feel if we get more of the same in a sequel then this franchise will get shelved by MGM for a second time around until demand grows once again…

A movie made full of pros and cons… like and hate become blurred on the same line. Too much man in a suit for our liking, child audience = compromised.

Fan Tweets:

We hit to twitter to let our followers know we were reviewing the movie, here are what some of them had to say…