RoboCop isn’t the first Paul Verhoeven remake Sony Pictures has showcased at Comic-Con. At the last two Cons they promoted Total Recall, a decent movie – and a pretty good Director’s Cut – that flat out bombed at the box-office alongside underwhelming critics and fans. Obviously, they’re hoping director Jose Padilha’s remake of Verhoeven’s best film isn’t met with the same fate. With a cast this good – Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Kenneth Williams, Jennifer Ehle, Abbie Cornish, and Jackie Earle Haley — if all else fails, at least they’ll have some mighty fine talent on display.
We already know that it’ll be, no surprise, PG-13. The original RoboCop hasn’t aged a day as a nasty piece of violent cinema, and despite Samuel L. Jackson believing otherwise, it would remain an R-rated movie by today’s loose standards. But none of that matters at the end of the day.
What matters is if Padilha and his cast make do something new with the character, and from what the cast and Padihla had to say at Comic-Con, that’s what they set out to do.
1. “You have to be realistic about what you’re making. Clearly these things are giant piece of entertainment so there are certain decisions you make. Even though you’re staying true to the character, you go, ‘Yeah, I can have some fun here, because by and large, you know who the audience is going to be.’ You’re going to give them what they want in that audience.” – Michael Keaton
2. “We kept a couple of the one liners from the original movie, but we felt those iconic lines from the first movie were a part of the tone of that movie, Verhoeven’s tone. I think that it would feel unjust to keep all those lines. We’ve kept a couple of lines from the original movie, but ‘your move, creep’ is not one of them.” – Joel Kinnaman
3. “We get to know Alex Murphy a little better than in the original film. We spend more time with him as an undercover cop and as a family man. He’s got a beautiful little family. And then, that is very much the question: is he property now? Is he owned by OmniCorp? They let him interact with his family. He gets to reconnect with them after he becomes RoboCop, but of course it’s not easy to come home and try to embrace your six year old son and your wife when you have a big robotic body.” – Joel Kinnaman
4. “There is a relationship between the use of robots for war and fascism. The issue has already been posed by the use of drones. You read any newspaper today and you read about the pros and cons of using drones. The issue is already in the original RoboCop, and our movie is pretty much about that. That’s one part of it.” – Jose Padilha
5. “My favorite movie of all time? You mean if I was lost on an island, what would I watch every day? Hard Boiled, because I like John Woo, action, Chow Yun-Fat, and I think it’s a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful movie.” – Samuel L. Jackson, displaying good taste.
6. “In the first movie there was all this satire with the ads, the over-the-top corporation ads selling soomething that clearly was not the case. We do the same satire in our movie, but instead we go for the media.” – Jose Padilha
7. “We went for a more super human approach to RoboCop’s movement pattern, but then we added in some more robotic movement to him.” – Joel Kinnaman
8. Michael Keaton responding to Kinnaman calling his suit uncomfortable: “Bullshit! I’ve seen his suit. It’s air cooled. I was the pioneer of bad suits. His suit is for sissies.”
9. “Shooting a movie is shooting a movie. When you get to the set, it doesn’t matter if it’s a one million dollar movie or a 140 million dollar movie. It’s about the screenplay, the actors, and the handling of the camera.” – Jose Padilha
10. “I know very little about the original RoboCop. I’ve seen bits and pieces of it.” – Michael Keaton not pandering to RoboCop fans.