Director Jose Padilha introduces the new trailer for Robocop, which seems a little weird when you’re watching the director’s commentary on a film before you’ve even seen the trailer, but it makes sense as a strategy. Sony surely wants people to associate Robocop with the director of Elite Squad, and not the studio who already made a PG-13 Total Recall now releasing a PG-13 Robocop.
The idea of a PG-13 Robocop sounded about as good to me as a porn film cut entirely from male oh-faces, but it’s hard not to be excited by the cast – aside from Samuel Jackson as the law-and-order pundit and Joel Kinnaman as Robocop, it’s got Michael Keaton, Gary Oldman, Jackie Earle Haley, Michael K. Williams, Abbie Cornish, Jennifer Ehle, and Jay Baruchel. And whereas the 80s version was a more broad parable about Jesus and Totalitarianism, the makers of the remake had the good fortune to begin production just as Predator Drones were becoming the US government’s most effective extra-legal killing machines. So, unlike Total Recall, this one’s actually about something, a too-often overlooked factor of big-budget movie making.
Whaddya think?? I still don’t like the idea of a softcore critique of fascism, but the new version of ED-209 kind of gives me a boner.
Also, if they want Robocop to “know what it feels like to be human,” why would they put a cop in there? HEYO. (*draws Anarchy symbol on sneakers, cranks up Avril Lavigne*)
Release Date: February 12th, 2014
Here’s the version with the intro from Padilha, in case you were wondering: