In 1987, director Paul Verhoeven created the perfect movie. An R-rated, hilarious and action-packed film with something to say about the world around it. Hell, it even sold toys. You’d never have guessed the inevitable franchise would spawn only two follow up films before being put to rest by 1993’s disastrous RoboCop 3. Fast forward to 2014 and a time when Hollywood’s prime directive is to remake and reboot nostalgic IP. Often to the considerable dismay of at least some of their respective fan groups. To their credit however, Sony Pictures hired a visionary and fearless director perfect for upsetting the status quo. Much like Verhoeven had done more than thirty years earlier. They hired an all-star cast and spared no expense recreating the world of RoboCop. But studios are going to studio. They followed up these great choices by failing to learn from any of the lessons Robocop 3 provided. They caged that same director’s artistic freedom, demanding he deliver a family friendly PG-13 film, and completely took away the essence of the character they’d promised to bring back to life. Though the director would fight through it all and make a competent film… this resurrection would prove far more Pet Sematary than RoboCop (In that it came back from the dead unnatural… not that it resembles the same plot). Anyway… This is the story of What Happened to RoboCop (2014).
The announcement of a RoboCop reboot came from Sony’s Screen Gems back in 2005. Three years later, after MGM announced they were also looking to revive the property, celebrated director Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, The Wrestler) was announced at San Diego Comic-Con as the director. The film would be written by The Haunting, Road to Perdition, and Thirteen Days writer David Self. Aronofsky was a clear indication they were on the right track. An artistic director unafraid to be brash, he would no doubt make bold choices with his commentary. Here’s where things began to go off the rails. For reasons we’ll never fully know, Aronofsky and the entire creative team were no longer involved in the remake by 2011. It likely had something to do with the studio’s financial troubles at the time. However, there were also rumors of creative differences. Both in Aronofsky’s understandable desire for an R-rated cut… As well as his alleged refusal to make RoboCop in 3D after an MGM studio executive was wowed by their Avatar theater experience and requested Robocop recreate it. Sounds like something Ari Gold would have to deal with in Entourage… and I totally believe it’s true.
Meanwhile, director José Padilha, after the success of his Brazilian crime epics Elite Squad and Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, was being courted by Sony. According to Padilha, the studio pitched him several films, but none appealed to him. He saw a RoboCop poster in the room and asked if they owned it. When they confirmed they did, he said, “That’s the film I want to make,” and they obliged. It made perfect sense. Anyone who had seen the Elite Squad films and the way the sprawling action movies entertained while exploring the relationship between law enforcement and politics knew this was a match made in heaven. If you take nothing else from this video, check out the Elite Squad films. RoboCop fans should love them.
With the perfect director on board, the script was to be handled by Joshua Zetumer, who at the time had exactly zero finished writing credits. To be fair, he had done uncredited rewrites on Quantum of Solace and had written an unused screenplay of Frank Herbert’s Dune novel, as well as an unmade fourth Jason Bourne film. Still, it seemed like an odd choice for such a high-profile project. Zetumer would take a far more serious approach to Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner’s 1987 script.
The action here takes place in 2028 and begins with a story about drone and robot usage overseas, rather than remaining confined to Detroit. OmniCorp desires to bring their technology to America, where a bureaucratic fight is happening over the topic. The script tackles themes of humanity and government, but the satire and comedy are mostly gone. Save for a performance from Samuel L. Jackson in a role originally offered to Sean Penn as an over-the-top agenda pushing news anchor. The film also focuses on a more cyberpunk version of RoboCop, rather than our gritty clunk of lovable metal from the 80s.
One of the biggest issues is the lack of actual RoboCop action. The story feels like a long and tragic build to an underwhelming ending set piece. Aside from a short montage, we don’t get to experience much of RoboCop cleaning up the streets. It instead focuses on the drama of Alex Murphy being separated from his wife and son by a greedy company with loose morals. While it’s heartbreaking and well written, it doesn’t exactly understand the assignment, as the kids say.
As for casting the new, more emotional RoboCop, you might say the studio had some delusions of grandeur. With names like Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, and Keanu Reeves being floated for the role. Later, Michael Fassbender and Russell Crowe were also considered, but the studio ultimately chose Joel Kinnaman. Kinnaman had gained recognition for his role in AMC’s The Killing, and Padilha believed he had the right mix of toughness and vulnerability.
House MD actor Hugh Laurie rejected the role of OmniCorp CEO, and at one point, Clive Owen was being considered. The role ended up in the capable hands of the great Michael Keaton, who delivers a good performance, as always. However, his portrayal has a dead-serious earnestness that starkly contrasts with the over-the-top, cocaine-fueled depravity of previous business overlords in the franchise. But hey, it’s Michael Keaton. Still worked. Some of the other OmniCorp workers were less entertaining, such as the weirdly casted Jay Baruchel, who plays an OmniCorp Exec and randomly drops awkward lines like this one: “We created a hero. What happens when he opens his mouth?”
Esteemed actor Gary Oldman was cast as the morally conflicted Dr. Norton, (after actual Edward Norton turned the role down) and the cast was rounding out with heavyweight talent. Though Oldman wasn’t exactly singing the film’s praises, admitting that he took the project for money and was “at the mercy of what the industry is making.” However, he did acknowledge his admiration for the intelligence of the script and Padilha’s direction. Keaton echoed this sentiment, stating that the main reason he signed on was to work with Padilha. As did most of the cast.
Abbie Cornish was cast as Murphy’s distraught wife, Clara, in a role that Kate Mara, Jessica Alba, Keri Russell, and Rebecca Hall had all auditioned for or turned down. Jackie Earle Haley joined the cast as a character named Rick, who works with robots and humans but has an inexplicable hatred for those who are a mix of both. His hatred for RoboCop is so irrationally over the top, one wonders if there’s not a deleted scene of RoboCop sleeping with his wife on the special features menu.
RoboCop was mostly filmed in Toronto and Vancouver during a hot summer. So hot, in fact, that Kinnaman claimed to have lost 20 pounds in the first week of filming due to the heat and discomfort inside the suit. Kinnaman wasn’t the only one troubled by the new suit. When the first leaked set photos and official promo shots of the suit surfaced in 2012, they were met with overwhelming negativity. Instead of the beloved, clunky, but still cool RoboCop design of the ’80s; Robo now wore a thinner, shinier, and black version of what once was. Fans revolted, complaining it looked like any other Batman or Iron Man-type armor, that it was generic and lacked the personality of what came before. Even Kinnaman admitted that he didn’t get the suit at first, saying he had to quell all of his instincts over the course of filming. Specifically, why the suit was so different from the original.
RoboCop was off to a bad start in the public eye.
Gone was the original look and gritty street feel of the original. The city felt sleeker, and Robo’s mechanics and databases were far more cyberpunk than anything that had come before. Everything just felt… different. The suit, special effects, and characters weren’t bad by any means. It just didn’t feel like RoboCop. Even with the small hints of the original title track hidden within Pedro Bromfman’s score. Who, by the way, achieved his sound by blending the sounds of both acoustic and electric instruments to symbolize Murphy’s transformation. Which, is extremely thoughtful and kind of cool.
Effects Supervisor Jamie Price had quite the daunting task ahead of him on the visual side of things. They tackled the responsibility by farming out different effects shots to various companies. From the cool and futuristic set of The Novak Element to a guitarist with synthetic hands, different companies handled different effects shots for the film. Price also noted that working with Padilha was a unique challenge because the director, a documentary filmmaker at heart, was concerned about visual effects detracting from the film. As a result, much of it was shot handheld to allow more freedom for Padilha and the actors, rather than using many Steadicams or cranes.
For the ED-209 scenes, the filmmakers wanted to honor what had come before while incorporating realistic motion for today. Though CGI was used, they did have a physical wireframe version of the ED-209 on set they could physically move around before cutting it out in post and replacing it with the CGI version. For the new EM-208s, human stunt actors wearing suits covered in tracking markers were used on set, before being digitized in post.
As the budget and the special effects ballooned, so did the calls for the film to be PG-13. This was undoubtedly one of the most damaging decisions of all. A sentiment of which both Kinnaman and Padilha agreed. In fact, during one of Kinnaman’s first interviews after landing the role, he said, “Of course it’s going to be R-rated. Only an idiot would make a PG-13 RoboCop film.” Before waking up the next day to 47 missed phone calls from the studio. They also kept close tabs on Padilha, making sure he was delivering the desired family friendly-ish entertainment. This became so frustrating for Padilha that he phoned a director friend of his and vented that the project had been pure suffering. He told him that for every ten ideas he has, nine of them were cut and that he’d never work on a production this size again. The contents of the conversation were unintentionally leaked to the press by his friend before they had even finished filming. Which, naturally caused further strain between Padilha and the studio.
RoboCop was finally released upon the world in February of 2014, coming in third place on its own opening weekend to George Clooney’s Monuments Men, and The Lego Movie. The ultimate haul for the flick with a budget of around $130 million wasn’t so bad on paper (it pulled in over $242 million worldwide). But it hadn’t blown the minds, arms, or legs off anyone, either. Surprisingly, the critics reactions to Robo and his new look were rather tame. The film sits today at a 50% “Rotten” Rating on review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes. A website you may never take seriously again when you learn that score is nearly double the rating of RoboCop 2 on the site. Which sits at a mere 28% “Rotten”. Which, to put it eloquently, is total horse shit.
Sony saved a little face by saying they were working on a sequel in 2015 but predictably, that never came to fruition.
As years have gone by, some folks have opened up a little bit more about their experiences on the film: Kinnaman admitted Verhoeven’s satire had been too ingrained in fans expectations for them to steer so far from it. He’s also right in saying the film would have been much better received had it not been named RoboCop. Padilha later lamented that he didn’t have any creative freedom and echoed his friends earlier statements that he spent 90% of his time on the film simply fighting the studio. That he’d think long and hard about ever doing a production of this size again.
Verhoeven himself gave his critiques of the film, stating that the character had become too tragic in the remake. While in the original there’s a moment or two where Murphy will go home or have a flashback that brings him pain, he’s mostly unaware of the weight of his own human tragedy. Here, I agree, that the film becomes far too depressing and bleak for its audience to be able to experience the entrainment the first film provided. And is still providing today.
And that my friends, is what happened to RoboCop 2014. With hopefully more to come from Amazon, James Wan and their supposed RoboCop TV series. Which I would happily buy for a dollar.
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