I do not doubt that the 1987 RoboCop film was a complete masterpiece and cemented itself as one of the best action films ever. It’s the movie that made me a huge fan of RoboCop and I watched this film growing up (for some reason my mother let me watch this when I was 6).
Since then, it spawned multiple sequels that never quite lived up to the same heights as the original. The second film maybe did okay but not quite as good as the first.
Then, we had the 2014 reboot. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t think this movie was as horrendous as some people made out. It had some solid moments and I genuinely liked the idea of seeing Murphy solve his murder, I liked seeing the impact when they revealed what’s left of his body and I did like the suit with the original colorway.
I don’t think it’s better or even close to the original. Here are just 4 things I think the film let us down with;
- Using an Iron Man type suit, that felt too sleek and didn’t capture the original bulky, weighty metal the original used
- Using black instead of the original colourway
- Not going R-rated
- Not enough action
I believe the potential was there and maybe could’ve been saved by a sequel but we’ll never know and I’m not surprised we weren’t able to find out.
RoboCop has done well outside of live-action content. He featured in Mortal Kombat 11 and had his own game in Rogue City.
The rumor we have is that RoboCop will technically be rebooted but in a weird way. The original 1987 movie will stand but all of the sequels will be written off and the next film will be a sequel to the original. It doesn’t make sense to do this at all and I’ve said this before.
The original movie came out nearly 40 years ago. It’s a classic, that’s fine. I do think a reboot could work here but it needs to be faithful and remain respectful to the original. Remaining the same level of satire, the same sort of timescales, R-rated, and also takes some risks with it as the 2014 movie did but does it the right way.
I guess all in all I want to see more of RoboCop. The character is iconic and deserves some more love. The issue with creating a sequel is the fact a lot of the cast are much older now, it wouldn’t work the same way. Maybe I’m wrong on that and they can make it work with a time jump or whatever but ideally I’d like to see them give it another go.
