Robocop (Reboot)

CastorTroy

I was reminded of the new tv series, Almost Human

Liam McPoyle

Officially rated PG13 by the MPAA for "intense sequences of action including frenetic gun violence throughout, brief strong language, sensuality and some drug material"

I was 50/50 whether I'd go see this but after reading the above there isn't a chance in hell.

I might download it once it gets a DVD release but there is no way on Gods greem earth I will spend my hard earned money to support studio executives that are almost completely redundant of anything new.

The article is on Dread Central, on mobile so can't link.

Mr Freeze

Coleman Slawski wrote: »

Officially rated PG13 by the MPAA

Yikes, have they not seen the original? The studio that is. Why make another Robocop 3 watered down kids version.

Liam McPoyle

Mr Freeze wrote: »

Yikes, have they not seen the original? The studio that is. Why make another Robocop 3 watered down kids version.

$$$$$$

Or the hope of $$$$$$.

Sadly the demographic for the majority of big releases is the teen market so little Johnny & Janey Q Public can't see too much onscreen violence as it might, ya know, warp their fragile little minds or heaven forbid, stop them being able to actually pay in to see this inevitable crap feat.

I hope this movie absolutely TANKS.

pixelburp

Coleman Slawski wrote: »

Officially rated PG13[...]

Was there really any doubt? This doesn't come as any great surprise at all.

I think I'll just dig out the Total Recall remake thread, that'll give a nice sense of what the reviews on this one will be like

conorhal

Coleman Slawski wrote: »

$$$$$$

Or the hope of $$$$$$.

Sadly the demographic for the majority of big releases is the teen market so little Johnny & Janey Q Public can't see too much onscreen violence as it might, ya know, warp their fragile little minds or heaven forbid, stop them being able to actually pay in to see this inevitable crap feat.

I hope this movie absolutely TANKS.

The film or it's demographic are sadly incidental and have been ever since Orion realised that, despite never getting to see the movie, a massive number of kids went out and bought Robocop action figures.
Like StarWars, the secondary market in toys outstripped the grosses for the film, hence the new movie's prominent featuring of gun attachments and a robocycle.
They probably don't even care how the movie is recieved so long as it provides enough buzz to fill the shelves of Smyths.

FutureGuy

ED-209, to this very day, scares the living sh!te of me. No joke, I get a wave of primal fear when I see it in it's stop start 20 seconds to comply glory.

Terrifying.

I'll give this film the benefit of the doubt. It was never going to be an 18's gore fest.

pixelburp

FutureGuy wrote: »

[...]
I'll give this film the benefit of the doubt. It was never going to be an 18's gore fest.

I don't think it's the lack of gore that bothers me about the rating; it implies a certain immaturity and that punches will be pulled - both figuratively and literally.

PG-13 suggests to me concessions will be made in terms of theme, tone, language and yes, even violence (though not necessarily the gory kind). For instance, I think it's very telling that major gunplay scenes in the trailer showed RoboCop gunning down androids. It makes me think that this film will be so bloodless & toothless that they balked at showing humans being shot, just so the could keep things 'family friendly'. I hate to bring it up again, but this was a big failing in the Total Recall reboot: they wussed out by having all the violence directed on faceless 'droids because it kept the protagonist heroic and arguably less violent.

Mr Freeze

pixelburp wrote: »

I don't think it's the lack of gore that bothers me about the rating; it implies a certain immaturity and that punches will be pulled - both figuratively and literally.

I must agree with this.

I watched Robocop again recently, the ED 209 scene without gore would be just as good, the gore felt over the top to me now rewatching it.

That said, in the scene where Alex Murphy is shot to death, the gore kind of needed there to show the brutality in which Clarence execute him. Just having bang fade to black wouldn't have had the same impact, or as a kid watching Robocop, I was disgusted after I taped it on UTV only to discover that this scene was heavily edited down, no hand being shot off and no head shot at the end.

Duggy747

UTV, out of all channels, would cut the hell out of Robocop. I think even up until only a few years ago they cut out nearly everything with gore in it.

Robocop 1 was the only truly good film out of the franchise. I thought Robocop 2 was forgiveable because of it's impressive stop-animation but the 3rd was horrible, watered-down stuff.

Stop-animation makes everything creepy from ED-209 to the villain of the 2nd movie who I thought was terrifying when I was a kid because he had no face and found his robotic movements were very real:

The PG13 rating isn't quite as in inviting as it may seem. Quite a lot of recent action films have revieved the dreaded watered down rating and still retained a hard edge. I'm not all that excited for Robocop but at the same time I'm not writing it off based on the rating. By all means write the film off of the reviews are abysmal but it just seems pointless to judge the film on anything as trivial as a rating.

Over the past 2-3 decades the rating system has changed drastically. In the 80s the original concept for Freddy, his teeth would be visible through gaping wounds on his face. The MPAA said that the film would recieve an R if Craven went ahead with it. Fast forward 20 years and you have a near identical concept in The Dark Knight and no one batted an eyelid. If rating boards were to go back and re-rate many of the classis 80s action films then they'd be getting 15 ratings which is often the same as a PG13.

B.A._Baracus

PG13 rating sucks.
So it'll be a stripped down version with little nods and winks to the original but wont cross a certain line because it wants to maintain it's wider audience. Urgh.

I'll still give it a look. Love Robocop... but hopes of it being a good movie have somewhat dropped :pac:

Marty McFly

Deleted User wrote: »

The PG13 rating isn't quite as in inviting as it may seem. Quite a lot of recent action films have revieved the dreaded watered down rating and still retained a hard edge. I'm not all that excited for Robocop but at the same time I'm not writing it off based on the rating. By all means write the film off of the reviews are abysmal but it just seems pointless to judge the film on anything as trivial as a rating.

Over the past 2-3 decades the rating system has changed drastically. In the 80s the original concept for Freddy, his teeth would be visible through gaping wounds on his face. The MPAA said that the film would recieve an R if Craven went ahead with it. Fast forward 20 years and you have a near identical concept in The Dark Knight and no one batted an eyelid. If rating boards were to go back and re-rate many of the classis 80s action films then they'd be getting 15 ratings which is often the same as a PG13.

Of coarse you are right no doubt about it but at the same time I like my action flicks hard and gritty full of bad language and scenes of violence which at pg-13 we certainly wont be getting if you can name me one I'd be very suprised. The Raid for me was one of the best recent action flicks why because they didn't shy away from violence it was the most graphic scenes which drew the biggest ooohs and ahhs from the audience in the cinema.

One modern scene and film that really grated me was Live Free or Die Hard when in stead of saying his best known catchphrase they used a gunshot to muffle the sound of motherfcuker hated that and I can see this film going down the same lines.

pixelburp

Deleted User wrote: »

The PG13 rating isn't quite as in inviting as it may seem. Quite a lot of recent action films have revieved the dreaded watered down rating and still retained a hard edge. I'm not all that excited for Robocop but at the same time I'm not writing it off based on the rating. By all means write the film off of the reviews are abysmal but it just seems pointless to judge the film on anything as trivial as a rating. [...]

I don't think we are judging solely on the rating, rather using it as a barometer taken alongside the trailers, clips, photos and general buzz emanating from the production. As you say, hard PG-13s do exist, but taken within context Robocop's rating seems like confirmation of many people's fears & suspicions, including my own. As always we'll see how the film transpires on release, but I think at this stage bar a slew of reviews praising this reboot, I'll pass

pixelburp

pixelburp wrote: »

I don't think we are judging solely on the rating, rather using it as a barometer taken alongside the trailers, clips, photos and general buzz emanating from the production. As you say, hard PG-13s do exist, but taken within context Robocop's rating seems like confirmation of many people's fears & suspicions, including my own. As always we'll see how the film transpires on release, but I think at this stage bar a slew of reviews praising this reboot, I'll pass

Still a few images and trailer with moments taken out of context can't really be used as a basis to judge a film. I'm not the least bit interested in the film but I'm not going to write if off just yet. People seem to think that action films still need to be a hard R rating and fail to recognize that these days you can have a film that's nastier and more visceral than most of the 80s classics and it can get away with a 15PG rating here. Olympus Has Fallen and The Last Stand are two recent film that was written off by many on here because they weren't rated 18, yet both films managed to be far more violent than many of the classics people love.

ps3lover

Deleted User wrote: »

Still a few images and trailer with moments taken out of context can't really be used as a basis to judge a film. I'm not the least bit interested in the film but I'm not going to write if off just yet. People seem to think that action films still need to be a hard R rating and fail to recognize that these days you can have a film that's nastier and more visceral than most of the 80s classics and it can get away with a 15PG rating here. Olympus Has Fallen and The Last Stand are two recent film that was written off by many on here because they weren't rated 18, yet both films managed to be far more violent than many of the classics people love.

Both those movies where rated R and not PG13 so I fail to see your point.

ps3lover

ps3lover wrote: »

Both those movies where rated R and not PG13 so I fail to see your point.

The point was that they were 15PG here and people wrote them off.

ps3lover

Deleted User wrote: »

The point was that they were 15PG here and people wrote them off.

But not pg13.

Just look at what happened with Terminator Salvation, the producers and director have since admitted aiming for the low rating was a big mistake and forced them to make changes to the plot that they didn't want to. They said they couldn't make the movie they wanted to due to it.

ps3lover

ps3lover wrote: »

But not pg13.

Just look at what happened with Terminator Salvation, the producers and director have since admitted aiming for the low rating was a big mistake and forced them to make changes to the plot that they didn't want to. They said they couldn't make the movie they wanted to due to it.

It's important to remember that an R rating does not mean that the violence is any more visceral or intense. An R rating is generally given to films with excessive language and sexual content rather than violence. The last few Bond films have been far more violent than any of Arnie's 80s classics yet they all got a PG13 rating. A lot of R rated films get rated so due more so to language and sexuality than violence. Olympus Has Fallen could have been dropped to a PG13 had a number of the "fucks" been removed but the studio realized that the R rating would appeal to incinerators who associate the rating with making for better action films.

ps3lover

Deleted User wrote: »

It's important to remember that an R rating does not mean that the violence is any more visceral or intense. An R rating is generally given to films with excessive language and sexual content rather than violence. The last few Bond films have been far more violent than any of Arnie's 80s classics yet they all got a PG13 rating. A lot of R rated films get rated so due more so to language and sexuality than violence. Olympus Has Fallen could have been dropped to a PG13 had a number of the "fucks" been removed but the studio realized that the R rating would appeal to incinerators who associate the rating with making for better action films.

Really because it's rated R for strong violence[\b] and language throughout.

Even Safe was Rated R for strong violence throughout and I thought that one was quite tame.
Also look at how insultingly tame The Expendables 2 is. Expendable 2 is much tamer then Olympus Has Fallen yet it has no bad language or nudity yet it's somehow Rated R for Strong Bloody Violence. How do you explain that one? Expendables 2 is far to tame yet that got an R rating which just means anything below that is inexcusable.

pixelburp

Deleted User wrote: »

Still a few images and trailer with moments taken out of context can't really be used as a basis to judge a film. I'm not the least bit interested in the film but I'm not going to write if off just yet. People seem to think that action films still need to be a hard R rating and fail to recognize that these days you can have a film that's nastier and more visceral than most of the 80s classics and it can get away with a 15PG rating here. Olympus Has Fallen and The Last Stand are two recent film that was written off by many on here because they weren't rated 18, yet both films managed to be far more violent than many of the classics people love.

Again though, this isn't what I'm saying; it's not about the potential lack of hard-R violence - to be honest I hate gore-porn and films relishing in violence for violence's sake anyway - but that there seems to be a stylistic choice to manufacture the violence in the lower end of the PG-13 spectrum.

We'll see how things pan out (although I would argue that the viewer must eventually make a judgement call on the evidence presented thus far) but seeing a heavy reliance on drones and robots in the trailer suggest there's not even that much on-human violence. Even the manner in which Murphy is injured seems quite tame; ok, car-bombs are hardly tame, but it seems like another attempt to dehumanize the action so it ticks the right ratings boxes. And going by precedent of movies past, that all suggests mediocrity and production-by-committee. It's just conjecture for now of course...

CastorTroy

I understand lower ratings in remakes, though they're not always good.

What I don't understand are lower ratings in sequels. Like Die Hard. Why make the sequel aimed at a lower age group if they're not old enough to be watching the earlier movies in the series?

Links234

ps3lover wrote: »

How do you explain that one?

Ratings are bull****, made up on a case by case basis and rarely reflect a movie's content.

ps3lover

ps3lover wrote: »

Really because it's rated R for strong violence[\b] and language throughout.

Even Safe was Rated R for strong violence throughout and I thought that one was quite tame.
Also look at how insultingly tame The Expendables 2 is. Expendable 2 is much tamer then Olympus Has Fallen yet it has no bad language or nudity yet it's somehow Rated R for Strong Bloody Violence. How do you explain that one? Expendables 2 is far to tame yet that got an R rating which just means anything below that is inexcusable.

Olympus Has Fallen could have received a PG13 had they removed some of the fucks. Same with Safe, it could easily have been edited down to get a PG13 cert and retained all the action and violence. For a lot of low to mid budget action films an R rating is seen as a bonus. Look at the horror genre and how large numbers of genre fans will write off any horror that isn't R or Unrated. The Expendables 2 wanted an R as the marketing had made much of the fact that the film was shot for one. had the film been rated PG13 then there would have been considerable backlash from "true action| fans.

The rating system in the US is broken and you can find the criteria of what qualifies for an R or PG13 rating changing from one film to the next. As such I never judge a film based on the cert. If I did that then I'd be one of the many people in Ireland who refused to see Olympus Has Fallen because it was rated 15A. Olympus Has Fallen is far bloodier and nastier than many of the old R rated action films of all and it's also one of the few films where female characters are shot in the head onscreen, something which would in the past guarantee an R rating.

pixelburp wrote: »

Again though, this isn't what I'm saying; it's not about the potential lack of hard-R violence - to be honest I hate gore-porn and films relishing in violence for violence's sake anyway - but that there seems to be a stylistic choice to manufacture the violence in the lower end of the PG-13 spectrum.

We'll see how things pan out (although I would argue that the viewer must eventually make a judgement call on the evidence presented thus far) but seeing a heavy reliance on drones and robots in the trailer suggest there's not even that much on-human violence. Even the manner in which Murphy is injured seems quite tame; ok, car-bombs are hardly tame, but it seems like another attempt to dehumanize the action so it ticks the right ratings boxes. And going by precedent of movies past, that all suggests mediocrity and production-by-committee. It's just conjecture for now of course...

I don't see why the film needs to emphasis violence against humans. I'm watching Almost Human and week after week we have shotguns blasts to the face, various horrible deaths and a real sense of glee in emphasising just how crappy being a cop in the future is. The fact that the violence happens to androids means that the makers don't have to cut away during the violence as other Network shows do.

The fact that Robocop is being directed by José Padilha has me somewhat optimistic that it won't be a generic, by the numbers piece of crap.

ScumLord

Deleted User wrote: »

Still a few images and trailer with moments taken out of context can't really be used as a basis to judge a film. I'm not the least bit interested in the film but I'm not going to write if off just yet. People seem to think that action films still need to be a hard R rating and fail to recognize that these days you can have a film that's nastier and more visceral than most of the 80s classics and it can get away with a 15PG rating here. Olympus Has Fallen and The Last Stand are two recent film that was written off by many on here because they weren't rated 18, yet both films managed to be far more violent than many of the classics people love.

I actually think that making a violent film a PG13 is more harmful than a violent film with a R rating. In PG13 you have all the violence without any of the consequences. We see cars, buildings and all sorts of public damage but none of the consequences. Thousands of people would have died in the battles of the transformer films but that's all brushed to the side and not one mention of it is made.

The violence in the original robocop destroyed lives, caused heartache and in the end was defeated. Modern action films just have violence with happy endings.

ebbsy

Have to echo a lot of what was said above.

Robocop is a film that was way ahead of its time. The 13s rating will hurt it I think. Dredd was a great film, but if was not 18s would it have been so good? Unlikely.

Remakes eh ? Total Recall, Escape from New York, The Thing, The Ring, etc., all a let down in my opinion.

CastorTroy

ebbsy wrote: »

Have to echo a lot of what was said above.

Robocop is a film that was way ahead of its time. The 13s rating will hurt it I think. Dredd was a great film, but if was not 18s would it have been so good? Unlikely.

Remakes eh ? Total Recall, Escape from New York, The Thing, The Ring, etc., all a let down in my opinion.

Is that Escape From LA or did I miss the remake?

krudler

Mr Freeze wrote: »

I must agree with this.

I watched Robocop again recently, the ED 209 scene without gore would be just as good, the gore felt over the top to me now rewatching it.

That said, in the scene where Alex Murphy is shot to death, the gore kind of needed there to show the brutality in which Clarence execute him. Just having bang fade to black wouldn't have had the same impact, or as a kid watching Robocop, I was disgusted after I taped it on UTV only to discover that this scene was heavily edited down, no hand being shot off and no head shot at the end.

That's completely the point, and it makes the "someone call an ambulance" line even funnier.

ebbsy

CastorTroy wrote: »

Is that Escape From LA or did I miss the remake?

It was. I thought the 1996 film was filth.

maryrose608

i think a Dark robocop movie could be super