paperback_wizard
Joined Sep 2005
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I'd buy a ticket to this movie for a dollar. I'd even buy it at normal price. Certainly, the new RoboCop is different than the original, but it is by no means the worst installment in the franchise. Paul Verhoeven created a hyper-violent satire, and many fans of the original believe it can never be duplicated. But the remake, far from losing the spirit of the original, finds a way to make a story about cyborgs, robotic drones, and naked greed relevant for our day. Who knew?
The new Alex Murphy does a great job of embodying the central theme of this movie: how much of a man can you remove before he loses his soul? It's a legitimate question, and a relevant one in this age of artificial limbs. Face it, if you wanted to make a movie about a man who fights to stay "human" as his body is replaced with robotics, then RoboCop is the character you'd eventually create. And Joel Kinnaman seems perfect for the role. Even after most of his body is replaced, Officer Murphy returns to his family and friends with his personality more or less intact. It's only later that "complications" arise, ensuring his creators take drastic steps to keep their "monster" from running wild.
The mad scientist of this particular tale, Dr. Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman), is perhaps more of a schizophrenic scientist, as he can't seem to decide whether he's on the side of the angels or not. In the beginning, he wants to help Murphy retain his humanity; but he still manages to help kill it by degrees, first by making his tactical responses more computer-driven and later by dulling his emotions in general so he can cope with the new sensory inputs. Both of these fly in the face of the purpose of "putting a man inside a machine". The people of these great United States don't want machines making decisions, after all; they want a human mind making decisions, and a human hand pulling the trigger when necessary.
Ironically, Oldman would have been the perfect "mad scientist" in a Verhoeven-style satire; one who only cares about advancing his research, proving his theories, conducting more experiments, and ultimately being justified by his creation. Science fiction needs more of that type of mad scientist to explore the extreme scenarios of man versus machine; but, of course, Murphy needs an ally if he's going to some day take down the real "villain" of the piece.
That villain, of course, is Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton), purveyor of robotic drones across the globe who can't seem to find a market for his products in the states. "Americans want a product with a conscious," he laments to his marketing team, "something that knows what it feels like to be human." He isn't as overtly evil as Ronny Cox's Dick Jones, but his cool head and easygoing style makes him more insidious. He manipulates Norton into slicing just a little more of Murphy's soul away with every opportunity to make him more "efficient", more marketable to the American people.
And, of course, he has his team to back up his plays. Jay Baruchel is his marketing whiz-kid who comes up with various iterations of RoboCop's "armor" for various tasks (though Sellars himself ultimately decides on the black tactical shell). And Jackie Earle Haley is Richard Mattox, the mercenary who puts Murphy through his paces, while delightfully taunting him with the epithet "Tin Man". We see quite a bit of action in this movie, despite the much bemoaned PG-13 rating, and while most of Murphy's violence is directed towards robot drones (including multiple ED-209′s), he gets the chance to confront both Mattox and Sellars in several pulse-pounding scenes.
Of course, if you just can't survive without serious satire, then Samuel L. Jackson has you covered, starting, ending, and peppering the movie with his Pat Novak persona. Novak loves robots, and isn't afraid to use his popular cable news show to accuse America of being "robophobic". He'll cut off U.S. senators as quickly as he'll cut off scenes of robots shooting children a world away just to promote his profanity-punctuated viewpoint. While we see Murphy struggle with being a cyborg, we see the country struggle with the question of whether it's right to ask anyone to bear that burden; and we see it through the lens of an over-the-top political commentator with a weird hairpiece.
In the end, this movie owes its unique style to a Brazilian director in his first Hollywood outing. Jose Padilha, a big fan of Paul Verhoeven's style and aesthetics, sees no point in even trying to emulate him. And while most fans of the original would go further and say there's no point in rebooting RoboCop at all, Padilha sees a future, our future, that includes "autonomous drones, smart robots that will decide life over death".
"It's going to be a real important decision in the future, both politically and philosophically. When you have a robot that's pulling the trigger, but making the decision itself, our culpability gets thrown out the window. In the new film, set in 2028 Detroit, OmniCorp have these drones in other countries, but not in America. So they want to get them into the American market and needed a product that had a consciousness, therefore they put a man inside a machine, and that's the premise for the movie."
It's a great premise, too. Do we want machines making those kinds of decisions? Other sci-fi movies have tackled this question. Why not RoboCop, the one movie character who may be the most perfect for the job? Both Padilha and Verhoeven are noted for blending action and social commentary, which may make this not only the perfect time but also the perfect team for repurposing the world's most famous robotic police officer.
The new Alex Murphy does a great job of embodying the central theme of this movie: how much of a man can you remove before he loses his soul? It's a legitimate question, and a relevant one in this age of artificial limbs. Face it, if you wanted to make a movie about a man who fights to stay "human" as his body is replaced with robotics, then RoboCop is the character you'd eventually create. And Joel Kinnaman seems perfect for the role. Even after most of his body is replaced, Officer Murphy returns to his family and friends with his personality more or less intact. It's only later that "complications" arise, ensuring his creators take drastic steps to keep their "monster" from running wild.
The mad scientist of this particular tale, Dr. Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman), is perhaps more of a schizophrenic scientist, as he can't seem to decide whether he's on the side of the angels or not. In the beginning, he wants to help Murphy retain his humanity; but he still manages to help kill it by degrees, first by making his tactical responses more computer-driven and later by dulling his emotions in general so he can cope with the new sensory inputs. Both of these fly in the face of the purpose of "putting a man inside a machine". The people of these great United States don't want machines making decisions, after all; they want a human mind making decisions, and a human hand pulling the trigger when necessary.
Ironically, Oldman would have been the perfect "mad scientist" in a Verhoeven-style satire; one who only cares about advancing his research, proving his theories, conducting more experiments, and ultimately being justified by his creation. Science fiction needs more of that type of mad scientist to explore the extreme scenarios of man versus machine; but, of course, Murphy needs an ally if he's going to some day take down the real "villain" of the piece.
That villain, of course, is Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton), purveyor of robotic drones across the globe who can't seem to find a market for his products in the states. "Americans want a product with a conscious," he laments to his marketing team, "something that knows what it feels like to be human." He isn't as overtly evil as Ronny Cox's Dick Jones, but his cool head and easygoing style makes him more insidious. He manipulates Norton into slicing just a little more of Murphy's soul away with every opportunity to make him more "efficient", more marketable to the American people.
And, of course, he has his team to back up his plays. Jay Baruchel is his marketing whiz-kid who comes up with various iterations of RoboCop's "armor" for various tasks (though Sellars himself ultimately decides on the black tactical shell). And Jackie Earle Haley is Richard Mattox, the mercenary who puts Murphy through his paces, while delightfully taunting him with the epithet "Tin Man". We see quite a bit of action in this movie, despite the much bemoaned PG-13 rating, and while most of Murphy's violence is directed towards robot drones (including multiple ED-209′s), he gets the chance to confront both Mattox and Sellars in several pulse-pounding scenes.
Of course, if you just can't survive without serious satire, then Samuel L. Jackson has you covered, starting, ending, and peppering the movie with his Pat Novak persona. Novak loves robots, and isn't afraid to use his popular cable news show to accuse America of being "robophobic". He'll cut off U.S. senators as quickly as he'll cut off scenes of robots shooting children a world away just to promote his profanity-punctuated viewpoint. While we see Murphy struggle with being a cyborg, we see the country struggle with the question of whether it's right to ask anyone to bear that burden; and we see it through the lens of an over-the-top political commentator with a weird hairpiece.
In the end, this movie owes its unique style to a Brazilian director in his first Hollywood outing. Jose Padilha, a big fan of Paul Verhoeven's style and aesthetics, sees no point in even trying to emulate him. And while most fans of the original would go further and say there's no point in rebooting RoboCop at all, Padilha sees a future, our future, that includes "autonomous drones, smart robots that will decide life over death".
"It's going to be a real important decision in the future, both politically and philosophically. When you have a robot that's pulling the trigger, but making the decision itself, our culpability gets thrown out the window. In the new film, set in 2028 Detroit, OmniCorp have these drones in other countries, but not in America. So they want to get them into the American market and needed a product that had a consciousness, therefore they put a man inside a machine, and that's the premise for the movie."
It's a great premise, too. Do we want machines making those kinds of decisions? Other sci-fi movies have tackled this question. Why not RoboCop, the one movie character who may be the most perfect for the job? Both Padilha and Verhoeven are noted for blending action and social commentary, which may make this not only the perfect time but also the perfect team for repurposing the world's most famous robotic police officer.
- Review originally posted at http://fourthdayuniverse.com/reports/2014/02/robocop-repurposed/
"The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" is the quintessential fantasy movie, with quests, monsters, fair maidens, heroes, villains, revenge, intrigue, magic, dungeons, and, of course, a dragon. All of these elements are present in Tolkien's novel "The Hobbit" (with the exception of the "fair maiden", that is), but not all of them are there throughout the novel; so, in trying to turn one novel into three movies, Peter Jackson had to stretch a lot of elements across all three movies, and introduce whole new elements in some places. It's less of a problem with "Desolation of Smaug" than it was with "An Unexpected Journey", which is partly why people say this film is superior to that one; but it's still a problem.
Jackson has taken some serious flack for reusing characters from The Lord of the Rings in a trilogy based on a novel that never even mentioned them. But, there is a valid and even important point to adding these characters. In the novel "The Hobbit", when the company enters Mirkwood, Gandalf (Ian McKellen) leaves them, claiming he has business elsewhere. While this may seem like a vague justification to give Bilbo an excuse to step up, Tolkien did actually have something important for Gandalf to do at the time. He leaves to investigate reports of a Necromancer in the crumbling stronghold of Dol Guldur. Many dark creatures in Middle Earth have a connection to this place, as you'll see in DoS. Radagast the Brown (Sylvester McCoy) alerted the White Council to the Necromancer's plotting in AUJ, which is why we see them all together there, and why Gandalf travels to Dol Guldur in this film. I mention this to show that not everything Jackson does in the Hobbit films is about pandering.
On the other hand, some of what he does is all about pandering. While Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and company are battling Spiders in Mirkwood, they are "saved" by Wood Elves, who promptly take them all prisoner as trespassers. Included among the Elves is Legolas, who, in the Tolkienverse, is the son of King Thranduil (Lee Pace), so at least there's a logical explanation for him being there. But the female warrior Elf Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) is completely new.
I understand that Tolkien didn't include a lot of female characters in his stories. But the least you could do is not include a woman who has only two roles to fill, one of them being purely romantic. Sure, Tauriel is seen slaughtering at least as many orcs as Legolas, but that doesn't make her a strong character; that just makes her a character who happens to have a talent for killing.
Her other role was, apparently, being in love with Legolas; and with the Dwarf Kili (Aidan Turner). Between the awkward flirting with both men, the lack of any substantive contribution to the narrative, and Jackson shoehorning in a brand new subplot for Kili just so Tauriel would have some more screen time in the final act of the film, there's no real reason why her character should have been added to DoS.
The main problem I had with Tauriel is she seemed completely out of place in the narrative, and not because she had never been there before. They interspersed tense and dramatic moments between Bilbo and the dragon Smaug with "romantic" and, frankly, quite silly moments between Tauriel and Kili. If they had eliminated the "love triangle" between Tauriel, Kili, and Legolas, even if they had left in the romance angle between her and Legolas, then it wouldn't have wrenchingly distracted from what were, in my opinion, the most powerful moments of the film.
Setting aside all the "extra" plot lines, whether Tolkien intended for them to exist or not, the "Hobbit" parts of the film were, in a word, fantastic. The way they wrote and handled the scenes with the Spiders, the escape from the Wood Elves' dungeon, and the climactic confrontation with the magnificent Smaug were my favorite moments, and Freeman's Bilbo virtually carried every scene. He melded tension, suspense, and even humor into a performance that kept me grinning from ear to ear.
Smaug the Golden, the Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities, in no way disappointed me. Dragons are magnificent creatures, and Smaug has set the standard for dragons for over 75 years now. Benedict Cumberbatch's voice undoubtedly lent to the powerful portrayal, but there's nothing that quite matches simply seeing the massive beast on the screen, emerging from beneath a sea of gold and jewels (with a cowering hobbit in the center adding no small amount to the feeling of awe at the sight). And to hear the words, only slightly altered from Tolkien's original text, as Smaug taunts Bilbo with his insignificance, teasing him with the prospect of near-instantaneous destruction, and even taking time to instill a sense of doubt in the hobbit's mind about his companions, the conspicuously reluctant-to-enter Dwarfs. I could watch the film over and over just to see Smaug again.
I shook my head several times throughout the film, though not as much as during the first film. I think some scenes (and characters, obviously) just didn't belong. But, some scenes that Jackson added helped the movie, and the larger narrative of the trilogy. And, as I cannot say enough times, the dragon was incredible. Much more so than after An Unexpected Journey, I'm looking forward to the next film.
(Read the full review at http://fourthdayuniverse.com/reports/2013/12/that-was-a-dragon/)
Jackson has taken some serious flack for reusing characters from The Lord of the Rings in a trilogy based on a novel that never even mentioned them. But, there is a valid and even important point to adding these characters. In the novel "The Hobbit", when the company enters Mirkwood, Gandalf (Ian McKellen) leaves them, claiming he has business elsewhere. While this may seem like a vague justification to give Bilbo an excuse to step up, Tolkien did actually have something important for Gandalf to do at the time. He leaves to investigate reports of a Necromancer in the crumbling stronghold of Dol Guldur. Many dark creatures in Middle Earth have a connection to this place, as you'll see in DoS. Radagast the Brown (Sylvester McCoy) alerted the White Council to the Necromancer's plotting in AUJ, which is why we see them all together there, and why Gandalf travels to Dol Guldur in this film. I mention this to show that not everything Jackson does in the Hobbit films is about pandering.
On the other hand, some of what he does is all about pandering. While Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and company are battling Spiders in Mirkwood, they are "saved" by Wood Elves, who promptly take them all prisoner as trespassers. Included among the Elves is Legolas, who, in the Tolkienverse, is the son of King Thranduil (Lee Pace), so at least there's a logical explanation for him being there. But the female warrior Elf Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) is completely new.
I understand that Tolkien didn't include a lot of female characters in his stories. But the least you could do is not include a woman who has only two roles to fill, one of them being purely romantic. Sure, Tauriel is seen slaughtering at least as many orcs as Legolas, but that doesn't make her a strong character; that just makes her a character who happens to have a talent for killing.
Her other role was, apparently, being in love with Legolas; and with the Dwarf Kili (Aidan Turner). Between the awkward flirting with both men, the lack of any substantive contribution to the narrative, and Jackson shoehorning in a brand new subplot for Kili just so Tauriel would have some more screen time in the final act of the film, there's no real reason why her character should have been added to DoS.
The main problem I had with Tauriel is she seemed completely out of place in the narrative, and not because she had never been there before. They interspersed tense and dramatic moments between Bilbo and the dragon Smaug with "romantic" and, frankly, quite silly moments between Tauriel and Kili. If they had eliminated the "love triangle" between Tauriel, Kili, and Legolas, even if they had left in the romance angle between her and Legolas, then it wouldn't have wrenchingly distracted from what were, in my opinion, the most powerful moments of the film.
Setting aside all the "extra" plot lines, whether Tolkien intended for them to exist or not, the "Hobbit" parts of the film were, in a word, fantastic. The way they wrote and handled the scenes with the Spiders, the escape from the Wood Elves' dungeon, and the climactic confrontation with the magnificent Smaug were my favorite moments, and Freeman's Bilbo virtually carried every scene. He melded tension, suspense, and even humor into a performance that kept me grinning from ear to ear.
Smaug the Golden, the Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities, in no way disappointed me. Dragons are magnificent creatures, and Smaug has set the standard for dragons for over 75 years now. Benedict Cumberbatch's voice undoubtedly lent to the powerful portrayal, but there's nothing that quite matches simply seeing the massive beast on the screen, emerging from beneath a sea of gold and jewels (with a cowering hobbit in the center adding no small amount to the feeling of awe at the sight). And to hear the words, only slightly altered from Tolkien's original text, as Smaug taunts Bilbo with his insignificance, teasing him with the prospect of near-instantaneous destruction, and even taking time to instill a sense of doubt in the hobbit's mind about his companions, the conspicuously reluctant-to-enter Dwarfs. I could watch the film over and over just to see Smaug again.
I shook my head several times throughout the film, though not as much as during the first film. I think some scenes (and characters, obviously) just didn't belong. But, some scenes that Jackson added helped the movie, and the larger narrative of the trilogy. And, as I cannot say enough times, the dragon was incredible. Much more so than after An Unexpected Journey, I'm looking forward to the next film.
(Read the full review at http://fourthdayuniverse.com/reports/2013/12/that-was-a-dragon/)