The New Robocop

I am not really a child of the 80’s. I was born in 1984, so I didn’t have a lot of opportunity to immerse myself in pop culture.

Robocop was certainly not one of the movies I watched growing up. I remember watching the live-action series and I’ve seen the first movie a few times. I’ve seen a bit of 2 and 3, and I watched the Prime Directives miniseries when it aired.

The Hollywood machine has got its hooks into Robocop and a studio is remaking it. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the early concept art for the new Robocop, and by the Old Man is it ugly.

This new look has nothing going on.It doesn’t even have any common design elements with the original. The original Robocop’s iconic slit-visor is nowhere to be seen, nor the contrast between black polymer sheathing and the burnished steel armour, just dark blue and dark grey plates. How will those abdominal plates articulate? It doesn’t look like there’s enough space for Robo to store his sidearm in a thigh holster. It does not say “Robocop” to me. It doesn’t even say “cop” to me; it looks like a disposable minion from any first-person shooter developed in the last six years or a design rejected from Monday Night Combat for being too serious. If I saw this thing walking down the street, I wouldn’t feel safe, I’d be terrified.

Even ED-209 has changed. As seen on the OmniCorp front page, it’s just been made more complicated. What was so wrong with the gun pods? Everything’s exposed; I can’t tell what’s what. It’s as bad as the robot designs from the Transformers films.

Since these are early designs, there’s a lot of time for things to change. For an audience to identify with the character, Robocop needs an iconic look, and right now this design has none.

Rock of Ages

I just came back from a preview screening of Rock of Ages. If you’re thinking of going to see it, maybe I can sway you one way or the other.