RoboCop Remake Gets An Official Synopsis, It May Seem Familiar
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Given all of the viral advertising that’s coming out for Jose Padhila’s RoboCop reboot, you’d think it was coming to theaters in a few months, not in 2013. In fact the film hasn’t even started filming yet.
A press release about foreign distribution rights contained a quick plot synopsis for the upcoming action flick. It may seem familiar to some of you.
In RoboCop, the year is 2029 and multinational conglomerate OmniCorp is at the center of robot technology. Their drones are winning American wars around the globe and now they want to bring this technology to the home front. Alex Murphy is a loving husband, father and good cop doing his best to stem the tide of crime and corruption in Detroit. After he is critically injured in the line of duty, OmniCorp utilizes their remarkable science of robotics to save Alex’s life. He returns to the streets of his beloved city with amazing new abilities, but with issues a regular man has never had to face before.
If you’ve seen Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 original, then, plot wise, Padhila’s RoboCop doesn’t seem like it will offer much in the way of surprises.
The most interesting bit of this synopsis, however, is that it sounds like there’s more building of the surrounding world going on. In Verhoeven’s film there’s a sense of the dystopian, corporate-controlled nature of the future, but it is vague and only hinted at. From this description it sounds like those elements will be more in your face in the update, and play a more prominent role. Whether this approach actually works, or if it comes across as too blatant and heavy-handed, remains to be seen. At least they’re trying something different.
RoboCop stars Joel Kinnaman as Alex Murphy/RoboCop, Gary Oldman as RoboCop’s creator, Samuel L. Jackson as a media mogul, Hugh Laurie as the primary antagonist, and Abbie Cornish as Murphy’s wife.
