Giant Freakin Robot

José Padilha and his team certainly seem to have a different mindset than J.J. Abrams when it comes to set securing, considering that almost every facet of RoboCop has already leaked in one form or another. New videos of RoboCop zipping up and down the streets of Toronto have surfaced, revealing how Joel Kinnaman’s stuntman loves to show off for passersby.

A lot of people are down on the look of the suit in the upcoming RoboCop remake. Many fans of Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 original just don’t dig the new black look. While not a huge fan—to my eyes it looks like a robotic Venom costume—I’m going to try to reserve judgment until we finally see it in action.

The beleaguered RoboCop remake has been the source of a lot of drama already, and it’s not even slated to come out until 2014. There have been rumors of director Jose Padilha describing the project as “hell,” a release date shift that suggests that MGM may not be super confident in the direction of the movie, and a round of fanboy blowback after set photos of the underwhelming new RoboCop designs hit the internet. With all of the hullabuloo, I’d very nearly forgotten about something we heard months ago: the new RoboCop is supposed to go through several “looks” during the course of the film. Now, thanks to a photo posted online it looks like what we’ve seen so far may not tell the whole story.

Hollywood has been stuck in remake mode for years now, but recently they seem particularly focused on remaking the filmography of one particular guy: Dutch director Paul Verhoeven. This past summer saw a new version of Total Recall starring Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, and Bryan Cranston. In February 2014, we’ll get to see director Jose Padilha’s take on Verhoeven’s RoboCop. There’s also a new version of Starship Troopers, based on the novel by Robert Heinlein, and which Verhoeven adapted into a campy, mega-violent film back in 1997. If you’re Paul Verhoeven, I’m not sure whether all these would seem like a compliment or a slap in the face. Thankfully, somebody decided to ask him.

The Playlist recently interviewed Verhoeven and took the time to ask him about all the remakes of his films. Asked about this past summer’s lackluster Total Recall remake, Verhoeven points out that “critics were a lot more complimentary to me and Arnold about the original after the remake came out than they had been been before it.” That’s a spot-on assessment of the differences between the two Total Recalls in my opinion. The remake was slick and pretty, but stripped of all the corniness and the outright weirdness of Verhoeven’s original, it just felt like a hollow and tedious exercise. The original Total Recall is batshit insane in a thousand different ways, but if you strip out all the Schwarzenegger one-liners and three-breasted hookers and psychic conjoined twins and ancient Martian terraforming machines, it turns out you’re left with not much. Watching the remake just made me appreciate the first Total Recall even more.