1987 RoboCop Footage Goes Behind The Scenes Of Verhoeven’s Cult Classic
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With more than a year until the release of José Padilha’s RoboCop remake, it’s interesting to look back at Paul Verhoeven’s original. Director Paul Verhoeven and actor Peter Weller took what could have been a very silly story of a robotic man and elevated the material into a satire of ’80s greed, as well as a look at what it means to be human. Below is a vintage behind-the-scenes look at the production of RoboCop from Entertainment Tonight in 1987.
It’s refreshing to watch this early look at RoboCop. Today many of the special effects and filmmaking would be done with CGI instead of practical work. Comparing Peter Weller in the RoboCop suit to Joel Kinnaman in the suit is like night and day. While both suits are robotic in look and texture, Weller’s feels grittier and Kinnaman’s feels slicker.
It almost seems as if the 2014 version of RoboCop will be more cartoonish than the original. That somehow, the 2014 version will be more tame and watered-down, just based on what we’ve seen in leaked location photos and video footage. Of course, we’ll see when Padilha’s RoboCop is released in 2014.
Imagine what Peter Weller had to go through every day while filming RoboCop. Each day, spending an hour and a half in makeup to put on the RoboCop suit seems like a daunting task. But while it was a pain to put the suit on, the results speak for themselves. The original RoboCop is a little more than 25 years old, and it still holds up as an action film and a satire. It’s still a very popular film, which is why Hollywood feels fit to remake it.
RoboCop will be released in theaters everywhere on February 7, 2014.
