It's so hard to accept a different incarnation of something that you hold a great deal of love for. I'm not here to blow smoke up your tailpipe about how I love the classic 80's film because of the political subtext...nope, I'm one of those guys that loved Robo's ability to create new holes in the bodies of bad guys, plain and simple. Yeah, the rest of it was cool and allowed my older self to continue my now 20 year long love affair with cyborg law enforcement but it was the action that sold my ticket. So needless to saw the bar I've set for Jose Padilaha attempt to recapture that magic is slightly lower than others, but with every clip I see a movie that is that much closer to making itself a worthy competitor. Will it surpass Robocop the original? Nah, no chance but Robocop 2 and 3 better watch out (who am I kidding Robocop 3 was as bad as Superman IV).
This new clip shows Robo's first controlled live fire field test....a welcome change from OCP's previous practice of debuting new and untested military grade weaponry in a boardroom (I'm looking at you ED-209). Not that we didn't know this already but this new Robo seems quite a bit more agile than his predecessor, it also confirms that he is less of a mindless robot fighting for his humanity and more of a resurrected human with cybernetic upgrades. There is no digitized voice or responses that sound pre-programmed, honestly he seems less cyborg and more modern day Matt Damon from Elysium. Regardless of the eventual venom spit by fanboys everywhere about how "inferior" this is to the original it looks to me like Padilaha has at least managed to put together a fun action flick that will strike all of the right chords with the 12 year old in all of us.
