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ROBOCOP
About The Film Man and machine unite in RoboCop, a reimagining of the 1980s cult classic,
directed by Jose Padilha. In the film, Officer Alex Murphy becomes the star
product of OmniCorp, the world's leading robotics defense company. In a Detroit
ravaged by crime, OmniCorp sees an opening for the perfect policeman - a robot
that can clean up the city, without putting police lives at risk. Trouble is,
the idea of a robot pulling the trigger makes people anxious. To get it done,
they compromise: after Murphy is mortally wounded, he wakes up in the hospital
mostly a robot, barely a man at all - but all cop.
For OmniCorp, Murphy represents a tremendous opportunity. "He's a product they
want to sell," Padilha explains. "He's a prototype. He's been developed, just
like a soda company might develop a new bottle: they're trying to find the ideal
design for a robot to sell to police departments. It's potentially billions of
dollars for the company, so they're willing to cut a few ethical corners to get
there. But they forgot something - inside the product, there is a man; it's not
just a suit, it's a human being. They set up this invention that they think they
can control, but they pick the wrong guy. They pick somebody too good, a guy
determined to use his new powers for justice."
"OmniCorp's idea is that they need a man inside the machine, a man who makes the
decisions so the corporation won't be held liable if something goes wrong," says
Joel Kinnaman, star of the television series "The Killing," who plays Murphy.
"They leave his emotions intact in social situations, but when facing a threat
or when a crime is committed, the computer takes over. When they realize his
emotions make the system vulnerable, they completely shut them off. But when
Alex comes in contact with his family, his emotions find a way back and override
the computer system. He starts making his own decisions again."
Kinnaman says he was attracted to play the role of Alex Murphy after meeting
with Jose Padilha. "Jose described his vision - his philosophical and political
ideas that could fit inside the concept of RoboCop," says Kinnaman. "You could
use that concept to talk about a lot of other interesting things. He wanted to
make a fun action movie that discusses philosophical dilemmas that we will face
in the very near future. And I wanted to be a part of that."
"Back in the 80s, the idea of a half-man, half-robot could only take place in
the far future. But it's actually happening now," says Padilha. "From
prosthetics to drones to self-driving cars, this idea is becoming part of
everybody's life. It's raising a lot of legal and ethical issues that we're all
dealing with. And Alex Murphy embodies all of those questions - what happens
when you put the man inside the machine?"
Padilha says that his involvement with the film began by a fortunate twist of
fate: "I had a meeting at MGM, and we were talking about movies I might want to
make. They had a poster of the original RoboCop, and I said, well, that's the
movie I want to make. I think it's a brilliant film, an iconic classic. I gave
them my take, and they said, 'Let's do it.' It was a lucky coincidence - a
studio that had the right material, a guy who is a fan, and a poster."
The producers of the film, Marc Abraham and Eric Newman, say that Padilha was
the perfect choice to helm this new vision for RoboCop. "The studio took a real
chance," says Abraham. "They went to a filmmaker who had made some brilliant
documentaries as well as two films, Elite Squad and Elite Squad 2, that became
extraordinarily successful, particularly in Brazil - Elite Squad won the Golden
Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. They were excited about hiring a filmmaker
who was out of the box to make a movie that was out of the box."
"There's a frenetic quality to Jose's films," says Newman. "You come away from
his movies thinking, 'That's cool.' But at the same time, he invigorates the
movie with a point of view." And, Newman adds, RoboCop provides a great
framework to do just that. "RoboCop is just as relevant as when it came out," he
continues. Jose wanted to make a movie that worked on two levels - it had to be
action packed and have that 'wow' factor with things no one has seen before -
but also thematically relevant, with something to say about the world."
"I think it's fun to go to a movie, have a great time, and at the same time,
come out thinking, 'there's an issue here,'" he explains. Through his admiration
for RoboCop, Padilha saw a way to bring the story to the screen in a new and
very contemporary way. "The themes of the movie are even more current today," he
says. "We are getting close to a world in which warfare will be automated.
We're going to have robots replacing soldiers and policemen. Right now, we're
beginning an intense discussion about drones, which are not automated - there's
a human being, observing from a remote location, deciding when to pull the
trigger. But what happens when software, an algorithm, makes that decision?
Everything in the movie is going to be in the real world very soon, and we're
going to have discussions about whether this is OK or not. It's fascinating for
me to have a chance to tackle this project years later, with the insight of all
that has happened technologically, and try to recreate it in the current time
for our current issues, but still keep the philosophical core of the original
character."
The issues aren't just ethical or moral, but also practical. "Let's say you buy
a car that drives itself and the car loses control and runs over someone. Whose
fault is that? Who gets sued? You, or the company that made the car?" asks
Padilha. "Well, what if a cop makes a mistake and kills someone? Today, it's the
cop that's to blame, not the police department. But what if the cop is a robot?
All of these issues that come with technology can be discussed within RoboCop."
And it's not just political - it's also very personal for Alex Murphy. "In the
movie, people have to believe that the machine knows what it feels like to be
human, so they keep Alex Murphy's brain intact. He has all his emotions. He
has all his memories. He has cognitive capabilities. However, he can't hold his
son or have sex with his wife," says Padilha. "It's a nightmare being Robocop.
The movie is very much about the drama of this man facing the existential
question - how am I going to go forward like this? Is Alex a machine or a human
being?"
Even if the film has an existential element, there's still plenty of cool
factor. For the filmmakers, dabbling in robot technology was like an open
playground. "One of the most exciting things to us - as filmmakers but also fans
- was to create all the robots," says producer Eric Newman. "We had a lot of fun
with those. We have the ED-209s, the hyper-aggressive killing machines. We have
the EM-208s, the humanoid-sized perfect soldiers."
Production designer Martin Whist, who designed the various iterations of RoboCop
as well as the ED-209 and EM-208, says that even as they let their imaginations
run wild, the truth was right there to back them up. "Every idea we had for
something RoboCop could do, it turns out, somebody is researching it now, in
real life," he says. "For example, there are people out there right now in the
lab, who have sensors on their brains that allow them to move a robotic hand
with their thoughts. We had this idea for a high-powered Taser gun - and it
turns out that it's being developed. Everything in the movie is based in
reality."
"It was imperative that the movie was grounded - it had to feel authentic and
believable," says Newman. "One of Jose's great advantages is that he trained as
a physicist, so his BS detector is very finely tuned. He questioned the
scientific veracity of everything, and as a result, we have a movie that feels
very legitimate."
RoboCop himself has two separate and very different suits in the film. "The
first suit was intentionally a tip of the hat to the original film and the
original design," Whist explains. "I wanted to stay with the coloration of the
original design; the overall impression is silver, but - just like they did on
the first film - we used a technique where there were multiple colors in it:
there are magentas and deep blues in it. It's a little less sophisticated than
the second suit, a little boxier, a little less agile, and that was intentional
to show the evolution from one RoboCop to the next."
In the original RoboCop, the filmmakers used stop motion animation for the
ED-209. For the new film, the filmmakers naturally chose visual effects. "When
you first see the ED-209 in the original film, it's such a memorable moment -
but because of the type of animation, they were limited in the way they could
move the camera or compose the shots," says Visual Effects Supervisor James E.
Price. "Now, we're able to use modern tools, and we have a lot more flexibility.
We can really integrate sophisticated motion and composites into those scenes.
And that's a perfect fit for Jose's filmmaking style - he's very active with the
camera, very in the moment. We didn't have to lock down the camera, and we could
let the visual effects play out the way he wanted to shoot it."
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