Tag Archives: Robocopy

The Robocop Remake Skips its Elysium Class Warfare Moment

Don’t bother with the Robocop remake. The original–campy, sensationalized, mildly intolerable–still succeeds in one key element: examining class warfare.

You’d think that in an era of post-2008, the 1% being called out as contemptuous greed-mongerers and the Occupy Movement, that a Robocop remake would examine in a contemporary frame, the class divide that reflected Detroit in the future, as told by the 1987 dystopic lens.

But no. My friends, I have seen the new Robocop so that you don’t have to.

The new one skips these things:

  1. Detroit actually having gone bankrupt.
  2. Huge wealth bifurcation.
  3. Massive class conflict.
  4. Garish pop culture.
  5. Depraved consumerism.

Elysium, on the other hand, happily embraces massive class conflict on a gritty and human level. It succeeds where the Robocopy fails.

So you should do this: re-watch the original Robocop, watch Elysium, and skip the Robocopy. Ultimately, the remake, which is free of class analysis, is simply designed to fluff us into greater obedience.