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:
- Detroit actually having gone bankrupt.
- Huge wealth bifurcation.
- Massive class conflict.
- Garish pop culture.
- 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.