Few sci-fi films quite captured the zeitgeist like seminal 1987 film “RoboCop.”
(Few films have been as prescient either, given the state of Detroit in both the movie and in real life.)
The film, which is about a fatally injured police officer given a second lease on life thanks to cybernetics, was a smash hit that spawned a pair of sequels.
That last of that original “RoboCop” trilogy came out in 1993 — and the franchise has been in something of a funk ever since then.
There was a short-lived television series and an even shorter-lived reboot attempt in 2014, with neither quite rekindling the magic of the 1987 original.
Fast forward to 2024, and another stab is being made at rebooting the venerable sci-fi franchise.
So why is it so hard to shake this bad gut feeling about it? There’s a couple glaring reasons for it.
First, according to a report from The Hollywood Reporter, “RoboCop” is well on its way to being rebooted as a television series.
Have you seen a “Robocop” movie?
Yes: 67% (4 Votes)
No: 33% (2 Votes)
That, in and of itself, doesn’t mean a whole lot, given that the early aughts television series “RoboCop: Prime Directives” is a completely separate entity.
“Prime Directives” was a Canadian miniseries (it was all of four episodes long) that acted as an effective sequel to the original trilogy.
While Canada was behind that series, a much bigger entity will be helming this latest reboot.
Amazon Studios — offshoot of the tech empire built by Jeff Bezos — will be creating this new series, and that’s … concerning.
First, and perhaps foremost, it’s hard to trust anything Amazon will do given the extraordinary way it has butchered the works of famed author J.R.R. Tolkien in the largely panned “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” television series.
And that leads to the second major issue with this upcoming “Robocop” show.
If Amazon can’t get the overtly obvious good versus evil allegory correct from “Rings of Power,” how in the world is it going to nail the far more nuanced tale of “RoboCop,” corporate greed and the role of police in society?
They probably won’t, and the show logline provided by the Reporter doesn’t alleviate those concerns.
“A giant tech conglomerate collaborates with the local police department to introduce a technologically advanced enforcer to combat rising crime, a police officer who’s part man, part machine,” the logline read.
That sounds like a story rife with potential about some of those heady topics broached in 1987, such as free will, honor and duty, corporate greed, and police relations.
Given Amazon’s history and the fact that 2024 is dripping with bad faith ideologues, there’s a very good chance that this new version of “RoboCop” will be more about ACAB than anything substantive.
And that’s a darn shame.
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