The Films of 2014: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Near the end of Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973), Caesar (Roddy McDowall) vanquishes the insurrectionist, Aldo (Claude Akin) and simultaneously reinforces Ape Law, paradoxically the edict that “ape shall not kill ape.” 

Meanwhile, Caesar’s human adviser, MacDonald (Austin Stoker) notes that by confronting the notion that laws must occasionally be bent and values re-examined, the apes have irrevocably joined “the human race.”

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) is a vibrant, moving, beautifully-dramatized series entry that very much concerns the same reckoning. 

The film revolves around Caesar’s (Andy Serkis) fall from grace or innocence, and the lesson that apes are not superior to man merely because of their nature. The world is not always a case of us vs. them, good vs. bad.  Caesar learns this in the film, though with great difficulty.

In addition to being a rock-solid remake of (and improvement over…) Battle for the Planet of the Apes, the new film -- in the best tradition of the long-lived franchise -- features a powerful subtext and social critique. 

In this case, much of the new film revolves around the very quality that is damaging our nation so grievously today: tribalism. 

And in gazing at the pitfalls of tribalism, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes asks explicitly (in its very dialogue) about something else. 

It asks about strength, and what that word truly means.

Does strength stem from superior numbers? From family?  From racial unity?  From the barrel of a gun?  

Does strength come from an irrational refusal to compromise with those who don’t see the world precisely as you do?  

When faced with facts that disprove your world-view, do you double-down anyway, in hopes of being seen as "resolute?" Or do you adjust to facts and go a different way?

Instead of these answers, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes suggests another definition of strength. Strength can, perhaps, emerge from an understanding that your tribe has made a mistake. Strength, in some cases, is all about having the guts to do something about an injustice you have played a role in creating.

In terms of the film, this is the chaotic terrain that Caesar must navigate, and there are no easy answers, and no guarantees that his answers are the right ones, either.  The humans and apes by-and-large double down on hatred and distrust, and the film's climax reveals exactly where that kind of thinking leads.  This is not an empty lesson in America of today, where we have become divided by labels like liberal and conservative that, in the final analysis, don't even adequately describe our beliefs.

A serious-minded, carefully-structured morality play, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes also daringly eschews all the bells-and-whistles we have come to expect from modern summer blockbusters. For instance, there are no action scenes in the film that exist just to wow us or bowl us over. 

Furthermore, there is no gimmicky “surprise” final shot in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes that attempts to up-stage the famous Statue of Liberty ending of the 1968 original.  The film ends as it begins, with extreme close-ups of a leader’s intelligent eyes as he carries the weight of his people, and the future, on his shoulders.  These book-end images place emphasis exactly where it should be: on Caesar’s learning curve as a rational leader, family man (or ape), and guardian of moral values in an uncertain world.

Most delightfully, there is no fan service to speak of in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, no moments that make us reckon with the existence of a larger franchise, or franchise history. Not a soul jokingly quotes famous Charlton Heston dialogue or plays with Statue of Liberty toys.   

Instead, director Matt Reeves lands us smack-dab in the planet of the apes, and tells us a great, involving, heart-wrenching story while we are there.

In the process, he’s given audiences the best Apes movie in a generation.

“Who the hell else am I going to blame?”

Ten years after the Simian Flu wipes out most of humanity, Caesar (Serkis) leads a society of intelligent apes in the safety and beauty of Muir Woods.  A father to a new-born son and a teen, Blue Eyes, Caesar and his friends, including Koba, Rocket and  Maurice, have established new laws to guide the primates, including the edict that ape shall not kill ape.

One day, in the woods, Blue Eyes and another ape, Ash, encounter a human, Carver.  The human immediately draws a gun and shoots Ash, though the ape survives.  Caesar orders Carver and his human cohorts, including Malcolm (Jason Clarke), Ellie (Keri Russell) and Malcolm’s boy, Alexander (Kodi Smit-McPhee) to return to their home, and never to return to the forest, the realm of the apes.

But the incident has already set in motion a series of events that can’t be undone.  Distrustful of humans, Koba begins to form an insurrection against Caesar, recruiting even the leader’s own son, Blue Eyes.

And back in San Francisco, the leader of the human colony, Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) prepares for war with the apes.  His people need to generate electricity using a dam in ape territory, and rather than see humanity fall back into the Dark Ages, Dreyfus is willing to kill to keep the lights on.

Malcolm and Caesar work together to help the human city maintain its power, but dark forces on both sides of the tribal divide plot to break the fragile peace.

“War has begun.”

Firstly, there can be no doubt that Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a remake of Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973).  Events and some specific characters are different, it is true, but in terms of spirit and intent, the two films boast many connections.

Both films, for example, reveal Caesar’s Ape civilization at an early stage of existence in the middle of a picturesque forest.  

In the Ape worlds of both Dawn and Battle the apes are depicted learning written language on the equivalent of chalk boards. More than that, they are learning a new law, which in both films is that, explicitly, “ape shall not kill ape.”

Similarly, both Battle and Dawn involve the march of the generations. 

In both films, we see that Caesar is a husband and a father. In Battle, his son is murdered by an insurrectionist, Aldo, and that is nearly the case, as well, in Dawn. Uniquely, the son of Caesar character is also visually associated with guns in both pictures.  

In Battle, we see young Cornelius playing a childhood game with a stick.  He pretends it is a gun, and make-believe “shoots” a human opponent.  

In Dawn, Caesar’s boy, Blue Eyes, picks up a real gun, and goes to war, though ultimately he regrets his actions.

Significantly, both films also find Caesar returning to the ruins of an old (human) city and unearthing there the wisdom of his father.  

In Battle for the Planet of the Apes, Caesar sees film-reel footage of Cornelius, who warns him that the world will end in bloodshed if the militarism and anti-human beliefs of ape culture are not put down.  

In Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Caesar returns to the San Francisco home we saw in the previous film, Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) and watches recorded images from his own childhood.  He sees that Will Rodman (James Franco) loved him…and gave him a home.  This footage reminds him of a fact he once knew: not all humans are bad.

In both cases, the (dead) father provides the wisdom that Caesar needs to help him choose sides, and avoid unnecessary blood-shed. 

Many of the story beats in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes also follow those featured in Battle. 

For example, in both stories there is an inter-species war (ape vs. man) that “good” apes (like Caesar, Virgil, and Maurice and Rocket) don’t wish to undertake.  Apes and humans fight, but the war is expressly against the will of this group, who argue instead for peace.

Secondly, both films also feature an insurrection in the fragile, protean ape culture, led by a war-like ape that steals machine guns from an armory. 

In Battle, that ape was a gorilla, Aldo.  In Dawn, it’s Koba.  

In Battle, Aldo steals from the Ape armory, which is guarded by Caesar’s "conscience," a kindly old ape named Mandemus (Lew Ayres).  

In Dawn, Koba robs from the humans and takes their guns.

In terms of specific set pieces and theme, both films also end with a literal fall, one visually representing a fall from innocence. Aldo falls to his death from a high tree branch in Battle, after combating Caesar. Koba falls to his death from a high skyscraper scaffold after combating Caesar in Dawn. 

The setting has changed subtly in the battle, but the nature of the setting -- the highest branch that apes always seek out, so-to-speak -- and the conclusion (a fall from grace…) serve as the metaphorical and physical climax of both Ape pictures.

The fall from grace plays out in another way too. 

In both films, Caesar is forced to kill an ape that he trusted, in direct contravention of the law that ape shall not kill ape.  Yet he does so, ironically, to assure the continuance of ape culture and ape law. Thus his people -- in both films -- must reckon with a complicated nuance or shade of gray. The law must sometimes be bent or broken to save it for future generations. Values must periodically be hauled out and re-examined. In this case -- and only sometimes -- to save civilization, an ape must kill an ape, alas.

The notion of tribalism overwhelming reason is a consistent leitmotif in the film.

For example, Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) and his human cohorts risk everything for...electricity. They have decided, at some point, that electricity equates to civilization in their eyes, and they are not willing to step-down from that belief.  

No matter what. 

The humans could use torches or fires to light the night-time of San Francisco, but instead they cling to a delusion. They want things exactly the way they used to be....even though the Old World is now completely dead. They thus cling to a convention or tradition not because it makes sense in the present, but because it made sense in the past. They can't adjust to the present, and rather than do so, will kill to preserve a tradition that they cherish.

The same humans then double-down over this need for electricity. When faced with a challenge in acquiring it, they don't re-examine their beliefs. Instead, they decide it is valid to start a war and take it by force, killing many innocents on both sides in the process.  

Similarly, humans like Carver blame the apes for Simian Flu, successfully marginalizing them as enemies of humanity when that isn't precisely the case. When Carver is pointed to the facts by Ellie: that the apes were experimented on by humans, and that humans created the Simian Flu, Carver -- like others -- doubles-down on his ignorance and refuses to acknowledge the unpleasant truth.

Importantly, Koba also doubles-down on hatred and false beliefs. Even though situations have changed dramatically in ten years, he can see humans only as the monsters who tortured and abused him. He is now free of that captivity and safe, and human civilization has fallen to ruin, but he doesn't let such facts interfere with his consuming hatred for an "enemy."

In reckoning with such notions, Dawn operates on a plateau of moral and storytelling complexity well beyond its impressive predecessor. In Rise, it is easy for Caesar and his ape army to hate humans, for they have come to know humans only as sadistic and cruel. 

Caesar’s learning curve is much more difficult in Dawn, as he deals with the fact that it is an ape, not a human, who endangers the future of ape society. Life is rarely so simple as tribalism makes it out to be. There are villains and heroes among "us" and among "them."

If Rise is about Caesar taking control of his life, Dawn is about Caesar realizing that life is far more complex than he had understood. But he is ultimately a strong leader (and a great character) because he takes responsibility for his actions and mistakes, specifically for trusting Koba instead of realizing that apes too can "double down" on violent tendencies and beliefs.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes examines the tribal mind-set well, without ever seeming preachy. Koba gains adherents by suggesting, explicitly, that Caesar loves humans more than he loves apes. This is not even close to being a true statement, and yet when apes see Caesar cooperating with humans, Koba’s words gain a certain level of surface legitimacy. 

In point of fact, Caesar is merely attempting to prevent bloodshed, because he knows how it will ultimately end: with many deaths among “us” and “them.”  But to some apes, he has become weak. Why give aid and comfort to the enemy?

On the flip-side, why not help someone who could one day be a trusted friend?

Ultimately, we see that it is Koba who is the weaker individual, because he cannot look past his own grievances and stereotyped views of humans to see that the men around him --Malcolm, Ellie and Alexander -- want only what the apes want: to survive.  Instead, he looks at them as being part of a tribe that he hates, and so writes them off without a second look.

Again, the message is one worth repeating.  Liberal or conservative, Christian or atheist, straight or gay, black or white, male or female, ape or man, we all love our children and all want to live happy lives in freedom. Why do we have to demonize each other when we have in common such important traits?

One nice aspect of the film is that Dawn of the Planet of the Apes treats human beings and apes as, essentially, mirror images, and no one side emerges as more villainous, thus making a point about tribalism that transcends partisan politics. 

Dreyfus cannot see the apes as anything more than mere animals, and so, like Koba, bases his decisions on faulty, out-dated information. In some way, then, the film suggests that the worst tribal instincts occur when we believe things of other people that perhaps once were true, but may no longer be so. We must examine such "truth" for ourselves, and see if it holds up. We must constantly adapt to reality, instead of trying to construct reality out of old, mistaken precepts.

In both cases, intelligent beings resort to tribal identities and loyalties rather than to reading the facts, and the results are disastrous for a planet already in dire straits. 

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes also reveals what happens when toxic tribalism meets gun-ownership...and the results aren’t pretty.  

At the risk of wading into controversy, it’s difficult to deny the fact that the carnage in this film would have been much less significant without all the fire-arms. In this case, guns only make a tense situation that much more horrible and bloody. Guns don’t really protect anybody in the film, or make a single outcome more positive. Contrarily, they render every confrontation more dangerous by a multiplicative factor. When both sides are acting irrationally and with extreme violence, how, precisely, do you discern who the "good guy with a gun" happens to be?

What you're really doing in a situation like this is basing your judgment on a biased pre-conceived notion, choosing the side of someone who happens to dress or otherwise look like you do. And that too is a resort to tribalism instead of rationality and reason.

On another subject entirely, with Rise of the Planet of the Apes I worried some about the plot device of Simian Flu wiping out humanity, instead of humanity wiping out himself in a nuclear war, as was the case in the original 1968 film.  

How could apes hate man so much after 2000 years unless man had acted in such a rash, horrible, planet-destroying way?

To my delight, Dawn provides the answer. 

It suggests that even in an end-of-the-world scenario, apes and man can’t put down their tribalism long enough to talk, to logically reason out a lasting peace for both.  Generations may pass, but hatred lives on.

Since we are long out of the Cold War at this juncture in our history, and the kind of irrational tribalism featured in the film is getting scary and murderous in real life right now, I appreciate the re-boot saga’s focus on that problem. 

In 2014, we can readily extrapolate a post-apocalyptic future whereinn tribalism is all that's left of civilization. Separate tribes, huddled in fear, lashing out at anything different or new, the person with the biggest cache of guns dictating what is defined as strength, and what is seen as weakness.

Finally, I must note  that Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is beautifully-shot, but I was especially impressed by the moments in the last act, wherein the titular orange dawn arrives at last. Caesar braces for a war he doesn’t want against people he doesn’t hate, with soldiers he doesn't want to see die. Malcolm, behind him, seems to recede into shadow...until he disappears into blackness.  

This is the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes indeed, but visually, it is also the Total Eclipse of Mankind.  Malcolm -- the good man -- disappears into shadow, darkness, and history as a new force, a new tribe rises.

What happens when a leader less wise than Caesar takes the reigns of ape culture?  What will that "new" tribe be like then?

I suspect we will learn the answer to such questions in future Ape movies, and I very much like the notion that this version of the story exists in the same universe as the first five films. This tale could be interpreted as the rise of the apes before the time travel interference of Milo, Zira and Cornelius, and their son, who “becomes” Caesar in that time line.  

This is how the ape revolution began the first time, and Rise and Dawn depict the events that led to the world Taylor found in the original 1968 film. His ship then returned to the present (in Escape) and altered that history, changing everything. 

What we are seeing, then, in Rise and Dawn plays like “unaltered” ape history, a chronology in which man causes his own downfall (through irresponsible science first, and then tribalism), and apes rise. 

Perhaps, even at some point, desperate humans will launch nukes in a last-ditch effort to prove their "strength" in the face of an ape culture on the rise, thus creating the Forbidden Zone. Who knows?  A clever writer can square the circle in any number of ways and get us right back to Chuck Heston paddling for shore on that picturesque dead lake.

But in the final analysis, it doesn’t really matter, I suppose, how Dawn of the Planet of the Apes fits in with a fifty-year old continuity. What matters instead is that this film speaks powerfully to us in the here and now as cogently as the 1968 original did to audiences of its day.

Back then, we thought we would blow each other up in a nuclear war. Today, our contentious tribalism is the danger looming on on the horizon, threatening to tear down what so many have worked so long and hard to build and protect.

And if that happens, says Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, our own worst human instincts will have made monkeys out of all of us.

Movie Trailer: The Purge (2013)

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Cult-TV Review: Penny Dreadful, Season One (2014)

Penny Dreadful, Season One, is all about the most terrifying monsters ever to challenge humanity. 

But if you believe that by that description I refer to Dracula, Dorian Gray, or The Frankenstein Monster, you are mistaken.  

Although the Showtime TV series, created by John Logan, involves those beings, all the series’ real monsters stem directly from human nature, from human psychology.

For instance, spiritualist Vanessa Ives (Eva Green) contends with shame over a past indiscretion and betrayal (“Closer than Sisters”). This shame literally possesses her at points, or paves the way, perhaps, for her spiritual possession (“Possession.”)

Similarly, Egyptologist Sir Malcolm Murray (Timothy Dalton) deals continually with his own guilt and vanity (“Séance”), arising from the death of his son, and the abduction of his daughter, Mina, by a vampire.

Meanwhile, young Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway) deals with irresponsibility regarding his own creation or child (“Resurrection,” “Demimonde.”)

Even Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett) -- a gung ho American gunslinger -- grapples, at least after a fashion, with his own flaws.  In this case, the primary foible may be cowardice, since Ethan ran away from his life of wealth and privilege in America (“Night Work.”)

In Victorian England of the Pax Britannia -- the unusual but remarkable historical span that gave us both Jack the Ripper and the works of Charles Darwin -- these conflicted characters serve as our heroes while they battle the monsters imagined by Stoker, Shelley, and Wilde. 

These monsters move in and out of human society, occupying its fringes, but Ives, Murray, Frankenstein and Chandler are grounded or anchored in that society of 1891; as consumed by their personal foibles as they are by their supernatural quarry.

I am just now catching up with the final episodes of the first season as I write this review, though the second season is currently airing on Showtime. But at this stage, I can state that I admire Penny Dreadful’s dedication to character, and its central leitmotif of psychological monsters vs. literal ones. 

At first glance, one might mistakenly believe that this horror-themed series is some League of Extraordinary Gentleman-type pastiche of Victorian literary figures -- a superhero movie, essentially -- when in fact, it is the very opposite. The monsters may be mythic, but the people all possess feet of clay.

Indeed, Penny Dreadful's excavation (or perhaps I should write “exhumation”) of the central protagonists, so flawed and self-destructive, takes narrative precedence over the depiction of the famous monsters, and it is a fascinating idea.  The Frankenstein Monster (Rory Kinnear) and Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney) represent -- much as they do historically -- “othered” horror figures, derided outsiders dwelling beyond the concept of normality. In other words, their physicality or exterior qualities make them “different” and outside of the norm. They are easily pinpointed by others, and derided for their dreaded differences.

But Murray, Ives, Chandler, and Frankenstein, in contrast, showcase the societal norm as sick and faulty.  They may be beautiful to gaze upon (quite unlike Caliban, or Proteus…), but they represent an Establishment and society that is corrupt and decadent to its core, destroying itself with lust and avarice and ambition. 

The nature of the series’ protagonists creates an unusual kind of suspense or tension in the individual stories.  

In the pitched battles with the undead, for example, whether aboard plague ships or beneath opium dens, one is never quite certain if the “heroes” will succeed, or even if they will all be fighting on the same side at the same time. They are each so tortured and obsessed with their own history, we sometimes wonder if they can trust themselves and one another enough to engage the enemy.  Only one character among the protagonists seems dependable, though he remains inscrutable: Sembene (Danny Sapani).

One episode, “Possession,” deals beautifully with this very concept. Murray, Frankenstein and Chandler attempt a multi-week cure/exorcism of the possessed Vanessa Ives, and are committed to their cause. But before those weeks are over, questions of motive and secret agendas are raised. 

The result? Trust among the characters is diminished, not enhanced.  So a story that begins with the openly acknowledged need for “trust” ends instead with a retreat to separate, individual corners because of the acute recognition that at least one of the monster fighters may not be acting out of the purest or most honest motives.  

Trust gives way to bitter accusations and frissons.

And meanwhile, out in the world, the bloody carnage -- possibly a result of the vampire master, possibly a result of the human Ripper -- spreads.

The first season of Penny Dreadful consists of just nine episodes, but there are at least three obvious stand-out segments: the aforementioned “Possession,” “Resurrection,” and “Closer than Sisters.”  

“Possession,” the calm before the storm of the season finale, promises group unity, and then shatters it, delivering more personal chaos. 

“Resurrection” is a story faithful in spirit and execution to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, recounting the birth and life of the monster, here called Caliban. Much of the episode’s action occurs at the Grand Guignol Theater, and involves the Monster finding a place where he calls home, a place where he can find belonging.  

And “Closer than Sisters” is an absolutely haunting hour that reveals Vanessa’s back story. We watch her childhood and friendship with Mina develop, as well as Vanessa’s eventual betrayal, and the cost of that betrayal on her soul.

I would be remiss if I didn't point out that Penny Dreadful is also remarkably cast. Timothy Dalton is a commanding, sometimes heroic, sometimes monstrous, presence. Treadaway is perfect as Victor Frankenstein: fastidious, “bloodless” and at absolutely the right age to play Shelley’s protagonist (unlike, say, Kenneth Branagh in the 1994 film).  

Hartnett is also strong as the brash American gunslinger, yet the character and the actor both evidence surprising, buried depths, particularly in Chandler's interaction with an Irish prostitute (Billie Piper) and the seductive Dorian Gray. 

But all these characters, to one degree or another, seem to pivot off of Vanessa Ives, and Eva Green delivers a fearless, nuanced, sometimes bat-shit crazy set of performances here.  I write “fearless” because Green is, obviously, a beautiful woman, and yet she enthusiastically takes her character to some ugly places, both physically and emotionally in the first season catalog. She delivers performances of astonishing rawness in “Séance,” “Closer than Sisters” and “Possession,” in particular.  In the wrong hands, "Possession" could come off like a knock-off of The Exorcist (1973), but Green makes the story personal and individual to her character, Ives, in a way that makes it feel simultaneously fresh and terrifying.

I’ve encountered some folks online who watched Penny Dreadful and dismissed it as slow or somehow campy, though I believe both of those criticisms are off the mark.  

On the contrary, Penny Dreadful takes its time to establish the psychological “monsters” inside its monster-hunter team, and the series doesn’t so much go over-the-top as it does attempt to embody the inherent contradictions of the Victorian Age.  

Like that epoch in history, the series zooms from Reason and Enlightenment ideas (even in terms, actually, of sex) to the heights of wild Romanticism. Murray is a perfect embodiment of this conflict, himself: a man of science and reason now countenancing an exotic world of monsters and irrationality, and not quite knowing where he stands in it, or even, what he really is.  Is he a hero, or a loathsome, vain monster? 

Ives battles the same surging tides and contradictions. On the surface, she is a chaste, proper lady.  But in “Séance,” “Closer than Sisters” and “Possession” a repressed side literally bursts forth from her, longing for expression and release.

I absolutely love The Walking Dead (2010 - ) and its very contemporary zombie apocalypse, yet I must say that it is a delight to go back to the classic literary monsters and the conflicts of the Victorian Era.  

There’s a place still in the genre, today, for Frankenstein, Dracula, and the other characters of that Age;  characters that embodied, at its beginning, the inescapable contradictions of modernity.  

Penny Dreadful, a Gothic entertainment, returns us to that framework, and does so with remarkable style and complexity.

I’m looking forward to the second season…

TV Trailer Penny Dreadful (2014) - Season One

Movie Trailer: The Pyramid (2014)

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Movie Trailer: The Houses that October Built (2014)

Movie Trailer: Annabelle (2014)

Cult-Movie Review: RoboCop (2014)

RoboCop (2014) is a top-of-the-line science fiction movie for our time. It features a remarkable cast, strong visual effects and it ponders, with intelligence, some important issues of this epoch.

And yet the reboot -- while never an embarrassment to the long-standing franchise -- is absolutely, categorically, humorless. 

As you may recall, a vital aspect of the 1987 Verhoeven film was its comical skewering of right wing, pro-business policies in a fictional future U.S.A. The ED-209 didn’t just malfunction, for example, he turned an OCP board-member to a bloody pulp.

Meanwhile, the movie’s TV commercials for products such as the board game Nuke ‘Em revealed how the world had become a blood-thirsty, dog-eat-dog world due to rule, essentially, by unregulated corporations.

The new RoboCop finds no humorous corollary for any of these moments, and this, I fear, is a symptom of our times too.

For some reason, horror and science fiction films these days are afraid to be funny, to crack a joke here and there. They are deadly serious, instead, and that level of unremitting “grittiness” can be exhausting.

I suspect it’s the Dark Knight (2008) effect, honestly.

Now, post-Nolan, every genre pic has to be deadly serious and set (largely) at night, so we think it is “authentic” or “real.” It’s funny to contemplate, but Adam West’s Batman (1966 – 1968) cast a pall over superhero productions for a generation by presenting the hero as campy.  It now looks as though the Nolan trilogy has had just as deleterious effects on our age today, taking the genre to such dour, humorless heights that people forget how much fun a good, thoughtful sci-fi picture -- like RoboCop (1987) -- ought to be.

Why do I miss the humor in this RoboCop so much? 

Well, in Verhoeven’s film, the humor made a valuable point about the society as a whole, but it did so without turning the movie into a preachy left-wing diatribe. The commercials and moments of humor leavened the whole thing.

It’s the same reason you want a spoonful of sugar with your medicine, right?

In the original RoboCop, the points about out-of-control right-wing economic politics were still scored -- viciously so, in some circumstances -- but the movie was free to be an action movie, and not a sermon. We could look at all the pieces of the social critique, recognize them, and then laugh at our recognition of them. We could still have a good time, even while nodding in agreement about the nature of the exaggerated, fictional world.

Sometimes, the world really feels this way…

The new RoboCop proceeds from a point of far greater seriousness, and yet its point -- that people aren’t the property of corporations -- doesn’t transmit nearly as effectively as similar messages did in RoboCop, or even the gonzo-bonkers sequel, RoboCop 2 (1990).

This doesn’t mean the new film isn’t intelligent. It’s a smart and earnest movie. I liked it. But I didn’t admire it in the way I still do the original film.

The new RoboCop can be credited, absolutely, with rethinking the details of Alex Murphy’s story for our times. This version of the tale focuses on American military engagements in the Middle East, the plight of veterans who return home less than whole, and the use of drones or otherwise automated hardware against our citizenry.

It’s an intriguing angle for certain, and yet, again, the film somehow doesn’t feel as visceral or as moving as the original RoboCop did, even when it takes the time to explore aspects of the character’s personal life that the original didn’t touch…like the plight of Murphy’s wife and son.

Again, RoboCop is no embarrassment. It’s not a terrible, unthinking, or slapdash “re-boot.” But in the final analysis, it doesn’t carry the ball any further down the field than the original did. Objectively, it’s just not as good as the original was -- even though the argument could be made that the film is quite well-done -- and so its very purpose must be called into question.

Do we need a RoboCop reboot that doesn’t improve on Verhoeven’s original vision?  If so, why? 

It seems to me that this is the most important question that needs answering here.  All the solid work of the admittedly impressive cast and director Jose Padhila, doesn’t quite validate the existence of a film that feels, at times, so mechanical.

“A machine does not understand how it feels to be human.”

In an America of the near future, the corporation OCP wants more than anything to sell its robotic sentinels -- ED-209 and ED-208 -- to crime-infested cities. But CEO Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton) can’t open this market because of the settled law of the land.  The Dreyfus Act forbids robotic hardware to be in a position where it can police the American people.

Sellars suspects he can get around this edict by putting a man into such a machine, and marketing that man and his “conscience” to the American people. 

When Detroit cop, Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) is grievously injured in a bombing, Sellars has his candidate for that job.  He goes to a well-respected doctor, Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman) and tells him to build…a Robocop.

When Murphy awakes, he discovers he is not quite the man he used to be.  Only one hand, his brain, his face, his lungs and his throat survived the bombing and the ensuing surgery.  Now he is more machine than man, housed in a complex robot body.  At the very least, however, he will still get to see his wife, Clara (Abbie Cornish) and his son, David.

When RoboCop hits the streets of Detroit and proves a success at stopping crime, the U.S. Senate holds a vote to repeal the Dreyfus Act. 

But with that repeal, RoboCop is now obsolete.  He has outlived his value to Sellars…

“It’s great to see American machines helping to promote peace and freedom abroad.”

The new RoboCop could almost be titled RoboSoldier because its primary concern is the post-Iraq War world. The film’s events occur during an American occupation of Iran (and Tehran, specifically), as ED-209s and humanoid ED-208s patrol the streets, enforcing the peace at gunpoint. 

Meanwhile, veterans come home to America physically broken, and scientists like the sympathetic Doctor Norton (Oldman), attempt to make them whole again with robotic limbs. There's a remarkable scene in the film of a man learning to use his robot hands to play the guitar. It's hopeful and sad at the same time.

Although technically not a soldier, Murphy comes home broken too, and must -- with all the changes inside him, and all the horror he has seen -- re-integrate into his family unit and his former life.  But of course, he is a changed man, literally, and again, this is the precise story that many soldiers face upon returning stateside, and to their homes.  

They are not who they once were.They are changed, even altered psychologically, by their war experiences. And Murphy faces this problem too. He undergoes a kind of robotic version of PTSD and doctors reduce his Dopamine level so that he acts, with his family, like a "zombie." He hardly seems to recognize his loved ones.

At the same time, on the home front, right-wing voices of “law and order” on TV demand that the American street be pacified too, using the same machines patrolling Tehran. 

But a liberal senator, Dreyfus, created a bill (and then a law) which prevents the use of such military equipment in American cities. 

Again, this dramatic scenario is ripped straight out of current events. In 2015, more and more police units in metropolitan areas are gearing up with military hardware, and more and more Americans are growing afraid that they could be the target of drones, or other machines of war, during moments of civil disobedience. Are police our protectors, or occupiers of our cities?  Very many, that line seems to be blurred.

The new RoboCop handles this paradigm well, and quite intelligently.  The commentary is smart, and often ironic, but it is never sharp enough, or funny enough, to leave a significant impact. Samuel L. Jackson plays a right-wing TV pundit/bloviator Pat Novak who complains about “robo-phobic” America and stands in front of giant screens of the American flag, draping himself in patriotism that is more aptly fascism.  This isn't satire though. This is an accurate depiction of certain personalities in the current media.

Novak calls the Tehran occupation a peaceful one, and notes -- immediately prior to a boy’s death by ED-209 -- that for the first time Iranian people can raise their children in safety and security.

The point is made ironically, of course. Novak spouts propaganda; and we see for our own eyes that it isn’t the truth. There’s no safety and security here, only an invading force occupying the city.

But the moment isn’t funny, because the new RoboCop doesn’t get the idea that was transmitted so clearly in the original.  

If you want to make a really memorable point about something, then you take reality and exaggerate it. You take it one step further than reality.

Go out of bounds with it a little. 

Instead, the reboot speculates, in dead serious fashion, about the use of military technology in other lands, and here at home. We get serious war scenes, with a youthful casualty. But this footage seems like it could be real, and from today, with just a few exceptions.

Paul Verhoeven, I suspect, would have treated the moment very differently. He would killed that Iranian kid in the most grievous, bloody, over-the-top, politically incorrect fashion, and then, for punctuation, have had Pat Novak label him a terrorist. 

We all would have gasped.

And then we would have heard some nervous titters or giggles from fellow audience members at the bad taste of the whole thing…and yet the point would have been made irrevocably. 

Our words, ideals, and our actions not only fail to line up, that scene would have expressed, they actually have no relation to one another.  

This was the essence of many Media Break moments in the original franchise. Remember in RoboCop 2 how Leeza Gibbons griped about environmentalists who complained about a nuclear meltdown in the Amazon Rain Forest.  

Those pesky environmentalists! They’re always complaining about something!

In the reboot, the ironic event (the death of a child during a “peaceful” robot patrol) is noted, but it just kind of hangs there on the screen, flat. The moment is played dead straight, and so the opportunity to expose Novak’s hypocrisy and propaganda is lost, at least to some significant degree.

To reiterate, I believe it is commendable that RoboCop attempts to tackle a serious subject: American military equipment exported to places where it is neither desired, nor helpful, by corporations who want to open big markets and make money. But the movie has no really illuminating or memorable viewpoint to note about the subject.

It's text vs. subtext, I guess, at least in some ways.

Also, it is commendable, I believe that this iteration of RoboCop expends the time and energy to showcase what Clara (Abbie Cornish), Murphy’s wife, goes through, following his injury and resurrection.  

She goes through Hell, and it’s the same Hell that so many military families go through in real life. A soldier is catastrophically-wounded, on the verge of death. How do you help him or her? How much do you consider quality of life for the injured vets? How much can technology help?

These are serious questions, and I appreciate that this RoboCop goes further than the original (and its sequels) did in charting this aspect of Murphy’s life.

The performances are all very good, too. Gary Oldman projects decency and humanity as the doctor who tries to make things better, but realizes he has gone too far. Michael Keaton is appropriately asshole-ish as OCP CEO Raymond Sellars, a man used to getting his way, and willing to use the media and the government to get what he wants. 

Joel Kinnaman is fine as Murphy/RoboCop too, but the role still belongs to Peter Weller. With Weller, you got a sense of Alex’s kind of gentle goofiness. Remember him trying to twirl his gun to impress his son? Or racing Lewis to the car, and driving it, his first day on the job, over her objections? 

It’s difficult to put this into words, but even though the new RoboCop gives the character more interaction with his family, and a deeper character arc, it is Weller’s Murphy who somehow seems more truly, legitimately human.  The new Murphy wants to solve cases, and bring people to justice. He’s like a cliché movie cop, dedicated, even as a robot, to bringing in a perp.  The old RoboCop wanted to impress his son, fit in on the job, and be a good cop. 

There’s a measure of difference there that’s worth noting.

The new film also fails to make an important connection, one that was so vital to the original work of art.  In Verhoeven’s film, Dick Jones and Clarence Boddicker were two sides of the same coin: board room thugs, and street thugs. Here, the plot involving the gun-runner Antoine Vallon, doesn’t really connect meaningfully with Sellars and his machinations. The plots are separate, and the Vallon plot doesn’t really go anywhere.

The new RoboCop also seems to have a lot less action in it too. 

One on hand, people could say it is a more mature film than the original was, since it attempts to focus on emotions and character arcs.  

On the other hand, the old film had action and satire -- it was exciting and smart -- so it’s hard to argue that it wasn’t a more fully realized work of art. This RoboCop takes itself very seriously, yet doesn’t  make its commentary stick in anything approaching a memorable or striking way.  

Again, I don’t wish to present the impression that the remake is terrible, or even bad. I’ve watched the film twice now. Once last year, and then again two nights ago, after finishing up the other RoboCop films. 

Clearly, the 2014 film is much better than RoboCop 3 (1993) was. No one in their right mind would argue otherwise. But by eliminating the humor and satirical angle of the series, this RoboCop film feels just as flat as that film did, at least at certain points.

The story, the performances, the visual effects are all superior, for certain, but this is, no doubt the “Tin Man” version of RoboCop. 

All head. No heart. And certainly no funny bone.