10 Changes That Made RoboCop 2014 Vastly Inferior To The Original

8. It Could Have Been Set Anywhere

The setting for both RoboCop movies, original and remake, is Detroit. In Verhoven's movie, we really got a sense of this city as a unique "world," and - aesthetically - it felt like the ideal location for the movie to take place: run-down, corporation-heavy. The odd thing about the Detroit of the remake is that it could be literally anywhere... we don't get a sense that it's particularly crime-ridden, nor is the idea put across that we're living in a 2028 ruled by corporate greed. Simply put, the Detroit of the remake lacks personality. There is absolutely nothing to define it. Compare that to the run down America in, say, Neill Blomkamp's Elysium, or in the recent Dredd, and you begin to see how little attention to detail has gone into this futuristic terrain. Is it dystopian? Utopian? Is it supposed to be like now? RoboCop thrived in '87 because we believed that the world Alex Murphy lived in was a cruel, dangerous place - greedy, filthy and perhaps even beyond redemption: the setting allowed you to buy into the premise. But RoboCop 2014's playground isn't a playground at all. It's more like a sandbox... without the sand.