10 Changes That Made RoboCop 2014 Vastly Inferior To The Original

6. Murphy's Emotional Transformation Is Confused

Murphy's emotional journey in RoboCop is fairly simple, and its simplicity is what allowed the first movie to incorporate the idea of an emotional journey without overcomplicating things. So Murphy is killed, comes back as RoboCop, and towards the end of the story, despite thinking that he was purely "mechanical" (or however you want to word it), Anne Lewis comes to realise that there's still some humanity in her old partner after all. The defining moment comes at the end of Verhoven's movie, where RoboCop asserts that his name is "Murphy" to the OCP President, and not "RoboCop." It's a good, solid plot thread, and though it's nice that the writers behind RoboCop 2014 decided to play with this aspect of the movie a little more, their intentions were lost because they made it all so darn confusing to follow. From the moment that Murphy finds himself as RoboCop, we're told - through varying scenes of exposition - about the character's emotional state. Tweaks are made here and there to the system, and Murphy's emotional capacity changes accordingly - the problem is that he's either too emotional, or not emotional enough. All this tinkering makes up the bulk of the movie, as Gary Oldman's Dr. Norton attempts to pin down what, exactly, is happening inside Murphy's head - how much of Murphy still remains? But it's impossible to find any of that interesting, simply for the reason that it's all too confusing to follow. We don't know what "stage" Murphy is really in at any given time, or whether he's acting how he's supposed to. By overcomplicating this aspect, the emotional journey is actually lessened - whereas the ending of Verhoven's movie still packs more of an emotional punch.