10 Changes That Made RoboCop 2014 Vastly Inferior To The Original

5. No Interesting/Clear Cut Bad Guys

Hollywood movies nowadays seem to have forgotten what it takes to render a truly interesting bad guy: it's not enough to just hire Michael Keaton, have him deliver his lines towards the end of the movie in an increasingly slippery manner, and be done with it (which is, unfortunately, what happens here with OmniCorp CEO Raymond Sellers). It's not Keaton's fault, of course - there simply wasn't enough written down on the page to begin with. And the inherent problem with RoboCop 2014, ultimately, is that we don't really have a clear cut bad guy. In a movie of the action genre, it pays to have a good, solid antagonist because it gives the narrative some momentum... a goal for our protagonist to shoot for. Keaton's bad guy is only vaguely "bad," and the other bad guy, Antoine Vallon, is played as just an afterthought - a random element to fill up the pages. But think back to the hate you felt for the original film's dual villains: Ronny Cox's slimy OCP Senior President Dick Jones, and Kurtwood Smith's repellent thug Clarence Boddicker. Whereas they were sinister and memorable, the villains in the remake prompt a single reaction: "Meh."