6. Less Melodrama, More Crime Fighting
Building on that last point, RoboCop doesn't do a whole lot of crime-fighting in this reboot, which is naturally disappointing. Over half of the film is spent on either Murphy struggling with his family or going through tedious amounts of test training against other robots. It most certainly fits within the story José Padilha is telling here, but a large part of what makes the original entertaining was watching RoboCop actually fight crime. A perfect example is the grocery store robbery in the original, which sees a criminal repeatedly yelling "F*** ME" for inexplicably no reason, as he pumps shotgun shell after shotgun shell into RoboCop. As RoboCop eventually reaches the perpetrator, he bends the entire muzzle of the shotgun and then tosses the guy through a glass panel. Any version moving forward simply needs to take itself a little less seriously, and deliver on its promise of a cyborg cleaning the streets of Detroit. The emotional arcs aren't necessarily bad, but they can become overbearing after a while. A better balance must be striked in future reboots or sequels.