10 Remakes That Should Never Have Happened

Like many films on this list, the RoboCop remake fell into the mistake of believing that slapping a shiny new veneer onto an old film would result in the same success. But when the 2014 RoboCop remake was released, it failed to recognise what had made the original so popular.

Released amidst the action-heavy films of the 1980s, ridden with one-liners and large men that couldn't act properly, RoboCop was startlingly intelligent. The plot is pulled straight out of a comic book, but the writing makes it work as an exaggeration of America, heavy with cynicism and humour.

That the protagonist is a literal machine, impenetrable to both bullets and emotion, is a clever twist on the typical shots of Schwarzenegger or Stallone mercilessly gunning down men by the hundreds in their films.

With such obvious social commentary on the surface of the film, it shouldn't have been difficult to bring RoboCop into the modern era, where society is still plagued with controversial issues of police brutality and privatisation. The 2014 film attempted this, but it had no real conviction behind it. The demand for darker, more realistic films in recent years resulted in the screenwriters stripping all the satire and clever wit from the original film.

Without the humour of the original film, the remake of RoboCop seems to simply go through the motions of providing a commentary on modern day America, and measures up poorly to the satirical and humour-laden predecessor.