Beyond a few lines here and there, something deeper needs to link a classic with its progeny. If you use a known product name you must be respectful to its legacy. Robocop 2014 is considerably different from the original and yet there are so many similarities that it feels like a new version of the same story. It explores similar themes in a modern context but in a way the core story is the same: an uncaring, greed motivated corporation wants to monitor the population with a police force in their control and decide to use a dead cop in a machine to do it. They mess with his head, try to program him and make him forget but his humanity wins through in the end and in the process he usurps his would-be masters and brings down a crime syndicate. Murphy's desire to solve his own murder is a core element of both films and in each case is as a part of a wider criminal investigation. Where the original plot was around a corrupt executive pushing his defective product upon a society that didn't need it but the military wanted it the new one is about, well, the same thing. Except different.
I.T. Consultant, technophile and Doctor Who fan. I like to talk about tech, take films apart and make excuses for Doctor Who's continuity errors. No other show has the power to make me feel like a big kid.
