i did see the Elite Squad films, about a year ago, actually, when he was announced as the director. haha. they were fine enough, but i just didnt really super connect with them.
however, you analogy with Batman isnt quite valid here. see, Batman was a comic book before it was a movie, before it was a TV show, and before it was a cultural institution. so no, Batman Begins isnt a remake of any of the batman films that came before it, it is just ANOTHER in a long string of film versions of the pre-existing comic book. now, Robocop was written as a film, and then from that film, we got two sequels (which i still think are significantly more solid than they are getting credit for here, they arent amazing, but still… solid) the TV shows (both live and animated), and then the (pretty rad) miniseries ‘Prime Directives’… and now we are getting a remake of the original film. Batman isnt a remake, so to speak, because the well from which it is drawing is a different medium… the well that the new Robocop film is drawing from is the original movie, thus a remake.
now, you have disagreed with me and then added a smilie face, so i have to get way overheated and start a multi-thread battle with you, let me start it by saying that Watchmen the movie sucked HARD, changed the ending, and removed the spine from what is possibly the greatest graphic novel never. (but from the butcher behind the dreadful Dawn of the Dead remake, i cant find myself too surprised.) now have at thee! [;)]
True, the Batman analogy isn’t 100% apt, but i do stand by my view that no other Robocop project was worth a damn, he’s a really great character and i think they squandered him on cheap trashy follow-ups that had no heart at all.
Regarding Watchmen, i think it was as great a conversion of the comic as could have been done, the original comic ending just would not have translated well at all to the screen. Would audiences have accepted a giant squid wrecking the place after a dark, kinda realistic superhero film? It was fine for the comic, but i think they’d have balked at it in a film. I’m surprised Snyder was able to keep it so close to the comic to be honest, there must have been plenty of pressure to change it to appeal to the masses. As it stands i think it’s the darkest big budget superhero film so far, it seemed to be aimed pretty much at people who read the comic (apart from a couple of concessions, like the squid) - and that group, let’s face it, is a tiny minority of the viewing public. I loved Dawn of the Dead too, and i’m a huge fan of the original. I think with those two films Snyder showed a lot of promise, but his other stuff doesn’t interest me at all.
As for Robocop, i’m looking at it as another version of the story. It’s not like we won’t be able to see the original again once this one comes out, we’ll always have it. I’m just more upbeat about it than most of the people i know, and i realise i’m in the minority. I hope for the best, it’s a talented director and talented actors, it may be a PG-13 rating but i’m confident they’ll be able to pull off something worth seeing. Hopefully it’ll be great. If it’s not, believe me, i will be fucking furious, but i’m definitely open to it. I think Hollywood is artistically bankrupt and essentially greedy and money-oriented, but it is a business. I’ve always hoped for a new, decent Robocop film, and hopefully out of their greed there’s a chance that this could be better than the usual trash, and those crappy sequels.