Horrendous Theory: Neil Blomkamp is a Chrononaut at 11:43 AM

But the tiiigers come at niiiiiight....

Neil Blomkamp just revealed that his Alien movie has been put on hold, which should be no surprise, since  Prometheus 2: Alien Boogaloo has recently been renamed Alien: Paradise Lost, and they probably don't want an Alien's Prequel's Sequel and an Aliens' Sequel cannibalizing each other.

I think it's rather sad, because while I don't think Prometheus was all that bad, I do would rather have  Blomkamp hammering in obvious metaphor's while also providing great visuals and good characters, than a second Prometheus full of "Bad Choices: IN SPAAAAAACE"

Hey, this one also had a black goo that did whatever the plot needed it to, but you know what else it had? Likeable characters you could understand.

I really do like Blomkamp. But I have a theory why a person in my age bracket would.

Blomkamp's sensibilities land squarely in the 80's.  Extreme violence and aliens and robots. 80's stuff. Neil Blompkamp's movies have been so far Elysium, Alien Nation, and a Johnny 5-Robocop mashup.  It's fair to say it's a fairly unique vision, at least compared to the actual Robocop remake, anyway. I suspect if Neil Blomkamp got ACTUAL Robocop, his take on it would be Robocop.

The concerns of his movies are also a bit of a throwback. While as a South African I'm sure  the Apartheid hits pretty close to home, It's not exactly topical in the 21rst Century. Don't missunderstand me, it's a great thing that he would use it as a refference point, but it's still.

The only thing Neil Blomkamp tackled is slasher movies, the paranormal, 80's macho heroes and...time travel...

...Because he IS a TIME TRAVELER!...

Think about it. He's got an idea for Aliens that's basically Alien 3, discarding  Alien to the third power and Alien Ressurection like they didn't happen. Because to him, they didn't happen. That's why he's making analogies to the Apartheid so good. Because to him that was 5 years ago.

Think about it, one minute you're a Hollywood hopeful with a script pitch for ALien 3(which there where alot of) and next thing you know, you're falling down a time vortex.

I'm on to you, B-K! Either way, your secret is safe with me, and I'm looking to your next throwback mash up. Is it Exorcist meets Rambo? Is it Ghost busters meets  Beetle juice? Is it Alien meets Predator? Whatever, it'd be more original than a remake of Point Break.

6 things that Robocop (2014) can't be worse than at 9:57 AM

Did...did I leave my symbolism at home?

Robocop and I have a history. I was 4 years old when we first met. Before I knew to answer to my teacher what color the cat was(oddly enough, "orange". and not my estimated "yellowish stripes, variedly dark), or what went after 1989, I knew the tale of  Alex Murphy, a cop from the future that was killed and came back as a better cop (because this time he was a more Robo.)

So I'm in a perfect position to say that this year's Robocop starring Michael Kinnaman and directed by Jose Padilhla, will completely destroy the foundations of my childhood, If only because I've more respect for Peter Weller in a robot suit than I have for most strangers. I will not claim that. Asides from common remake arguments like "I don't have to watch it" or " I don't have the money to watch it", "seriously, where the hell are my priorities?" I don't feel  a movie as strong as Robocop (1987) can be destroyed by ill conceived by products that Paul Verhoeven has nothing to do with.  If it was so, it would have happened a long time ago, and perhaps it would have happened when they made...:

1)The Sequels

"What do you mean the warranty doesn't cover this?

If kid me had been asked how many sequels Robocop should have had, I'd have probably simply laid out some kind of bi-weekly Robocop sequel program while drooling all over my Super Mario Bros 2 shirt. If it'd been suggested one of these movies would have had Robocop fight robot ninjas and robot druggies and have a jetpack and an arm cannon, I'd have had a seizure, because I like all those things and they're putting them in Robocop. Okay, not the druggies, but they're bad guys, so it's awesome.

But older me's grown to appreciate the non-robot parts of the film. Paul Verhoeven's greatest success was making a movie that's a different kind of awesome as you get older. It works as a satire, yet it  can be seen  played straight. It's hockey and ridiculous and Robocop moves very silly, but the subtlety with which it handles things is incredible.  But the sequels did not fully grasp that, and in fact,  I might as well say that none of the following articles in this list did.  The studios had their  cash cow, and the milking was to be sloppy and careless, especially after the third movie. Wait...

2)The OTHER sequels

DROPITUDROPITUDROPITUDROPITUDROPIT

Like most action franchises in the 80's that met with success, Robocop continued to limp along long after it's earned goodwill had been spent by doing low budget sequels that never went to theaters. The Robocop franchise had 4 sequels that went straight to television as part of a miniseries Prime Directives. They don't even have Robocop in the titles, so you might be pleasantly watching "Dark Justice"  and suddenly, hey Robocop is in this!

Man, that second season of Mortal Kombat Legacy was shitty.

In this series Robocop battles foes like "Robocable"(which is neither a cyborg television service provider nor related to the convoluted X-Men character Cable who is  himself already part robot.) and "The Bone Machine"(which is not what the ladies call me...yet...) on his way to stop a techno organic virus. Essentially, Prime Directives makes the theater sequels look like well thought out extensions to the original stories.

A Technovirus...just like Cable...

If you want to know how close this is in spirit to the original movie after  reading that, I'll let you know the actor who plays Robocop made sure not to watch it, and made up his own idea of how Robocop should move, and that since the makers did not have the rights to the movies themselves, they have a strict "I don't know if this is tied to the Robocop movies at all." policy.

Man, Robocop don't belong in Television!



3) The Television series

But I'd be lying if I said I didn't watch all this crap as a kid.

Running Robocop by television standards is a tricky business. Violence is central to the plot and plentiful, and this is a dirty corrupt world of drugs, theft and prostitution. In television, apparently sometimes you can't say 'asshole'. But "artistic integrity" is not something you can put into an offshore bank account, and so they commissioned the creation of a Robocop TV series.

Filmed in the gritty streets of Toronto, the TV series differs from the movies, in the same way a machine washable tiger plushy is different from a panther. Actually ignoring several events from the movies, the show gave Murphy several "upgrades" that allowed him to take down foes like "Puddleface" without killing them. Not for nothing, but the guy who took out the arm cannon and put in a net gun, a zipline and ground anchors needs to be fired.

So this year when your watching new-Robocop go into "social mode", remember that Robocop hasn't really been rated R since 1993. How many years is this? Defanged of it's violence and wiped  clean of it's satire, Robocop is essentially a cartoon character.

4) The Cartoons

By tricking the FCC they could pass this half an hour commercials as educational.

Robocop is not for kids. My mom trusted me to watch it, and I was a pretty mature toddler, but basically it's not for kids. However, Robocop has 2 robots, which nets you points with precocious theater- sneaking punks.

So naturally, this violent ballade about a guy who gets shot a million times and comes back as a robot to basically avenge himself, was repackaged for children's animation twice.

But just how do you sanitize Robocop even further? Well, lemme put it this way: remember Clarence Bodicker, one of the men who killed Murphy and won our hearts with his disdain of bitches? What was his state at the end of the movie? Brutally killed, you say? Because the cartoon was so tame, he isn't even allowed to be brutally dead offscreen, and makes a comeback.

Ladies, leave!

Understand: Robocop kid's merchandise was not an oddity or an exception during the 80s. Robocop toys were on stores, and nobody laughed at the idea of a candy dispenser shapes as the upper half of Robocop. I got one, and you could actually remove it's helmet to watch an unpainted likeness of Peter Weller's agonized face as you ate your sweet chalk pellets. Robocop was  a hot commodity.

But that can't explain  the other cartoon. Ditching the "Not too distant future" setting for a "really far into the future" one, Robocop: Alpha Commando was released in 1998 to coincide with absolutely no other Robocop product. In it, a reactivated and Upgraded Murphy battles one of those stupid acronym happy terrorist organizations. Upgraded here means "retrofitted with stupidly huge arms that can shoot paste." Indeed, Robocop does not shoot anyone in the face, because he's got skis that come out of his feet and an aggravating robot voice that announces each item just before he draws it out. I'd say he was basically Inspector Gadget, but this one's incompetence was not an endearing trait.

"I do not know what the whole 'legs day' thing is about."

You know it's bad just from the intro, where the lyrics are merely different tones of 'Robocop', like they meant to add something about how cool he is like every other cartoon intro,  left  it like that until they can come up with something that rhymes with "cop"("Robocop! He can...hop? He likes...mops?") but then they remembered they didn't care about anything. This was the last animated show MGM ever did, probably because new limits of suckage  established by the FCC in the late 1990s. Er...citation needed.

5) The Videogame.

Well, I wasn't going to buy it until I learnt Robocop might 'interact' with animals.

There are plenty of videogames about Robocop, mostly concerning his movies and that time he had to shoot the Terminator. But those games exist in a time where to make a videogame all you needed was a license and a handful of Japanese coders.

But when a Robocop game got announced for the original Xbox in 2002, the standards had gone up. After all, the technology to display shiny helmets and a sorta  story was now at their fingertips.

IT SHOULD BE FUN!

The game was a first-person-shooter and had Murphy stop a new drug from ravaging the streets, with his own version of D.A.R.E. (which in this case means "Dudes assault Robocop then end") Despite the franchise and genre being a match made in heaven, the game was strictly programmed in hell. Much like "Alpha Commando", the game's mercenary hunger to catched that Robocop zeitgeist was made much more obvious by the fact  there wasn't really any zeitgeist to capitalize on at the time. Try jumping out of the bush at a stranger and yelling Robocop at random moments. That's what this game was. Also, don't try what I just told you.


6) The Comics

What, no pouches? Early 90's Marvel I am disappoint.

Marvel produced an early 90's series of comics that followed on the original stories from the movies. Did you know that Roboco's original designs where not done by that guy that Clarence Bodikker killed, but rather by another crazier scientist and he stole it? Did you know he made robot monkeys to fight Robocop? Well did you? Of course not. Marvel had to ship a book every month that said Robocop on the cover and reenacting scenes from the movie would probably only get you so far. So not only did Marvel get creative with Robocop's future, but past as well.  Oh, and there's a new drug on the market, and Robocop must stop it. Man, that one never gets old.


Off course, if you like Robocop, you're already writing that you knew all this stuff, and among you there must be some of the kind of people who would bemoan a blander, PG 13 remake of Robocop, and regard it as sacrilegious heresy . If you fall into that part of the Venn diagram, answer truthfully: how bad would it have to be to be worse than all this?

You have 15 seconds to comply.

6 things that Robocop (2014) can't be worse than at 9:57 AM

Did...did I leave my symbolism at home?

Robocop and I have a history. I was 4 years old when we first met. Before I knew to answer to my teacher what color the cat was(oddly enough, "orange". and not my estimated "yellowish stripes, variedly dark), or what went after 1989, I knew the tale of  Alex Murphy, a cop from the future that was killed and came back as a better cop (because this time he was a more Robo.)

So I'm in a perfect position to say that this year's Robocop starring Michael Kinnaman and directed by Jose Padilhla, will completely destroy the foundations of my childhood, If only because I've more respect for Peter Weller in a robot suit than I have for most strangers. I will not claim that. Asides from common remake arguments like "I don't have to watch it" or " I don't have the money to watch it", "seriously, where the hell are my priorities?" I don't feel  a movie as strong as Robocop (1987) can be destroyed by ill conceived by products that Paul Verhoeven has nothing to do with.  If it was so, it would have happened a long time ago, and perhaps it would have happened when they made...:

1)The Sequels

"What do you mean the warranty doesn't cover this?

If kid me had been asked how many sequels Robocop should have had, I'd have probably simply laid out some kind of bi-weekly Robocop sequel program while drooling all over my Super Mario Bros 2 shirt. If it'd been suggested one of these movies would have had Robocop fight robot ninjas and robot druggies and have a jetpack and an arm cannon, I'd have had a seizure, because I like all those things and they're putting them in Robocop. Okay, not the druggies, but they're bad guys, so it's awesome.

But older me's grown to appreciate the non-robot parts of the film. Paul Verhoeven's greatest success was making a movie that's a different kind of awesome as you get older. It works as a satire, yet it  can be seen  played straight. It's hockey and ridiculous and Robocop moves very silly, but the subtlety with which it handles things is incredible.  But the sequels did not fully grasp that, and in fact,  I might as well say that none of the following articles in this list did.  The studios had their  cash cow, and the milking was to be sloppy and careless, especially after the third movie. Wait...

Swing and a miss! Tim Burton's Batmovies at 10:21 AM

Black and yellow, black and yellow, black and yellow...

 It's about time we talked about Batman. I know this subject is  a fringe one and a taboo in the Internet, but we must break social boundaries of how acceptable it is to talk about Batman.

Dark Knight Rises is probably on it's way out of theaters( and I was entirely unable to catch it.) The end of the Nolan era for Batman, the innevitable reboot nipping at it's heels,  and the seeming endless ways Warner Brother can't get too far into it's Superheroes withouth returning to Batman are all the talk of the town.

Nestled between this conversations is a subtle discussion of Tim Burton's  two Batman films, and their underlying qualities. It tends to divide the geek populace into  two schools of thinking.

"Holy Crap, is your breath fresh!"

A) This movies are good, they opened the way for Superhero movies now, and are a reasonably good adaptation of the Batman mythos in a darker way than the old Adam West show.

B)This movies are bad, nothing like Batman, and are the inspiration for badly adapting Superheroes to the silver screen.

The only one who  likes this pairing is the guy on the left.

Not everyone holds this combination of opinions, but it's mostly what you'll find.

I could tell you that when I saw them I was very young. My dad dragged home a big old TV with awkward  microwave buttons so we could watch the Batman 89 movie before heading to one of my first remembered cinema goings(along with Pewee's Big Adventure. It's not my fault I'm a Burton enthusiast!) to Batman Returns.

While my little kid mind had to register a lot(and return from the lobby confused as to why Batman let  Catwoman lick his face.) of weirdness, I never the less considered it a great movie, and put it alongside Robocop, and Predator and Airplane as the best movies in the world.

But let's not make this about just me, or about the movies. The movies are qualified as being unnacurate to the books by many. And I sort of agree. But so what?

So what if Batman's "no killing code" gets switched to a "lot of times killing code?" So what if the films are rooted in impressionism rather than...whatever stylistic choice you're supposed to have for Batman. So what if the background of the character is changed and the origin, and it's not as dark as anything.



Let me tell you something. When Batman Returns was abuzz in the cinemas, my parents could afford 1 movie IN THE YEAR. The rest was black and white T.V.  And what did my local T.V. channels do as a response? EVERYTHING! They scrambled to run whatever Superhero show and movie they could, as long as we would watch. They Ran the Flash T.V. series and the old 70s Wonder Woman series. They Ran The Incredible Hulk. They ran Ultraman and I could swear they ran Kakero Spider-Man. They ran the Swamp Thing movie and they ran the TV show as well. They fucking ran the Adam West show.

Try harder, internet! I was mocking this before it was cool!

So, back to young me. I began absorbing. I did not know who Flash was in the comics if the movie was good. But I liked Flash. I liked Wonder Woman.  I liked the Adam West show.

Regardless of what the direct influence of Burton's movies, the indirect influence in my case was that a lot of  superhero elements where brought before me, which was good, because I could not even know where comics where sold, and when I saw them on the supermarket, coud not afford them(or my parents would not buy, because Batman looked like this, and had to perform surgery in a sewer on a baby. No, I could not forget that if I tried.).  My understanding of the superheroes would not expand much beyond what TV told me until the year 2000, where I discovered that internet people  would spend their time detailing the fictional life of Storm and Marrow.

What I'm saying is that Burtman(haha!) may be Batman in name only in a way. It may be campier than what we think. It might not fit our nerdy standards of today, where we sit down and pick aparts  which parts of Avengers are 616, which are Ultimate, and which are invented wholesale for the movie. The movies might only be enjoyable to me because I grew up with them. But they shaped me into the sexless, sociopathic nerd that writes too much about Tim Burton's wife I am today.

(Wait, is that a good thing?)

Swing and a miss! Tim Burton's Batmovies at 10:21 AM

Black and yellow, black and yellow, black and yellow...

 It's about time we talked about Batman. I know this subject is  a fringe one and a taboo in the Internet, but we must break social boundaries of how acceptable it is to talk about Batman.

Dark Knight Rises is probably on it's way out of theaters( and I was entirely unable to catch it.) The end of the Nolan era for Batman, the innevitable reboot nipping at it's heels,  and the seeming endless ways Warner Brother can't get too far into it's Superheroes withouth returning to Batman are all the talk of the town.

Nestled between this conversations is a subtle discussion of Tim Burton's  two Batman films, and their underlying qualities. It tends to divide the geek populace into  two schools of thinking.

"Holy Crap, is your breath fresh!"

A) This movies are good, they opened the way for Superhero movies now, and are a reasonably good adaptation of the Batman mythos in a darker way than the old Adam West show.

B)This movies are bad, nothing like Batman, and are the inspiration for badly adapting Superheroes to the silver screen.

The only one who  likes this pairing is the guy on the left.

Not everyone holds this combination of opinions, but it's mostly what you'll find.

I could tell you that when I saw them I was very young. My dad dragged home a big old TV with awkward  microwave buttons so we could watch the Batman 89 movie before heading to one of my first remembered cinema goings(along with Pewee's Big Adventure. It's not my fault I'm a Burton enthusiast!) to Batman Returns.

While my little kid mind had to register a lot(and return from the lobby confused as to why Batman let  Catwoman lick his face.) of weirdness, I never the less considered it a great movie, and put it alongside Robocop, and Predator and Airplane as the best movies in the world.

But let's not make this about just me, or about the movies. The movies are qualified as being unnacurate to the books by many. And I sort of agree. But so what?

So what if Batman's "no killing code" gets switched to a "lot of times killing code?" So what if the films are rooted in impressionism rather than...whatever stylistic choice you're supposed to have for Batman. So what if the background of the character is changed and the origin, and it's not as dark as anything.

Unlicensed Lawyer: Punisher(2004) at 9:23 AM

The Punisher has had more reboots than Batman. In the movies at least. Despite being decades younger than Batman, Marvel's gritty, lethal vigilante has been tried by studios more times than DC's gritty, less lethal vigilante. And oddly enough, it never has been as succesfull as to actually justify more. It's going on the fifth now, a T.V. series that has Frank Castle being a cop by day, and the Punisher by night.

Fans are never satisfied with these Punisher Movies. But studios just can't stop welcoming back Frank into our multimedia screens. This discrepancy is easilly explainable.

The Punisher is an 80s movie. You remember those. It's about the toughest motherfucker in the world, forced into taking justice into his own hands by that 80s Crime wave. Movies like Death Wish and Cobra sort of defined the genre. If you want to make Punisher right, you make an old Steven Seagal Movie and paint a skull insignia on his chest.

Thus, studios love the Punisher. A known franchise, with a built in base that only costs as much as your average squibs and explosions actioneer. No expensive customs or computer effects. No "getting the costume right". You don't even need a big action star name.You use the name "Punisher" to draw fans and the curious to your moderately budgeted action movie.



However, fans hate them, because, by and large, we aren't making that movie. The Punisher movies where certainly each something other than that core Punisher story where he hates crime and shoots people. I mean, yeah, he does that, but there's always a catch. The early 90s Dolph Lundgren movies completely ignored the title character's costume and had him ally with criminals. And I heard the latest one was an extremely weird and campy movie. But in my opinion, the 2004 movie starring Thomas Jane gets too much shit.

The movie changes Frank Catle's main setting from New York to Tampa, Florida, and the setting to his family's death from getting into a shootout unrelated to them in Central Park to getting a hit put on them on Puerto Rico(though I'm guessing that was also filmed in Tampa). Punisher's skull shirt is bought by his son on my Home Island, allegedly told it had some kind of mystical protective force. The guy who runs Hot Topic was just playing with you, kid.

Further on, the sound bite, sort to speak, is that a criminal is fake tortured by Punisher, and let go. The method, a pretend skin melting involving a blowtorch, an icicle pop, and a steak, is as unbelievable as it is silly, lead many to say:" hey, this isn't what Punisher would do! He would actually smelt the guy and then kill him!"

Now, I don't argue that this sillyness is not really what Punisher would do in most core Punisher stories. When Punisher gets silly, it usually involved Frankenstein, Eminem, or Archie. But the fact that it's not a page by page of a Marvel Knights book does not in fact make it a bad movie.

You see, way, I see it, whoever gets the writer or director job to Punisher usually goes: "Pfft! Why do we pay for a comic license for an 80s movie? I'm not making no 80s movie!". However, Punisher 2004 actually has a lot of that. It has a montage of Punisher getting himself ready and prepping his base.The Punisher's vehicle of choice is a big American Muscle car. Punisher actually fights "El Mariachi" and "Ivan Drago" in them!

The Punisher's method is less "Death Wish" and more " Count of Monte Cristo", as the Punisher, rather than try and get vengeance on a poorly cast John Travolta directly by shooting him in the head, let's the vices of the criminal family destroy him morally first. Sure, it's not very Punisherey, but he does push him into a skull shaped series of explosions at the end.



You see, you KNOW that the criminals aren't gonna kill Frank Castle. They aren't. The tension of the movie needed to be something other than whether The Punisher could take down the crime family, because indeed, that part of it seemed patently easy. But this movie examines the fact that Frank Castle is eternally grieving. That's a point most of this kinds of movies avoid. In most of these "avenge my family" movies, the guy walks off more badass and more complete after achieving their goal. Here, Castle puts a gun under his chin.

It's not an adventure, being the Punisher. He lost his family, and he can't fucking get over it. And he's decided he's not gonna get over it. He's gonna get even. But you're kiddin' yourself if you think he's not in intense agony.

So, yeah, it's not a perfect movie, and certainly not the blue print for a Punisher adaptation. And yeah, the villains are pretty bland and forgettable. And yes, he lets that one guy go. It's a silly action movie with some interesting characterization, peppered with homages. That makes it...what, the best Punisher movie so far?

Unlicensed Lawyer: Punisher(2004) at 9:23 AM

The Punisher has had more reboots than Batman. In the movies at least. Despite being decades younger than Batman, Marvel's gritty, lethal vigilante has been tried by studios more times than DC's gritty, less lethal vigilante. And oddly enough, it never has been as succesfull as to actually justify more. It's going on the fifth now, a T.V. series that has Frank Castle being a cop by day, and the Punisher by night.

Fans are never satisfied with these Punisher Movies. But studios just can't stop welcoming back Frank into our multimedia screens. This discrepancy is easilly explainable.

The Punisher is an 80s movie. You remember those. It's about the toughest motherfucker in the world, forced into taking justice into his own hands by that 80s Crime wave. Movies like Death Wish and Cobra sort of defined the genre. If you want to make Punisher right, you make an old Steven Seagal Movie and paint a skull insignia on his chest.

Thus, studios love the Punisher. A known franchise, with a built in base that only costs as much as your average squibs and explosions actioneer. No expensive customs or computer effects. No "getting the costume right". You don't even need a big action star name.You use the name "Punisher" to draw fans and the curious to your moderately budgeted action movie.



However, fans hate them, because, by and large, we aren't making that movie. The Punisher movies where certainly each something other than that core Punisher story where he hates crime and shoots people. I mean, yeah, he does that, but there's always a catch. The early 90s Dolph Lundgren movies completely ignored the title character's costume and had him ally with criminals. And I heard the latest one was an extremely weird and campy movie. But in my opinion, the 2004 movie starring Thomas Jane gets too much shit.

The movie changes Frank Catle's main setting from New York to Tampa, Florida, and the setting to his family's death from getting into a shootout unrelated to them in Central Park to getting a hit put on them on Puerto Rico(though I'm guessing that was also filmed in Tampa). Punisher's skull shirt is bought by his son on my Home Island, allegedly told it had some kind of mystical protective force. The guy who runs Hot Topic was just playing with you, kid.

Further on, the sound bite, sort to speak, is that a criminal is fake tortured by Punisher, and let go. The method, a pretend skin melting involving a blowtorch, an icicle pop, and a steak, is as unbelievable as it is silly, lead many to say:" hey, this isn't what Punisher would do! He would actually smelt the guy and then kill him!"

Out for Puppies! at 9:29 AM

Out for Puppies! at 9:29 AM