6 Things we're missing out on thanks to Copyright at 11:42 AM



If you hate the idea of public domain, you hatin' on Cthulu

A new year! A chance to think about the future. Specifically, what might have been. You see, I'm a fan of alternate worlds in which things went different. But not just ones where, like, I'm a jerk wearing black. Or, well...MORE of a jerk wearing black a lot more often. But the ones that could have easily been ours. The one where Mr Freeze was played by Patrick Stewart and where Ryu had that fiery kick.

I think of copyright.  Of the  Game Jam I'm currently hosting and part of my impetus is I thought of the things that could have been, should copyright had not been extended to last longer than Stan Lee's actual lifespan. A lot of people where worried about their favorite characters and how they'd be besmirched if copyright  wasn't there to protect them (but I've been to Paheal, and Fanfiction.net and know that nothing is safe or sacred.). But I can only lament the possibilities that never occurred. This lost opportunities include...

6) Some more celebrity comebacks

You see, some celebrities have the one character or two they're good at. There's only one Charly Chaplin, only one Larry, Curly and Mo, only one Ace Ventura.

But what happens sometimes is, MGM owns Ace Ventura, the character. Jim Carrey totally has a great idea for a sequel. It's awesome. But the studio don't agree with it. They have a full schedule and a head full of farts


Who the hell is this for?

  If Ace could become public domain while Jim Carrey lived, He'd be able to work with another studio, or no studio, and bring back the character.  If the Ghost Busters had become public domain, Dan Akroid would just be able to do his own Ghost Busters spin off or whatever, without having to fight the studio or wait for Bill Murray.



5) Saving movie theaters



Well, I suppose now I'll have to laser pointer my big screen TV while people I know yell obscenities.

When I was a kid, going to the movie Theater to experience a movie was an epic thing that had few substitutes. Indeed, televisions had yet to catch on to theater quality,  bootlegs where not something you could grab off the street and put it in your pocket, or download, and cellphones that record had yet to be invented.

But we can't live in the past anymore. Theater attendance is apparently at an all time low, even though Hollywood has made sure no movies made this year weren't based on a comic, TV Show, cartoon, other movies, or toys. Cinemas  can't afford to fight these other mediums, and they especially can't fight the fact people know the movie will be legally available in a few months.

Really, theaters rent these movies hoping people will buy enough popcorn and candy bars to  offset the cost of the rental, employees, maintenance, and so on and so forth.

However, if   movies that weren't re-registered into the copyright office after 36 years went public domain, then we'd have movies that could be shown with no cost to the audience, we'd have films that could be shown to the audience, free of charge, from as early as the 70s and even the 80's! You could set up your own little theater and show them!


"I've got The Hobbit movie for 7 bucks and...Invasion of the Bee Women for 50 cents."

Mind you, most of the classics wouldn't be available. Mostly the rare movies that  didn't  get registered, usually because they weren't  profitable enough.  But since there is no cost to rent them, you could run low ass prices and get bored people, or retrophiles into it.

And further, the bigger chains could have some movies to run in the lower seasons. They could organize special viewing of this movies.

But as long as copyright owners have their copyright, huh?

4) It would discourage large companies from buying all the cool stuff

The Disneys, Viacoms, and WBs of the world have been busy. In a  few couple of years they've gobbled up most of the popular brands that they already didn't own. Disney bought Star Wars and Marvel. WB(that already owns DC, all the filmation cartoons, all the Hanna Barbera characters, and possibly your firstborn.) bought Mortal Kombat(along with other stuff you don't care about, and they don't, either) while Viacom locked down Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers.



You find the weirdest things when buying  a game company.

Clearly there is good money in owning a perennial hit, and where there is monies, giant corporations  will be. I don't resent them for it, but I don't like the implications of it.

I mean, clearly  WB has more characters than it can use or need. But who cares? The older ones probably still have a lifetime of copyright left.

Back in the day, though, you had to pay every 30 years to keep your work under protected status. Not a lot of money, mind you. But perhaps enough money that maybe they get to thinking if they REALLY need to hold on to the rights of Shmoo and Batfink.


You'd have to be a real dick to think otherwise.

Marvel has 7000+ characters*. I ran some costs and it would cost them 210000 to maintain the copyrights each of those, based on a 30 dollar fee. Some of these characters are simply not worth holding on to, and would go public domain.  Because, seriously, if you can't spend 30 bucks every 30 years in your ploy to put your dick in DC's face, maybe you shouldn't get to do it for free.



Would Disney see things differently about buying Marvel if they knew such copyright exclusivity had a limit? Well, don't make me bring up the Disney filmography again. Those guys love the Public Domain. Of course they'd rather get Spider-Man in the 2030s for free than pay  millions of dollars for him NOW.

3) Hundreds of books, movies, and songs

I join Duke in bringing up all the stuff we could  ALL use, now ( Now, Duke, I've made some assumptions about what you're gonna post several months into the future. Don't give me a dead link, now). A few highlights:


songs

I Put a Spell on You.

books

The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. Free Cat in the Motherfucking Hat for Everybody!

movies

The Blob, The Fly, and Attack of the 50 Foot woman. The Hidden Fortress, a movie that directly inspired Star Wars, is also from this year.

3)Saving a bunch of your taxpayer money


Nobody likes it the way it is, anyway

"But Batzarro, how is my tax money being spent on copyright?" You may ask. It's simple. For a work to be fully protected, it needs to be registered at the Copyright office. Most of the mainstream shows, movies and songs that got made,  scores of ones that didn't, and even  those sketches of Ninja Turtle clones people registered so no one would steal their "ideas" are all literally, physically registered in actual buildings. How else are we supposed to know whether our sexy, steampunk remake of Narnia will get us a Cease and Desist?


I know. I have a problem.

More recently, of course. You can look up part of these records yourself online. But for certain hard to find ones you'll have to have employees look it up for you. For 200 dollars.

You see, it  used to be copyright did not last as much, and payments where made to ensure those works remain protected. The copyright office had a little more cash to operate, and works actually lapsed into the public domain.

But  now, your initial payment of 40 something dollars gets you twice as many years of protection. It costs money to keep all those bad ideas protected, so it gotta come out of YOUR pockets.

It costs the government as of 2002  13 million a year to maintain a copyright record. Or rather, it costs YOU that much. The Copyright Office is not a private entity. It's a subsidiary of the United States Government. This why permanent copyright is impossible: We don't have enough money to keep those kinds of records in, say 1000 years. Even with user fees, no way the cost of keeping those unmade Batman movies protected won't keep adding up.

2) Adam Strange's appearance in Smash Bros

That's right. Adam Strange, the Superhero who lives on another planet until a thunder forces him back on Earth(or does he live on earth until a thunder forces him back to another planet), could have been in Smash Bros in 2015 as DLC. Sure,in that scenario Batman and Superman are both long into the Public Domain, But Adam's practically made for it!


Sure, why not.

Nintendo wouldn't put Sherlock Holmes in Smash Bros. Really, most of the characters on public domain now are from  before color movies.  Back then we didn' have concepts like "Superheroes" or "Other Planets" or "Time Travel". That means that, most time travelers, extraterrestrials, and Superheroes are copyrighted.

You might think it's cheesy to want to use the characters made by  someone else. After all, why can't I come up with own character? What  am I, a hack?

Haha, you wouldn't tell Alan Moore, that. Really, when he's not using public domain characters to do artsy perversion he's nudge-winkingly trying to use James Bond and Harry Potter in his stories. Why, if he could use the genuine article, I bet you it'd be mother buggering fantastic, and none of you at the peanut gallery peasants would be calling him lazy.


But seriously, this is borderline fan ficky, Alan.

Why can't Chris Sims, self declared Batmanologist, have a stab at Batman? Bob Kane and Bill Finger is dead, and WB is in no risk of going chapter 11, over a webcomic. Why must we wait so many years for a Wonder Woman movie? Because the creative possibilities are chained  to profit margins.


1) Not as many remakes



"Whooooot? How can making very popular works public domain make there be less remakes?" That's a good question. I mean, it SOUNDS counter intuitive. If Batman where public domain, if feels like he'd be in every movie this year.

But actually, no. You see, studios like this thing where they are the sole owners of a franchise that's worth millions of dollars. They get to make exactly as many Superman movies as they want, and you get to do exactly as many Superman movies as they'll allow(zero). And then they get to do it again next decade.

But if they only had 30 years, it's put pressure on them to create/buy/own a NEW thing for 30 years.  Once anyone can make their own Superman movie,  WB will probably move on to buying the next thing they feel will last those 30 years, and not "whatever, it's forever"

What's more, new, obscure stuff is essentially new works to you if you don't know them. Have you seen Star Oddyssey? No? Then maybe my book based on it will be new to you! I mean, the problem is not that it's a remake. Didn't you like The Fly? Well maybe my book is Cronenberg's Fly to the original movie's The Fly.



Brundelfly would approve of my book.

My point is why won't you fuckers buy my fucking book obviously there's a lot more stories to tell out there than how Peter Parker got his powers. If more studios had more legal access to a wider variety of popular stories, those studios would be less likely to keep pumping the same stories they already pumped. I mean, let's look at the 1958 box office: and compare it to the 2013 box office. Which has more remakes, reboots or adaptations? So really, we should be fighting for more stuff to lapse into the public domain, not less.



Ignore the fact all but one of 1958's movies are based on books. Books don't count.

We're undercutting the creativity of the entire country because what? Because "I might just make a great work, and I don't want to eventually have people enjoy it without their joy profiting me directly?" Let's fight for shorter copyright durations today, before we have to fight for less long copyright durations tomorrow.

*In my zealousness, though, I completely forgot that you don't exactly register A CHARACTER in  copyright, but a work. A character's first appearance being PD makes THAT first appearance of the character Public Domain(because you can't make derivatives of a public domain second issue, which would be based on the first issue). Which means, that Marvel would probably have to copyright and re-register EACH COMIC IT MAKES to make sure no elements in it ever lapse. Now, being that Marvel has made approximately (we're not gonna discount licensed material, variant covers and crossover shit. Math is bad enough, and I won't be surprised when I turn out to have completely bungled up this, anyway.)32,000 comics, we're talking roughly  $960000 every 30 years.  The original math still works if Marvel was  just  registering first appearances to keep the first appearance from lapsing, discounting joint first appearances, obviously. It's still a lot of money to keep the rights to The Hypno-Hustler and Venom's Ex-Wife, though.

6 best spiritual sequel games to beloved franchises at 8:09 PM

Original Franchise, don't steal!

Enough about hoping about Spiritual Sequels to classics! After all, don't we have enough with what we have? Well, uh... no.

But still! It's time to look at those games that are only a couple of names and wigs away from being part of a huge copyright infringement lawsuit. After all,  not being able to work on an IP is a small obstacle for those who really, really want to do certain games.


Timesplitters is the better Perfect Dark follow up.

We all wanted the Rare-Microsoft Alliance to work. Rare seemed like the kind of studio that did great games in spite of Nintendo and not because of it.Sadly, it didn't, and Rare now is merely a familiar husk filled with I don't know.

It did not take long for new studios based on former Rare employees to start cropping up, which included Platinum games, who are mostly reknown for their Time Splitter series, and obvious Golden Eye/Perfect Dark send up with a time travel twist.


 Blinx the Cat is Sonic's distant cousin.

Well, sort of. The creator of Sonic is also the creator of Blinx, a time manipulating cat with a vacuum. While the similarites might end with them both being platformer animals, Blinx does share some of Sonics tude.

However, Blinx instead trades the trademark speed for a time manipulating gimmick. However, his Xbox exclusivity wound up being his undoing, as  despite some strong initial efforst now often overlooked to make the console home to more than a 13+ audience, the console was never the place for fuzzy wuzzy plataformer heroes. Blinx had two games, though, which is one more than most animal plataformers and also one more than Sudeki,  Voodoo Vince, Brute Force, Kung Fu Chaos...

King of Fighters is the REAL Street Fighter 2.

At some point after Street Fighter 1's hilariously catastrophic results, Capcom and it's creator decided to do a parting of the ways. I'm not gonna say it's because he made a game that people injure themselves with...but it's possible.

Street Fighter man wound up working on SNK and helping make...King of Fighters! Dun, dun DUUUUN!

Yes, KOF did borrow heavilly from what worked for Street Fighter 2, but at the same time added some things of it's own. Often considered rival franchises, they did wind up making nice, nice for a couple of crossover games at the turn of the millenium. Still, where Street Fighter found new life with SF 4, and Mortal Kombat had it's "comeback" with Mortal Kombat: Days of Future Past,  and Even Killer Instinct managed to clamber out of wishlists and into relevancy, King of Fighters has managed to skid in place for the better part of a decade. Maybe next Millenium, Ryo.

Human Killing Machine is the bad sequel to Street Fighter nobody wanted

Again, nobody liked Street Fighter Pelao, but apparently it was enough of a hit to deserve a follow up. Capcom immediately got on that eventually producing the classic...Final Fight.

However, a company that helped port SF to home computers called Tiertex, had a vision for a new Street Fighter, built on their engine for Street Fighter 1. They pitched it to Capcom as a sequel.

Capcom passed, and, say what you will about Capcom, but damn it when they get it right they get it right. THIS was going to be Street Fighter 2.

The game's character's make  SF2's cast of national stereotypes look like a sensitively appealing group. The Swedish fighters where prostitutes, for crap's sake.

Face it, in terms of "German Stereotypes", Hans the Schnitzel Maker here is the least bad possibility.

Marathon is Halo is Marathon

If you're like me, you don't need to see Halo ever again.

Before Microsoft came along, Bungie had made a name for itself with Marathon, a Doom Clone (shut up, I'm still young!)

While them both being first person shooters might seem like a bit of a loose connection, there's more than that. Both share the idea of a gun that can be charged for a bigger blast, among other ideas such as Forge, a level creator, and AIs on ship that had potential to go rogue.

In fact, before Bungie and Microsoft split, the threads between Haley and Mara could almost be seen visible in terms of the story and  symbology. Sadly, this is not to be anymore.



Star Soldier/Gladiator is the Star Wars game that never was.

Even the "Episode" Gimmick.

One day, Lucas Arts and Capcom where going to make a Star Wars fighitng game together. This makes sense, see, because Capcom was tops at the genre, and Lucas Arts was the best at having the rights to Star Wars. It was going to be super fun.

But at some point, Lucas Arts backed away from the deal, leaving Capcom with a partly done game about people wacking each other with Laser Swords that  they couldn't sell.

So, they changed a name here, a design there, barely anything here and voila! Star Soldier was born! While less Street Fighter with lasers and more  a poor man's Soul Edge in space, it's a fine couple of games, now mostly known because it's Ryu, Hayato, made an appearance in MVC2.

Lucas Arts, meanwhile, got some people and make Star Wars: Masters of Terras Kasi, which only wishes we could say it's a mediocre game.

11 Geek Comandments for adapting a work at 12:00 PM

Michael Bay, stop making an idol in the shape of Shia Lebouf!

This days, just about everything is an adaptation of a comic, movie, book or candy, if not a sequel to an existing property, or a remake of an old movie. It all ties in into filmmakers trying to get your butt on a seat, and they think this is less of a risk than starting a whole new, original thing.

And it's fine. Yeah, you heard me. It is fine-ah! Back in my days trying to make a movie based on a comic or a game, tended to be seen as a risk.  Nobody would have expected people to "GET" Avengers, as if this highly loved decades old material was something far beyond the comprehension of your average person.

Invariably, they made a lot of mistakes, which made what attempts they did do at the time laughable now. But there are some lessons in those that a lot of Hollywood suits still need. Which is why I'm making this handy guide. After all, the point of making these adaptations is to bring you into the movie initially, but to keep you there and bring in more people you need to know what they walked in expecting.

So I'm coming down from the mountain, with the stone tablets in my hand. These are the commandments for adapting any works I like.

1) Thou shalt not turn your villain to a guy in a suit

Fear me, Wonder Woman! I AM EGG FU!

I've mentioned this several times, but I'm going to expand it into a commandment, now, because Hwood obviously needs to hear it. So you got the rights to, pfft I don't know, Mortal Kombat. And its still a viable franchise after decades of being introduced. And you have to work in Shang Tsung, immortal demon sorcerer from another dimension, because he's one of the more popular characters. But then your like, "Oh, shit,  that's too creative to work with and I want to make this movie super low budget, so in this case Shang Tsung will be a buisnessman working for Outworld Corp. Instead of a sorcerer, he's a CEO!"

Hey, HEY. This is Shang Tsung as a manager. TOTALLY different.

7 franchises that could use a Cinematic Universe at 1:04 PM

Wha...money? This? How

Everybody wants a cinematic universe now. Every time studios sent out a press release with those words, they're saying "please give us as much money as Avengers!" Especially now that A2 is out there, raking all the money by the yachtful.

It's mostly misplaced wishful thinking. But that's not to say nobody can ever pull it off. And there's some franchises where it does kind of make sense.

These are them.

7l) James Bond

Actually, this was announced over a decade ago.

There's been 20 something James Bond films, stretching across 40 something decades. With very few recurring characters and very little continuity to them, there's almost no world building. "James Bond exists, here's a threat to the Western World, James Bond has sex and shoots until the Western World's interests are safe again."

But it doesn't have to be like that. There's bound to be other Double Os out there, doing their thing differently from James Bond. And the villains. My, God! They could totally establish why Jaws has metal teeth, Blofeld is scarred and why shooting people makes Xenia Onattop sexmoan.

6) Resident Evil

"Stay Behind me!" "I KNOW MY PLACE, ALEECE!"

The newest Resident Evil movie was on hold, because Milla Jovovich was too pregnant to play the lady lead Alice, for a few months.

Now, we all know Resident Evil is nothing without Alice. But maybe, instead of waiting till next year to film everytime she gets pregnant, they could make a movie without Alice.

It sounds crazy, but there's other characters in RE besides Alice, who can have their own, similar to the game's story somewhat adventures.

We don't have to cut off our Alice supply cold turkey, though . We can have her cameo pregnantly to explain God himself chose her to be the mother of Jesus mark 2 because she's so awesome.

　

5) Dragonball

NNNgaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Ok...Dragon Ball sucked all the testes of the universe. But that doesn't mean whoever it is has the rights(please don't be Fox...) can't have another go at it.

But the whole Goku story...the well is poisoned, you know? Nobody wants to see Justin Chatwin don the spiky hair again.

But Dragon Ball has dozens of ancilliary characters, races, and worlds to put onscreen, with even more planned!

You could have a movie just set on planet Vegeta, establishing them Saiyan as planet wrecking badasses they are, and ending with Vegeta starting on his month's long journey to fight Goku. You could have an entire movie explain how Master Roshi became the old pervert we know him to be. You could have a movie just of Piccolo training Gohan. You could...oh, shit it's Fox. Nada, forget I said anything.

The 6 Other Disney Villains that need their own gritty origin story. at 12:22 PM

"Okay, you're motivation here is that you're not invited to a party and people have to fuckin' die over it."

This year sees the release of Maleficent, a movie where Disney answers the question nobody asked: How did the evil fairy godmother Carabosse Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty become the evil character we've all come to know? The satanic witch, in a reverse on the recent racebending Hollywood has had going on, will be played by actual satanic witch Angelina Jolie.

"Ask Herbert. I wanted her to be called Marina. Marina Badguy, that's a nice name."

Sure enough, you'd think  this literal fairy tale character doesn't need any character expansion because it's been 55 years since the original and the whole point of it WAS that she was a depthlessly evil character. No, we gotta go out and see her  story so we can truly understand her actions in  Sleeping Beauty. We gotta find out she wasn't making a fashion statement with her horn-wrap, she was just covering her literal horns. We gotta know what kind of stupid fairy parents name their kid Maleficent.

So if we're gonna do this, let's do this, then. Here's some more DIsney characters that  need their origin story told as a way for Disney to continue marketing it's kid's cartoons to  grown adults, taking their nostalgia to the bank IM expand their narrative universe ever more into a rich tapestry.

Jaffar

Do you have one that doesn't talk like Gilbert Gottfried?

When  we first meet Jaffar, he's hypnotized his way to Sultan's Chief Adviser (Are you sure "advisor" is not a word, spell-check?), a position he's not quite satisfied with. Despite being fairly well off, he's desperate enough to seek a magic lamp in a cave clearly designed to turn away potential costumers.

What if he was once a young idealist who wanted to make a better Agrabah, shunned form society due to their fear of sorcery? In the end he caves in and decides that the corrupt monarchy of Agrabah can only be made to help people by being put in a trance.

Naturally there's some bad people who want him dead, but by the end they're all dead, and he's climbed his way up to vizier.  And then the Sultan's wife gives birth to baby Jasmine.  CUT TO CREDITS, OMG!


Fat Cat

Many Men...wish death upon me...

They're making a  Chip n' Dale: Rescue Rangers CG origin movie, even though I think the origin of the team  got pretty well established in the first episode of the cartoon. But whatever, I'm not gonna get caught dead watching  a Disney movie trying to out 'Munk Alvin and the Chipmunks.

However, what about Fat Cat, one of it's recurrent villains? He was a cat...and also a mobster!  This clearly calls for a movie about  a young kitten growing up in the violent slums and alleyways of Jersey,  coming up in the ranks of the brutal animal crime world. But, uh, in a cute, Disney CGI kind of way.

 Well it's either that, or Nilmnolm. And we all know those movies about wacky scientists have not made Disny any bank.

Helga Sinclaire

For the last time: I do not have a mosquito on my face.

Atlantis: The Lost Empire is one of those Disney movies that  gets lost in amongst discussions of the company's  movies. Existing right in the Decline of Disney's traditional animation features and  alongside the rise of Pixar's CGI, the character's in it certainly aren't getting lumped with The Disney Princess and Disney's Skylanders thing. We've even forgotten than Princess Kida actually IS the first black Disney Princess.

But I like it. I mean, not a whole lot, but it's decent.  The movie's characters are a who's who of  adventure movie tropes and stereotypes, including one Helga Sinclair.

A Femme fatale mercenary, she's equally at home dressing like Lara Croft and  dressing like a Noire film gal,  In the end of the film she get's thrown out of a balloon, and then  the balloon falls on her. Underground. So it'd take some narrative gymnastics to explain her further adventures, unless they take place in hell.

So naturally, we go back and explain that she once was lost in a mystical island and had to learn to be tough and avoid getting raped. Ripoff? Yes. But then, we're already talking about Disney and Atlantis, so...

Dr Anton Sevarious

I can't make this funnier. Look how happy he is to be sticking that grape juice into someone!

I'm surprised Disney hasn't  brought Gargoyles back in any meaningful way. Yeah, there's some comics and stuff. Talk to me when Goliath shows up in Kingdom Hearts.

I say the Gargoyles universe is complex enough to stand a few spinoffs. In a few short seasons they made a world where aliens, sentient Gargoyles, robots, and greek and norse mythology all coexisted.

It's bound to be weird to be a scientist in a world where Pan is real, and maybe a coworker of yours in disguise. But that's where Anton Sevarious lives.

Responsible for several pseudoscience things, including a clone of Goliath and a Mecha loch ness monster, Dr Sevarious clearly has seen some  some shit, and does not  give a shit. A lot of times mad scientists look like disheveled old men, claiming that they'll "SHow them all!"

Not Sevarious. He's down with anything.  Kevin Bacon for the part. The movie should just be about  this crazy ass super scientist who never turns down a challenge, and winds up filling New York with like, tentacle monsters and dinosaurs and shit.

And then he still don't give a shit.

The Stoner Turtle from Finding Nemo.

Dude, let's wasted and tie can wrappers around our necks!

Oh, what was that? The Turtle from finding Nemo was not high on drugs? Well,  what was it, then? What was it?

Clearly, a 60's inspired origin story is the way to go. How that turtle learned how not to be a square and chill out.  He started out a young hatchling, part of a conformist  turtle family, including a turtle dad with a crew cut telling him to go enlist so he can go to Vietnam...'s shore and fight crabs.  But soon, he discovers  Reefer Shore, a place where all the  arthropods  eat, like, nutrients from nature itself, man.

Pretty soon, he's bucking the system, and wearing dreads made out of algae. Come on, doesn't that sound like a better movie than "The continuing adventures of the forgetful fish."?

The Prince from Snow White

Hey, birdie. I claim Prima Nocta all up your cloaca.

As long as we're expanding on 2d carboard cutouts from old Disney movies, what about the nameless Prince from Snow White? The first in a long line of boring male love interests, the Prince just kind of wanders into the movie, being all charming and crap. You could just leave that there.

OR...or...you could Game of Thrones that shit.  Did you know how much murder and rape and slavery  and royal court politics have to happen before Mr Charming can just wander into scene and make out with a comatose woman? Well, now you will! With the new  SHowtime series, "Castle Charming". 

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...