Just the other day I basically surrendered to the concept of remakes (The Wild Bunch finally broke me). I recognize the value of a brand, I’m honestly sick of bitching about them, and people are probably exhausted from reading all our complaints, for all the good it does anyway. 

Well… I guess I can officially file my grievances about just one more. Because it seems that for some reason, they’ve decided to remake Robocop.

The circuitry-filled crimefighter has already endured two inferior sequels, a syndicated TV series and a pair of straight-to-cable movies, but that’s not enough damage for Tinseltown, so producer Michael De Luca and Sony have apparently decided to dismantle the scrap and solder it back together for a 21st century version of the heavy-steppin’ police weapon.

Our source is usually quite reliable with intel, as unfortunate as that may be in this case.  I honestly thought De Luca was a little better than this – as New Line’s former president of production, he helped make a reality of movies like Blade, Magnolia, The Mask, Austin Powers… And now a remake like this?

Blasphemy? Nah, but certainly idiotic, and a distressing indication of the true depths of creative bankruptcy afflicting Hollywood. Word is that original Robocop director Paul Verhoeven wisely wants nothing to do with it.

As a summary for those six or seven mutants out there who’ve never seen it, the original extra-violent classic was set in a crime-ridden futuristic Detroit, where a mortally wounded law officer becomes part of a corporate experiment in which his remains are encased in a robotic suit and unleashed on the city’s felons.